Terming India's response to the Mumbai terror attack as "inadequate," an influential policy advisor has suggested that New Delhi set up a body on the lines of America's National Counter-terrorism Center and the US could possibly render assistance in this regard.
While lauding the legislative step of setting up a national investigative agency, Ashley J Tellis, senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said the effort lacked on preventive aspects of terrorism.
Testifying before Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, Tellis said post-Mumbai India should create an institution like the National Counter-terrorism Center in the US.
"I think the legislative response that they have engaged is quite inadequate, because what they have in effect done is that they have created a new investigative agency to deal with the problems after they have occurred – an agency that would essentially bring perpetrators to justice," Tellis said responding to a question from the committee chairman senator Joseph I Lieberman.
Creation of a national investigative agency is important, but it does not help India with its old problem in terms of prevention, he observed.
"They still have to create something like the equivalent of National Counter-terrorism Center (NCTC). They have not done that yet," Tellis said. Indian officials, he said, are still struggling with the issue of classification.
"Initially the information that they get is preliminary through technical intercepts, which is shared by a very small group of people. They (India) do not have a system in which that information is rapidly disseminated to law enforcement and those elements on the frontline," Tellis said suggesting that a small team of Indian officials could be invited to the US for necessary training in this regard.
"The big challenge for them is fusion. How do you bring all the information from various sources and getting it to those who can actually use them at the ground level. This is where, I think, we can really make the difference – bringing them to the NCTC," Tellis said.
Senator Lieberman termed it as a useful suggestion and then referred to India's national security advisor, MK Narayanan, spending some time at one of the fusion centers of the US during his trip to New York last year.
"We would try and get some high ranking Indian officials come to DNI (Director of National Intelligence) and NCTC," he said.
"My own view from here is that they have not done enough. But this is not easy," he said.
