Gaps in national security

By Radhavinod Raju

It was in his Intelligence Bureau Centenary Endowment lecture delivered in New Delhi on December 27, 2009, that Union Home Minister P Chidambaram first outlined a ‘broad architecture of a new security system that will serve the country today and in the foreseeable future’. Chidambaram had visited the United States and seen the functioning of their counter terrorism centre a few months before the lecture. When he delivered the lecture he had completed a little over a year as the Union home minister, and spoke about a new system that would be put in place in India to fight terrorism. He pointed out that there was “… no substitute for the policeman who walks the streets. He is the gatherer of intelligence, the enforcer of the law, the preventer of the offence, the investigator of the crime and the standard-bearer of the authority of the state, all rolled into one. If he is not there, it means that all these functions are not performed. That — the failure to perform essential police functions — is where the rot began and that is where the rot lies even today”. In this connection, Chidambaram referred to the large number of vacancies in the rank of constables; but two years down the road though there has been some improvement, a lot more ground remains to be covered — there are thousands of vacancies in the rank of constables in most states. The recruited constables have to be given training and that continues to be a big roadblock in most of the states, for there is acute shortage of trainers and other infrastructure required for this purpose.

There are over 13,000 police stations in the country, and they function like islands, without communicating with each other. The minister referred to the crime and criminal tracking system that the Centre was pushing through so that the work of the district police, the state police headquarters and the central police organisations is greatly facilitated, especially in the matter of exchanging information pertaining to crime and criminals. Here again, after two years while a lot of ground has been covered, a lot more remains to be covered. The minister also emphasised the need for community policing to enable citizens to interact with the police and wanted a toll-free service for them to pass information or lodge complaints. Chidambaram called for restructuring the intelligence gathering system in the states by having a separate cadre for the state special branch and for setting up quick reaction teams in all the districts to respond to attack of terrorists.

While referring to the improvements already introduced by him, like his daily meetings attended by the national security adviser and other intelligence chiefs for better coordination, and the strengthening of the multi agency centre at the central level and the state MACs where the state special branch also participates in the meeting on intelligence sharing, the minister said that the government was better informed and the agencies are more alert. However this did not mean that we could prevent or pre-empt terrorist attacks. He observed that the various agencies at the Centre like the Intelligence Bureau, the R&AW, the JIC, the Defence Intelligence Agencies, and the Financial Intelligence Agencies, etc do not report to a single authority and there is no single or unified command which can issue directions to these agencies and bodies.

Chidambaram also mentioned the need to integrate different databases which contain vital and sensitive information, but do not share it with each other. He said that the central government has decided to create the National Intelligence Grid for this purpose, and said that in 18 to 24 months it would be in place. However due to concerns raised by various ministries and fears of breaching of privacy laws, it took the government about 18 months to clear the first phase of this programme.

But the most ambitious proposal of Chidambaram was the setting up of the National Counter Terrorism Centre with the goal of ‘preventing a terrorist attack, containing a terrorist attack should one take place and responding to a terrorist attack by inflicting pain upon the perpetrators’. He said that this organisation had to be created from scratch. While the United States did it within 36 months of 9/11 Chidambaram said that we did not have 36 months, but had to decide immediately to set up the NCTC by the end of 2010.The Cabinet Committee on Security cleared the proposal of the minister only a couple of days back, over 24 months after the proposal was first mooted, overshooting Chidambaram’s target already by over 12 months.

Many well-wishers have been waiting for the NCTC ever since Chidambaram outlined his plan, having realised the importance of a coordinated approach to fight terrorism. Once it is set up the NCTC would have to perform functions relating to intelligence collection, investigation and operations. All intelligence agencies would therefore have to be represented in the NCTC. According to the minister MAC with expanded authority will be at the core of the new organisation. So the actual work, or the nitty-gritty of setting up the NCTC will start now — bringing together the intelligence, investigation and operational components together. The minister had hoped that there would be no turf wars, as the NCTC will have to have oversight responsibilities of a number of existing agencies. He also said that the NCTC will have to have, apart from MAC, the NIA, the NCRB, the NTRO, the JIC and the NSG as part of it, and that positioning the R & AW, the ARC and the CBI under the NCTC to the extent that they deal with terrorism will have to be looked into. Unless the minister, with the backing of his colleagues in the Cabinet Committee on Security, personally follows up and ensures implementation, this would be an extremely difficult, if not impossible exercise.

It would be useful to see to what extent the various projects the minister unveiled in his lecture in December 2009, have been implemented. This would be useful in the implementation of the NCTC, especially where it concerns the states, who hold the key to implementation of some of the key projects in the states. It would also be necessary to examine whether any changes are required to be made in the NIA Act to make it more effective. Though the Act provides that the central government can direct the NIA to take over any case mandated by the Act without the concerned state’s consent, in practice it is seen that the Centre is cautious in this regard, raising questions about the Act itself.

(Views expressed in the column are the author’s own) 

Radhavinod Raju is a former director general of the National Investigation Agency. E-mail: radhavinodraju@gmail.com 

New Indian Express

17th January 2012