Hindustan Times
NCTC: Another half-baked institution of coalition era
When Home Minister P Chidambaram spelt out the new security architecture for India in his path breaking December 23, 2009 Intelligence Bureau endowment lecture, he envisaged a counter-terror body which would not only create actionable intelligence but investigate terror attacks and even have the capability of vacating them. It was although not clear how NCTC would function given each state had an anti-terror squad of its own, and law and order being a state subject.
Having an over-arching mandate as compared to its American namesake, the body was christened National Counter-Terrorism Centre or NCTC. At the lecture, Chidambaram vowed to create the body by 2010 end and beat the American record of creating the same body after 9/11 attacks in 36 months.
With the Indian version of NCTC ready to be operational on March 1, 2012, Chidambaram has beaten the US record by single-handedly pushing the lethargic and indecisive Indian system to create the counter-terror outfit in just 26 months.
However, in the process, the NCTC mandate has been vastly diluted from the initial 2009 proposal. Chidambaram had visions of a body that would be an umbrella counter-terror outfit with IB’s multi-agency centre (MAC), National Investigation Agency (NIA) and National Security Guards (NSG) reporting to it for intelligence, investigations and CT operations respectively among other things.
NCTC was Chidambaram’s single window to vacate terror from India with operations wings of both IB and Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) under its control. It was an ambitious plan which fell foul to well entrenched Indian intelligence satraps led by the then National Security Advisor MK Narayanan as neither the IB nor the RAW wanted to part with their operations wings.
On January 12, 2012, Cabinet Committee cleared a rather truncated NCTC, which would function under IB with its Director reporting to Director, IB, Home Secretary and Home Minister. The proposal for an independent body with a single counter-terror Czar was shot down.
While Chidambaram may argue that this is just the beginning for NCTC, my take, given the past experience, is that this is the end. After the Kargil war, the Subrahmanyam Committee report had suggested the creation of Chief of Defence Staff, a single point man for military advice to the government, with a tri-service integrated command under him.
On November 23, 2001, the Integrated Staff Headquarters was created within the Defence Ministry. A decade later, the tri-service body is headed by Chief of Integrated Staff, a three star officer, with no sign of CDS.
Lacking the power, vision and accountability, the CISC is actually a free military radical within the system or a parking slot for officers wanting to stay in Lutyen’s Delhi. This is because neither the NDA nor the present UPA have the confidence to install a CDS as politicians are normally insecure of uniformed military commanders since Indian Army commander-in -chief was made Chief of Army Staff in the Jawahar Lal Nehru days.
So despite all the important world powers installing a CDS, in India, CISC is an orphan in military surviving on crumbs of the parent armed forces. Cut to present and we see the same in the truncated or half-baked NCTC, which will be headed by an additional director general who possibly no one wants in the parent intelligence agency. From what it appears NCTC is going to be a glorified MAC rather than the opposite which was proposed in the 2009 lecture.
All this leads us to a larger question. Why does India create half-baked institutions with limited empowerment and massive mandates? Is this a sign of a weak and insecure political leadership? Organisations like NCTC, NTRO, JIC, CISC, DIA etc are like free radicals floating around the humungous Indian bureaucratic ocean trying to make themselves relevant by more than often making a nuisance of themselves.
Some of these organisations have become parking slots for post-retirement benefits for in favour bureaucrats or soldiers. What will that NCTC will do that empowered MAC or JIC cannot do? After all the three bodies collate and analyse collected intelligence for law enforcement agencies to take action.
Put it bluntly we have created another additional director slot in the IB and call him or her Director, NCTC with a room on Raisina Hill. My understanding is that till such time the government is confidently prepared to make large scale fundamental changes in the existing institutions, it should empower the existing ones rather than go on tinkering experiments.
As the Congress is the inheritor of British imperial legacy, it should know that UK chose to empower the MI-5 and MI-6 agencies instead of creating NCTC. Even the US NCTC has been a bit of a non-starter because both the CIA and FBI share critical intelligence directly with the government of the day. Many including yours truly were in favour of creation of a federal National Intelligence Agency (NIA) to handle terror cases.
Nearly, three years later, the body has little more than sundry charge-sheets to show for work. It is still to join the dots in Hindu terror cases and is on a wild goose chase in snow bound Kishtwar to nab those responsible for the September 7, 2011 Delhi High Court blast. Rather than keep on creating more institutions, we must understand the capability of Indian human resource is rather limited with only scope for “jugaad” or fixing and pathetically less for original innovation. May be we should blame all this on coalition dharma of the day.
(22 votes, average: 4.77 out of 5)
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