Abstract
It is often asserted that India lacks a concerted, long-term, whole-of-the-government approach to tackle the security challenges it confronts. In this view, which Harsh Pant reiterates in his Introduction to the volume under review, India responds only after threats manifest themselves. Not surprisingly, therefore, its responses are inevitably ad hoc, short-termed and driven by the instincts of the political leadership at the helm. Narendra Modi’s ascent to the prime ministership raised expectations of a fundamental shift from this lackadaisical approach to national security management because of both his image as a decisive leader seeking to transform India and his ideological roots in the Hindu Right which lays greater emphasis on shakti. Indeed, the election manifesto that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) issued in 2014 attributed the dysfunctional state of national security management during the previous decade to the ‘lack of a strong and visionary leadership’, called for ‘a review and overhauling of the current system’ and stressed the importance of drawing up ‘a clear roadmap to address the issue head-on, with radical systemic changes’.
What was the first Modi sarkar’s record in dealing with the security challenges confronting India? How far did it reform the national security management system? Further, what are the policy issues it is likely to face in its second term? These are the questions addressed by the volume under review—India’s Evolving National Security Agenda: Modi and Beyond. Adopting a broad definition of security, the volume brings together nine contributions covering traditional issues of defence policy, counter-insurgency and counterterrorism, emerging challenges in outer space and cyberspace and non-traditional aspects like the environment and the role of women in national security.
Chapters one to three assess the defence policy aspects of the first Modi government. In the first chapter, Abijnan Rej employs three metrics to evaluate the approach adopted towards China, Pakistan and the Asian neighbourhood: (a) ideation of new postures, strategies and doctrines; (b) reform of the defence bureaucratic architecture; and (c) build-up of new capabilities. Ideation of new postures and strategies was the highlight of the first Modi government. It crafted a firm but non-escalatory stance towards China, as demonstrated during the Doklam crisis, while forging an understanding to not allow differences become disputes. On Pakistan, its posture was robust, emphasising that talks and terror cannot go together, employing surgical strikes in response to terrorist attacks and blessing the revival of the Cold Start strategy in the Joint Doctrine published by Headquarters Integrated Defence Staff. The Modi government also introduced several initiatives in the maritime security domain. These, as Tuneer Mukherjee details, included: Project Mausam to foster maritime linkages in the Indian Ocean Region; vision of Security and Growth for All in the Region (SAGAR) for the Indian Ocean Region; upgradation of Look East to a more purposive Act East Policy; establishment of the Forum for India Pacific Islands Cooperation; and embrace of the construct of the Indo–Pacific as a free, open and inclusive region.
The Modi sarkar has also performed creditably on the second metric of reforming the national security structure. Rej and Kapil Patil fail to fully recognise this mainly because their assessments were penned before the second Modi government assumed office and created both the post of Chief of Defence Staff (CDS) and the Department of Military Affairs in the Ministry of Defence. These measures have vested the CDS with the power and responsibility of inter-services coordination. In 2018, the National Security Adviser was similarly vested with the power and responsibility of inter-ministerial coordination by being made the chair of both the newly established Defence Planning Committee and the Strategic Planning Group which was until then chaired by the Cabinet Secretary. Further, the first Modi government substantially enhanced the budget of the National Security Council Secretariat and converted the National Security Advisory Board into a focused group consisting of defence, diplomatic and intelligence specialists. Another important step it took was establishing the Shekatkar Committee and acting on many of its recommendations to effect economies in defence expenditure. Finally, Modi 1.0 also focused attention on the defence industrial sector by articulating the Make in India vision to transform the country into a defence manufacturing hub, initiating work on setting up two defence industrial production corridors and adopting the strategic partnership model to enable public and private defence entities to benefit from collaboration with foreign defence manufacturers. Together, these steps are bound to have a significant impact on national security management in the coming years.
Where the Modi government has proved to be ‘lacklustre’, as Rej describes it, is in building up military capabilities. The principal reason for this was its mismanagement of the economy, which made it impossible to meaningfully enhance allocations. As a result, not only has force accretion stagnated but the services are also being compelled to scale back force development plans. The Army has suspended the raising of the Mountain Strike Corps, and the Navy has reduced its warship requirements by nearly 17.5 per cent from 212 to 175 vessels. Another reason that is often cited, including by Rej, for the lack of force development is ballooning pay and pension commitments, especially of the Army, crowding out capital expenditure of all three services. In 2015, Modi had also pointed out to senior commanders that ‘modernisation and expansion of forces at the same time is a difficult and unnecessary goal’. But the scope for reducing personnel strength in the Army is limited given that both the defence of mountainous terrain (from Ladakh to Arunachal Pradesh) and counter-insurgency tasks are manpower-intensive. It may be more viable to consider raising the officer intake under the short service commission scheme and introducing a pension-less early exit scheme for the other ranks.
With respect to countering terrorism, the Modi government’s principal and only innovation was surgical strikes and, more importantly, owning it up publicly, which earned it both popular approval and diplomatic support for sanctions against the emir of the Jaish-e-Mohammed. Otherwise, as Kabir Taneja points out, it persisted with the ‘snail-paced bureaucratic procedures’ to develop a counter-terror infrastructure that was set in motion by the Manmohan Singh government. The Modi government’s performance was, however, more comprehensive in its approach to countering the Maoist insurgency. Niranjan Sahoo’s excellent chapter details how the Modi government built upon and made more robust the two-pronged counter-insurgency strategy developed during the Manmohan Singh prime ministership. On the development front, it enhanced financial support to the affected states, made special allocations to enable paramilitary forces to undertake welfare activities and redoubled efforts to develop infrastructure in the affected districts. At the same time, it beefed up security measures by increasing the number of fortified police stations, enhancing Security Related Expenditure, doubling the number of combat training schools, permitting the use of drones and helicopters and making the surrender policy more attractive. Sahoo notes that the Maoist insurgency stands much diminished as a result of these measures, and correctly raises the question as to whether this was the first Modi government’s ‘finest achievement’ in the arena of national security.
The Modi government also built upon the decades-long effort of previous governments to develop the space programme. Where it innovated was in forging a link between the space programme and foreign policy by inducting the Foreign Secretary into the Space Commission, dedicating the GSAT–9 as a South Asian satellite and inviting neighbouring countries to utilise the Indian Regional Navigation Satellite System. Rajeswari Pillai and Vidya Sagar Reddy suggest that, going forward, India needs to broaden space policy by including national security aspects in it, a movement that appears inevitable after the Modi government demonstrated the country’s anti-satellite capability towards the end of its first term. India similarly needs an overarching cybersecurity policy and a holistic cybersecurity architecture, argues Bedavyasa Mohanty. His chapter notes that Modi 1.0 acted upon only some aspects of the vision laid down by the National Cyber Security Policy of 2013 and highlights the importance of updating it to meet new challenges in supply chain integrity, cybercrime and cyber-attacks. Mohanty also advocates the crafting of an encryption policy that enables legitimate use without curtailing privacy, the establishment of a cyber command and the building of cyber ranges to test the resilience of both military and private networks.
The final two chapters on environmental security challenges and the representation of women in the national security apparatus by Aparna Roy and Vidisha Mishra, respectively, detail the positive initiatives taken by the Modi government but also note the limited impact these have had on the situation at the ground level. Much more, therefore, needs to be done. But the approach to be adopted for addressing these and similar issues that fall in the domain of human security is best not determined by national security considerations. A national security approach is likely to create a distorted picture, produce faulty analysis, result in super-optimal policies and, worst of all, begin the slide towards a garrison state.
The overall assessment that emerges from the volume under review is that the first Modi government did take important steps to reform the national security management system, although it needs to do much more in the second term. An important takeaway is the evidence provided by the various chapters regarding how the first Modi government’s policies and postures ultimately rested on and carried forward the policies practised by previous governments. A little reflection on the contents of the chapters would have led the editor of the volume to realise that India’s responses in the national security realm are not a collection of ad hoc and unconnected responses but have evolved organically during the terms of successive governments. Strategy is not a blueprint that emerges fully formed like Athena from the brow of Zeus. It is better conceived as a process that involves continuous adaptation to the actions and responses of sentient adversaries.