Notional security

The Principal Secretary to the Prime Minister is not competent to hold the office of National Security Advisor NSA. And the Principal Secr...

The Principal Secretary to the Prime Minister is not competent to hold the office of National Security Advisor NSA. And the Principal Secretary, of this or any other government, cannot double as the National Security Advisor for the simple reason that it is a full-time commitment and cannot be handled by a re-employed bureaucrat simultaneously engaged in running the Prime Minister8217;s Office. Therefore, the government8217;s announcement of the formation of a National Security Council NSC is flawed from its day of birth.

The multi-layered structure that has been set forth is defective. It has built-in contradictions, and at the end of the day, is designed to stifle the strategic policy-making process. The rationale behind creating an NSC is precisely the opposite of what this newly announced body is going to set out to do. The NSA, for starters, cannot be anyone other than a political heavyweight, with a strategic vision for India, and who is not currently engaged in the running of the government. This is thetried and tested option followed the world over. How India can hope to reinvent the wheel in this matter is as perplexing as the decision has been.

By giving the Principal Secretary a double role, the government is declaring that in this vast country with a pool of talent there is not one individual who has the political savvy, the strategic perception and the exposure to governance so as to be eligible for appointment as the NSA. That is a very poor opinion to hold for India. Compounding the problem of a double-take NSA is the constitution of an enormous Strategic Policy Group.

As it currently stands, the Strategic Policy Group is an enlarged version of the Committee of Secretaries, with the armed forces chiefs and some other bureaucrats thrown in, all of whom will get together to conduct a strategic defence review SDR. Too many cooks will spoil the broth, and the SDR already seems like a casualty. The members of the Strategic Policy Group have enough on their hands, and the additional responsibilityof coordinating with other ministries and departments, whilst conducting the SDR, is a recipe for disheartenment.

The SDR should in fact have been handled by the yet-to-be constituted National Security Advisory Board, for that is where the specialists will come in. Leaving the SDR to administrators within the government does not suggest judicious thinking. Logically, therefore, the formulation of the SDR should be interchanged between these two layers. The Strategic Policy Group can then study the SDR for the viability of its implementation, as also its analysis for the topmost level of the NSC.

Revamping of the Joint Intelligence Committee JIC, which will undertake the secretarial work for the NSC, is long overdue. Currently, there is not one department in the government which takes the JIC seriously. So the challenge is not simply to rejuvenate the body but to bestow it with credibility. That can happen only if the government ensures that appointments to the JIC are not mere parking slots to a postingin New Delhi. That, however, can also be said for the NSC, and its ultimate rationale for streamlining administrative functioning. Hence the need to have an NSA with that vision.