The national security threats that India confronts today are much more diverse and complex than ever before. These threats range from nuclear-armed adversaries like China and Pakistan, to Maoists, and militancy and terrorism arising from within its borders and beyond. The question that we must ask is whether the country has a strategic measure of these challenges and the willingness and ability to confront them and, if required, pre-empt them. The tasks before India’s intelligence community are similar to those that are confronted by their counterparts across the world: they relate to strategic intelligence, anticipatory intelligence, current operations, cyber intelligence, counterterrorism, counter proliferation and counter intelligence. As per the National Security Strategy of the US published in 2014, the objectives require integrated mission and enterprise management, and innovation. They are contingent upon the security challenges faced by a nation at a given time and necessitate reform and reorientation to meet evolving threats. Historically, intelligence agencies have been forced to reform and restructure because of failure. In India, too, reforms in intelligence agencies have occurred, primarily after wars and crises.

This report shall highlight the tasks before the Indian intelligence agencies in implementing reforms and restructuring. It will seek to highlight the lack of political guidance and, in this regard, examine why recommendations made by previous task forces and committees have not been implemented.

The report draws considerably from the conference on The Future Challenges to India’s Intelligence System, organised by the Observer Research Foundation on 24 February 2015, which featured discussions involving serving and former Intelligence officers, research scholars and specialists interested in intelligence affairs.

The discussions at ORF were divided into three broad themes: External intelligence; internal intelligence; and technical intelligence. The key issues that emerged from the discussions are the following:

(i) Co-ordination and tasking in need of improvement amongst intelligence agencies and between state and Central agencies;

(ii) Intelligence collection is ad-hoc in the absence of clear-cut requirements from the consumers of intelligence;

(iii) Poor cadre management and inability to recruit qualified language specialists and technical skills result in a shortage of personnel;

Lack of intellectual capacity and investment in education system exacerbate recruitment shortfalls in intelligence agencies. Engaging private players for specialist tasks is therefore necessary;

(iv) Agencies suffer from chronic shortage of military expertise Big data analytics capabilities need to be commissioned and customised for the Indian context;

(v) Special forces capabilities need to be ramped up and their concept of use ‘married’ with the capabilities of intelligence agencies;

(vi) China’s growth and the multiplication of its capabilities requires a more focused effort in
TECHINT (Technical Intelligence) and HUMINT (Human Intelligence);

(vii) Parliamentary statute is the key for creating accountability in intelligence agencies;

Lack of political attention and effective guidance has prevented reform and optimal functioning of the intelligence system.