Nation

New Delhi: Ministry of Road Transport and Highways (MoRTH) will be organising the “National Highways Excellence Awards” (NHEA) 2021 on June 28, 2022, as per the statement issued by the ministry.

This year, the Ministry is hosting an award ceremony in the presence of Union Minister, Nitin Gadkari, to recognise firms and stakeholders for the best performing road assets and toll plazas around the country. Bridge Construction and Tunnel Construction were included as new categories for the fourth award cycle.

In 2018, the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways (MoRTH) launched the “National Highways Excellence Awards” (NHEA) to reward stakeholders in the highway building and maintenance process and to foster a spirit of healthy competition among them.

According to the statement, the goal is to recognise and reward corporations for the best-performing road assets and toll plazas in the country. Recognizing organisations who are operating extremely well and providing the highest quality services during the construction, operations and maintenance, innovation, greenery, tolling, and road safety stages of highway development.

The award’s goal is to build world-class road infrastructure, motorways, toll plazas, expressways, bridges, and tunnels every day using new and creative building procedures that place a significant emphasis on environmental sustainability and cleanliness.

“A total of 157 nominations were received in 2020 across all categories, and one additional special award category, Bridge & Tunnel, was added to the pool of categories from 2019. Union Ministers Shri Rajnath Singh and Shri Nitin Gadkari felicitated the final winners at an award ceremony, held at Vigyan Bhavan, on 18 January 2021,” reads the official statement.

Economist and Nobel laureate Amartya Sen’s latest book, The Country of First Boys, is a collection of essays on an array of topics, ranging from development, justice, and education, to calendars, Rabindranath Tagore, and the importance of play. In an interview with The Hindu , Prof. Sen spoke candidly about the need to prioritise human security and not just national security, the controversy that has dogged the Nalanda University, and, drawing inspiration from Adam Smith, the need for an intelligent response to rampant capitalism. Excerpts:

In your book, you speak of the different priorities of human security and national security. Don’t you think national security often becomes an alibi for not spending enough on human security?

Well, there are three things. Firstly, security ultimately is a matter in which the leading concern should be around human life. So if we are speaking of security, it has to be human security. Since this also means security from external threats and violence, what we call national security is only one of the constituent factors in human security.

Secondly, it is true that in the name of national security, resources are often not allocated to things on which human security depends, such as education, health care, and a social safety net. And sometimes, national security in the political context seems like a barrier rather than a component to fostering human security. But at the same time, when we consider reducing the budget for national security, we also have to think of the other implications. There’s no reason why there should be a conflict between the two.

Thirdly, the neglect of education, health care, and social safety net has been so foundational in India, so deeply rooted in the class structure of the society, that to blame it all on national security would be a mistake.

Your work has helped shift the focus of development from economic growth to concerns about the quality of human life. Is it time now for another shift — from human development to social justice, as the true measure of a nation’s progress towards being a more developed society?

When we came up with the Human Development Index (HDI), the idea was to have a simple index that would capture something better than the GDP figures. If you look at the very first Human Development Report (HDR) of 1990, we invoked the idea of justice in a number of cases. I think as human development grows as a discipline, justice will increasingly become a bigger component of it.

How do you respond to critics of development economics such as Arturo Escobar and Majid Rahnema, who argue that the very discourse of development perpetrates a regime of powerlessness and ‘unfreedom’ among those identified as ‘underdeveloped’, who are then coerced to follow the Western model of industrialisation and market-led development?

I respond with a great deal of scepticism to this line of reasoning. Adam Smith [whose major work, The Wealth of Nations, was published in 1776] was constantly concerned about human life, about distribution, the divide between the rich and the poor, the role of the market in the efficient production of commodities and the government’s role in providing education, health care, and social safety nets. I think this lesson remains relevant. To call it a ‘Western model’ undersells it. The market economy was not purely an invention of the West — there was trade between Egypt and Babylon, and you find trade seals in Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro.

But there was no capitalism at that point.

That’s true, but capitalism is a very peculiar term. The way the interests of the poor are consistently neglected — if you call this capitalism, then I would object to this kind of system. In this sense, Smith was in many ways an anti-capitalist. While he was in favour of private ownership of capital, he also thought that whenever rich men got together, they conspired on how to defraud the poor. He never used the word ‘capitalism’, but he was against the excessive power of capital; so am I; and in many ways, so was Karl Marx.

Coming to the subject of Nalanda, people have criticised Dr. Gopa Sabharwal’s appointment as vice-chancellor of the university. They point out that she neither has any background in Buddhist studies nor does she fit the UGC criteria for vice-chancellorship — at least 10 years as a professor in a university set-up.

She is a very good vice-chancellor. It’s not surprising that given the Indian caste system, caste-like issues have cropped up, with people saying that for a vice-chancellorship, the candidate’s caste has to be that of a professor and not a reader, and certainly not a lecturer. In such a regime, the great American universities would not have flourished.

Secondly, Nalanda is not a Buddhist university, nor was the old Nalanda. So, had we looked for a monk to run the university, it would have been a mistake — that was not what we were seeking.

There’s a new chancellor now, George Yeo from Singapore. Chancellor Yeo has made a public statement saying that Dr. Sabharwal is a very suitable vice-chancellor and he would like her to continue. The propaganda against Dr. Sabharwal was quite orchestrated.

In your book you poke fun at the Indian Left for its “antiquated understanding of imperialism” and its obsession with “American imperialism”. The U.S. has 900 military bases in 130 countries — you think there is no such thing as American imperialism?

It is certainly unbalanced that America has so many bases across the world, and to worry about it is legitimate. But to be able not to think of anything else is a mistake. I was thinking particularly of the time when the Left decided to pull the government down over India’s nuclear deal with the U.S.

Is there such a thing as American imperialism? In some ways there is. But there is some Indian imperialism as well. There’s also some Chinese imperialism, and some French and British too. American imperialism is much more important than these, that’s true. But I am against a situation where the Left cannot think independently because of their obsession with one thing.

Now the party is under a new leadership with Sitaram Yechury, and one hopes that there will be more intelligent thinking. I am in favour of humanity, equity and justice, but also in favour of intelligence.

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National security management under the incumbent Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) regime can best be described as the management of systemic inefficiency, with the institutional and ideational foundations of the country’s national security architecture having become weaker since the new government took charge almost two years ago.

For sure, the NDA did inherit a fragile national security architecture, which it has made worse, through commissions, omissions and a shocking lack of direction. Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s presidential style of national security management without bothering to create, consult and strengthen the country’s national security institutions is further contributing to this ominous structural decay.

In fact, strengthening national security was one of the major electoral planks the BJP used in the run-up to the 2014 parliamentary elections. It is only fair then that we assess its performance on the basis of the key national security promises it made in its >2014 election manifesto : “Reform the National Security Council to make it the hub of all sector-related assessments”, “completely revamp the intelligence gathering system by modernising the intelligence department”, “ensure greater participation of Armed Forces in the decision-making process of the Ministry of Defence”, and “study in detail India’s nuclear doctrine, and revise and update it, to make it relevant to challenges of current times”. A factual analysis shows that the Modi government’s performance on each of these stated goals has been grossly incompetent.

Institutional dysfunction Mr. Modi’s presidential style is hampering key institutions of national security management which traditionally functioned on the basis of regular deliberations, briefings, and constant assessment of threat scenarios by experts, both internal and external. Take the example of the National Security Advisory Board (NSAB), which was set up during the previous BJP-led government (1998-2004) “to undertake long-term analysis of and provide perspectives on issues of national security. Its policy recommendations and options are conveyed to the National Security Council for its consideration”. The term of the ninth NSAB came to an end in January 2015 and the new government has not only not bothered to reconstitute it, but is actively thinking of doing away with it. We certainly need a more empowered NSAB, with access to classified files and whose inputs are regularly used for national security management by the leadership. But doing away with an existing institution, at a juncture when the government needs a lot of fresh ideas and outside expertise for strengthening the country’s national security, is an ill-advised move.

The National Security Council (NSC), comprising of the members of the Cabinet Committee on Security and the National Security Adviser, which is supposed to be the locus of deliberations and decision-making relating to national security as well as oversee the formulation of the country’s nuclear strategy, hardly ever meets to take stock of the security environment. So with deliberative mechanisms such as the NSAB and NSC not doing their job, the country’s national security management is a one-man show based out of the Prime Minister’s Office.

>What about nuclear strategy? The Manmohan Singh government had created a highly specialised Strategy Programme Staff “to work on a perspective plan for India’s nuclear deterrent in accordance with a 10-year cycle”. There are legitimate concerns today about the mandate of this body, and how empowered it is to deliberate, strategise and engage in strategic nuclear planning. What is also evident is that despite the BJP’s claims in its 2014 manifesto, the NDA government is showing absolutely no interest in the country’s nuclear strategy. With the advisory/deliberative mechanisms either defunct or not in place, there is a danger of loosening political control over the evolution of the country’s nuclear strategy, potentially even the numerical shape of the arsenal itself. India’s nuclear strategy, as is widely recognised, has a number of doctrinal inadequacies which need to be addressed and corrected by the government, something the BJP specifically referred to in its manifesto. This has so far remained an empty promise. The more India’s nuclear strategy remains unarticulated, the less political control there will be.

Hamstrung intelligence community What about the intelligence agencies which collect and process raw intelligence and provide policy inputs to the government? Both the Intelligence Bureau (IB) and Research and Analysis Wing are short-staffed at every level with acute deficiency reported at the level of foreign language speakers. Despite the threat of the Islamic State and Islamist terror that India has been faced with, the IB has just three Arabic translators! The agencies clearly need a lot more trained personnel today than ever before due to the complexity of challenges and threats that the country faces. But instead of giving state-of-the-art training to the new recruits, the government has actually reduced their training period. These organisations, in short, face a number of challenges today in terms of shortage of sophisticated equipment, inadequate training and staffing, and promotion and career prospects for non-Indian Police Service officers. But nothing has been done by the NDA government to fulfil their promise to “completely revamp the intelligence gathering system by modernising the intelligence department”.

Another key post-26/11 institution that is in trouble today is the NATGRID. Created to function as a metadata intelligence grid by networking multiple datasets available with various agencies, >NATGRID, a pet project of the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government, is neither fully operational nor given adequate importance by the NDA regime — it does not even have a full-time chief since the NDA government refused to renew the contract of its CEO close to two years ago.

Key legislation ignored How satisfactory has been the NDA government’s performance on national security/defence-related legislation and reforms? The demand for reforms in India’s higher defence management is a long-standing one and has been recommended by the Kargil Review Committee (1999), the Group of Ministers’ (GoM) report (2000), and the Naresh Chandra Task Force (2012). One key recommendation of these reports has been to create the post of Chief of Defence Staff as a single, authoritative source of military advice to the government.

Indeed, a number of Parliamentary Standing Committee reports have also expressly supported this. A 2007 Standing Committee report said, “The Government should take the GoM’s recommendations as well as this Committee’s concern in this matter seriously and take the final decision on CDS at the earliest.” Another committee repeated this demand two years later saying it is “of the considered view that the creation of an additional post of Chief of Defence Staff (CDS) to act as Chairman of the CoSC [Chiefs of Staff Committee] is essential to ensure optimum level of jointness among the different wings of the Armed Forces and to provide single-point military advice to the Government”.

Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar has also been promising, as recently as December 2015, defence reforms including the appointment of a CDS, in keeping with his party’s electoral promise. But no tangible action has been taken so far in this regard.

Nuclear safety, security and regulation is another key area that the government needs to focus on. Worrying incidents like the >recent heavy water leak at the Kakrapar Atomic Power Station in Gujarat and India’s ambitious civilian nuclear expansion plans demand utmost priority to civilian nuclear issues. Indeed, various Parliamentary Standing Committees as well as the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) had recommended the creation of an independent civilian nuclear regulatory authority. Keeping in mind this pressing need to carry out structural reforms in the civilian nuclear sector, the UPA government had presented the Nuclear Safety Regulatory Authority (NSRA) Bill to the Lok Sabha in 2011. The Bill is currently lapsed, and the new government has done precious little to bring an amended version for consideration of Parliament. Unwillingness to carry out structural reforms can have disastrous implications for the country’s expanding civilian nuclear industry.

Mismanaging Kashmir Kashmir is back on the boil, this time with far more disenchantment with New Delhi. Radicalisation is on the rise and youngsters are joining the ranks of militancy, not to speak of the growing support for it in the Valley. While anti-India sentiments in Kashmir have been rising for some time now, the BJP’s inability to handle its political alliance with the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) with sensitivity and statesmanship has only made things worse. By refusing to abide by the sensible approaches laid down in the PDP-BJP ‘Agenda of the Alliance’, the BJP has lost a historic chance to contain anti-India sentiments in the Valley and reduce the psychological distance between New Delhi and Srinagar. If the huge congregations of mourners turning up at the funerals of militants killed by security forces are any indication, we are looking at troubled days ahead in Jammu and Kashmir.

Finally, despite all its claims of giving primacy to strengthening and safeguarding India’s national security, the BJP-led government continues to adopt an unmistakably ham-handed and visionless approach to national security issues and institutions. There has been no attempt so far to reform or strengthen the country’s national security institutions, articulate a much-needed grand strategic approach to national security, and legislate on important national security matters. Despite all its pre-election rhetoric on national security and the ongoing grandstanding on securing and strengthening the nation, the BJP government’s approach to national security has been less than satisfactory. Close to two years in office, it should remember that high-pitched nationalist rhetoric can’t secure the country, but painstaking institutional reforms, legal provisions and a sense of purpose could.

(Happymon Jacob is Associate Professor of Disarmament Studies at the Centre for International Politics, Organisation and Disarmament, School of International Studies, JNU.)

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