Indian Counter Terrorism Capabilities Needs Rejuvenation

Terrorism is a serious problem for India and so far Indian counter terrorism responses are far from satisfactory. Whether it is traditional terrorism or cyber terrorism, India is lagging far behind. Unfortunately, a tragedy is always needed in India to wake up Indian government temporarily.

Once the tragedy is over, the concerns for national security and cyber security also subsides. On the contrary, in the name of national security and cyber security, corruption, myopic vision and e-surveillance are the only chosen options by Indian government. If you add the fact of turf war between various Indian ministries and departments, the chaotic picture of Indian national security in general and counter terrorism capabilities in particular emerges very clearly.

There is no second opinion about the fact that intelligence gathering is an essential part of national security of India. However, intelligence gathering skills developments in India are far from satisfactory. Naturally, India cannot fight with terrorism and cyber attacks with the present intelligence infrastructure of India. The present intelligence infrastructure of India is in big mess.

The intelligence infrastructure of India needs urgent rejuvenation. It is high time to move away from mere lips services and political statements and to move ahead in the direction of developing counter terrorism capabilities. We have an obvious but unresolvable terrorism dilemma in India.

With the growing use of social media by cyber criminals and terrorists, the intelligence agencies world over are engaging in open source intelligence through these social media and platforms.

Indian intelligence agencies must develop not only open source intelligence capabilities in India but they must also learn how to deal with highly sophisticated encryption usages. By limiting their capabilities to a weak encryption usage limited 40 bits encryption alone, this aim is absolutely frustrated. We must formulate a well drafted encryption policy of India that covers all the possible uses and prevention of the abuses of encryption.

India has been ignoring all these issues for many decades. It is high time to think about these issues and do some actual and hard core work in this regard.