P Chidambaram's efforts to make India safe

The home ministry has initiated an overhaul of the policing and intelligence appartus to tackle the twin threats from jihadis and Naxals. The aggressive stance is showing results

P. Chidambaram
Budget Allocation
Rs. 3,283 crore - a 55% increase from Rs 1,810 crore in 2009-10
Big Idea
Institutional reforms in areas affected by Naxals; taking on terror on a larger scale. Neutralising the twin threats of Naxalism and jihadists while improving access to remote and impoverished areas.

Long-term Goals
Reduce the area under domination by Naxals. Counter terror that is raising its head again

It's not often in India that politicians praise their rivals. So when Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi complimented Home Minister P Chidambaram for his handling of internal security, it came as a surprise to most.

At a meeting of chief ministers on internal security in the first week of February, Modi said that since Chidambaram took over, states were getting positive and quick response from the central government on terrorism that had helped foil several potential incidents.

Just over a week later terrorists struck the German Bakery near the Osho Ashram at Koregaon Parka in Pune. Frequented by foreigners, the blast killed 11 and wounded over 40 people. A day later Maoists surrounded and massacred 20 jawans at a camp of Eastern Frontier Rifles at Silda in West Bengal. In yet another incident, on February 20, just days ahead of the scheduled Indo-Pak secretary-level talks, suspected Taliban terrorists beheaded Jaspal Singh, a Sikh, in Khyber Agency in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) region in Pakistan.

A year-long lull has been broken; fear is making the public jumpy and Indo-Pak talks will begin in the shadow of terror once again.

In 2008, there were six major attacks that bore the signature of cross-border terrorism and killed 470 people. At the Intelligence Bureau Endowment Lecture earlier this month, Chidambaram was asked how the country had managed to remain incident free for 14 months. "Honestly, it is because of dame luck that there has been no terror attack," he replied with surprising candour.

Taking Charge
The massive terrorist attack on Mumbai in November 2008 shook the country and the then Home Minister Shivraj Patil was fired. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh handed over the charge to Chidambaram, arguably one of the most experienced ministers in his cabinet.

The Congress leader from Sivaganga in Tamil Nadu had already made a mark in the finance ministry as a no-nonsense administrator, for his handling of the country's finances and a penchant for peppering his Budget speeches with verses from the Tamil epic Thirukkural.

Under Chidambaram's watch, the home ministry appears aggressive and purposeful. Chidambaram has actively engaged with the public and the states and has initiated an overhaul of the policing and intelligence apparatus of the country. That is why there does not seem to be any perceptible anger against him even after a sudden spurt of incidents.

Since he took over, Chidambaram's two central preoccupations have been cross-border terrorism and home-grown Naxalite violence unleashed from the jungles of eastern, central and southern India.   
The minister has set up a specially trained commando battalion to take on the Naxals. In addition, he set up the National Investigation Agency (NIA) and the National Counter Terrorism Centre (NCTC) to counter terror. The National Security Guard has also been allocated hubs in major cities to ensure that the crack commandoes can respond faster to attacks like the one on Mumbai. 

Chidambaram envisions ground operations to revolve around the NCTC. This centre will deal with cross-border terrorism and Naxalism. The Multi-Agency Centre or MAC, an information aggregator anchored by the Intelligence Bureau, will be at the core of the NCTC.

The NCTC would also gather information through the NATGRID, which would collate information such as Internet usage, bill payment and other information available in police records. The project, which is expected to be cleared soon by the Cabinet Committee on Security, will help in tracing movements of suspects and money trails. Last year, Chidambaram hired Captain Raghu Raman, a former armyman and head of Mahindra Special Services Group, as chief executive officer of the project.

Once NATGRID goes live - it is expected to be established in two years - it would provide designated security agencies access to multiple databases, including bank account details, credit card transactions, visa and immigration records, in one location. It will eliminate the need for agencies to depend on each other for information sharing, which often used to be ineffectual because of turf consciousness and ego hassles. The NATGRID has been established on the lines of the Federal Bureau of Investigation in the US.

"The NATGRID does not seek any new information. It will collate information that is already available with the government. For instance, today the agencies have to seek information from several agencies. Instead of this there will be one common database from which the information may be made easily available," said an officer associated with the project on condition of anonymity.

Security expert Ajai Sahni, however, says that unless states co-operate in enhancing capacity, the creation of new institutions by the Centre would not yield the desired benefit. According to Sahni, merely taking a leaf out of the American system that evolved after 9/11 would not be sufficient.
"The FBI's annual budget stands at $7.1 billion - to match this for India's population we would need to envisage an expenditure four times as much. The Centre's outlay under 'policing' currently amounts to just $3 billion," he says.

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