Killing the NCTC: Why India sucks at counter-terrorism

Four Chief Ministers – Mamata Banerjee, Jayalalithaa , Naveen Patnaik and Nitish Kumar – have come out against the National Counter Terrorism Centre , which was intended as a nodal counter-terrorism agency and was to be operationalised from 1 March. Gujarat Chief Minister too is believed to have opposed the proposal. Non-Congress opposition parties and leaders have similarly criticised the proposal. The criticism against the NCTC has been made principally on the ground that it will erode the rights of the States. Banerjee noted in a letter to the Prime Minister that under the terms of the order, the NCTC would have extensive powers, including the power to arrest and the powers to search under various provisions of the law. Additionally, state governments functionaries would be required to provide information/documents to the NCTC..Banerjee said it was difficult for the state government to accept “such arbitrary exercise of power by the central government/central agency, which have a bearing on the rights and privilege of the states as enshrined in the Constitution of India.” Federalism gone wild [caption id=“attachment_216915” align=“alignleft” width=“380” caption=“At first glance, this appears to be a case of federalism gone wild. AFP”]  [/caption] At first glance, this appears to be a case of federalism gone wild. Just as with the Lokpal Bill, where the bogey of States’ rights was invoked to effectively spike the already weakened anti-corruption Bill that the Congress brought before Parliament, so too now the proposed NCTC faces the high hurdle of opposition from State governments, including at least one headed by a key ally of the ruling Congress. What is it about the hyperpartisan Indian political system that it cannot even evolve a consensus on so important a matter as the need for a nodal counter-terrorism agency? Why is it that even the matter of national security - and the countless lives we lose every year to terrorist attacks – does not persuade parties to take a larger national perspective? And why does not the proposed agency, the brainchild of Union Home Minister P Chidambaram ( who saw it as his “unfinished agenda”), inspire confidence among State Chief Ministers? Much of the problem arises from the way governments at the Centre and in the States, for all their claims to rising above politics, view terrorism through a partisan prism. When Chidambaram first unveiled the NCTC idea, in a landmark speech in December 2009, barely a year after the November 2008 Mumbai attack, he had actually visualised it as a much more all-encompassing agency. ( Read his speech here.) Strikingly, it appeared then that Chidambaram was unveiling a major policy in a public speech, without so much as securing Cabinet clearance for the proposal. Chidambaram envisaged the NCTC as a nodal agency to deal with terrorism – that is, prevent a terror attack, contain it (if an attack did take place), and thirdly, “inflict pain upon the perpetrators”. With that mandate, he saw the NCTC performing functions relating to intelligence, investigation and operations. To that end, he felt that the NCTC would result in the transfer of oversight responsibilities over existing intelligence agencies to the proposed agency. And although he said it was his “fervent plea”” that this “should not result in turf wars”, to observers it reeked of an effort to whittle down the powers of the then National Security Adviser MK Narayanan – who was subsequently eased out of office. In such inauspicious circumstances was the NCTC conceived. Even members of the intelligence community cautioned against building up a “super-agency.” Vikram Sood, former head of the Research and Analysis Wing (India’s external intelligence agency), argued that it would be wrong for the NCTC to aspire to become a “super-intelligence organisation and … take over the operational aspects of intelligence organisations.” Since then, the mandate of the NCTC has been eroded substantially. It was once envisaged as an overarching counter-terrorism agency with various other existing agencies – the Research & Analysis Wing (RAW), the Multi Agency Centre of the Intelligence Bureau , the National Investigation Agency (NIA) and the National Security Guards – reporting to it. But when the NCTC was eventually cleared by Cabinet, it was placed under the Intelligence Bureau. Curiously, even the whittling of the NCTC’s authority – thanks to turf battles within the intelligence community - hasn’t convinced its detractors of the merits of the agency. For far too long have ruling parties at the Centre misused and abused intelligence sleuths for partisan political ends. Narendra Modi noted a while ago that the Congress was using all the investigating agencies and intelligence agencies in a vain attempt to ensnare him politically. “Had the energy used by them against Gujarat … been directed towards Pakistan, half of the problem of terrorism would have been solved," Modi said. Heck, it isn’t just Opposition chief ministers; even one of Chidambaram’s senior ministerial colleagues has complained of “snooping devices” in his Ministerial office. Additionally, the excessive preoccupation of Congress leaders like Digivijaya Singh with “saffron terror”, while willfully ignoring the rather more widespread roots of terror elsewhere, also shows up a mala fide intent to use anti-terrorism provisions to selectively target political opponents. (That’s not to say right-wing groups aren’t guilty of terrorist attacks, but the disproportionate emphasis on so-called “saffron terror” points to a more insidious attempt at playing communal politics even when it comes to terrorism.) In fact, some State-level leaders have a rather better record when it comes to counter terrorism. Jayalalithaa, for instance, has an exemplary record of tackling terrorist groups who operated in Tamil Nadu: in the wake of the 1991 assassination of Rajiv Gandhi, she leveraged the widespread disenchantment with Sri Lankan Tamil extremism to uproot the militant groups that had a free run in earlier times. It is in this context that the opposition from the four State chief ministers begins to make sense. While nobody can argue with the compelling need to counter terrorism, and for better coordination among intelligence agencies, the bona fides of the UPA government in this area aren’t entirely above reproach. So, while Chidambaram’s vision of the NCTC as a nodal agency has much to commend, in the end the proposal fell flat owing to the UPA government’s – and Chidambaram’s – inability to convince the political spectrum of the earnestness of its efforts to counter terrorism and of its readiness to rise above political pettiness. It’s also a measure of why India truly sucks at genuine counter-terrorism.