NCTC still a distant Dream

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Once again the day long conference of Chief Ministers at Vigyan Bhawan today on internal security and the need for National Counter terrorism centre (NCTC) seems to have been yet another conclave  for agreeing to disagree. As expected, Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi took the lead in debunking the centre by calling NCTC as a poorly conceived idea and, later twitted that “Unfortunate that in its quest to target political opponents, Centre is undermining intelligence systems with CBI questioning IB officials.”

Modi was equally blunt in his statement that “It is not clear how big it is going to be, what forces are going to comprise it, how exactly it is going to function and which statute will it derive its powers from. I think such poorly conceived ideas which tinker with age old existing systems rather than strengthening them are going to do irreparable loss to our internal security”.

Modi also expressed his strong reservations about the structure and functioning proposed in the National Counter Terrorism Centre Order, 2013 saying that “Moving the multi-agency centre (MAC) from within IB to the proposed NCTC will end up weakening it even as it appeared that it was taking some concrete shape. The proposed NCTC will be just another superstructure in the maze of institutions already existing,”

On the other hand Chhattishgarh Chief Minister Raman singh too eachoes almost the same sentiment that NCTC was a foolhardy decision which would damage States. He  was of the views that NCTC should not be given powers similar to that envisaged in the NIA Act among others by allowing it to probe terror related cases without state’s consent.  And he went to the extent of saying that “National Counter Terrorism Centre (NCTC) should be ratified by Parliament to make it responsible and answerable to people”

Karnataka Chief Minister Mr Siddaramiah speaking with Chief Minister of Harayana Mr.Bhupinder singh hooda at the Chief Ministers’ Conference on Internal Security, in New Delhi on June 05, 2013. The Minister for Home Mr KJ George and Add Cheif Secretary V.Umesh were also seen in the picture.
Karnataka Chief Minister Mr Siddaramiah speaking with Chief Minister of Harayana Mr.Bhupinder singh hooda at the Chief Ministers’ Conference on Internal Security, in New Delhi on June 05, 2013. The Minister for Home Mr KJ George and Add Cheif Secretary V.Umesh were also seen in the picture.

It was in 2009 that the then Home Minister P Chidambaram, ( obviously influenced by the Americans in the aftermath of 26/11 Which prompted them to constitute NCTC) copied the American concept and   displayed it as the most brilliant idea from the UPA-II idea factory and even promised that “ a made-in-India NCTC would be up and running “by the end of 2010”— a third of the time it had taken the United States. “India cannot afford to wait 36 months”, he had said to media then.

Then came Sushil Kumar Shinde’s who responded to furious protests by chief ministers by dropping plans to give an Intelligence Bureau-led NCTC powers of arrest. His new proposals cast the NCTC simply as an innocuous intelligence-sharing hub. Today’s meeting would once again given an opportunity to Congress party hawks to say that   once again, opposition was sabotaging the counter-terrorism effort for petty political reasons.

The fact of the matter is that India’s NCTC represents the abiding delusion that terrorism can be beaten into submission mere paper work. No wonder then a columnist wrote that “even bribing the Lashkar-e-Taiba and the Maoists with the Rs 3,400 crore the NCTC is estimated to cost will have a better chance of success.”

Copying the American model of NCTC is one thing but implementing it an entirely different issue. In India, there generally isn’t enough intelligence in the system in the first place, and when there is, there are rarely enough operational resources to do much about it.

There were enough intelligence inputs about the possibility of a lashkare- Taiba death squad trying to hit Mumbai during September 2008. Mumbai police had in fact, placed a few guards near Taj Hotel and at two other places but withdrew them later. It is a different matter that the LET attack was deferred because of the bad weather on high seas and Mumbai was indeed hit a few months later. But the larger question was what would have few policemen done to counter them even if they were on duty for a longer period on those points because they were not properly armed or trained.

There  were at least 8 such examples across the country where the Intelligence Bureau(IB0 had issues specific warnings about maoist / naxal attacks in Andhra Pradesh, IM bombing threat in Delhi and three other places. Yet it could not stop those attacks. The main reason behind it is the lack of credible intelligence and response capacity of the ground forces.

That was clearly admitted by MOS Home on the floor of the Parliament  that the Intelligence Bureau  had 18,795 personnel on its rolls, against a sanctioned strength of 26,867 — in other words, that the principal domestic counter-terrorism intelligence service was a third under-strength. In 2009, then-union home minister, P Chidambaram had authorized the hiring of 6,000 personnel. The agency is still waiting. Even if the 8,000 staff now needed were to suddenly descend at the Bureau’s North Block office, its academy can train just 600-700 a year—which barely covers attrition.

The  Chief Minister Mr Siddaramiah  and  Minister for Home Mr KJ George speaking with Chief Minister of Gujarath Mr.Narendra Modi at the Chief Ministers’ Conference on Internal Security, in New Delhi.
The Chief Minister Mr Siddaramiah and Minister for Home Mr KJ George speaking with Chief Minister of Gujarath Mr.Narendra Modi at the Chief Ministers’ Conference on Internal Security, in New Delhi.

One of the main reasons for the present state of intelligence set-up is the lack of credible and competent people being posted in adequate numbers at strategic places. As of now, Intelligence Bureau’s operations directorate—the hub of its counter-terrorism effort—has some 30 analysts and field staff, all told; another 30-odd track Maoists.  Local counter-terrorism teams set up in 2008 have been dismantled due to staff shortages. Five of the 28 Joint Directors in New Delhi deal directly with counter-terrorism issues—the rest committed to assessing everything from the state of play in elections, industrial relations and even food security and their check lists goes on becoming longer with every passing day.

On paper Chidambaram’s NCTC was to weld together multiple intelligence databases: the National Intelligence Grid, NATGRID, the Crimes and Criminal Tracking Network and System, CCTNS, and the Intelligence Bureau-run hub, the Multi-Agency Centre, known as MAC… Even the CCTNS was inaugurated, on a pilot basis, in January. Since then, its software has repeatedly crashed—the outcome of persistent flaws in design and implementation. PolNet, a basic data-sharing service linking forces across the country and scheduled for a 2006 roll-out, has been all but abandoned. NATGRID remains “several months to several years” away from being able to provide fluid real-time access to existing government databases.

Under these circumstances, the NCTC would remain a botched up idea as long as its basic ingredients are not strengthened. Apart from the Centre, states would also have to improve their own dysfunctional intelligence-gathering systems.  It could enhance the staffing of civil police—the first responders in a crisis, and the first point of contact for community intelligence.  No wonder then that a senior strategist mocked at the NCTC idea saying “We have eviscerated our intelligence and police institutions over the decades and now want to create layer upon layer of meta-institutions to monitor, coordinate and oversee this largely dysfunctional  apparatus”

Even if some of these points are seriously pondered over and action taken to strengthen the basic policing and intelligence gathering apparatus as well as a leap in the  quick response capacity of the   armed forces, the “trust deficit” at political level would continue to remain the biggest hindrance in realizing the NCTC dream.

(Posted on June 5, 2013 @ 11pm)

(Ajay Jha is a Commentator and Independent Writer and Analyst on Politics, security and Economy of South And West Asia. His email id is: Ajay N Jha <ajayjha30@gmail.com>)

 

 

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