Networking Intelligence

The National Intelligence Grid will be an umbrella organisation of investigating agencies providing a crucial centralized data system

KEY POINTS

· It is unclear how the National Intelligence Grid (NIG) will differ from the National Counter Terrorism Centre
· With a Parliamentary form of government and a Cabinet Committee on Security empowered to take decisions, ownership of the proposed NIG will be problematic
· While it is not necessary to replicate the NIG that has been set up in the US it is a useful template for the Indian system.

India is located in a volatile and unstable area surrounded by either inimical or failing states. The country faces an ongoing terrorist threat sponsored by Pakistan, home grown insurgencies and a rising power with which we have fought a war and with which we still do not have a demarcated border. In India, we face internal ethnic insurgencies, ideological upheavals and worsening socio-economic problems emanating from exploding expectations and imbalances that arise from a rapidly developing economy. In addition, today’s enemies have no borders and they have the advantage that they are usually invisible till they perpetrate their acts. The rapid growth of science and technology has altered the way future wars will be fought and how terrorists will equip themselves. Lethality will have a different meaning ranging from nuclear bombs in state arsenals to dirty bombs in the hands of terrorists, state sponsored cyber warfare to use of cyber technology by terrorists and the use of modern communications by the state and non-state actors. Speed, miniaturisation and lethality make for that extra surprise that the state has to match in case it has to deal with 21st century threats. As the scope and scale of threats increases with the passage of time, it is for nations to understand and appreciate fully this threat and then take necessary steps to protect the state’s vital interests including its population.

Modern Terrorism

Modern terrorism is driven not just by ideology, religion or ethnicity but ultimately monetary spin offs weigh in heavily with the sponsors and practitioners. The new economy of terror and international crime has been calculated to be worth US $ 1.5 trillion (and growing), which is big enough to challenge Western hegemony. All the illegal businesses of arms and narcotics trading, oil and diamond smuggling, charitable organisations that front for illegal businesses and black money operations, form part of this burgeoning business. Narcotics smuggling generates its own separate business lines, globally connected with arms smuggling and human trafficking, and all dealt with in hundred dollar bills.

The buzzword today is globalisation, including in the business of terrorism. Armed groups who have linked up internationally, financially and otherwise, have been able to operate across borders with Pakistani jehadis doing service in the US, France or Australia while Uzbek and Chechen insurgents have taken shelter in Pakistan. The manner in which Pakistani terrorist organizations have morphed and amalgamated in recent months gives an indication of their malleability and adaptability as well as control exercised over them by the state. This only exacerbates problems for the Indian intelligence and security services, including the counter terrorist. Indian security needsThere is no knowing the origin or nature of the next threat or terrorist attack. If September 11, 2001 was an act of airborne terror, the November 26, 2008 was an act of maritime terror, in its infancy. Today’s pirates off the coast of Somalia could be tomorrow’s terrorists acting across India’s 7500 kilometre coastline. Judging from recent experience, we need to be prepared to deal with state sponsored cyber warfare.

Historically, the Indian state has sought to improve the security systems episodically and not based on worked out threat perceptions for the future. The Chinese invasion led to the creation of the ARC, SSB and SFF. The Pakistani invasion of 1965 and the Mizo uprising on 1966 led to the creation of RAW. For years nothing new was created till the Kargil invasion which led to the creation of the DIA, NTRO and MAC. The Mumbai attack November 2008 led to the creation of the NIA, the proposed NCTC and there is talk of creation of National Intelligence Grid. Since the Kargil invasion of 1999, there has been a tendency to replicate US systems in India.

The US has an elaborate National Intelligence Grid. The blue print of the US Intelligence Community called the “500 Day Plan for Integration and Collaboration” describes the essence of the problem with these words “IC personnel have not fully developed the mutual trust or the information sharing networks that enable a common IC culture of collaboration. In today’s environment, the wide array of intelligence professionals with varied backgrounds and experiences need to work together with greater access and agility and collaborate on improvements and mission critical problems as a matter of course to achieve superior results.” It seeks to accelerate information sharing, build acquisition excellence, modernise practices and seeks to clarify the US DNI’s authorities. The US NIG has a different purpose, in that it seeks to integrate the Intelligence Community. The Indian system, envisages establishment of a huge data bank.

The first task is to get the NIG off the ground by May 2011. As one understands from what has appeared in print so far, the NIG is an ambitious programme which seeks to provide complete data about any individual. This would include land records, internet logs, phone records, gun records, driving license, insurance and income tax records, relating to rail and air travel, phone calls, bank accounts, credit card transactions and PAN cards. This data would be available to eleven government agencies like the IB, RAW, MI, DRI, and so on. All authorised agencies like the Railways, Income Tax, Air India, the state police and even banks, insurance and telecom companies will have access to this data. This is to be linked with the Unique Identification system to be established by February 2011.


There are a few essential requirements as we go in for improving our security systems.

1) The system must be adapted to Indian conditions with care being taken not to simply copy systems followed in other countries, notably the US and the UK.

2) It is no use forming new agencies unless the existing ones are first spruced up. Intelligence and police reforms form part of a general reform.

3) There must be a quick response mechanism in position from the Centre down to the point of action in the state.

4) It is not enough to have a new system unless there is reform bottom up and not merely creation of state-of-the-art superstructures.

5) Downstream, in tackling insurgencies and terrorism it is not enough to have a muscular response. Intelligence agencies need to analyse and evaluate the data and information, all in rapid time keeping in mind the high use of technology and cyber warfare from threats emanating from state adversaries.

6) Since there is a multiplicity of specialised intelligence agencies, there has to be a clearly and legally stipulated charter of duties for each agency who would make their demands on the NIG in accordance with their charters.

7) There has to be effective and imaginative media management.

8) It is necessary to create a culture in the Intelligence Community that creates co-ordination and collaboration – never an easy goal- and to be able to feed multiple consumers in real time.

9) Further, there has to be effective co-ordination between the agencies and among the various ministries and departments of the government.

10) In our structure where law and order is a state subject, there has to be a legislative enactment that empowers the centre that compels the states to cooperate either for data sharing, or follow up on intelligence inputs

11) Finally, co-ordinating and supervising all these intelligence agencies would have to be an Intelligence Co-ordinator as distinct from the National Security Adviser who is really the chief consumer of the finished product and then therefore the principal advisor.

Judging from the manner in which we organise our national census and our election cards, there are reasons to be skeptical about our ability to achieve this much needed data bank by the stipulated date, assuming that this has cabinet clearance. That said, there have to be safeguards against misuse of this data both by those managing it and those seeking the data. The NIG is located in a Presidential form of government in the US where the ownership of this system lies with the President. In India, with a parliamentary form of government and a cabinet committee on security empowered to take decisions, ownership of a proposed National Intelligence Grid (NIG) is going to be problematic. This is a subsequent issue.

It is not clear how NIG would be distinct from the NCTC, would it duplicate its data or will it merely superimpose itself. The personnel managing the NIG would need training and experience both of which have their own unavoidable gestation period. These are grey areas that need to be sorted out. Above all the NIG must be manned by trained men and women and not birds of passage.

It is not necessary to replicate the US system in its entirety but this is a useful launching pad to adapt to the Indian situation. In our case, the mere establishment of a NIG will not be enough unless there is a simultaneous root and branch bottom up approach simultaneously.


Source : Defence and Security of India,Vol 3(1), August 2010