Expressing concern over the prevailing internal security environment in the country, Vice President Hamid Ansari said it required well directed actions in political, socio-economic and security fields.
[File] Vice President Hamid Ansari | AP
If the strategy of the government, both the Centre and the State, has been to deal with insurgencies with a strong hand, Ansari pushed for adjustment in country's approach to security management. “The focus has to be on the rule of law and bringing accountability of state action,” he said as he insisted on making people-centric approach to internal security.
Delivering the K. Subrahmanyam memorial lecture in New Delhi on Tuesday evening, Ansari painted an alarming picture, “Seven decades after the independence, there is widespread unrest, discontent and conflicts among sections of population. There are threats emanating from regional and social imbalances, which have given rise to and fuel insurgencies, terrorism, sub-nationalism and communalism.”
The vice president warned that many in the public were losing faith in the system, in ability of law enforcement agencies to maintain law and order and in the ability of the judicial system to provide justice.
“201 of 535 districts in India are affected with one form of violence or the other. This is also increasing,” he said.
Quoting various government reports, Ansari said that human security at individual and community levels leaves much to be desired even when traditional security concerns have been addressed.
The vice president appeared to critique the government's handling of security situation as he said that people in the disturbed areas felt insecure both from the insurgents and the state.
While the NDA government has been claiming that its policy has dealt a strong blow to the naxals through its various policies, especially after the demonetisation, Ansari appeared to give a note of caution.
He quoted a Ministry of Home Affairs reply in Rajya Sabha claiming that Left Wing Extremism violence has declined since 2011. “Despite this improving trend in official assessments, and the impression that the Maoist movement is reaching a plateau, states like Orissa still consider LWE ‘a major cause for concern’, and knowledgeable scholars express caution about the possibility of early success in overcoming the challenge posed by the LWE.”
As the government strategy has been to “seek more security forces and greater militarization of the environment”, Ansari warned that centrifugal tendencies and alienation both at the community and group level are increasing.
“Public feels that the state is absent in areas of their interest and that its interest is detached from them. In critically disturbed areas, the state’s functional presence is diminishing. The paradox is that both the state and society are insecure.”
Ansari expressed concerns over the threats to social cohesion. “Threats emanate from sporadic instances of caste, communal or other sectional instances of social disharmony. The underlying cause of these is a failure at individual or group levels to give shape to the requirement of fraternity enjoined in the Preamble of the Constitution.
“It needs to be said that many, if not all, of these instances of social strife also portray a failure of the state agencies to undertake timely preventive or corrective action. Making an assessment for 2016, the South Asia Terrorism Portal has observed that ‘while the immediate challenge of terrorism and insurgency has receded across the country and across the ideological spectrum, the conflict potential in India remains high and is often exacerbated by state policy and partisan politics,” he added.
Giving his views on possible solutions and shift in policy, Ansari said, “the focus of internal security is, and should be, the society. Issues of individual liberty and society’s security often appear at odds with each other. The key to dealing with internal security is to keep the focus on both the people and society, and on the rule of law that, regrettably, has been undermined by the rule of politics.”
