ASSEMBLY POLL '98
COMMENTARY
SPECIALS
INTERVIEWS
CAPITAL BUZZ
REDIFF POLL
DEAR REDIFF
THE STATES
YEH HAI INDIA!
ELECTIONS '98
ARCHIVES

Government should improve NSC's structure, says Subrahmanyam

The government should immediately initiate wide-ranging discussions with defence and security experts and improve the structure of the newly-formed National Security Council as it left much to be desired, noted defence analyst K Subrahmanyam said today.

''Nothing is lost by forming the NSC as it is, but nothing prevents the government from improving it at the earliest as only an executive order had been issued and it is not a legislation,'' Subrahmanyam, a former director of the Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses in New Delhi, said.

The well-known defence expert was reacting to the formation of a six-member, three-tier NSC headed by the prime minister yesterday.

Subrahmanyam, who was critical of the formation of the NSC in its present form on more counts than one, said making the principal secretary to the prime minister also the national security advisor and converting the joint intelligence committee into a secretariat for the NSC were follies of the first order.

The defence expert called for a separate national security advisor and said holding the twin responsibilities of principal secretary to the prime minister and of the national security advisor was not going to be an easy task.

He was also highly critical of converting the JIC into a secretariat for the NSC, saying it was against the basic premise of security. ''Intelligence assessment and policy should never be mixed as it is against the basic premise of security.''

Subrahmanyam said the crux of recommendations of the task force on national security council headed by K C Pant was an independent secretariat and back-up expert structures.

He said combining the jobs of national security advisor and the principal secretary to the prime minister may result in justice not being done to either.

The noted defence expert was also critical of what has been billed as the strategic policy group and described it just like an expanded secretaries' committee which could at best make comments on others' work and could not by itself do any original work.

For the purposes of a strategic defence review there should be a group of experts to prepare a draft on which the secretaries could make observations, he observed.

He stressed that the newly-formed NSC was nothing more than old wine in a new bottle and the BJP-led coalition government had fallen back on the V P Singh government's proposal to convert the JIC into the secretariat for the NSC.

He said this went contrary to the general perception that national security planning must start with a long-range intelligence assessment made by professionals. By converting the JIC into the secretariat for the newly-formed NSC, it was clear that long-term intelligence assessment was bound to be neglected and the proposed strategic defence review may just boil down to a collection of ad hoc views of individuals.

Regarding the national security advisory board comprising persons of eminence from the government, Subrahmanyam said it was not clear whether they were full-time or part-time functionaries.

He was of the view that unless the national security advisory board was constituted into a single coherent body and its members made full-time staff, it would not be able to discharge its functions effectively.

If that was done, the person who heads the national security board, would be the key person in national security planning. Such a person would have to be of the rank of a secretary to the government and well-versed in national security affairs.

The government last night established a three-tier high-powered NSC headed by Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee to undertake a strategic defence review and decide on long-term policy options.

The establishment of the council, approved by the prime minister, is based on the report of the task force chaired by former defence minister K C Pant and was submitted to Vajpayee recently.

The strategic policy group, recommended by the 1996 proposals on the NSC, would comprise the three service chiefs, cabinet secretary, foreign secretary and secretaries of home, defence, defence production, finance, revenue, space and atomic energy, RBI governor, director of Intelligence Bureau, RAW secretary, scientific advisor to defence minister and the JIC chairman.

UNI

Tell us what you think of this report