10 | THE HINDU SATURDAY, JANUARY 9, 2016

NOIDA/DELHI

WEEKEND

IPSO FACTO

China’s transition to a ‘new normal’ rate ofgrowth was always expected to be bumpy. But,as it shifts gears, the Asian giant is spillingpain on to the rest of the world, and volatility

is about the only certainty in the global economy at themoment. The yuan’s depreciation on Thursday to itslowest level since 2011, again put stock markets and cur-rencies worldwide under pressure. Investors fear othercountries could now be forced to consider competitivecurrency devaluations. The depreciation was less unex-pected than the devaluations in August and is in line withBeijing’s move to make the yuan — all set to become a re-serve currency of the International Monetary Fund —more market-linked. There’s a fresh worry: China’s for-eign exchange reserves shrank by $108 billion in Decem-ber, the biggest monthly drop on record, and declined by$513 billion last year. To put this figure in perspective, In-dia’s foreign exchange reserves added up to $350.4 billionon January 1. The accelerating outflows from China, in-vestors fear, could also be a sign of the country’s deepen-ing troubles. China is rebalancing its economy, shifting itaway from a model of debt-fuelled infrastructure andlow-cost exports towards lower but more sustainablegrowth, driven instead by domestic consumption andservices. Reformers in Beijing want to slow the Chineseeconomy, which expanded at a frenetic 10 per cent an-nually before 2008, and by about 7 per cent more recent-ly. As the world’s second largest economy goes through arecalibration, the question increasingly being asked is:are the authorities in Beijing in control of the transition?

The scale and span of China’s trade gives it an over-sized influence over the global economy. Its waning ap-petite for commodities and imports is hurting economiesdependent on such exports. For India, though, the drop ininternational commodity prices, especially of oil, is pro-viding a silver lining as it is a net importer. The pain forIndia will come from the big and growing trade deficit ithas with China. The deficit, which was $48 billion at theend of March, had reached $36 billion in the first eightmonths of this year and could worsen with the yuan’s de-preciation. The Indian government must recognise thatthe depreciating yuan is a threat above all to Prime Min-ister Narendra Modi’s ‘Make In India’ plan. Indian manu-facturers already suffer significant cost disadvantages.Their competitiveness will now diminish further againstimports from China. Under the burden of China’s slow-down, global trade itself has shrunk. Recovery continuesto elude the world more than seven years after the finan-cial meltdown in 2008 and the subsequent monetary eas-ing worldwide. India must recognise that the global eco-nomic scenario is far from healthy and take steps to spurdomestic growth.

China’s contagiouseconomic turmoil

U.S. President Barack Obama parted with the

steely tradition of his two-term presidencythis week, when he shed tears at the WhiteHouse over what appears to have become a

top-of the-agenda item of his final year in office, gun con-trol reform. Although he broke down at the mention ofsix-year-olds massacred at Sandy Hook ElementarySchool in Newtown, Connecticut, it was anger thatseared through his speech announcing executive actionsto take on the stubbornly lax regulation of guns in theU.S. These actions aim to expand background checks forgun ownership, boost funding for federal agencies en-forcing gun laws, improve treatment of mental healthconditions nationwide, and herald an era of “smart gun”technology to prevent accidental firearm deaths. Fewwould blame Mr. Obama for feeling frustration over thequagmire that has greeted every attempt of his to start aconversation on what many worldwide would consider areasonable restriction on the constitutionally enshrinedright to bear arms. He has pitched for tighter, more mea-ningful gun laws no fewer than 15 times from the Oval Of-fice, and his most ambitious attempt to bring the discus-sion to the floor of the Senate three years ago wasspeedily disposed of by hostile lawmakers. This week’sexecutive action had echoes of that 2013 omnibus guncontrol bill, yet in the face of uncertain funding prospectsin a Republican-controlled Congress, likely resistancefrom conservative states and near-certainty of legal chal-lenges, it may lack the teeth to seriously impact gunproliferation.

There are two forces behind America’s abysmal pro-gress in halting the regular occurrence of gun rampagesin public spaces. The first is what Mr. Obama describedas the “lies” of the pro-gun lobby, whose lifeblood is theinfluential National Rifle Association, funded largely bygun manufacturers. After every mass killing with guns,NRA spokespersons proclaim in the American mediathat the only answer to gun deaths is more guns. Their ef-forts are bolstered by Republican presidential hopefulssuch as Donald Trump. The second, more intractable,impediment facing any would-be reformer is the U.S.’scultural proclivity for gun ownership. Even though aQuinnipiac poll last month found 89 per cent overall sup-port for expanded background checks, a CNN poll thesame month found that only 48 per cent of Americans fa-voured stricter gun control laws. Like any other culturalrevolution, unwinding this national obsession with gunswill be a slow process. Ultimately the realisation mustdawn that, contrary to the Second Amendment’s promisethat the right to bear arms will protect the public fromthe tyranny of government, in the 21st century it is thetyranny of firearms that truly threatens the Americanway of life.

The U.S.’s firearms menace

ost terror attacks in India are charac-terised by three critical missteps: ig-nored intelligence inputs, inconsis-tent security response, and heavy

casualties.Consider, for instance, the Pathankot

and the 26/11 Mumbai terrorist attacks. Afew days before the boat with terroristsactually landed in Mumbai, the Intelli-gence Bureau had details of the specificlocation of a satellite phone used by ter-rorists on a boat moving towards theMumbai coast. In the run-up to the at-tacks, there were at least two more specif-ic alerts Indian agencies had about a pos-sible attack on Mumbai.

After 166 people were killed, hundredsinjured, and India held to ransom for daysand humiliated on the global stage by 10terrorists, no one was held accountable.Those who were supposed to act on theterror alerts, those who were supposed toguard the seas and those who were sup-posed to protect Mumbai, all carried onwith their professional lives.

In Pathankot the story just got worse.The U.S. agencies had alerted their Indiancounterparts around Christmas about agroup of half-a-dozen terrorists planningto target the city. By early morning of Ja-

nuary 1, a senior police officerreported his ordeal with the ter-rorists. Despite several hoursavailable to intercept the terror-ists in a limited space, New Del-hi, in its wisdom, decided towaste time by flying in NationalSecurity Guard (NSG) com-mandos from the national capi-tal, while thousands of trainedarmy soldiers were already sta-tioned all over Pathankot.

As with 26/11, the criminal neglect bythose responsible for acting on the infor-mation would again be whitewashed. TheCentral government would again come tothe conclusion that no one was responsib-le for the lapses that resulted in the humil-iating attack and the mismanaged coun-terterror operation.

In all of its contemporary history, Indiahas only been going around in a loop in itsinability to tackle armed non-state actors.Jaish-e-Mohammad, the Pakistan-basedterror group suspected to be behind thePathankot attack, was founded by Ma-sood Azhar, who was one of the three ter-rorists freed by India in yet another em-barrassing episode of terrorism onanother year-end: on December 31, 1999,the National Democratic Alliance (NDA)government of Atal Bihari Vajpayee de-cided to release three terrorists after Indi-an Airlines flight IC814 was hijacked toKandahar, to secure the lives of thepassengers.

Reshaping India’s security posture

Though India’s wars with neighbour-ing countries have played the most im-portant role in impacting its security pos-ture, terrorism has, in fact, been thebiggest threat faced by the country on al-most all major counts — the number ofsoldiers killed, duration of engagementwith armed movements or the spread ofthe menace. However, terrorism hasn’thad a commensurate impact on reshapingIndia’s security posture and tactics, aswell as political strategies.

That might explain why India has oneof the poorest track records in tackling in-surgencies. Various studies have shownthat insurgencies with external supporttend to linger on longer than purely do-mestic movements. Broad assessments of

armed conflicts since World War II showthat their average time span is just overfour years. A RAND Corporation assess-ment of 89 armed movements said thatthey last for approximately 10 years on av-erage; the government’s chances of win-ning a civil war keep improving as thearmed movement becomes protracted. InIndia, none of those statistics seem towork. The Naga insurgency is as old as in-dependent India, several other northernmovements are several decades old, andKashmir militancy started in the late1980s. One can attribute their longevity tothe role of neighbouring countries such asPakistan and China in fomenting thesemovements, but it is a futile blame game

considering the limited diplomatic op-tions available to rein in those countries.Besides, practical statecraft will acknowl-edge that the use of non-state actors fortactical and strategic aims across the bor-der is commonplace. Every battlefield,from Bangladesh in 1971, where the MuktiBahini militia was armed and trained byIndia, to the present battlefield of Syria,where the U.S. and other internationalpowers are arming militias, has similarstories.

Even-handed approach needed

However, there is a second aspect ofterrorism/insurgency that can be bettercalibrated. At the core of the state re-sponse should be a well-delineated na-tional security doctrine and securitystrategy. And the doctrine has to beplaced firmly on constitutional values, es-pecially equality before law. Addressinggrievances of various groups and dealingwith all wrongdoers with the same forceof law is critical in this fight against ter-rorism. Successive governments havefailed that test. When political expedien-cy prevails over constitutional duties, thestate cannot expect to defeat terrorism.

In the encounter killing of SohrabuddinSheikh, or the terror cases of Malegaon,Samjhauta Express, Mecca Masjid, etc.,the state’s prosecution has been differen-tial and has varied depending on the gov-ernment in power. The Central Bureau ofInvestigation and the National Investiga-tion Agency are actively used as tools ofthe government of the day. Indeed, theNarendra Modi government is not writ-ing out any fresh instructive manuals forIndian democracy, but only carrying onwith the expedient practices mastered bysuccessive Congress regimes and othercoalition governments. This must end, ifthe Indian state is serious about fightingterrorism.

Political misuse of state organs and thecomplete lack of transparency in their op-erations have resulted in Indian intelli-gence agencies emerging as obscure cen-tres obfuscating facts or exaggeratingthings, mostly to impress political mas-ters or for other vested interests. The lackof accountability has also meant that fieldoperations of intelligence agencies aremostly cottage industries run on fakesources or exaggerated claims. Underly-ing all of it is the significant financial ben-efits. The final result is that even whengenuine intelligence alerts are available,they are not acted upon with seriousness.Most intelligence alerts of Indian agen-cies actually read like fantasy stories fromunbridled minds. Most often, they aremerely that.

Pathankot has shred to pieces the cycleof terror responses in India: from proc-essing intelligence alerts, mobilising firstresponders, carrying out counterterroroperations under a well-defined com-mand-and-control system, minimisingcasualties and, finally, obtaining maxi-mum intelligence to thwart possible fu-ture attacks. The raid on the airbase has

shown that terror responses cannot beleft to the whims and fancies of a few indi-viduals, however lionised they are. It hasyet again highlighted the fact that Indiastill does not have a laid-down policy re-sponse to its biggest security threat.

A documented security doctrine

It is time to finally accept the realityand move forward on a broad sweep of re-forms in the security establishment. Thiscould be done at three levels — parlia-mentary oversight, a well-defined nation-al security doctrine and a national securi-ty strategy to implement the doctrine,and, finally, an independent federal com-mission of accountability on securitymatters.

There have been several discussionsabout improving the accountability of in-telligence agencies and other federal or-ganisations responsible for the security ofthe country. Many experts are apprehen-sive of an adverse effect of parliamentar-ians being given oversight of intelligenceagencies. However, the fact is that there isno better accountability system possible.The diversity of Indian politics will en-sure there is robust oversight, and that themechanism is not held hostage by a fewvested interests in Parliament.

As many experts recommend, it is timefor India to have a documented nationalsecurity doctrine, like the Constitution,so that successive governments do notforget the fact that they are mere custo-dians of an idea called India, and not revo-lutionaries mandated with recreating thenation-state. The tweaking of India’s se-curity concerns, based on their limitedunderstandings and jingoistic or pacifistpersuasions, has had a terribly adverseimpact. When I.K. Gujral became theprime minister, he shut down India’s cov-ert capabilities abroad in the simplisticassumption that it would bring peace; byrushing in the NSG to Pathankot and ig-noring the huge Army capabilities availa-ble in the vicinity, the Modi governmentmiserably mismanaged the operations inthe airbase.

Standard response protocols

The doctrine should be accompaniedby a security strategy that should spell outthe state response to various kinds of se-curity challenges. If it is a terrorist strike,then the decision-makers must know theresponses expected of them, and not tryto improvise based on their limitedawareness. Command and control forsuch operations should also be spelt outin the document.

Finally, and most importantly, Indiamust constitute a very credible, and per-manent, federal commission of account-ability on security matters. This is impor-tant not just to bring in accountability tothe security establishment, but also to en-sure that the many insurgencies and ter-rorist challenges do not result in the intel-ligence and security apparatus getting afree hand to misuse their powers. Such acommission can also be a watchdog inplaces like Kashmir and the Northeast,where repeated allegations of humanrights violations are haunting political ef-forts to find peace, and feeding terrorism.

India, and its security forces, can’t anymore trust the wisdom of a few wise mento tackle terror threats, secure our assetsand safeguard national interests. The firststep is to write down what the rulers ofthe day should do when a terror threatoccurs.

josy.joseph@thehindu.co.in

GAPS IN THE GRID: “Pathankot has shred to pieces the cycle of terror responses in India: from processing intelligence alerts, mobilising first responders, carrying out counterterror operationsunder a well-defined command-and-control system, minimising casualties and, finally, obtaining maximum intelligence to thwart possible future attacks.” Picture shows soldiers on watchat the perimeter fence of the Pathankot airbase. — PHOTO: AP

Save security from the establishmentThe bungled response to the Pathankot attack underscores the need for a three-pronged revamp: parliamentaryoversight, a well-defined national security doctrine and an independent federal commission of accountability

The lack of accountability hasmeant that field operations ofintelligence agencies aremostly cottage industries runon fake sources orexaggerated claims 

Pathankot has shown thatterror responses cannot be left to the whims andfancies of a few, howeverlionised they are

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Josy Joseph

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saturday, january 9, 2016