REAL NEED

 

DEFENCE Minister Mr. Rajnath Singh has underlined the most correct expectation about the country’s overall security comprehension. As he inaugurated a conference-cum-exhibition on “Advanced Technologies for Internal Security and Disaster Relief”, Mr. Singh insisted upon breaking down barriers that separate thinking on internal as well as external security issues. India is faced with ever newer security challenges that require an organised, integrated thinking so that the country is able to come up with a security culture that is free from thought arrested in silos, he added, giving Indian security community a thought to ponder over for future.

 

The Defence Minister is more than right to highlight the country’s real need as regards overall security thought-process. Of course, Mr. Rajnath Singh was only pushing forward the thought that has already taken roots in the collective Indian mind as regards comprehensive national security. For the past few years, India’s security community has engaged itself increasingly in thinking about ways and means to create a common thought-process that does not differentiate between external and internal security issues. For the past couple of decades, India has given much of its energy to evolve an accommodative security and strategic culture so that the nation is never taken by surprise on any point concerning security of different kinds -- from defence to food to energy to health to natural resources to internal and international relations.

 

Despite this, what is being done needs to be enhanced in every possible respect -- which the national leadership keeps talking about from time to time. In strategic thought, India has made rapid strides and has established wide-ranging global partnerships in pursuit of safer world order in which India is not only individually secure but also plays a greater role in larger interest. When Defence Minister Mr. Rajnath Singh talks about breaking of silos and evolving a comprehensive security concept, he refers to multiple dimensions of the national thought-process. In the past few years, India has seen rise of a number of security-related think tanks, some private and some associated with the Government, to add value to the national comprehension on the critical concept.

 

The Indian Armed Forces, too, have seen a substantial transformation in thought and action in recent years -- reflected in the creation of the position of Chief of Defence staff and in promotion of the theaterisation concept for operational military issues. Another domain in which India has done extremely well in furtherance of the thought is in defence production. Through various concepts such as ‘Make In India’ and ‘Made In India’, the country’s ordnance industry has taken rapid and giant strides, so much so that India has become one of the world’s major defence exporters. India has also raised its defence imports but is working closely to reduce the inflow of foreign defence production into the country. All these dimensions certainly paint a picture that is altogether different from the one available in the country say a quarter of a century ago.

 

Yet, Mr. Rajnath Singh -- and the national leadership -- is not content with whatever has been achieved. Its aim is clear -- evolve and enhance the concept of integrated security culture to levels not imagined ever in the past and go on adding value to the thought and subsequent action. Of course, from now on, with the basically heightened bars, every inch of upward progress is going to be all the more challenging for the country. And that appears to be the exact point of emphasis of the national leadership in terms of better and finer security and strategic culture. Without doubt, India is going to witness exciting times as regards security thought-process.