Chanakya's New Manifesto: To Resolve the Crisis Within India (29 page)

4.47  It must be taken into account that every time there is punitive action against the Naxals, there will be an outcry about the death of innocent victims and human rights violations. The State cannot be allowed to perpetrate such violations and any misuse of power should be dealt with firmly. But it is also true that when the avowed goal of the enemy is to overthrow governments, it has to be dealt with decisively.

4.48  Similarly, any attempt, motivated by political reasons or so-called human rights considerations, to dilute the presence of our armed forces in Kashmir, should be tackled with very great care. Human rights violations cannot be condoned, but all objective data shows that there has been no reduction in armed terrorist interventions from across the border. The army’s optimal presence is absolutely necessary to counter this threat.

4.49  The AFSPA was promulgated in 1958 to cover states in the Northeast. It gives the armed forces, in areas declared ‘disturbed’ because of the scale of the unrest or instability, special powers to use force, enter and search premises and vehicles, and arrest without warrant while providing legal immunity for this action. It is valid for this act to be questioned by human rights and other organizations. In fact, the Justice Jeevan Reddy Commission set up by the government in 2004 to investigate excesses under this act in the Northeast was the right step. Similarly, the over ten-year-long fast by Irom Sharmila to press for the repeal of AFSPA in Manipur is legitimate in a democratic polity. The government must also take on board the criticism of UN bodies and Human Rights Watch. Guidelines must be issued to the armed forces to refrain from human rights violations and any allegations of such conduct should be speedily investigated. Periodic reviews to dilute the stringency or need of the act should be held. However, none of this should deter the government from retaining the act should the situation warrant. In the Northeast, insurgency is still rife, supported by China and, in specific cases, by Myanmar. The presence of the armed forces with special powers to counter this continues to be essential. This is even more the case in Jammu and Kashmir, where the act was extended in 1990.

4.50  The lack of coordination between the multiple intelligence agencies in the country has to end. All intelligence relating to terrorism and insurgency should be collated by the newly created ministry of internal security and systematically processed through the Natgrid. The minister of internal security must put an end to turf wars and create a system for integrated workable intelligence to be available to the law-and-order and security agencies.

4.51  All the intelligence agencies whose primary focus is to collect and analyze external intelligence, such as RAW and the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), will report to the NSA. The NSA’s role must be clearly defined, and the duplication of roles and offices dispensed with. The NSA will be the conduit between the external intelligence agencies and the minister of internal security.

4.52  The NSA will be the point of interface between the external intelligence agencies and the minister for internal security. The two would institutionally need to meet on a daily basis.

4.53  The National Security Council headed by the PM would, naturally, include the new minister of internal security. It must meet as least once a week.

4.54  The National Security Council Secretariat (NSCS) must be streamlined with fixed responsibilities. Apart from its coordinating role, including inputs from all external intelligence agencies, it could be entrusted with specific tasks dealing with space, nuclear, cyber and energy security. The proposed refurbished Policy Planning Division of the MEA whose primary focus, as explained earlier, would be security, could provide inputs on a daily basis to the NSA through the foreign secretary. Such clear allocation of tasks is necessary because multiple bureaucratic organizations within the security apparatus which function without a clear brief serve little purpose. It is better to have fewer layers in the security structure but to rigorously define their role and affix responsibility.

4.55  A fresh attempt has to be made to revive our structures of covert intelligence in hostile states. The decision of former PM I. K. Gujral to wind down our intelligence-gathering operations within Pakistan must be reversed.

4.56  Simultaneously, the vital area of tech-intelligence must receive immediate attention; this would include the countering of terrorist threats in cyber space. For a country with India’s prowess in IT, this should not be difficult, but it is imperative that the monopoly of government-owned IT agencies in this area must end.

4.57  Even so, there is no substitute for human intelligence garnered by basic policing, through the use of informers and by penetrating terrorist cells or insurgent-held areas. In this context, the alarmingly high level of vacancies in the police force is unacceptable. If other constraints make an immediate solution to this problem difficult, at least vacancies in the intelligence wings of state police should be filled on a priority basis. These are essential to monitor and penetrate terrorist modules and insurgent activities at the ground level.

4.58  The long-delayed agenda of police reforms must be tackled on a nationwide basis. This would not pose a problem once law and order is on the concurrent list of the Constitution. Police reforms (including the protection of honest officers from vengeful politicians) should take place without delay. The Supreme Court has provided a blueprint for these reforms. The Centre should, on this basis, enact a bill applicable to the country as a whole.

Given the verifiable threats India faces, both internal and external, we must end our passivity and incompetence in matters of security. This is a matter of supreme national importance, and requires us to dramatically change our attitude and mentality to security. We need to immediately review existing security structures and institutions and accord to this sector the overriding priority it deserves. Only then can we forge an effective and coherent national security doctrine which safeguards our interests, both in the present and the future.

THE CREATION OF AN INCLUSIVE SOCIETY

In the happiness of his subjects lies the king’s happiness; in their welfare his welfare. He shall not consider as good only that which pleases him but treat as beneficial to him whatever pleases his subjects.

For one whose heart melts with compassion for all creatures, what is the necessity of knowledge, liberation, melted hair on the head, and smearing the body with ashes.

To a poverty stricken man all is void.

The Arthashastra

Arguably, no other country in the world needs to be a more inclusive society than we do. As we have seen in earlier chapters, our current approach to the problems of poverty, illiteracy and malnourishment is hopelessly ineffective. The reasons for this are clear enough to anyone with a modicum of objectivity and sensitivity to the situation at hand.

First, we have persisted—long after the expiry date of the idea—with the notion that top-down State ‘altruism’ is the solution to the problem. This must not be interpreted to mean that the State has no role to play and can abdicate its responsibility towards ameliorating the condition of the deprived. But, the belief that the only thing that the State should be doing is to hand out doles, most of which don’t reach the intended beneficiaries, is both bad policy and an abdication of responsibility. It is bad policy simply because it is not working, and, has not worked in a long time. And, it is an abdication of responsibility, because it nurtures a false sense of satisfaction among policy makers—including the few genuine bleeding hearts among them—that everything that needs to be done is being done.

Secondly, no policy can work effectively or optimally in a society which provides the worst incubating environment for notions of care and concern. We must recognize a new economic principle
:
transformational policies, especially those concerning the empowerment of the deprived, can be efficacious only if the society which implements them is genuinely motivated to achieve results. In other words, unless there is an enabling milieu of actual concern about the plight of the underprivileged, policies to benefit them will not work. Policies are effective when they reflect societal consensus and concern. Otherwise they become opportunistic or tokenistic or a means of perpetuating the interests of the privileged in the name of the poor.

The unfortunate truth is that India is not a caring society. The privileged do not care about the poor, and the only time they are thought about in any positive way is when political parties are factoring them into electoral calculations. Otherwise, they are perceived as a burden that has to be dealt with somehow. Unless these two fundamental flaws are tackled, India’s desperately needed project to create a more inclusive society will not make progress.

Our past experience shows that badly-planned State altruism squanders valuable resources in the name of the poor. This is not a condemnation of the idea of State-sponsored interventions per se, for in a country like ours it is a perfectly legitimate idea. However, in India, vested interests have always plundered State altruism for personal gain, and the poor benefit the least. Any proper evaluation of the government’s flagship welfare schemes bears this out. To procure grain and other cereals from farmers and distribute it through a subsidized scheme to those most vulnerable to hunger, was the motivation for the government’s procurement and public distribution system (PDS) plan, which started in the late 1960s and was subsequently expanded to rural districts. The scheme cannot, in principle, be faulted. But, in practice, the results have been abysmal. According to some estimates, nation-wide statistics show that 67 per cent of PDS wheat doesn’t reach the poorest of the poor for whom it is intended; in states where poverty is the highest, 60 per cent do not get their quota; two-thirds of all subsidized grain gets diverted to the open market for sale; ‘out of stock’ responses are as high as 80 per cent; and almost 50 per cent of those entitled to this grain need to pay bribes to get a ration card. Those who do receive something of the trickle, complain of poor quality, and the harassment they have to endure to get what is their rightful due.

Sadly, the Indian proclivity for personal profit, when married to ill-conceived government welfare schemes, procreates corruption. The PDS has become a nursery for corruption. If it is to be retained it needs a complete revamp; some states have attempted to do this, but the truth is that, as currently constituted, the system is grossly corrupt and ineffective, and not worth the money pumped into it. To run the PDS, the government has to procure foodgrains. It does this by progressively increasing the minimum support price (MSP) at which it buys food grain from the farmer, in the mistaken belief that a higher support price benefits the needy farmer, whereas it usually subsidizes the pampered rich farmer. Once the grain is procured, it has to be stored and distributed. For this, the government massively subsidizes the Food Corporation of India (FCI), an organization whose criminal inefficiency has been described recently by Supreme Court-appointed food commissioners as ‘genocidal’. The FCI can store about 70 million tons of grains. Of this, 25 million rots because of badly built granaries, poor storage and worse handling, bureaucratic ineptitude, bad management, lack of funds and corruption. It is possible that the quantum of grain wasted is even higher, because of fudged stock maintenance and rampant pilferage.

The PDS also needs to identify who it must reach out to. Several poverty lines (
32 per day, or
22.40 for rural areas and
26.65 for urban areas, or
40 for both) have been devised, often unsupported by scholarly research, in order to identify below poverty line (BPL) beneficiaries. But, in a country where the very poor are ubiquitous, BPL targeting has become a bit of a macabre joke, or as
The Telegraph
put it, ‘a highly profitable business of imagining the poor’.
⁴⁵
Of course, to make its welfare schemes work the government needs to know who its exact beneficiaries are. However, the problem lies in drawing such ‘precise’ lines. And, even assuming that one has managed to adequately define who the poor are how does one identify and reach out to them, bypassing touts, and the myriad other vultures who prey on the system. Schemes to map the country’s citizens such as the unique identification (UID) and Aadhar may be one of the ways to get around this problem but they are still a long way off when it comes to national coverage, or an honest administration which ensures that aid gets to the needy.