'The Great Indian Experiment is alive and secure'

I would dare to say although we face an increasingly challenging security environment, independent India also has better capabilities to deal with them. But we live with a paradox in India. We are simultaneously increasingly secure and increasingly paranoid about our national security. And since we live in a rapidly changing world, we need to find new ways of ensuring our security.

Consider how secure India is today compared to the three decades after independence. There is no existential threat to India's integrity. For two and a half decades we have faced cross-border terrorism and subversion, external support to insurgent groups and attempts to divide us communally, even the printing fake rupees by our enemies. And yet these have been the decades when India has done best in terms of accumulating power and raising our people out of poverty.

Why are we paranoid?
If we are actually more secure than before why are we increasingly paranoid about our security? One reason may be a sense that what worked for us in the past is no longer relevant. It is time to find new ways of ensuring our security.

That is because today's threats are more serious and complex than before. They are threats as much to our stability as to our way of life, to our quest to modernise, and to our strategic autonomy. And we have much more to lose.

As I said before, w e do have reasons to worry. There are real threats to India's security, those threats are more complex, and uncertainty in the international system is higher than it has been for a long time. And this is when India is much more linked and dependent on the outside world and has much more at risk. This is no longer a subsistence game, it is a game for higher stakes. Energy and food security could determine the future of our country (the Indian middle class knows that their jobs, prosperity and even lifestyle are connected to the outside world - many middle class families have someone studying, working or settled abroad. Those who are frightened of interdependence try to turn their backs on the world. The majority doesn't).

So we have cause to worry and to address the issues that I mentioned before. But why is there a hysterical tone to some of our national discourse on national security issues?

It is not just because threat inflation is an industry. It always was - a military industrial complex needs an enemy, journalists need a story, and diplomats work crises. There is an industry and economy built on threat inflation, as TV anchors counting up nuclear weapons and missiles reminded us last spring when Chinese soldiers pitched tents in Depsang. But that does not explain the hysterical tone.

There are two recent reasons, linked to each other, which cause people to worry and make our national security discourse sound paranoid at times.

One is an expanded definition of security. We rightly demand more personal security, in a society in rapid change. As a society, we expect much more from the state while we simultaneously fetter its hands by holding the state to higher standards of behaviour and impose checks and balances on its powers. And we now define national security in the broadest way, including energy and food security, and mitigating the effects of climate change.

The expanded definition of security leads to higher aspirations and expectations of the state and society. Public confidence in the capacity of state organs to provide internal security is low. We may have made progress since 2008 in improving our counter-terrorism mechanisms, but not yet in all the other aspects of internal and personal security. Expanded demands, limited public confidence, and the extent to which they are met are now amplified by the new media environment that we are immersed in. When partisan politics are added to the discussion, you can see why there is a perception of insecurity. There is thus, an increasing dichotomy between the reality of how secure we are and our perception of it. One or the other will have to change.

Conclusion
We are in a new normal where expectations and publicity try to drive governments in their security choices, not an objective calculus of the balance of power and how it could serve national political goals. We now conduct counter-insurgency and counter terrorism in the full glare of the TV cameras. Similarly, in cyber space we must assume from the open and transparent nature of the medium that what the state does will someday become public knowledge, and not just because of future [Edward] Snowdens.

The new normal has its advantages. Civil society is now involved in security issues. In Nagaland there is a spontaneous civil society movement opposing extortion and "tax" demands by insurgent groups. Unarmed civilians have shown great courage in standing up against intimidation by armed militias, spontaneously and largely on their own. We must learn how to operate in this environment. This is not just about media management. It is about changing and learning new ways of working so that we can actually use its characteristics to improve our own security.

I am confident that we can and will do so. Measured by outcomes India has done well in one of the toughest security environments in the world, nearly tripling GDP in the last decade. The last two and a half decades, when we faced cross border terrorism and other threats have also been the most transformative decades in our history. It is never easy living through rapid change. Contemporaries are often blinded and alarmed by the rush of events. We are fortunate to be living in one such phase. To my mind, the Great Indian Experiment is alive, well and increasingly secure.

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National Security Advisor Shiv Shankar Menon's address at Kerala State Planning Board on "India's Security Environment" Thiruvananthapuram, March 20, 2014