Problems with some changes made to National Security Council by NDA Govt in 2001

Reference: Read this article posted on my blog on Vajpayee

Despite making so many drastic changes NSC was short of certain real changes. Here's a list and this opinion has been collected from articles published by several defense analysts, experts and other online newspapers.

· It's a huge body of many loyalist individuals to a particular dept and not in the country as a whole

· How do u ensure Govt acts on recommendations made by strategic experts in NSAB? Will their reports just be thrown into thrash?

· NSA and Principal Secretary posts are to be made different

· JIC should not be headed by simply bureaucrats

· NSAB which consists of experts must not just be from Delhi, but across the different Indian states

· Why Finance, Defence, etc ministries be involved in this..? It resembles CConSecurity

· Some say that NSC must be a part of Cabinet with a Cabinet minister accountable for it

· JIC has be removed from NSC because independent existence of JIC has been crucial at several situations and helped security a lot

· While NSCS or in general NSC comes to conlusion, still CCOnSecurity is the sole decider and may choose to simply ignore their decisions. In US once the decision is taken, Presidential ratification is expected

· NSA and deputy NSA officials so far are not experts in intelligence matters. So, why have such people lead?

· Usually NSA so far has done good job on external security, but on internal security they have miserbaly failed - be it Brjaesh Mishra or M.K. Narayanan

· What J.N. Dixit did was to appoint a new post "Adviser on Internal security" solely for that purpose. However, this new post is not clear on how he/she is going to expect co-operation from NSC and as of now, NSA is accountable to NSCS but not the new post. So the new post is as good as dead.

· The biggest question is should NSA post concentrate on security matters or both security and diplomatic aspects of security. Some experts feel that the diplomatic aspects must be handled by diplomats (can take inputs from NSA) while the sole task of NSA must be only security related

· NSCS lacks experts in counter-insurgency, counter-terrorism, counter-intelligence, counter-proxy war, counter-psywar etc.

· No proper meetings of NSA and NSAB, SPG and NSAB and proper co-ordination is ad hoc yet

Apart from these, there are problems associated with appointment of Chief of Defense Staff (CDS) and Deputy Chief of Defense Staff (DCDS). With respect to its role, how it should be selected are all subject to intense discussions and till now no clear consensus has been achieved. The opinion is divided amongst defense experts themselves. Even in 2008, there was a press item stating that CDS will be a reality very soon