Mr Altaf Gauhar an eminent Pakistani columnist, who was Information Adviser to General Ayub Khan, wrote a series of articles in the Pakistani daily Nation in September and October, 1999, after the Kargil war under the title "Four wars and one assumption". He argued that Pakistan started all the four wars under one assumption which was articulated by General Ayub Khan. The latter genuinely believed "as a general rule Hindu morale would not stand more than a couple of hard blows at the right time and place."

Today Pakistani generals write about bleeding India through a thousand cuts. They have been talking about fatigue setting in the Indian Army because of its continuous deployment in counter-terrorist operations and its declining efficiency as a fighting force in consequence. Lieut-General Javed Nasir, the former head of the Inter Services Intelligence Directorate (ISI), wrote in early 1999 that "the Indian Army is incapable of undertaking any conventional operations at present, what to talk of enlarging conventional conflict." It was this mindset which led to the Kargil adventure.

The Kargil Review Committee report confirms the 1987 nuclear threat officially conveyed to India through Ambassador S.K. Singh, posted in Islamabad and of fears of a possible Pakistani nuclear strike in 1990. Yet the country's media, academia and Parliament have not bothered to discuss the nuclear dimension of the security issue. It would appear that one of the most difficult challenges to its security India faces is the general indifference to security on the part of the elite.

The Kargil Review Committee has recommended that the National Security Council, the senior bureaucracy servicing it and the service chiefs need to be continually sensitised to assessed intelligence pertaining to national, regional and international security issues and, therefore, there should be periodic intelligence briefings to the Cabinet Committee on Security with all supporting staff in attendance. There is reluctance both on the part of politicians and bureaucracy to devote time and effort for the purpose.

It is considered adequate if people are briefed when the need for it arises. This attitude is similar to the one exhibited by some political leaders who raised the question about the threat that developed in 1998 that necessitated the nuclear tests. In this approach there is a deplorable lack of understanding that the best way of tackling a threat is to anticipate it well in advance and be well prepared to meet it. Starting preparations to counter a threat after it has materialised is the surest way of inviting disaster.

This indifference to carry out regular periodic assessment of security threats on the part of our political class and bureaucracy and communicate it to the nation is at the root of the overall insensitivity of our media, academia, parliamentarians and the public at large to problems of national security.

This Indian mindset is not a secret from our adversaries. Therefore, they cannot be blamed if they attempt to exploit this weakness of ours. When I refer to bureaucracy, it includes the uniformed community as well.

This tradition of not anticipating the threat in advance and not being prepared to meet it and to attempt to counter it after it had assumed serious proportions is what Air Commodore Jasjit Singh calls the Panipat syndrome. The rulers of Delhi waited till the enemy advanced to Panipat and then went out and gave battle. It would seem that the political and bureaucratic class of independent India had not drawn any lesson from the three battles of Panipat, let alone the more recent wars of 1948, 1965 and 1971.

Yet another serious challenge this country faces to its security is the tendency of our political class and the media to a certain extent to politicise issues of national security in a partisan manner. In a mature democracy basic issues of national security are kept above party politics.

One can understand our Prime Ministers' keeping the development of nuclear weapons a closely guarded secret, not shareable even with their own senior cabinet colleagues. However, when the tests were conducted in May, 1998, it was obvious to every well-informed person, while the credit for taking the decision to test should go to the ruling coalition, it could not have developed the weapons in the 53 days it was in office. That credit should go to those parties which provided the previous Prime Ministers. If only the ruling coalition had displayed enough grace to invite those former Prime Ministers to be present while making the announcement, the nuclear issue would not have created the controversy it did.

This politicisation reached its peak during the Kargil conflict and continues to this day with adverse consequences to our national security. During the earlier wars in 1948, 1962, 1965 and 1971 there were failures of intelligence, assessment of intelligence as well as in policies. There was criticism of the government of the day by the opposition. Very rarely the criticism was directed against the Army and individual officers though various known accounts of the campaigns do reveal serious mistakes including the dissolution of the 4th Indian Division at Sela-Bomdila without joining battle. Yet very rarely one saw the kind of campaign that is now being carried on in certain quarters.

In a democracy the conduct of defence in terms of policy, management and procurement must be subject to criticism. But the degree of personalisation of criticism now being generated cannot be termed as constructive. This, it would appear, is attributable to the politicisation of national security as part of extremely partisan politics. Many of those in the media are committed political activists and therefore their political commitment colours their reporting and comments.

Transparency is the best policy and strategy. Unfortunately this is yet to be fully appreciated as is evident from the counter-productive government security deletions in the Kargil report and holding back the appendices and annexures. Many of them were published documents in this country and in Pakistan.

The NDA Government began with a proclaimed commitment to national security of a much higher order than its predecessors and established a National Security Council, a National Security Advisory Board and a Strategic Planning Group in 1998. A new beginning was made and there was a break with tradition in first setting up a Kargil Review Committee and then publishing its report. Then came the Group of Ministers to revamp the entire national security framework as recommended by the Kargil Review Committee. The four task forces set up by the Government have completed their work and submitted their reports promptly. It is expected that the Group of Ministers will act equally promptly and come up with their recommendations. Hopefully, the country is likely to witness a progressive revamping of the national security framework for the first time since independence. That is encouraging news.

But while the structures may get reformed and updated, the problem of attitudinal change towards national security is beyond the scope of this Group of Ministers. That is a matter for the political leadership at the highest level. The media has commented that the National Security Council set up in 1998 had hardly met. The NSC and Cabinet Committee on National Security (CCNS) has with one exception the same composition in terms of five Cabinet Ministers, including the Prime Minister. The Secretariat for CCNS is the Cabinet Secretariat while for the NSC it is the NSC secretariat.

The two bodies have, however, totally different roles. The CCNS is a decision-making body which has to focus on current security problems. It has also to approve decisions on current equipment procurement. The NSC has an advisory and deliberating role to develop long-term perspectives and to direct the ministries to come up with their policies and recommendations to the CCNS and to monitor the implementation. Because of this role, the Deputy Chairman of the Planning Commission is also a member of the NSC. In order to play this role effectively it needs long-term as well as current intelligence assessments. Its deliberations and advice on long-term policies will have to be based on such assessments.

It would appear from the reports that the NSC has not met, that in this country, without a tradition of strategic thinking and without much interest in national security on the part of our political class it has not been found easy to get over the inertia and switch to a culture of anticipatory planning for national security. There are many reasons for it. Our intelligence agencies have not been equipped and oriented towards long-term intelligence forecasting. Our foreign service is mostly geared to react to immediate events. Policy planning has never taken off in that ministry.

The Joint Intelligence Committee and long-term intelligence assessments have never been given due importance because of the lack of interest in anticipatory security planning. The chiefs of staff, being operational commanders, do not have adequate time for long-term thinking. The Ministry of Defence has burdened itself with house-keeping functions of the armed forces which are best left to them and has not been conditioned and trained to think through long-term international and national security issues. Therefore, there is not sufficient awareness in the Government that the country is not equipped to plan a long-term national security policy. At best it is equipped only to carry out short-term and current national security management. This is a crucial challenge to Indian security. Because of this lacuna the National Security Council has not been able to function since it was formally set up two years ago.

The tragedy is that even the nature of the illness has not been diagnosed. Only the symptoms are being treated. That, by itself, no doubt, is to be welcomed but that will not produce a permanent cure. The situation is likely to become further complicated with the new role we have envisaged for India as a state with nuclear weapons, an emerging economic power on a high-growth trajectory, a strategic partner of major powers, a global player, an aspiring permanent member of the Security Council and increasingly democratising and federalising its polity. We are to achieve all these objectives as an open society.

There is inadequate realisation in this country that achieving these aims will amount to a major alteration of the status quo in Asia and the world and, therefore, there will be a lot of resistance to it from both within and outside the country and the interaction of forces hostile to such development within and outside the country. In conceptual terms steering India towards the goals outlined above smoothly and safely with minimum damage is the basic security challenge to India. If that task is to be successfully tackled, there has to be a long term coherent thinking on the risks and threats we are likely to face and long-term planning to deal with them.

The Indian leadership accepted the need for nuclear deterrence in the early 1980s when Prime Minister Mrs Indira Gandhi initiated the nuclear weapons programme in response to Pakistan-China nuclear proliferation axis which had the tacit acquiescence of the USA. India declared itself a nuclear weapons state after the "Shakti" tests in 1998. The National Security Advisory Board has come out with a draft nuclear doctrine. In my view, understandably because I was the convener of the Board, the doctrine is the most logical, most restrained and most economical. But it is only a draft doctrine. Strategies, policies, targeting plans, command and control all need to be worked out. It is not enough if the country has nuclear weapons. It should be able to project credible deterrence. Deterrence involves some aspects of transparency and others of opacity. Therefore, there is an urgent need to work out a correct mix. A partially visible command and control structure is an essential ingredient of deterrence. Demonstration of capabilities of vectors is yet another. A robust and secure C4-I system is the third. A clearly ordained political and military succession is fourth. A demonstrated involvement of political leadership in command and control exercise is fifth and so on. Not only should these issues be addressed, they should also be seen to be addressed.

If we take him at his word, General Musharraf agrees with our Prime Minister that there is no significant risk of nuclear weapons being used in a war between the two countries. Logically, he follows that perception with the proposition that even large-scale conventional wars are unlikely. Our recent preparedness should reinforce him in that perception. We should continue our efforts to dissuade him from thinking about a large-scale conventional war by having a visible dissuasive capability. However General Musharraf does not rule out proxy wars. In April, 1999, he predicted that while nuclear and conventional wars were unlikely the probability of proxy wars was on the rise. He was in a position to assert it most knowledgeably since at that time, his mercenaries where infiltrating the Kargil heights. His attempt at 'salami slicing' in Kargil ended in disaster.

Therefore, India should be prepared to face proxy wars in future as it has been doing for the past 17 years. As of today, the proxy war is being fought by India on the basis of ad hoc improvisation. Surely, there is scope for a comprehensive and integrated strategy against the proxy war waged against this country. Counter-terrorism needs societal mobilisation and effective intelligence effort. Various steps in counter-offensive operations will have to be thought through — the most important being in the field of information campaign.

Those who wage the proxy war against this country take advantage of our weaknesses. The fault lines in our society are exploited. Our borders have been porous. Drugs, man-portable arms, terrorists, fake currency and illegal immigrants are able to pass through. Our sea shores are not always effectively guarded. Seven tons of high explosives could be landed on the Maharashtra coast in one instance. Our air space too was violated with impunity when arms were dropped at Purulia.

This country has contributed the term politician-bureaucracy-organised crime nexus to the political lexicon. Political-cum-bureaucratic corruption is rampant in the country because of the role money and muscle power plays in elections. Corruption at lower levels cannot be tackled when there is corruption at higher levels. A corrupt and misgoverned polity is highly vulnerable from the point of view of national security.

Those who look away, for a consideration, from legitimate law enforcement, and politicians who shield organised crime barons in exchange for large sums of black money to fund party coffers to contest elections may not realise that their corruption amounts to treason and endangers national security. It is the duty of the state and the government to create that awareness.

As Indian economic development accelerates, one must anticipate the adversaries of India to target this and one of the ways in which this can be done is by subjecting the country's economic symbols to terrorist attacks as happened in Mumbai in March, 1993. Mumbai recovered in a remarkably short time. But imagine the consequences and impact of such attacks simultaneously carried out in a number of cities. That would hit business confidence of foreign investors. Our long-term anticipatory planning for national security must take this into account and our business community should be sensitised to this and their support should be mobilised to deal with this threat.

The present Home Minister promised to bring out a White Paper on the activities of the Inter Services Intelligence of Pakistan in this country. That was a welcome move and would have helped to sensitise our population to the threats of proxy war, terrorism and subversion they face. It would have contributed to societal mobilisation. But for reasons that are not clear or cannot be logically inferred the publication of that White Paper has not happened. It is alleged that this publication would expose the sources of our intelligence agencies. It does not speak highly of our drafting and communicating skills if a White Paper on the activities of the ISI in this country cannot be published without revealing the sources.

If we are able to initiate the process of long-range future-oriented assessment of threats and challenges to our national security what will be the areas of our concern? The foremost concern should be the security of our communications and the transactions in our economic institutions. Unfortunately there is not sufficient awareness about the need to protect our communications through encoding. Instead, some vested interests are attempting to delay and derail efforts to increase the carrying capacity, the band width for telephonic and computer communications.

Arising out of these challenges is the issue of India preparing to meet them in terms of next generation weaponry which will incorporate information technology, microelectronics and sophisticated sensors. Today's defence production establishments under the Ministry of Defence are incapable of producing the next generation weaponry and equipment. The private sector in India is today far ahead of defence production establishments in capabilities in these areas. Therefore, planning to involve the private sector in such defence production should start right now.

Till now security planners in India were attempting to carry out their tasks on the basis of past experience or what they learnt from the industralised countries. Often there was a time lag in absorbing the experience of industrialised countries after analysing what would be applicable to our security environment. Our understanding of national security was not future oriented. Even in the rest of the world where countries have a strategic tradition the common saying till recently used to be that generals were used to preparing to fight the last war. It is no longer possible to deal with the problems of national security on the basis of past experience only, though that experience is very valuable as a learning process.

Today's national security challenges call for thinking ahead to anticipate which state and non-state actors entertain hostile intentions towards our state, our society and our value system and what they are likely to do and to devise ways and means of checking them. Therefore it needs future oriented research into international, national, political, social, economic and technological developments to keep abreast with the thinking of potentially hostile state and non-state actors. That is why in other countries national defence universities have been established and scholarly research is carried out to enable the national security establishment to keep a step ahead of the potential adversaries.

Unfortunately the recognition that national security today calls for high intellectual inputs and is not a routine bureaucratic management exercise by both people in uniform and civilians is yet to develop in this country. That raises further questions of training, periodic refresher courses, updating of knowledge and information of officers in the Defence and intelligence services and the civil servants. The present culture of generalism has become outdated and counter-productive.

It is often argued that this country should not be spending money on armaments and national security effort before tackling poverty. Some others are of the view that since our poor have no stake in this country, society and polity and since our politicians have to reflect the views of the constituency of the poor they are indifferent to national security. It is estimated that in this country some 30 per cent of the people are below the poverty line and 70 per cent are above it. One would, therefore, expect that 70 per-cent should have a stake in national security and they should be on guard that external as well as internal hostile forces do not disrupt our economic development. Secondly, if adequate resources have not been applied on the ground on education, health, water supply, housing and job creation, it is not due to disproportionate diversion of resources to national security but due to the fact that, according to Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, only 15 paise out of every rupee spent reaches the poor. The rest is siphoned off by the politician-bureaucracy-organised crime combine, which I have already termed as one of the major threats to national security. Therefore, those who overlook this diversion of resources meant for poverty alleviation and provision of basic needs through corruption and ask the country to reduce its national security preparedness are only helping the continuous robbing of the poor.

The Cabinet Secretariat resolution No 281/29.6.98/TS dated 16th April 1999 stated "The Central Government recognises that national security management requires integrated thinking and coordinated application of the political, military, diplomatic, scientific and technological resources of the state to protect and promote national security goals and objectives. National security in the context of the nation, needs to be viewed not only in military terms but also in terms of internal security, economic security, technological strength and foreign policy. The role of the council is to advise the Central Government on the said matters."

If the National Security Council is not able to fulfil the role prescribed for it, that becomes a challenge to national security. Therefore, it is necessary to analyse why it has not been able to fulfil that role and what could be done to ensure that the NSC plays that role.

The NSC and the Cabinet Committee on National Security have two distinct and complementary roles. The NSC has to look to the future. According to the Cabinet resolution the NSC is to cover external security, security threats involving atomic energy, space and high technology, trends in the world economy and economic security threats, internal security, patterns of alienation emerging in the country, especially those with a social, communal or religious dimension, transborder crimes and intelligence coordination and tasking.

This task of the NSC cannot be carried out without a dedicated staff which will have adequate expertise and will be able to develop holistic future-oriented perspectives and submit them for deliberations of the NSC. In the light of those deliberations the NSC will advise different ministries and organisations to come up with their policy recommendations. Those in turn will be considered by the Cabinet Committee for National Security and decisions taken thereon. Unfortunately, this has not happened and the NSC has not functioned at all in the absence of a fully-developed staff support. The present NSC staff was the old JIC staff with some marginal additions. That staff has to discharge its earlier function as the intelligence assessing body at a time when failure of the assessment process has been under intense criticism. Further the same staff provided secretarial support to the National Security Advisory Board, the Kargil Review Committee and the four task forces set up to review defence management, intelligence, border management and internal security. It is quite obvious that adequate thought has not been given to developing an appropriate staff for the National Security Council to function effectively. It is, therefore, not surprising that the council has not been functional.

The task cannot be performed by the ministries offering their inputs and their being coordinated. The ministries are focussed on the present and are not equipped to undertake a holistic long-term view of various security issues. The generalist system of civil service in this country inhibits the civil servants from acquiring the required expertise in most of the ministries. The country has not developed the culture of contract research and our civil servants are not used to sharing information which is necessary to have successful contract research. In fact information handling is an area of grave weakness with our civil services. They are reluctant even to share the time of the day.

It is understandable that for a country where the political class and the bureaucracy, including the uniformed one, have not developed adequate familiarity with the total concept of national security, as is evident from the NSC being formed only 52 years after independence, there will be teething troubles, various infantile ailments and adolescent problems in the development of the NSC and its full effective functioning. What is worrying and of concern is that it has not even let out its first cry since its birth.

President Truman talked of the buck stopping in his office. In our system the buck stops with the Prime Minister. Therefore, the responsibility for the present unsatisfactory situation of casual approach to national security vests with the Prime Minister and his immediate advisers in matters of national security. I am not saying it in a spirit of criticism. I am aware that the last two years have seen many steps forward in this area including the setting up of the NSC.

In my view it is difficult to do justice to the responsibilites of the offices of the Principal Secretary to the Prime Minister and of the National Security Adviser. However, I shall not press that point any further. Whether the Chief of a Government can have his utmost confidence in one or more persons is a matter no one from outside can prescribe. It has to be left to him though my preference is clear. If he chooses to have only one person to man both posts then the work has to be organised in such a way and structure and processes of the NSC should be so devised as to ensure smooth functioning of the National Security Council. There are very well-tried organisational principles to deal with the problem. Today there is a well-established and adequately staffed Prime Minister's Office. But there is no adequately staffed National Security Council office under the NSA. The present NSC, the old JIC is part of the Cabinet Secretariat. Let its old name be revived and let it focus more effectively and exclusively on intelligence assessment. That is a full time and enormously burdensome responsibility. The NSA requires independent dedicated staff to activate the NSC.

The NSC must have a regular time-table to meet on a prescribed day in a fortnight at the initial stage and once a week a little later. The members of the NSC will arrange their tour programmes keeping that regular meeting in view. The NSC should have comprehensive intelligence briefing in each meeting to be followed by a discussion. The Chief of Staff and intelligence chiefs and the secretaries concerned should attend these meetings.

These discussions should be free for all ministers and officials and should not follow the Cabinet procedure where the official speaks only when spoken to. It is quite possible that the discussion that follows would generate perspectives for studies, sensitise the NSC to anticipate future situations and promote more intensive interaction at the top levels of the bureaucracy. At the initial stage with a staff which is new and still to acquire expertise, it may be necessary to set up task forces to come up with studies on various issues. In this respect the recent experiment of setting up task forces is a valuable one. In about two to three years time a reasonably well-trained staff will be in place. Simultaneously a number of autonomous think-tanks have to be encouraged and research in universities on national security issues should be supported. One of the problems we have is the national security management is not looked upon as a long-term issue in which the capabilities have to be developed over a period of time. Each Cabinet looks upon it as an issue limited to its term of office. The NSC or the Prime Minister should hold regular periodic meetings once in three or four months to brief other parties in Parliament and keep them informed through regular supply of literature. The NSC secretariat should also ensure that when major policy statements are made they are made available to all political leaders and bureaucrats and they should be informed that was the Government's policy and no pronouncements should be made in an ad hoc and off-the-cuff manner. Therefore, a lot more attention has to be paid to the information policy of the Government on matters related to national security.

This is the right moment to start the effort to make the NSC to work. Thanks mostly to efforts of this Government, India is entering an era in which it is called upon to play a global role and is poised to enter into a high-growth trajectory. Therefore, it is the responsibility of this Government to lay strong foundations for a national security planning structure and to start training cadres who will later on man the posts in that structure. The present cadre of generalist civil servants cannot do it.

The development of the awareness to initiate these tasks constitute the core challenge to our national security. The present stop-go attitude of casual approach to it in normal times and finger-pointing at the time of crisis, has got to change by leadership efforts.

Bringing about these attitudinal changes, setting up an appropriate national security planning structure and organising the training of cadres are more difficult tasks than testing nuclear weapons in May, 1998. There is no point in just listing our various security challenges if the country continues to lack the mechanism to assess the long-term implications of each one of those and to plan our responses to them.