Framework for National Security

Since our politicians are too inept and our bureaucrats are too self-serving and governmental processes and thinking still too entrenched in colonial times for it to function effectively in an evolving globalized environment, it is time for ordinary citizens of this country with the relevant skills and exposure to come together and create the environment in which a framework for national security can evolve. The Mumbai episode has proven that we can no longer continue to rely on the government to provide the level of security needed for an emerging economy like India to continue to function effectively. The bottomline is that whatever structure is setup has to meet the needs of the ordinary citizen. Here is a small start and I will approach it purely from my present role as a consultant for performance management.

Lets start with the element of national security most visible to the ordinary citizen - the Police - ask yourself a few simple question? Do the police in its existing avatar inspire confidence in ordinary citizens? Would you be confident of walking into your local police station and filing a complaint? Would you be happy to call a 100 number to report suspicious activity? Examine your thought processes as you undertake this exercise? Is it faith, confidence and utmost trust that floods you. Or is it trepidation? Fear? Or the human response to all threat - flight?

The Police Organization in India

Article 246 of the Constitution of India places police, public order, courts, prisons, reformatories, borstal and other allied institutions in the State List. The structure and working of the state police forces are governed by the Police Act of 1861. The Indian Police Service (IPS) is an all India service which is recruited, trained and managed by the central government and provides the bulk of the senior officers to the state police forces. The quasi federal character of the Indian polity, with specific provisions in the constitution allows a coordinating and counselling role for the center in police matters and even authorises it to setup certain central police organizations.
The police station is the basic unit of police administration in a district or metro. A police station is divided into a number of beats which are then assigned to constables for patrolling, survelliance and collection of intelligence. Under section 3 of the Police Act 1861, there is provision for a system of dual control at the district level which places police forces under a district superintendant of police albeit under the "general control and direction" of the district magistrate that made the police force subservient to a bureaucrat on the principle of having a single executive head at district level that was so essential for maintenance of British rule in India. The magistrate role even overlapped judicial functions at this level.

Within a metropolitan area, however, the district structure did not work well and was replaced by the Commissionerate system where the policing responsibility was vested in a Commissioner of Police.

Criminal investigation was vested with the CID - a specialized branch of the police - a comprised two components: the crime branch and the special branch. The crime branch is the most important investigative arm of the state police and is multi-jurisdictional in nature. Special branch on the other hand is an intelligence arm providing for collection, collation and disemmination of intelligence and to monitor the overall security environment. Though structurally weak, the ATS was the state police's response to counter terrorism and has served reasonably well for most routine anti-terror investigations, albeit only where ever these units have been led by able professionals.

The state police itself has two primary components - civil police and armed police. The civil police deals with crime while the armed police provides a police contingency reserve to deal with law and order situations. The civil police man the police districts and have their own armed reserves for guard, escort or first response.

Response to Terror by Western Democracies

Lets examine the policing systems in some more developed western economies like the America and Britain and see what actions have been taken by these two prominent western democracies in response to global terrorism.

The American system of policing is quite unique by world standards states an article on the JRANK.org website (Police: Organization and Management - The American System Of Policing). There are approximately twenty thousand state and local police agencies in the US. Other English speaking democracies have a much smaller number: Canada (461), England (43), India (22) and Australia (8). It goes on to say that the majority of police agencies in the US are only loosely connected to one another with many having overlapping jurisdictions at multiple levels of government. Consolidating all these disparate structures into a more professionalized and unified framework was one of the recommendations in 1967 President's Commission on Law Enforcement and Administration of Justice. The article examines whether the economies of scale acheived from a unified structure results in a more efficient utilization of resources and also considers the information gaps resulting from poor communication, coordination and cooperation between siloed structures that more often than not allowed offenders to "slip betwen the cracks".

As a response to the September 11, 2001 terror strike, the US government setup a new organization - the department of homeland security that went operational in Jan 2003. Under the mandate of the Act, a new organizational chart was presented to the White House within 60 days of the enactment. Besides administrative and management functions, the structure provided for an integrated setup for (a) information analysis, (b) infrastructure protection and (c) emergency preparedness and response (d) science and technology (e) border and transport security operating under an integrating mechanism - the homeland security council. The creation of DHS resulted in a reorganization of the executive branch on a scale not experienced since the establishment of the Department of Defence (DoD) nearly half a century ago. The DHS was and still is a product of legislative compromises with a provision to monitor and adjust its structure as conditions warranted.

The law enforcement in the UK is arranged by geographical police areas matched to the boundaries of one or more local government areas. Majority of law enforcement is done by police constables. After the introduction of the Police Reform Act of 2002, law enforcement is increasingly carried out by people who are not constables. There are 43 police forces in the UK. All forces have teams of police officers who are responsible general patrol duties and response to emergency and non-emergency calls from the public. Most local areas or wards have at least one police officer who is involved in building links with the local community and resolve long term problems. The CID can be found in all police forces and deals with the investigations of more complex, serious nature. And all forces also have specialist departments that deal with certain aspects of policing - traffic, firearms, marine, horse, tactical support et al.

For counter terrorism, the UK Metropolitan police decided to setup a Specialist Counter Terrorism Command - a new bespoke, multi-faceted, single counter-terrorism command not restricted in design or look by existing structures. This has effectively taken over the roles of the Anti-terrorism and special branch of the existing police apparatus. The new command brings together intelligence analysis and development with investigations and operational support activity. Its mandate includes bringing to justice those engaged in terrorist, domestic extremist and related offences, to provide proactive and reactive response to such offences, gather and exploit intelligence, to assess, analyze and develop intelligence to drive operational activity, to assist British Security Service and the SIS in filfulling their statutory roles, to be the single point of contact for international partners in counter-terrorism matters and to assist in protecting British interests overseas by investigating attacks against such interests. The British already have several integrating structure in place - like that Joint Terrorism Analysis Center - that brings together people from the Security Service, SIS, GCHQ, Defence Intelligence Staff, Metropolitan Police Counter Terrorism Command and a further six government departments.

So now what?

The police are essentially a public service delivery organization and all processes and performance measures typical of a service delivery organization can be applied even to the police organization and specifically to the organizational frontline - the beat constable within a specific police jurisdiction. Any structural change that does not fundamentally change public perceptions about the beat constable may well be discarded at the outset for it is just money down another bureaucratic drain.

Task forces setup to handle multi-jurisdictional crime routinely become permanent in nature, requiring an additional level of collaborating and coordinating mechanisms and these can be dealt with as part of the organizational design processes based on any of the current practices. Of these practices, the contingency theory appears to be the most applicable at this time. Changing tack, lets consider the legacy of the present police organization - British colonialism. Police structures were based on a military/professional model [Ref: Police: Organization and Management - Managing Police Organizations] where discretion was available only in the hands of the bureaucracy. The police did was they were told to do, irrespective of the inconveniences to the common citizen as long as the requirements of the British rulers were met. This model quite obviously has no place in a modern democracy where police serves the common citizen. Yet the military/professional model of management continues. What is needed it its place is a system of community policing that various reform efforts coalesed into in America during the 1990s. One definition , used by the Justice Departments Office of Community Oriented Policing Services, contains three elements: (a) organizational and managerial change, (b) problem solving and (c) community partnerships. What ensued was the adoption of private-sector business practices and principles for the management of police services organization and delivery. Police reform appears to be the most urgent need of the hour.

Beyond normal policing situations, there is a multiplicity of organizations dealing with different threat perceptions - both internal and external. We will keep the scope of the discussion narrow to the immediate levels of escalation needed by a beat constable, in case of a situation requiring specialized skills specially since the Maharashtra government has already proposed an NSG-like force for Mumbai. The desirability of this along with its control and administrative structure needs to taken into consideration before a state commits to raising such a force. However, in the realm of immediate feasibility is the need to create specialized quick response units, a quasi-military unit armed with military grade weapons for the purpose of dealing with particularly violent situations and which can act within a specified timeframe. However, even here, their situational mandate would be limited to removing innocent bystanders from dangerous people and dangerous situations, not violent resolution.

So what is the solution? It is definitely not setting up an NSG style force for different metros and have them serving under a police organization. The first two requirements for the evolution of a framework for national security would be the definition of structure for a federal, integrated (internal, external and including the criminal justice systems) national security backbone followed immediately by an unification and harmonization of the security backbone standards and processes that facilitate communication, coordination and collaboration among all its disparate elements. What has to be kept in mind while doing this is that the different elements of national security have their own traditions and ethos - cultural elements that are so essential to effective organizations. There should be no attempt to drown out the essential elements of culture at the tactical level during the standardization and harmonization process. At the strategy and policy making levels of the organization, we just need the best talent available across the board - talent, that is measured only by the effectiveness of security that delivered to every citizen. However, there is one caveat. When the wish list is drawn up, the requirements for total security will exceed the GDP of India and grow exponentially. The point of balance between the need and the costs we are willing to sustain over the long term on a security apparatus given India's competing and equally urgent social needs will be difficult to determine.

However, we can no longer leave this to our self serving bureaucrats, not even as an arbitrator between the different silos of national security and not even to our bumbling array of adolescent to geriatric politicians. It calls for leadership, talent and committment of the highest order and this talent has to be drawn from the existing system and facilitated. The amount of rot in the system is monumental and the earlier the work starts with the well being of eachm and every citizen at the center of focus the better prepared we will be for the next event, which by all indications, maybe just around the corner. The only thing that seperates us from acheiving the desired end state is collective will. This has to become a people's movement in order to drive implementation timeframes of the restructuring and accountability of our elected representatives.