Are We Ready Yet?

UN committee criticises India’s anti-terror preparedness

Aworking committee of the UN Security Council has raised serious questions about India’s ability to fight terrorism. The counterterrorism committee was set up after 9/11 to implement Resolution 1373, meant to look into whether individual countries were taking steps to stem the financing of terror operations, crack down on terrorists and share intelligence in this respect with the rest of the world.
Its report faults India for not cracking down on informal channels of financing terror, such as hawala, and for not developing a national anti-terrorism data base to ensure better coordination between states and countries. India’s porous borders have not helped, the report points out. India, it says, lacks legislation which allows the use of special investigative techniques such as electronic surveillance.
While there can be no denying that terror demands new forms of administrative and legal preparedness, it would be wrong to infer from the report that India needs laws like the Prevention of Terrorism Act (POTA). POTA, enacted in October 2001 ostensibly to implement Resolution 1373, was scrapped in 2004 just before it was due to lapse. However, what is forgotten is that most of its provisions were transferred to the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA). These, in fact, include sections that permit electronic surveillance. The provisions left out were those that demanded stringent norms for bail, allowed detention without charges for six to 12 months, placed the burden of proof on the accused and permitted the police to record confessions. While the state needs appropriate power to take on terror, this is going too far. The UAPA already empowers the government to ban organisations it considers terrorist, check their funding and outlaw meetings in their support. The Prevention of Money Laundering Act, 2002, empowers the government to uncover a range of informal transactions. The problem lies not in the absence of necessary laws, as the report might lead us to believe, but in the lack of political will to implement them.
A case in point is India’s laxity in cracking down on money laundering, emphasised in the report. It is an open secret that hawala enjoys the protection of the political class. It makes little sense to set up anti-terrorism cells in states and frame draconian laws when the black money economy and its links with terror remain untouched. As the Hyderabad blasts inform us, the political class often does not act on intelligence tip-offs. The problem lies not with the law, but with entrenched political interests.