Building a grand narrative in national security

Bhartendu Kumar Singh
Indian Defence Accounts Service

National security discourse has been the preserve of a small community consisting of politicians, bureaucratic elites and strategic experts in most great powers. Attempts to widen the security community has had mixed results in these countries. In the Indian context, the year 2018 has seen some fascinating changes in the national security architecture and decision-making process. However, mobilisation of security expectations through institutional reforms alone is not sufficient. Unless the community is widened with proliferation of security consciousness, public policy processes may not benefit from best environmental inputs.

While India’s democratic political arrangement ensures accountable institutional arrangements on national security, it has a low security consciousness, largely subdued under the rubric of pressing domestic issues. Even during elections, security matters fail to emerge as mainstream agenda and rarely emerge from the subconscious level to enthuse the electorates. That does not mean people do not have a viewpoint on security. For example, people in North Bihar would always stand for an open border with Nepal due to cross-border socio-economic-cultural linkages. This opinion may be at variance with Delhi intellectuals. Similarly, people in Assam may have a strong view on immigration. For people in Punjab and Haryana, armed forces are preferred job options due to higher level of security consciousness. However, a pan-India viewpoint on security matters is missing and people shy away to real-life issues.

Several factors account for this low level of security consciousness.

Military security takes precedence

1.Security is an ambiguous concept, leading to interpretational problems and resultant security challenges. If a survey is done about the most important national security challenge for India, different answers would emerge. Most would say China and some would say Pakistan. Perhaps, these answers are right in their own way. However, very few would identify poverty and underdevelopment as the foremost challenge. This is because in security discourses, we have been reading entire narrative of security from only militaristic perspective, like ‘defence of borders’. We failed to conceptualise security in broader perspectives like developmental and environmental security.

Delhi-centric discourse

2.India has a small security community that is entrusted with leadership role in shaping security consciousness at large. Most think tanks and strategic experts are Delhi-based outplaying their counterparts in other parts of India in influencing public policy formulation. At a sub-systemic level, there is also a schism between experts who advocate an aggressive defensive posture confusing ‘security’ for ‘defence’ and development economists who are wary of commenting on neglected aspects of security. As a result, very few policy papers have been published advocating a cost-effective comprehensive approach.

Conditional funding for research

3.Security studies funding is a problem. Limited funding by corporate and foreign sources have conditionalities attached. The UGC and Indian Council of Social Science Research (ICSSR) fund some research projects and conferences but the outcomes are largely quantitative and miss out on value addition. Fund problems also discourage scholars from a career in security studies in India and are often poached by foreign think tanks and universities. India’s top two strategic thinkers are now based in Singapore. India’s top two development economists are based in the US. India’s best international negotiations expert is based in Germany. Outside the diplomatic fraternity, we do not have a single scholar who commands proficiency in Mandarin as well as Chinese security policy.

Fossilised syllabus  

4.Security studies is yet to gain popularity despite over a dozen universities offering under-graduate and post-graduate courses in defence and security studies. The course contents are archival, teaching methodologies fossilised and quality of teachers questionable. Research methodologies are not scientific and the PhDs produced carry no testable hypothesis. Perhaps that’s why these courses have not been able to attract bright talents. The growth of the security community at the most ‘critical’ level is, therefore, constrained.

The consequences

The insufficient security consciousness has its own consequences. It deprives policy-making processes of a wider environmental input that reduces dependency on organisational and bureaucratic way of decision-making. Second, there has been an increased militarisation of security debates due to monopolisation by experts with aggressive strategic posture. Thus, we largely hear of defence budgets being low, weapons being in short supply and military modernisation suffering a body blow. The alternative truth is never heard out.

Third, the economic approach to security is missed out. Cost-effective way of meeting security challenges (including China and Pakistan) are often laughed away. Developmental aspects of security like poverty, health and education fail to enter the discourse.

Fourth, the entire discourse remains ethically deprived. Our experts want more expenditure on visible fronts of security. Problems like millions of hungry mouths to be fed are irrelevant. The security apparatus spends substantial money on symbols and pompous arrangements that could be gainfully spent on deliverables. Moral norms and normative considerations aiming at a happy and secured nation do not figure in our security vocabulary.

For India’s emergence as a great power in a cost-effective manner, we need to cognisise security consciousness at every vertical and lateral level and proliferate it politically and psychologically. The guiding philosophy should be to secure environmental conditions for striving towards what Gurucharan Das calls as ‘India’s peaceful pursuit of middle-class life’. We need to emulate think tank experiences of the US and other great powers attracting best talents and nurturing them through basketful of incentives. We should also consider taking security studies to school curriculum. Most importantly, we need a national security strategy (NSS) acting as a primary reference and a grand narrative for engendering and proliferating a spirited national security consciousness.

Views are personal.