Plug The Security Holes

By Radha Kumar

For the federal investigating agency, look at US example

The government has finally put security reforms on a fast track. They have announced a Bill to set up a National Investigating Agency, a new coastal command, amending the CISF Act to protect private facilities and a slew of other measures. How far will these help to prevent the security lapses Mumbai made so painfully clear?

The three key areas for reform are: intelligence gathering and communication, specialist training and equipment and coordination between the federal and state ministries concerned. The first of these areas has received the greatest attention. In September, the Moily commission on administrative reforms suggested the creation of a federal investigative authority which could be set up by ordinance or through a constitutional amendment to the National Security Act of 1980. A similar proposal was made by the Subrahmanyam committee on security reforms set up by the NDA government. Neither proposal was acted upon, in part, according to Moily, because the states are concerned that this might infringe upon their rights in the federation. While this is an important concern, it ought to be possible to accommodate it, for example, through state consultation in an advisory capacity, so that national security, which is a federal responsibility, is not jeopardised as it has so often been.

According to the Moily and Subrahmanyam committees’ recommendations, the authority would be responsible for coordinating tasks that are divided amongst different intelligence agencies, such as RAW, IB and CBI. Additionally, it has been suggested that the authority coordinate between state police forces through the appointment of special police commissioners. Though the coordination of intelligence inputs is under the purview of the national security adviser and the coordination of police forces is under the home ministry,having a dedicated authority will at least make a sole agency responsible. To this extent it may succeed in plugging some of the existing gaps, especially in information communication to prevent or minimise terrorist attacks.

But an authority whose mandate is restricted to intelligence would not be able to deal with the national security challenge of how to effectively protect us from terrorism. While some of the other measures announced, such as setting up a coastal command, are intended to remedy glaring problems such as the navy lapses, coast guard breaches and police inadequacies that the Mumbai attacks pinpointed, it is not clear that a slew of complementary measures will work unless they are integrated with each other. As the failure to implement the Dharma Vira and Soli Sorabjee committees’ recommendations for police reforms shows, leaving this job to the respective ministries or service branches is chancing our luck.

In the past 15 years of terrorist attacks, our security forces have progressively weakened rather than strengthened in their capacity to protect us, and successive ministers and chiefs of services appear to bicker amongst themselves rather than attempt to reverse the trend. Who will tackle this problem? The federal authority would have been ideally positioned to build consensus on reforms and their implementation in the security forces, but many fear that such a comprehensive mandate might concentrate too much power in the hands of a very few.

In the US, the Department of Homeland Security faced similar problems. It was given too many and far too wide-ranging executive powers to counter terrorism, and it ran into stiff resistance in implementing recommendations that required reform in powerful departments and agencies. Nevertheless, it did have important success in coordinating between the border forces, coast guard, customs, transport, immigration and citizenship officials, and in acting as a conduit between them and the intelligence agencies. This success was generated only after the department won the right to choose its personnel rather than have them nominated.

While in actual practice the Department of Homeland Security infringed human rights, especially at immigration points, these violations diminished over time as it appointed special advisory and monitoring bodies. Its activities include training in emergency response and disaster preparedness. And it comprises not one but a series of coordinating councils, between services, departments and states. Most of its advisory bodies constitute a public-private partnership: they include members of industry, academia and think tanks, and their job is to propose innovative and practical measures for improving national security as well as to monitor performance for efficiency and human rights protection. In our case, for example, a first aim should be to regulate our financial and cellular services.

Most of the lessons to be learned from the US are those that we know. Our intelligence agencies and security services have to work together if they are to be effective; we need to combine training, materials and fair working conditions if we want our forces to be alert; and we have to develop a publicprivate partnership, with a focus on human rights protection and community outreach, if we are to give our security the deep roots that it needs.

A federal investigative authority alone may not be sufficient to reform our security. We need an authority which can, at the least, oversee the reforms that are required in our armed forces, coast guard, police and intelligence agencies as well as in our financial and cellular services. If those reforms are to be separately undertaken by the concerned ministries, then we need to hear what they will be and on what time frame. Logically, they should be simultaneous and the reforms should be integrated in order to facilitate interoperability in times of crisis. Otherwise it will be impossible to coordinate between intelligence and action, a scenario that we are all too familiar with.