A security architecture without the mortar 

Mains Paper: 3 | Internal security 
Prelims level: National Security Council
Mains level: India’s national security inadequacies stem from the absence of a national security vision

Introduction 

• The Narendra Modi government set up a Defence Planning Committee (DPC) to assist in the creation of “national security strategy, international defence engagement strategy, roadmap to build (a) defence manufacturing ecosystem, strategy to boost defence exports, and priority capability development plans”. 
• The Strategic Policy Group (SPG) within the overall National Security Council (NSC) system. 
• That the government has set up/revived these committees only in its final year in office goes to show that it is cognisant of the fact that its national security performance has been found severely wanting. 
• The centralisation of national security and defence decision making in the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) under the National Security Adviser (NSA), would salvage its national security reputation. 

Deteriorating environment 

• India’s national security environment has steadily deteriorated since 2014. Both the overall violence in Jammu and Kashmir and ceasefire violations on the Line of Control reached a 14-year high in 2017, a trend that refuses to subside in 2018. 
• There are far more attacks on security forces and security installations in J&K, and militant recruitments and violence against civilians in the State than at any time in the past decade-and-a-half. 
• Also the pressure from China is on the rise. 
• The surgical strikes of 2016 gave a befitting response to Pakistan, and the stand-off at Doklam conveyed to China that India is no pushover.
• The reality is that surgical strikes hardly made any significant gains, and the Chinese forces (by all accounts including a report of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on External Affairs) are back in the Doklam plateau with more force. 
• New Delhi’s neighbourhood policy continues to be in the doldrums and there is a clear absence of vision on how to balance, engage and work with the many great powers in the regional and the broader international scene. The frenzied foreign policy activities we are witnessing today are essentially diplomatic firefighting and damage control of a government in its last lap. 

Absence of defence reforms 

• India spends close to $50 billion annually on defence and yet there are serious concerns about the level of our defence preparedness. 
• Rhetoric can neither make a country secure nor win wars. Even more worryingly, India might be ill-equipped to fight the wars of the modern age. 
• What India requires then is not empty rhetoric but long-term strategic thinking of which there is little in sight. 
• India’s defence policy is on auto-pilot with hardly any political oversight or vision. 
• There is little conversation between the armed forces and the political class, and even lesser conversation among the various arms of the forces.
• This will soon become unsustainable for a country that aspires to be a modern great power. 

In the neighbourhood

• China has progressed a great deal in military jointmanship, and Pakistan is doing a lot better than India.
• In India, talk of appointing a Chief of Defence Staff (CDS) has all but died down. 
• Appointing a CDS, even the key post of military adviser in the National Security Council Secretariat (NSCS) remains vacant. 
• The government seems to mistakenly think that by having the NSA chair, the SPG and DPC will take care of the fundamental problems in the country’s higher defence sector. 

Significance of NSC 

• The post of the NSA is not a legally-mandated one. So one might rightly wonder how an unelected and retired official with no parliamentary accountability has come to occupy such a crucial position in the country’s national security decision making, and whether this is healthy in a parliamentary democracy. 
• The NSC, which replicates the membership of the Cabinet Committee on Security, almost never meets under the new regime, and the National Security Advisory Board, initially set up by the Vajpayee government, to seek ‘outside expertise’ on strategic matters, is today a space for retired officials. 
• There is little fresh thinking within the government or perspective planning on the country’s national security or defence. 
• All that the SPG and DPC would achieve is to further bureaucratise the national security decision making and centralise all national security powers under the PMO.
• There is some hope that these committees would take a close, hard look at the state of modernisation and domestic defence industry in the country, both of which are in a sorry state.
• Under the present system, where the ratio of revenue to capital expenditure in defence is roughly 65:35%, any serious attempt at modernisation would be impossible. 
• While the committees would be cognisant of this, there is precious little they could do now, just months before the government faces a crucial election. 

Way forward 

• India’s national security inadequacies stem from the absence of a national security/ defence vision. 
• Ideally, the country should have an overall national security document from which the various agencies and the arms of the armed forces draw their mandate and create their own respective and joint doctrines which would then translate into operational doctrines for tactical engagement. 
• In the absence of this, as is the case in India today, national strategy is broadly a function of ad hocism and personal preferences. 

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General Studies Pre. Cum Mains Study Materials

UPSC Prelims Questions: 

Q.1) With reference to the Nuclear Command Authority (NCA), consider the following statements:
1. NCA is responsible for deciding on the deployment of nuclear weapons in India.
2. Its executive council is chaired by the Prime minister of India.
Which of the statements given above is/are correct?
(a) 1 only
(b) 2 only
(c) Both 1 and 2
(d) Neither 1 nor 2
Answer: A

UPSC Mains Questions:
Q.1) Are these committees indicative of a newfound ‘national security consciousness’ in the Bharatiya Janata Party-led government today? Critically examine.