Historically India’s attempts at strengthening its intelligence infrastructure & capabilities have been reactive and incremental rather than holistic and sustainable. Discuss, and also provide a concrete network to transform India’s intelligence capability.

Intelligence infrastructure helps a country to track, intercept, monitor the threats, and alert the security architecture to deal with and nullify them. A strong intelligence infrastructure is of paramount importance for the security of any nation.

How India’s approach has been incremental & reactive:

• India has created its various intelligence agencies over a period of time, instead of following a comprehensive and holistic approach.
• India developed National Investigation Agency (NIA) and National Intelligence Grid (NATGRID) in response to the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks.
• Similarly, Defense Space Agency was developed recently in light of increasing the risk of space warfare by the US, China, and Russia.
• However, many aspects of India’s intelligence architecture are holistic and sustainable.
  • Cyber security architecture consists of CERT-IN, National Cybersecurity Coordination Centre, Cyber Swachhta Kendras, etc.

Framework to transform India’s Intelligence capabilities:

• India needs to evolve a comprehensive national security strategy so that intelligence gathering can occur as and when required.
• Further, there is a need for National Security Coordinator to coordinate intelligence between different agencies, as suggested by Naresh Chandra Committee.
• The use of technology like Bigdata, Artificial Intelligence, Robotics, Drones, etc can play a key role in strengthening intelligence architecture.

Finally, the recommendations of the Shekatkar committee may also prove useful to achieve intelligence reforms.