HOME TRUTH
Kashmir stands out as the key challenge even as the internal security situation across the rest of India has stabilised
Adecade ago, the home ministry was an internal security nightmare. It managed a deadly quadrangle of violence in Jammu and Kashmir, terror attacks in India’s hinterland, separatism in the Northeast and a spreading Maoist insurrection in the heartland. Today, barring Kashmir, all of these problems are on the decline, some with a permanent settlement in sight. The government’s shrill global pitch against Pakistan-sponsored terrorism seems to have worked. The attack on the Pathankot air base in January 2016 was the last major terrorist attack outside of Jammu and Kashmir.
The BJP’s 2014 election manifesto only vaguely mentioned the need to ‘address the challenges posed by the Maoist insurgency’. Home minister Rajnath Singh’s hands-on approach to tackling the menace has borne results.
Today the government is presiding over the sharpest drop in insurgency—a 71 per cent fall in casualties—from 908 deaths of security personnel and civilians in 2009 to 263 deaths in 2017. Territory controlled by Maoists has shrunk by 40 per cent—this April, MHA removed 44 districts from the list of Left Wing Extremism affected districts, leaving just 90 districts affected by the Maoists, the smallest since they raised the banner of revolt in 2004.
The situation in the Northeast, too, is under control with 2017 seeing the lowest number of insurgency-related incidents in decades. Hopes of a permanent resolution of the Naga insurgency which began in the 1950s brightened when the largest rebel group NSCN-IM signed a framework agreement with the government in 2015.
Only the upsurge in violence in Kashmir that began with the killing of Burhan Wani in July 2016 poses a serious security challenge for the ministry. The appointment of an interlocutor last October has not taken the peace process forward, coming as it does in the backdrop of a raging homegrown insurgency that is pulling in local youth in larger numbers and swelling recruitments of local militants despite 250 of them being killed in 2017 and 2018. Over 100 became militants last year and 27 this year. A Ramadan ceasefire offers a brief respite as the state debates the next course of action. Another cause for concern is the fact that the government has not completed even one internal security-related scheme in the 48 months in the home ministry. The Comprehensive Integrated Border Management System costing an estimated Rs 20,000 crore to be deployed along the entire 3,323-km India-Pakistan international border has so far not got beyond the level of two successful pilot projects of 5-6 km each, one in Punjab and another in Jammu.
The NATGRID or National Intelligence Grid, a system connecting the core data bases of intelligence agencies and another promise in the BJP manifesto has not been implemented. Neither has the CCTNS or the Crime and Criminal Tracking Network and Systems, an ambitious plan to link all the country’s 14,000 police stations taken off. Lack of budgetary resources is not the problem because the MHA has been consistently underutilising its capital budgets for several years now. This year, for instance, it could spend only 61 per cent of its allocation.