India's precarious internal security

This book should be compulsory reading for every Indian politician and bureaucrat, not because they are unaware of India’s internal security challenges but to understand how India can benefit from the best law-and-order practices globally and the path-breaking steps other countries followed after major terror strikes.

Vappala Balachandran, a former Indian Police Service officer, skillfully wields facts, data and anecdotes to demonstrate that, despite the November 26, 2008 Mumbai attacks (known as 26/11 in popular parlance), the Kargil war and numerous low-intensity terror strikes and riots, Indian politicians and representatives of the intelligence, security and defence agencies have failed to restrain their egos in the interest of improved internal security. The country remains as vulnerable as it was nine years ago when 10 Lashkar-e-Taiba terrorists killed 166 people, including foreign nationals, over three days. 

Mr Balachandran was part of the famous high-level Pradhan committee set up by the Maharashtra government after the 26/11 crisis. He studied the reports of various other committees and revealed that most of their recommendations had been implemented only partially. These half-measures were mainly on account of the reluctance of Indian politicians to cede control over state police forces or in reforming the police forces.

As Mr Balachandran points out, the US government had successfully set up Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTTFs) in 104 cities to deal with terrorism after the September 11, 2001 attacks in New York. JTTF officers are drawn from Federal Bureau of Investigation (which leads the teams) and 500 state and 55 federal agencies. In India, the local police continue to be the prime responder to an attack, followed by the National Security Guard’s combat operations. Untrained and burdened by endless local and special laws – from street patrols to culling street dogs to removing illegal encroachments – India’s police forces are singularly unfit to be the first line of response to a terror attack.

Mr Balachandran, who has given talks on national security overseas, suggests that Indian police must share the power of investigation and prosecution with other agencies. For instance, the New York Police Department (NYPD) shares crime and policing responsibilities with Transport Police, Correctional Services, Park Police, University Police and Environmental Correction Police and so on. This helps the NYPD focus better on its law and order duties.

The writer is of the explicit view that law and order should not have been left to the states, and traces India’s current internal security weaknesses to the drafting of the Indian Constitution. “The tragedy was that our founding fathers didn’t incorporate checks and balances in the Constitution… to give concurrent responsibility to the Centre to deal with national security threats. This was certainly a lapse by those who drafted the Constitution.”

He also argues the central and state governments wake up to security threats only after the fact. The assassination of Indira Gandhi saw the creation of the Special Protection Group. The hijacking of IC-814 in 1999 saw the introduction of the Central Industrial Security Force to handle airport security (a move state police chiefs had opposed before the tragedy). Similarly, a proposal for a National Investigation Agency had been pending with the Union Home Ministry since 2001 but was set up only after 26/11.

As striking is the fact that Mr Balachandran is unafraid to tell truth to power. So the Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led National Democratic Alliance regime comes under his critical scrutiny too. The National Security Council (NSC) under the current leadership, he says, has regressed into more opaqueness and this government is yet to appoint members to the National Security Advisory Board.  He believes the machismo of the Modi government on the national security front is causing more damage than helping the agencies.

He quotes as an example the signing of so-called peace accord with rebel outfit National Socialist Council of Nagaland (NSCN)–IM faction in full public view, which thinks was an immature move. “The NDA government should have realised that patient back channel talks away from the public gaze was the only way to arrive at solutions to such complicated problems.”

Another example relates to surgical strike in Myanmar after 18 Indian soldiers were killed by Naga insurgents. “The Indian government while trumpeting its muscular policy didn’t study its foreign ramifications,” he writes. Although the NDA-II government “chants the development mantra, [it has] shown no interest in effecting basic internal security norms.”

If there is a gap in this book it is the lack of greater insight into the functioning of these agencies and lesser-known organisations such as the NSC and Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC). Both NSC and JIC are supposed to be the government’s think tank on security and are tasked with analysing inputs provided by various intelligence agencies. But both have failed to fulfil their mandates.

But for anyone looking to get a first-hand experience of a police officer during the Emergency and the man who officially collated details of the 26/11 attack, this is the book to read.

Keeping India Safe: The Dilemma of Internal Security

Vappala Balachandran

HarperCollins

308 pages; Rs 599