B RAMAN
Individual States can control regional
terrorism or insurgency with a limited spread. We have had success stories as
in the case of Al Ummah in Tamil Nadu.
2.But terrorism or insurgency of a
pan-Indian spread is a different kind of threat like that of the Indian
Mujahideen or insurgency of the Maoists. The whole of India is their theatre. And target.
No individual State police, however professional and competent, can deal with
the threat on its own.
3.We are on the threshold of other and more
deadly mutations of terrorism such as maritime terrorism. Global terrorist
organisations have been on the look-out for weapons of mass destruction
material that they can use. From global, such threats are likely to become
national.
4.Only the Government of India can deal
with these mutations and prevent them from operating in our territory. No
individual State Police has or will ever have the expertise and capability to
prevent and neutralize them.
5.Our internal security problems are
inextricably entwined with our external environment. The non-State actors of
today---whether terrorists or insurgents---copy-cat States in their ability to
use modern technologies and new means of causing death and destruction.
6. Protecting ourselves and our nation from
these ever-changing threats is the business of all of us--- whether the central
agencies or the State Police. When our Constitution was framed more than 60
years ago, our internal security tasks were simple ---dealing with dacoities,
robberies and insurgencies of the Telangana kind. Our founding fathers had the
confidence that the States can deal with any internal security threat alone. In
their keenness to preserve and protect our federal State, they made the Police
a State subject.
7.Threats have changed today. Beyond our
worst imagination. No single Government or agency or police force can cope with
the threats of today by operating from an island of its own imagination. The
island mentality and the island techniques in the management of internal
security have to give way to a co-operative and co-ordinated way of managing
internal security.
8.Federalism is no longer the ability to
act alone. It is the willingness and the ability to act together. Terrorists
and insurgents are increasingly acting together at the regional, national and
global level. But we in India
are not. We find it easier to co-operate with other nations, but not with each
other.
9.The current controversy over the National
Counter-Terrorism Centre (NCTC) between the Centre and the States illustrates
the continuing prevalence of the island mentality in dealing with pan-Indian
internal security threats.
10.The concept was borrowed by
P.Chidambaram, the Union Home Minister, from the US where its NCTC has played a
useful role in preventing terrorism. Normally, there should have been no
controversy but Chidambaram’s action in seeking to make the NCTC a part of the
Intelligence Bureau with executive powers of arrest and search has rightly
alarmed the opposition-ruled States.
11.IN the US and elsewhere, such
instruments function independently and not as a wing of the intelligence
agency. They have no powers of arrest and search. The IB is a clandestine
instrument. Fears of likely misuse of such powers by it are legitimate. They
have to be addressed.
12.We used to have good habits of
co-operation in the past when the same political party was in power in the
Centre and the States. These habits are withering away due to the emerging
multipolarity of our political landscape in which everything is getting
politicized.
13.We need new instruments to deal with the
threats of today. Yesterday’s instruments are out of date. To oppose the new
instruments under the pretext of threats to federalism is short-sighted and
will prove to be suicidal.
14.We have to think of new ways of
interpreting and protecting federalism that would strengthen our ability to
maintain internal security without jeopardizing our federal structure. Dogged,
unthinking opposition to new, much-needed structures such as the NCTC will prove
counter-productive.
15.The Centre cannot escape blame for the
current controversy. It should have realized that it cannot deal with internal
security without the co-operation of the State Police. Instead of consulting
the States on equal basis and encouraging them to get into the same boat, it
has added to their suspicions by playing games that politicians play unmindful
of national interests. Its action in avoiding political consultations on the
NCTC before issuing the notification on its creation is haunting it now.
Instead of making the States more flexible and responsive to ideas of
pan-Indian counter-terrorism management, it has made them more distrustful of
the Centre.
16.It is time for the Prime Minister to
come to the forefront, take over the leadership role in this matter and remove
the suspicions and apprehensions of the States. How can India have internal
peace if the institutions of individual States decay and how can individual
States have internal peace if the
central institutions are thwarted from functioning as they should ?
17.The Prime Minister should announce the
withdrawal of the notification already issued and set up a small group of
experts from the Centre and the States to come out with a fresh draft of how
the NCTC will function without adding to frictions between the Centre and the
States.
( The writer is Additional Secretary
(retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, New Delhi, and, presently,
Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai, and Associate of the Chennai
Centre For China Studies. E-mail: seventyone2@gmail.com Twitter : @SORBONNE75 )
