NSC stymied by Dixit's death

The role of the NSC was never clearly understood both by the previous NDA and the present UPA dispensations

Gurmeet Kanwal Delhi

With J N Dixit's death, the structure and functioning of the National Security Council (NSC) are once again in the news. Some analysts have even recommended abolition of the post of National Security Advisor (NSA). Others have questioned the NSA's ability to function successfully as a pivot for negotiations on Kashmir with Pakistan and the territorial dispute with China. Still others have called for restoration of the ministry of external affairs as the pre-eminent agency for the formulation and conduct of foreign policy vis-à-vis the Prime Minister's Office's (PMO) involvement in it.

The present NSC was constituted on April 16, 1999 as an advisory body by a resolution of the Cabinet Secretariat. The NSC has a three-tier structure comprising an apex body headed by the prime minister, the Strategic Policy Group (SPG) and the National Security Advisory Board (NSAB). Secretariat support is provided by NSC secretariat, with the NSA at its head. As per the cabinet resolution, "The role of the NSC is to ensure that national security management is based on integrated thinking and coordinated application of political, military, diplomatic, scientific and technological resources of the state to protect and promote national security goals and objectives."

The subjects that the NSC was called upon to deal with include external security environment and threat scenarios; security threats involving atomic energy, space and high technology; trends in the world economy and economic security threats in areas of energy, foreign trade, food, finance and ecology; internal security; patterns of alienation emerging in the country; security threats posed by trans-border crimes; and co-ordination in intelligence collection and tasking of intelligence agencies so as to ensure that intelligence is focussed on areas of concern for the nation.

Six years after it was constituted, it is time to make an assessment of the usefulness of the concept and the efficacy of the structure that was envisioned for it. It is apparent that the role of the NSC has not been clearly understood either by the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) or the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) governments. Long-term planning for national security continues to lack professionalism. The full NSC has never met formally and the issues that it is required to deal with are usually discussed by the Cabinet Committee on Security (CCS).

As defence analyst K Subrahmanyam has written, "The NSC is meant to be a deliberative body which should enable long-term planning for national security issues on the basis of long-range assessments produced by professional assessment bodies. It is the prerogative of the CCS and concerned ministries to decide short-term policies related to defence and foreign affairs and oversee their execution."

The next grey area is long-term intelligence assessment. Conversion of the erstwhile Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC) into the NSC Secretariat indicates that the intelligence assessment process has not been clearly understood. Intelligence assessment must be totally independent of executive influence. Unless these two functions are separated, long-term policy planning for national security will continue to be disjointed.