Let me start this piece with a statement that is certain to earn the ire of all military leaders of India. There are apparently no security experts in the Indian Armed Forces. Therefore, by extrapolation, there are no strategic leaders in the Indian military either. Military leaders may disagree with me, but the nation, as represented by the political leadership, the bureaucracy and other opinion-makers, seems to think so. Only one example should suffice.

We created a National Security Council (NSC) in 1999. A National Security Advisor (NSA) was appointed. We have had three incumbents so far — two were retired diplomats and the third is a retired intelligence specialist. The NSA has a secretariat, which is headed by a deputy NSA. This appointment too has been held by retired diplomats so far. As far as the secretariat is concerned, officers of various ranks hold senior, middle level and junior staff appointments, but the military is represented only by a handful of junior officers.

The second part of the NSC, albeit outside the secretariat, is the National Security Advisory Board, a 20-person-strong entity where the military presence is a token of three — one each from the army, navy and air force. The third component of the NSC is the Strategic Policy Group, an unwieldy group, meant to function as the link between the political decision-makers and the permanent secretariat. The Strategic Policy Group, headed by the cabinet secretary, comprises serving bureaucrats heading key ministries.

It would be obvious from the above details of the security structure that either the armed forces have no security experts who could be included in the NSC structure or there is a deliberate attempt to keep the military out of the decision-making loop. Whether this lacuna is the reason for the lacklustre performance of the NSC so far, is for readers to judge. National security has many facets — political, military, economic, information technology and information warfare, demographic, communications, energy, science and technology and intelligence — but when the chips are down, it is military capabilities which would determine whether national security is effectively maintained or not.

... contd.