Author: N.V. Subramanian
Publication: NewsInsight.net
Date: August 14, 2008
URL: http://www.newsinsight.net/archivedebates/nat2.asp?recno=1708
Politicians are making it impossible to secure
India, writes
About eight-thirty last evening, the army
took over some tall buildings in Connaught Place as part of Independence Day
security measures. The sight was not reassuring, although the contrary is
suggested when soldiers take position. The army was doing the job that police
commandoes should have done, or the police side of National Security Guards
(NSG). The army should have been in the barracks training for war which should
never happen. Alas, all this seems so Utopian.
It is axiomatic that if borders are secure,
places like Connaught Place, downtown Delhi, could be secured by police. Not
just CP, but all of the interior. But since the mid-Eighties, when Pakistan
incited low-intensity war in Punjab and then Jammu and Kashmir, and after
the American pressure after 9/ 11, forced terrorist groups to relocate to
Bangladesh, so that India's east and North East could be destabilized, the
country's zones of security have terrifyingly shrunk. Parliament was attacked.
The garrison in Red Fort, symbol of India's military power, and from which,
in a few hours, prime minister Manmohan Singh will address the nation, was
penetrated by Pakistani terrorists. And simultaneous with this shrinkage of
secure public space, politicians have competed to gain higher alphabetic levels
of personal security.
The ultimate perversion is that one of the
most venal politicians, Amar Singh, has just won a security upgrade, although
all he has to fear, as someone wrote, are news TV sting operations. And there
is Mayawati, who has scant regard for constitutional politics, who frequently
speaks of assassination threats surrounded by commandoes.
To return to the army in CP, what's after
this "state instrument of the last resort"? In recent weeks and
months, the army has "aided civil authority" in Leh, Bishnah (J
and K), Vadodara, Ahmedabad (both Gujarat), Dausa, Sawai Madhopur, Alwar,
Dhaulapur, Kota, Jhalawar, Bayana, Bundi, Gharsana (all Rajasthan), Siliguri,
Calcutta (West Bengal), Sonitpur, Kokrajar, Jorhat and Dhubri (all Assam).
Anywhere that the local police or paramilitary fails, the army is called.
Successive army chiefs have warned against this trend, and the defence minister,
A.K.Anthony, repeated the warning recently. Ask senior army officers, and
they blame it on political failure and collapse of
governance.
While the army, for instance, fully understands
its role and responsibilities in Jammu and Kashmir, it also realizes the limits
to military peace. At best, the army can bring down the threshold of violence,
but the rest has to be done by politicians in Delhi, Jammu and Kashmir. Besides
the tragic deaths from police firing, the most troublesome news from J and
K is that assembly elections may be postponed again.
With all its drawbacks, democracy is the only
solution for J and K. With peace, or relative peace, in that state, it is
possible for the government to repair the situation in the rest of the Periphery.
And unless peace, security and democracy are robustly enforced in the Periphery,
we can no longer expect to normally celebrate Independence Day. Connaught
Place will be a ghost district even before this is published, and it will
remain so till the PM returns to the absolute security of five and seven Race
Course Road after his I-Day speech. No complains. Let him live long. But are
the rest of us to board up and celebrate our Independence in fear and hiding?
Is this independence?
Clearly, things cannot go on like this. The
army has to go out of normal sight. The borders must be turned over to the
Border Security Force. Paramilitary forces like the CRPF must return to becoming
premium state instruments to assist police in peace-keeping. The NSG should
revert to its mandated role and not be diluted with VIP security, which an
expanded and intensively-trained police force can take over.
But the bulk of police must return to classical
policing, which means knowing the beat, being intimate with the pulse of the
city or town, being on top of criminality, and making studied transformations
to combat urban terrorism. What is required is change with continuity, while
respecting institutional charters.
But the roadblocks are absent political will
and a construct called secularism twisted to win votes of defrauded and affrighted
minorities. As one more Independence Day approaches, politicians are making
it impossible to secure India. What's next after the Indian Army in Connaught
Place?
- N.V.Subramanian is Editor, NewsInsight.net.
