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A few days ago, a major event that will have far reaching consequences for India’s foreign policy and internal security went unnoticed in the mainstream news. It was the restructuring of India’s National Security Council Secretariat(NSCS).The National Security Council Secretariat is India’s apex government body that formulates India’s policies related to the country’s strategic interests in multiple domains related to defense, foreign policy, internal security etc. The NSCS was set up by former Prime Minister Shri Atal Bihari Vajpayee in 1998 with Shri Brajesh Misra as the first National Security Advisor. In this article, we will describe the recent restructuring in some detail.
The NSCS is a premier government body that traditionally advises the Prime Minister and his staff on issues and policies related to defence, internal security and foreign policy. The PM as the head of the NSCS whose day to day operations and policy making are overseen and managed by the National Security Advisor (NSA) and his deputies drawn from various services like the Indian Foreign Service, the Indian Police Service, the armed forces etc. Before analysing the organizational change, we should keep in mind that India’s meteoric rise on the world stage implies that it faces adversarial challenges on multiple fronts, including ongoing border disputes, protection of maritime trade routes, the safety of critical infrastructure and the threat of cyber attacks to name a few. Hence national security is the overarching theme in the current government’s functioning that spans multiple ministries. The NSCS aims to provide the strategy, direction and long term vision so that every ministry concerned with national security may be adequately prepared to address all possible threats.
Given this context, we will lay out the new organizational structure, the various people involved in the organization, their duties and respective areas of expertise. The Prime Minister remains the head of the NSCS and the National Security Advisor (NSA) who holds cabinet rank is Shri Ajit Doval, India’s longest serving NSA is the director of the NSCS. With the new revamped architecture, the scope of work & charter of the NSA’s office has increased significantly and it is his responsibility to formulate and oversee overall policy related to national security with other members of the NSCS, each contributing in their specific expertise fields. Another key vertical headed by the NSA that will become a part of the national security apparatus is the Strategic Policy Group(SPG). The SPG headed by the NSA will have the Cabinet Secretary, the three Defence Service chiefs, the Chief of Defence Staff (CDS), the Secretary-Defence, the Secretary-Home and Foreign Secretary as members representing various branches of the government. Additionally the Cabinet Committee on Security (CCS), which is the apex cabinet body for making security related decisions, will automatically be a member of the new NSCS as per the new mandate. Since the CCS by default has the Home Minister, the Finance Minister, the External Affairs Minister and the Raksha Mantri and NSA as members, they will also represent the new NSCS, thereby facilitating a synergy between the most important ministries and the security policy making apparatus. Recently in 2019, through an amendment to the Allocation of Business Rules, the government made the NSCS a legal constitutional body just like other ministries and gave it the power to convene inter-ministerial meetings, issue notifications to other ministries and intervene wherever necessary in all matters related to national security, thereby raising to the level of the other cabinet ministries.
Up until 2016, the NSA’s office had only one Deputy NSA’s post, but in 2017 the number was increased to three deputy NSAs, each having a more focused charter for national security. An additional change is that Rajinder Khanna, a career intelligence officer from R&AW, has been elevated from Deputy NSA to the post of Additional NSA directly reporting to Ajit Doval. The three Deputy NSAs will report to the Additional NSA who in turn is to report to the NSA . The first Deputy NSA will be Shri Pankaj Kumar Singh, an Indian Police Service officer and a former head of the Border Security Force who will look over internal security, border infrastructure, policy making, and security related to J&K and the North East. The second Deputy NSA in the NSCS will be Shri Pavan Kapoor, a serving Indian Foreign Service officer who will look after strategic and maritime affairs. Coincidentally Shri Pavan Kapoor will replace former Deputy NSA Shri Vikram Misri who has now been appointed as India’s new Foreign Secretary. Finally the third Deputy NSA will be Shri T.V Ravichandran, an Indian Police Service career intelligence officer from the Intelligence Bureau who will look after key areas of Cyber Security & Emerging Technologies.
Apart from the three Deputy NSAs who are from the Indian Police Service, Indian Foreign Service & represent the bureaucracy, the NSCS will include representatives of the defence staff. Henceforth, Lt Gen. M U Nair will be the National Cyber Security Co-ordinator (NCSC) overseeing India’s cyber-security and infrastructure preparedness. Air Marshal Sandeep Singh will join as the Military Advisor, tasked with coordinating with the Ministry of Defence and overseeing the induction of new technologies. Vice Admiral G Ashok Kumar will be the National Maritime Security Coordinator (NMSC) in charge of liaising with coastal states and coast-guard & other maritime security agencies.
Another new development is the inclusion of representatives from non-traditional ministries, i.e. Telecommunications, Railways, and others signalling a shift in the approach to national security, from the domain of defence & foreign policy alone to a more integrated interdisciplinary policy. This has become even more important because there are now security challenges in the telecommunications & power sector that demand the hardening of telecom & power grids along with safeguarding strategic railway lines used for transportation of military logistics to forward bases, especially in the North East. Following these changes, inclusions and additions, India’s national security apparatus and dispositions look much more robust and adequate to tackle the evolving and multiplying security threats.
References:
[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20170416141403/http://nsab.gov.in/?1001 [2] https://stratnewsglobal.com/
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