LEADER ARTICLE
Crossed Connections: Don't Mix Security with Business

Most government decisions are routine. Cabinet meets, takes up an issue and says yes or no. Once in a while someone feels that the issue is of strategic importance hence the security agencies’ clearance is required.
In such cases, the decision is deferred. How-ever, there is a big if. Someone has to raise
the issue, else something genuinely sensitive might just slip through.On the reverse, some innocuous decisions are guillotined too. Of course, often it also depends on the mood of the cabinet while it met or where the cabinet secretariat slotted the issue on the agenda. So basically ad hocism reigns.
Look at the recent move to hike the foreign equity cap in telecommunications from 49 to 74 per cent. RAW and IB’s opposition to the move was cited at the crucial meeting to scuttle its progress. The security agencies must have had credible reasons to oppose the move, but in the absence of a well-thought-through system in place, it left scope for doubt. Was the decision a result of some corporate rivalry? Who lobbied with whom for and against the move? So much so that some even questioned the intelligence agencies’ competence to go into the matter. Ditto for civil aviation, where the move to hike the equity cap from 40 to 49 per cent was scuttled.
Another security issue waiting to explode now is the WLL-M controversy. Apart from the marchof technology issue and whe-ther it is a fixed or a mobile service, on which the TDSAT’s directive is eagerly awaited, what is really keeping some people busy these days is the issue of call-monitoring on these networks.
The WLL networks of a couple of operators have been rolled out. The technology they use is CDMA, proprietary of San Diego, US-based, Qualcomm. Now, for every CDMA handset sold, Qualcomm would get approximately five per cent of its wholesale price as royalty. This has made several nationalists see red, who see it as getting sucked into perpetual payment mode like PL 480.
But that is a commercial issue. The security angle is different. Every licence agreement makes it binding on the operator to make provisions for security agencies to be able to monitor calls flowing through these networks. Apparently unlike GSM, CDMA networks are extremely difficult for the security agencies to monitor calls. Not that it is impossible, or else US itself would not allow such a network, but it was enough of a deterrence to the US intelligence agencies, which forced those involved with the rebuilding of Iraq to plump for GSM to build a wireless network. The pleas of Qualcomm and also some US senators fell on deaf ears.
But how will anybody in India decide on what does constitute a national security threat or not? For a nation which sees itself in the big league, such ad hocism is undesirable. There clearly is a need to institutionalise a system where such matters are not examined because it is mandated by statute.
Look towards the US, or European nations such as France, or Germany. All have an apparatus in place that must mandatorily examine issues, which might be of national interest from the security point of view. Only after it has gone through this apparatus do the policy-making authorities consider it.
The US, for example, has a Committee on Foreign Investment In US (CFIUS), an inter-agency committee which "seeks to serve US investment policy through tho-rough reviews that protect national security while maintaining the
credibility" of their open investment policy and also preserving investor confidence. The committee was set up in 1975, initially with the mandate to monitor the impact of foreign investment in the US.
In 1988, however, its mandate was expanded to determine whether any investment has national security issues sufficient to warrant an investigation, and undertake an investigation if necessary. So any foreign investment proposal is mandatorily referred to it.
Notice the absence of any ambiguity? It is this body which does not allow foreign carriers to pick up a majority stake in airlines in the US, or which stopped a telecom deal recently because of the involvement of a Chinese company. Nobody questioned the move.
This is something India needs to emulate. Not only will it inject credibility into the system, it will also put an end to the Doubting Thomases who spring up whenever something is referred to the security agencies, for the simple reason that the reference takes place because someone thought it should, not because the system mandated it.
It is important that a body be constituted with representation from intelligence agencies, ministry of home, finance, even science and technology. This cross representation is necessary to ensure broad-based competence. Once the body has been set up, as a first step, let it be asked to monitor certain sectors that are perceived to be of strategic nature. This could include civil aviation, telecommunications, broadcasting, especially terrestrial and defence.
Once it becomes mandatory for anything to do with foreign investment or control in these sectors to be referred to it, it would become less whimsical than at present. More important, a formal group with a formal charter to go into the issue would, while enhancing confidence levels in the system, dissuade those who think they can circumvent the system as and when they like.
For a government which makes such a song and dance about national security all the time, this is the minimum it can and should do.