The issue of border security in the country came up in an academic exercise viz. a conference on ‘Homeland Security, Smart Border Management’ recently organized by FICCI in New Delhi. Governor N.N. Vohra was among the distinguished speakers and defence experts at the important conference because he is working in a State that is faced with proxy war and border infiltration for more than two decades. Obviously, his observations and suggestions carry extraordinary weight because he continues to be at the helm of affairs.
Our country has a long border with Pakistan, China, Bangladesh, and Myanmar. Of these countries, Pakistan and China have been practically and physically indulging in hostile activities along the border like trespassing into our territory, infiltrating clandestinely along with arms and ammunition, shelling and firing on our border posts and subjecting the border dwelling people to unprovoked firing, and harassment etc. In J&K, Pakistan is engaged in a proxy war and clandestine infiltration of the border for last two decades and more. The proxy war entirely depends on border infiltration. This takes place over snow-clad mountains, rugged terrain, dense forests, gorges and plains, waterways and rainy season nullahs. Extraordinary training is required to be imparted to the suicide bombers who chose to sneak into our side clandestinely surmounting all the hazards that are involved. This all shows that the infiltrators are no ordinary jihadis who have undergone brainwashing and are infused with hate-India poison. They have received training which even normally recruited soldiers do not receive who are supposed to fight on mountains and in dense forests. These militants are equipped with latest communication gadgetry. The fact of the matter is that in our country, policy planners have no doubt been highlighting border security as a matter of priority but they have generally recommended increased manpower and infrastructure as the counterpoise to infiltration and sabotage. This has proved very inadequate response to a very big and serious challenge to the security and integrity of the state.
The time has come when the entire theme of smart border management has to be re-interpreted in the light of the strategies, mechanisms and propaganda campaigns planned by the infiltrators and conductors of proxy war. We have to assume that despite offering cooperation to our adversaries in border management system, we have to prepare ourselves to put in place a border security management of highest proficiency and capability whether in terms of manpower or equipment or border war gadgets, road connectivity and deployment strategy. Smart border management, towards which Governor Vohra and some more speakers like Lt. Gen. (retd) Parnaik have hinted, is of great importance and urgency to be taken up first at academic and then at practical level. Given the inimical attitude and unbridled covetousness of the two neighbours, we need to make a long term smart border management strategy, perhaps the greatest in the world in terms of all its pre-requisites like manpower, infrastructure, equipment, deployment strategy, surveillance, plugging of vulnerable entry points, border dwelling civilian population and a nodal agency that controls all these aspects for efficient security of the border.
It is of crucial importance to take the border dwelling civilian population into confidence. These people are making immense sacrifices for the safety and security of the nation. Therefore, they have a special place in the big smart border management scheme. The force that we are talking about has to be of a different nature. We should invite our scientists and technocrats in super institutes like IITs and IIMs, to come forward with innovative ideas of developing new smart border management force. It means not only special budgetary allocations but also specially oriented policy planning with clear objectives and destinations. We have to plan for a century at the least because we know our adversaries are not amenable to any international law, traditions of friendly neighborhood and the culture of peaceful co-existence. The unholy alliance into which these two neighbours are now bound leaves no room for the flourishing of moral and ethical code of conduct of relations with a country that may not be towing their philosophy of conduct of relations.
We have made much delay in responding to this unavoidable national policy. But accepting that it is never too late to mend, we hope that the useful and imaginative suggestions made by highly specialized and expert opinion on the subject will be taken up for more discussion before the blue print for the new smart border management sees the light of the day.
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