A National Security Council has finally been born in
India. It was a Caesarian operation. There were indications that the embryo was to be
aborted but the momentum of the Jaswant Singh-Talbott talks projected it to life. The baby
born is therefore, quite flawed.
Two fundamentals are absolutely imperative for a
National Security Council. It has to have a mechanism for thinking and another for
decision making. The NSC which has been constituted will have serious problems in both
areas.
The Council will have the Prime Minister at the top with
the Ministers for Home, Defence, Finance and External Affairs and Dy. Chairman of Planning
Commission as its members. Below it will be a three tiered structure, consisting of the
Strategic Policy Group, the National Security Advisory Board and the Joint Intelligence
Committee which will be its Secretariat. The National Security Adviser who is the
Principal Secretary to the PM will be the link between the NSC and its subordinate
constituents.
The thinking process is intended to be carried out in
the Strategic Policy Group by its seventeen members who are Secretaries of key ministries
and include the three Chiefs of staff, RBI Governor, Scientific Adviser to the Defence
Minister and Chairman, JIC. This group is no different from an enlarged version of the
Committee of Secretaries, already in existence, and whose deliberations are not known to
the distinguished for intellectual freshness, innovative depth and precise execution for
implementation. Most members of the Committee of Secretaries have been seen to be innocent
of holistic conceptions. They usually display predetermined loyalties and a tenacity for
jurisdictional attachments. They excel in turf battles, the level of thinking and
expertise needed for a body like the NSC will simply be not endowment of many of these
luminaries, not the least because in their careers for most of the time they would have
been on a round of musical chairs.
It is the National Security Advisory Board in which
persons of eminence in various fields outside the Government will serve, which really
qualifies to be the think tank for the NSC. However, one must keep the realities of life
in view while pondering over its efficiency and value. In India no Advisory Board manages
to be the core. The reports of most such Boards keep gathering dust. Perhaps, the reports
of the Task Force set up to formulate this NSC five months ago would have met the same
fate but for the imperatives created by the continuing Jaswant Singh-Talbott exchanges.
Further more, it may be noted that the Indian bureaucracy is extremely reluctant to share
information even among themselves. Will they permit transmission of sensitive intelligence
or information to outsiders in the National Advisory Board? If the past is any guide, the
answer to this question must inevitably be a NO. Bereft of key inputs, the product of such
a Board cannot be much different from what is already available in the media or the
academia.
The Joint Intelligence Committee has been a useful
organisation for evaluations and estimates. Its studies do sometimes represent combined
wisdom of various Government agencies. But it is one thing to produce a thought provoking
report, and , while another to have it welcomed by minds which should be receptive and
eager. Overtime, the JIC has broadened its areas of enquiry and assessment but one single
fact is adequate to throw light on the stature it enjoys with the Government. It has
remained without a proper head almost a year. It is only very recently that a head has
been named. The JIC is to be revamped for dealing with the demands of its new role of a
Secretariat for the NSC. The speed with which this revamping takes place will provide an
indication of how serious the Government is about this NSC.
The decision will be by the body of ministers at the top
with the PM at its head. This body is no different from the Cabinet Committee for
Political Affairs which has sometimes functioned in the country. Its shortcomings would
continue to be the same. Often, a strong PM has been a lone decision maker with others in
the group just nodding in their heads in agreement. Many flawed decisions were thus made
in the past for which a heavy price had to be paid.
The nomination of the Principal Secretary to the PM also
to be the National Security Advisor, provides the ultimate indication on that this NSC is
not expected to function but is intended to be just a showpiece. The principal Secretary
to the PM and National Security Advisor are two full time heavy duty jobs. While the
present incumbent in the Principal Secretary's assignment is a very highly rated official,
the National Security Advisor should have been a separate individual. By combining the two
posts in one person a bureaucratic gridlock has been created. The Cabinet Secretary who
heads the civil services of the country will play second fiddle, being just a member of
the Strategic Policy Group.
Foreigners have often commented that India lacks a
national security culture. This creation of an NSC reconfirms this view yet again.
A.K. Verma
11-12-98
(Former Secretary,Cabinet Secretariat , Govt. of India)
