Intel grid not in sight

When NATGRID (National Intelligence Grid) was set up as an attached office of the Ministry of Home Affairs on December 1, 2009, in the wake of the 26/11 Mumbai attack, it was expected that this would become fully operational to secure the nation from future attacks.

The Mumbai attacks occurred when 10 members of Laskhar-e-Taiba of Pakistan carried out a series of 12 co-ordinated shooting and bombing attacks for full four days across Mumbai in which 164 persons were killed and at least 310 got wounded.

Eight of the attacks occurred in South Mumbai: Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus, the Oberoi Triden, the Taj Palace and Tower, Leopold Cafe, Cama Hospital, the Nariman House Jewish Community Centre, the Metro Cinema and in a lane behind the Times of India building and St. Xavier's College. There was also an explosion at Mazagaon and in a taxi at Vile Parle.

After the terror attacks, the Centre sought to secure the country from both external and internal threats and decided to constitute the National Intelligence Grid with the mandate to connect 10 approved User Agencies (UAs), leading Central Intelligence and Law Enforcement Agencies and 21 Data Providing Organisations (DPOs) such as airlines, banks, railway, telecom etc. with a view to enhancing the capacity of the country to counter terrorism and crime.

A Detailed Project Report (DPR), outlining the NATGRID project to be implemented in four Horizons, was accorded 'in-principle' approval by the Cabinet Committee on Security (CCS) on June 6, 2011. The Union Home Ministry stated that on June 14, 2012 the CCS approved the implementation of Horizon-I and some elements of Horizon-II envisaged in the DPR at a cost of Rs 1002.97 crore. The CCS later approved Rs 346.05 crore on November 28, 2013 towards creation of necessary infrastructure - Data Centre and Business Continuity Plan at New Delhi and Disaster Recovery Centre at Benguluru.

The initial plan was to get the Disaster Recovery Centre operational first and to have the Business Continuity Plan at New Delhi to be completed by March of 2018. However, when a Parliamentary Standing Committee on Home Affairs sought to know the progress of the project work, it was told that there were delays in implementing the project as per the timelines due to several challenges.

The Union Home Secretary explained to the committee that by the time those challenges were overcome and the technology implementation plan was ready, the existing technology would become outdated and the new technology was to be put in place. Hence, it kept delaying the technology implementation. The assurance given to the Committee this year was that the project would be in place without further delays and the NATGRID would be operationalised by September 2018.

The latest information on it says that by September 2018, at the most, the building would be completed while the actual operationalisation would take a long time. The reason is that essential equipment has still not been procured and there are a large number of vacancies of technical consultants.

When Members of the Committee expressed apprehensions, they were told by the CEO of NATGRID that the building would be completed both at Bengaluru as well as New Delhi by March 2018, while connectivity between user and providing agencies along with a certain amount of basic analytics and data sharing was expected to be in place by September, 2018.

What was even more surprising was that though allocations were made by the Cabinet Committee on Security in 2013 itself for creating infrastructure, it is nowhere in place. What will be NATGRID with only its civil construction completed by next year? And of what use it would be to the Union Home Ministry without any intelligence flowing out of it?

The DPR was approved in June 2011 and the implementation approved in November 2013 and the project is still at a nascent stage! This under Narendra Modi's rule? Surprising. Eh?

It should be noted that the vacancies of technical experts have not been filled at all. Subject matter experts hired earlier have quit because there was nothing that they could do without any infrastructure being in place. So then, why is there this ambiguity and uncertainty prevailing in the government?

Why is there this inability in taking quick decisions? Or is it that unless Modi personally reviews the progress of this all-important project, it won't be completed? Even if someone forces the Home Ministry to complete it within the timeline of September 2018, the fact remains that it would be in a position to deal with only some basic analytics and minimal data sharing, which is of not much consequence to the Ministry or the nation.

Elementary knowledge suggests that the Ministry should re-publicise the posts at the earliest as widely as possible along with offering remuneration commensurate to that being offered in the private sector to attract the most qualified professionals for this technology-driven project.

Why is it not doing so? There is no dearth of professionals with soft skills in this country and the youth would only be too glad to take up the job if the required perks are provided. What is inhibiting the Ministry from doing so?
Or is it that it does not want this latest addition to come up at all as it could become an all powerful agency overriding several others? Even the Committee expressed its displeasure at the perennial poor utilisation of budgetary allocations wherein not even on-half of the allocation was utilised in any single financial year from 2010-11 to 2015-16.

It is time that the Center took up the issue far more seriously to make the NATGRID fully operational. This is no time to hone our delay-tactics any further. It is a Constitutional duty of the Union to protect every state against external aggression and internal disturbance.

"Under Article 355 of the Indian Constitution, this duty assumes more importance in the present scenario where terrorism, insurgency and Left Wing Extremism have affected almost every State of India. While there are agencies like NIA, IB, MAC (Multi-Agency Centre) and NSG and some in the pipeline like NATGRID that are cumulatively capable of addressing these menaces, there is no single unified authority to coordinate the operations of these agencies and ensure a quick response in times of crisis like the 26//11 attack," the Parliamentary Committee observed in its last meeting.

We may be shocked to note that in the past several Chief Ministers had objected to the proposed constitution of NCTC (National Counter Terrorism Centre) without consulting them. According to them, the proposed NCTC would have infringed upon the federal structure of the Constitution.

Strange, is not it, that the Chief Ministers at the helm of the State governments thought it more appropriate to treat the issue on the lines of propriety or otherwise, at the cost of internal security. They should have known that the contribution of their States to the security of the nations vis-a-vis the intelligence outputs is dismal.

If an on average day, the MAC gathers, collages, stores, shares, stores and disseminates about 150 inputs to the agencies concerned. Special alerts are issued as and when required. The inputs broadly divided under four heads - J & K, North-East, Left Wing Extremism and Rest of India.

The major contributors of inputs in 2016 (till September) are Defence Intelligence Agency (24.05 per cent), Research and Analysis Wing (20.70 per cent), Central Reserve Police Force (14.46 per cent), Intelligence Bureau (14.22 per cent), Border Security Force (5.98 per cent), Directorate General of Military Intelligence (3.06 per cent) and National Technical Research Organisation (3.66 per cent). Contribution from State Special Branches has been 11.05 per cent. Isn’t it time that the NATGRID is in place? Let us hope at least the PMO keeps track of the work to shake the Home Ministry out of its lethargy.