India’s intelligence security Need for an overarching strategy
By Colonel Satish Singh Lalotra
“You can’t be a real spy and have everybody in the world know who you are and what your drink is.. Anyonymous
The Indian Machiavelli Chanakya more commonly known as Kautilya was one of the greatest philosophers, thinkers and tacticians of not just India but the world itself had ever seen. It goes without saying that Acharya Chanakya who was known for his intelligence, clearly understood the need for a robust network of spies to remain on top of things.
He knew that the whole kingdom of Mauryas will collapse like a house of cards in the absence of spies since its mandatory for the king to have eyes and ears everywhere. The unprecedented and uncalled for attack on our jawans in the Galwan area of eastern Ladakh on 15th June 2020 by the PLA seems to point an accusing finger at us that somewhere down the line, India has failed to keep up the tryst with one of its greatest master tactician and spy Chanakya.
As mentioned above, the macabre manner in which the brutal attack was executed by PLA in Galwan had its prognosis in similar macabre style physical face offs in North Sikkim barely a month ago. The Galwan incident focused once again attention on the complex, security challenges facing India in the midst of corona virus pandemic which has the potential to derail its economic and social progress. In the aftermath of this faceoff at Galwan the functioning of India’s security and intelligence set up and its ability to meet new emerging challenges has been doing rounds albeit in a hushed manner.
The above fiasco in fact calls for reforms and restructuring of our intelligence system to make us more responsive, proactive and in harmony with the pursuit of nation’s internal and external policies. What ever piecemeal reforms have been tinkered with from time to time starting from the 1951 Himmatsinghji committee to GC Saxena special task force after the 1999 Kargil operations has been in the nature of only tackling the side effects of a bigger malaise rather than the disease itself afflicting the Indian intelligence apparatus.
The FICCI (Federation of Indian chambers of commerce and Industry) also came out with a task force report on national security and terrorism (Rajiv Chandrasekhar report -vol 1 2009) which made several suggestions for strengthening intelligence gathering and national security management. In fact all these reports were guided by the sole premise to defuse the crisis present at that point of time, retrospective in nature, rather than need based perspective plans to reform and revamp.
The Galwan valley clash in eastern Ladakh has brought into sharp focus again some of the lingering intelligence problems crying for an immediate resolution. Having had a stint for three years in SFF (Spl frontier force) which functions closely with ARC (Aviation research center) and RAW (Research and analysis wing) I was privy to functioning to of some of the country’s premier external intelligence organisations from close quarters though only in a brief manner. First impression which I gathered was the inter/intra organization turf wars which were debilitating to the extent that the intelligence so gathered became redundant for its final usage.
Interestingly with the benefit of hindsight it could be safely assumed now that our external intelligence agencies need a solid technology upgrade, especially in signal decryption work and cryptology. While in SFF to my amusement I saw that we still used Morse code a 1st WW crypto technology. A sad state of affairs. This calls for enhancing in house R&D capability to bridge the gap between what we possess and what we should possess to come up o top of the emerging situations.
Coming to the recent past, immediately after 1999 Kargil operations the then PM Mr Vajpayee ordered the formation of National security council (NSC) as a one stop organization to advise the PMO with Mr Brajesh Mishra as its head. The NSC took its real shape with NSCS (National Security Council Secretariat) an apex body consisting of 3 tiered structure in its ambit. The 3 tiers were the SPG (Strategic policy group), forming the nucleus of decision making body with host of members to include the Cabinet secy, Governor of RBI, Foreign secy, Defencesecy, CDS, COAS, CONS, COAF Chairman CBDT etc to name a few. The second tier consisting of National security advisory board had eminent members from the retired fraternity of government having expertise in national security. The most importantthird tier the so called ” Boots on ground” the JIC(Joint intelligence committee) consisted of RAW,IB and the Dtes of intelligence of the three wings of the armed forces. Unfortunately for this country the JIC the most important of all was abolished and merged with the all powerful NSCS in an attempt to help consolidate and streamline the country’s security apparatus towards the end of Modi government’s first term. It has to be known to all and sundry that the principal responsibility of intelligence assessment /gathering from all conceivable sources on ground rests with the RAW, IB as well as troops on ground /respective directorates of armed forces. All these actions are ably supported by sister organizations like the ARC(Aviation research center),RRC(Radio research center) and All india radio monitoring service (AIRMS) to name a few.
As stated earlier in 2018 to the amazement of everybody the NSA was made the chief of SPG (Strategic policy group)earlier headed by the defence secy with both NSAB and JIC disbanded. This has lead now to a situation wherein all intelligence inputs are analyzed by the NSCS which give its report to the PM and all other ministries for their further coordination. In fact prior to disbandment, all these tasks were equally shared by the SPG,NSAB and the JIC. Herein lies the crux of the entire problem of intelligence apparatus as obtaining today. The revamp of the security apparatus in 2018 has in fact saddled the NSA with superhuman onerous responsibility of donning too many caps of intelligence assessment to include principal security advisor to the PM, managing India’s nuclear deterrence as also supervision of intelligence agencies. He has too much on his plate to do justice and to be fair and square in his intelligence assessment in a Galwan like situation which requires 24×7 watch. In fact the “Boots on ground” i. e. JIC with its members like the RAW,IB and the Directorates of armed forces were the ideal work horse for intelligence assessment and jointness in sharing information between various stakeholders that has changed now since JIC’s merger with NSCS. With the JIC having gone the intelligence assessment which was a collective effort on its part has now come under the realm of NSCS which has a plethora of members ranging from cabinet secretary to scientific advisor to the PM and chairman of DRDO which are not privy sometimes to day to day intelligence summaries of an emerging situation.
All the above stated was earlier provided in a very cut and dried manner with various options to act upon by the JIC. Given the above scenario, the need of the hour is to again revive the JIC and further empower it with more sweeping changes in its working and reporting to have as close an intelligence assessment as possible. The Galwan incident in fact points to more of an intelligence mismanagement rather than intelligence failure as touted by all and sundry. As an example the very fact that Ladakhinomadic population of Nyoma lost their grazing grounds to the frequent Chinese incursions as well as an irrigation canal at Demchok about few years back should have been pointers enough for the NSCS to take cognizance of Chinese troops near the LAC. In fact the extent of damage incurred in the Galwan incident indicates that intelligence experts either glossed over or never conveyed the actionable intelligence to the troops on ground while assessing the Chinese intent. It has to be understood that intelligence gathering, sifting and assessment is a 24×7 task requiring experts over a large spectrum of actions with domain specialization. It is worthwhile to note that though India has 29 (twenty nine) intelligence Agencies to boost the national intelligence grid the much required synchromeshing of their efforts is missing. Cutting to the recent spate of events in Kashmir valley where targeted killings have become the order of the day, the Kashmir administration was left at their wits end to fathom how and who replaced the quintessential AK-47 assault rifles sneaked out from Pakistan to the Chinese pistols which are now the sine quo non of a militant to do his bidding. The need of the hour is to reduce the various turf wars amongst them, since intelligence shared is maximized rather than compromised. Strengthening of national security grid involves a vast gamut of actions to include border area development, defence, communication etc of all the frontier areas to name a few.
In addition to the above, certain reforms which I could think of will address long term problems bedeviling our intelligence set up are upgrading offensive and defensive capabilities in our cyber warfare, fast tracking of equipment procurement process, having regular and more interactions within intelligence agencies, whether analysis and operations work should be completely separated in intelligence agencies etc. Most importantly recommendations as made in the Himmat singh ji report way back in 1951 still hold true to present day geopolitical situation to a large extent and hence should not be glossed over. This country has far too much suffered in its past due to the omissions and commissions/ oversight of intelligence to its detriment and should not let its guard down come what may.
