Security, development are inter-related

Suresh Prabhu

Jan 13 2015

Excerpts from the presentations at theRoundtable on National Security Key Challenges Ahead organised by The Tribune National Security Forum in collaboration with the Indian Council of World Affairs

National security means different things to different people and at different times, it will change. Whenever you feel insecure, obviously as a nation that is an issue of national concern and should be addressed as a national security issue. We have been dealing with a large number of issues which we think are supposed to be addressed as national security issues, like protecting our borders, making sure that the internal law and order is maintained, peace is established. But all these have been there for long. One point that is very important is the issue related to security and development.

It is an established fact that you cannot have development unless you are secure. Nobody is going to come and make investments in a country, not even our own citizens, in a place that is not secure. For a long time we were thinking that for development we need resources and, therefore, development and defence did not go hand in hand because there was a time traditionally when the defence expenditure was one of the very large items on the expenditure side of the budget. If you look at it, over a period of time, that's changed considerably. Now, in fact, defence is not as significant an item as it used to be once. It may be still there in large numbers, but if you go by the percentage, there are far more important items of expenditure which are occupying a permanent place in the Union Budget than defence. For example, interest has now become a far bigger liability of the Government of India and for the states.

So, if you really talk about development, if you really want to bring in a transformation and, therefore, want to make us a very strong and vibrant country and a society, then we must identify issues which will spread development. To do that, we must find out not defence items or defence expenditure alone, but so many other items which are eating into the possible investment in defence. Then we come to a large number of issues which are also directly related to security. One of them is energy.

Energy security

If India continues to import energy of a kind that you are importing today, how could we ever claim that we are secure? Obviously, there will be an argument that we need to protect our maritime routes because that is the supply chain from where our energy resources are imported into India. Therefore, we need a strong Navy to protect our supply lines, to begin with. Maritime security is in any case, irrespective of whether we are importing or not importing, very important. In fact, our neighbourhood is not just in the SAARC countries; we have a much wider neighbourhood if you consider our maritime boundaries.

But do we definitely need to import the kind of energy that we are importing? Today, the argument may be slightly blunted because the oil prices have come down dramatically, but you know, like blood pressure, it could go down or go up again and therefore this is a time to strategise and not to gloss over it. Energy is a very important component of national security of any country and that again has implications in terms of how we actually plan our finances.

The second issue that is important is food security. Today, we are far, far better. We cannot imagine a situation when we talk about the 1960s, now that we are exporting rather than importing foodgrains. It happened thanks to the Green Revolution. But its home state is now seriously threatened. Why it is threatened is because of water, too much use of water. Punjab’s the largest irrigated state in the country definitely, but also largest in the irrigated part of the world. There we have used so much of water that now the salinity and therefore the groundwater being used for growing rice is actually eating into a lot of our natural resources. So, the question is, if you want food security, could we get it without thinking of the concept of soil security? Are we thinking about soil security in all seriousness that it deserves?

Then to the land. There is enough land even in Rajasthan and Gujarat in the desert; can you grow anything there? We cannot, because there is no top soil. The top soil is rich in fertility and is threatened because of the type of cropping pattern we are adopting today. That in turn will affect our food security. When we do not have food security, we need more Navy to protect supply lines to bring in food. Therefore, we must think about issues going beyond and traversing the traditional security pattern in terms of the Army, in terms of police, in terms of national security architecture, in terms of creating new institutions. All this is important, but there are certain basic policy issues that we need to create which will decide the impact of our domestic policies, which will impact some of the sectors, which will then create new demands for the security architecture of the country.

Strong foundation

We need to look at why as a society we are not so cohesive. Therefore, we really need to revisit some of the issues of additional security establishment and the security community. We must bring in a sense of patriotism in our citizens. If all children feel strongly for the country, that is what will really keep us guarded against the threat that we always encounter. Education, the path of military training that we must provide and the path of civic sense we must inculcate in the minds of the people. Therefore, it is something which must start now. “Catch them young” is the slogan which should be used and, therefore, we should try to really create an edifice.

First, have a strong foundation, then the edifice will be stronger. National security is a far, far important issue. I think now nobody needs to really invest a large amount of money in military hardware. Because we can have all the military hardware operated by the electronic system. I just talked about energy, but that is something which is in terms of our resources. The cost, the amount of money that we have to use for electronic hardware imports will be probably far more than exports if you do not take corrective steps immediately.

If there are 900 million phone users in India, how many of these phones are imported? So does it make sense that we actually are creating a market for the products to support other economies and not make something of that in India. If you continue to do that, it will lead to an adverse balance of payment; once you have an adverse balance of payment, you have an adverse current account situation.

Strategic threat

What we need in India first of all is a strategic-threat assessment institution. An institution which will actually assess that in the next 10 years, 15 years’timeframe, what strategic place India is going to have. I really do not know whether we have such an institution which really looks into that. We need a service, but that itself may not be able to create the type of talent that we require. It has to be something which must go beyond them, we must tell the large number of people who are working in the city, even in the private sector, in many other sectors, who could probably contribute to this assessment about the threats that India is going to face in the next few years. Once we assess those threats, then probably you can come back and then find out the type of response mechanism that we need to assess those threats.

But if you do not assess all the time whether the structure is commensurate with the type of threat that we are going to encounter, not today or tomorrow but in the next several years’time, then what will we do? So, we really need an institution like this. Yes, states are extremely critical in working in any area, whether it is development or whether it is security. Though under the Constitution, foreign policy and defence are exclusive domains of the Central government.

We often forget the fact that Bangladesh is India's neighbour, but not Delhi's neighbour. Bangladesh is West Bengal's neighbour. Nepal is definitively India's neighbour, but also a neighbour of Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, and therefore, what is important is, we should not forget the fact that the states are as important; they actually really deal with the situation on a day-to-day basis. Rajasthan will always have a problem of security if there is a problem in Pakistan. Punjab will have problems, so therefore states' role in foreign policy and security issues is far more. We really need to engage with them. The states also must know, as we cede some powers from the Central government to the states on these issues, that they too need to think about ceding some of their authority on the issue of maintaining national security.

States must also be able to work with the Central government in a way that there could be one single authority to deal with national security issues, and any state government should not feel that how can you come to my district and talk without my permission, because the district is also of India's. Therefore, we should really try to find out how we can work together in this particular way. I think that would really help.