Amid the heightening tensions over the terror attack in Pahalgam and a perceived countdown towards an Indian retaliatory strike, a high-level bureaucratic revamping by the Narendra Modi government was reported widely in the national media. The appointments, however, were noted more as a post-Pahalgam initiative than for their systemic import.

On 1 May 2025, the Modi government reconstituted the National Security Advisory Board (NSAB) – an advisory body under the National Security Council (NSC) which was constituted in the aftermath of the 1998 nuclear tests and was supposed to function as a residual element of the NSC.

The NSAB had its glorious years during the inception phase when the first NSAB chairman, K. Subrahmanyam – then known as the doyen of the Indian strategic community and the father of External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar – drafted India’s nuclear doctrine, and subsequently the report of the Kargil Review Committee. Taking inspiration from the American model, the NSAB brought out a Strategic Defence Review in 2002 and a National Security Review in 2007.

Image: PM Modi with the NSA Doval, then Army Chief Dalbir Singh Suhag, and IAF Chief Arup Raha at the Pathankot Airbase.

Since then, the Board has largely had a nominal existence, often populated by retired bureaucrats and members from the academic, media or think tank circuit who were close to the government.

The relevance of the NSAB, briefly, rose in the 2013-14 period, just before the Modi government took charge, particularly when the Chairman of the National Security Advisory Board (NSAB), Shyam Saran, who was also a former Foreign Secretary, engaged in some nuclear signalling.

Through a couple of articulations, Saran had indicated that India will consider the usage of even a tactical nuclear weapon by Pakistan against Indian territory or even Indian troops on Pakistan soil as a nuclear first use, which will lead to a second strike or massive nuclear retaliation as enshrined in the nuclear doctrine.

The NSAB’s relevance in the Modi era was largely invisible, if not absent, with Saran and his successor, P.S. Raghavan, also from the Indian Foreign Service (IFS), holding fort. However, from the 14-member Board that Saran presided over, Raghavan headed a truncated 4-member NSAB.

That the advisory body’s subsequent expansion to 16 members also largely went unnoticed only underlined its diminished standing in the Modi scheme of things, which was more about centralising power and authority in the hands of a few, with little scope for broad counsel.

Hence, the current decision to reconstitute the NSAB with a new head and 7 new members, in the midst of a national security emergency, might have not just given a fresh lease of life what had turned into a lame duck body, lately, but also has raised its profile and significance before the citizenry.

However, the action also confirms a fundamental characteristic of the current Indian security establishment – the dominance of the Indian Police Service (IPS) over the national security edifice.  

Alok Joshi, a 1976 batch IPS officer of the Haryana cadre and former Chief of the Research and Analysis Wing (R&AW), India’s external intelligence agency, has been appointed as the new Chairman of the NSAB, the first time an IPS officer heads the advisory body. While three of his predecessors were from the IFS, K. Subrahmanyam was an Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officer, besides being the country’s foremost national security or strategic affairs scholar in his lifetime.  

Joshi is joined by three other IPS officers, Rajiv Ranjan Verma, Manmohan Singh and A. B. Mathur – all with intelligence backgrounds – in the reconstituted NSAB. While three retired officers from the armed forces – Lt Gen A. K. Singh, Air Marshal P. M. Sinha and Rear Admiral Monty Khanna, the representatives from the three services, D. B. Venkatesh Varma, who served as Indian Ambassador to Russia, is the only representation of the Indian Foreign Service (IFS) from the new inductions. 

The details of the other serving NSAB members are unknown to this columnist.

With Alok Joshi’s appointment as NSAB head, and being joined by three of his former IPS colleagues, literally completes the total domination of the police force over the national security establishment, headed by the godfather of the service, Ajit Doval, himself, as the National Security Advisor (NSA).

The Polity’s report of March 2025 – A PS-II for PM Modi: Time ripe to ‘retire’ the ‘old guard’ – had provided a detailed picture of how the management of the national security establishment through the National Security Council Secretariat (NSCS) a division of labour between the IFS and the IPS. The report highlighted the swapping of chairs among the principals, i.e., when the NSA was from the IFS, the deputies could be largely from IPS, and vice-versa when an IPS officer becomes the NSA.

The report, however, also pointed out how, after Doval’s appointment as NSA, the share of IPS among the NSCS principals has also dramatically increased. In the current NSCS, Rajinder Khanna, another former RAW chief, is the Additional NSA and could be Doval’s potential successor. Besides Khanna, two other IPS officers - T.V. Ravichandran and Pankaj Kumar Singh, as Deputy NSAs in charge of the technology and intelligence, and intelligence clusters, respectively. Currently, Pavan Kapoor is the only other Deputy NSA, representing the IFS.

With the NSAB also now populated by IPS officers, the Indian Police Service domination over the national security establishment would be complete – a phenomenon that could only be attributed to Ajit Doval’s indomitable hold over the establishment and having the Prime Minister’s eyes, ears and complete trust.

At a time when the country went through an intense conflict with its adversarial neighbour, it will be worthwhile to examine if the hard securitisation approach of the Modi government has a significant imprint of the policing community in the national security establishment, notably the ‘defensive offence’ doctrine espoused by NSA Ajit Doval. This could be in contrast to the years when the diplomatic corps seemed to have prevailed over the security establishment, and particularly the relationship with Pakistan.

Image: NSA Doval, along with Army, Navy, and Air Force Chief in discussion with the Prime Minister

Do they understand the nuclear dimension?

The pursuit of the proactive security agenda, backed by the hardliner approach, might have brought benefits as seen in recent times. A notable shift would be the way in which the ‘nuclear blackmail’ or brinkmanship behaviour of Pakistan was addressed through an eye-to-eye confrontation. Yet, it raises questions about whether the dominant IPS sections of the security establishment have had a proper appreciation of the nuclear dimensions.

The decision to bomb the airbases in Pakistan, in response to an unrelenting drone attack, had significantly altered the equation. It could be surmised that the Pakistani leadership, realising its frontline airbases were attacked – which, at one point in time, used to be referred to as one of the nuclear tripwires – would have decided to escalate to the next level.

Accordingly, a Fateh-II missile was reportedly fired towards Delhi, which, if it had not been intercepted in Sirsa or Hisar, would have reached the fringes of the National Capital Region. At the time of this writing, a video released by the Indian Army (and subsequently withdrawn) talked about Pakistan firing a Shaheen missile with a conventional warhead, which too was supposedly intercepted by an S-400 missile.

An ISPR press release reportedly denied the usage of the Shaheen missile while confirming the firings of Fateh I and II.

Nonetheless, this eventuality could have prompted a counter-missile strike by India with its land-attack platforms or the BrahMos cruise missile, which would have directed the escalation to the missile domain. 

Thus, the decision to attack Pakistan’s frontline air bases, though emerging as the gamechanger and catalyst for a ceasefire imperative, could have also produced a different outcome, a calamitous one, had the Indian side decided to respond in kind to the Fateh-II firing. It would have been just a matter of time before the land-attack strikes would have graduated from the tactical to the strategic missile inventory.

While a sigh of relief could have come with the ceasefire announcement, particularly among sections who were alarmed at the firing of land-attack missiles and understood its implications, the post-Sindoor phase calls for an introspection on how the national security establishment currently operates.

Image: DGMOs of the three services briefing the media on Operation Sindoor

At the heart of the matter is the imperative of assessing, even if through public debate, how the current establishment conceived the progress of military hostilities with Pakistan, including the scenarios they have gamed on the nuclear dimension.

Considering that missiles were fired at Delhi, it is inevitable that scenarios for escalation to the nuclear level, the thinking of the current leadership on exercising of the nuclear doctrine – whether they are ready to absorb a first strike and will be able to command a second strike or massive retaliation, or whether the leadership is inclined towards using the nuclear option in the event of an impending nuclear strike.

On the other hand, if the IPS sections of the national security establishment have not fully grasped the nuclear dimension, this is time for Prime Minister Narendra Modi to revamp the establishment and restore balance and some strategic sanity.

While it seemed an oddity that the NSAB revamping, dominated by IPS presence, had only one nuclear expert, Venkatesh Verma, who retired from the Indian Foreign Service and has immense experience in non-proliferation policy, it is unknown if even the nominated faces from the armed forces also had strategic forces command experience.

Considering the near-nuclear experience of this month, experts like Verma, as well as military officers who have experience at the Strategic Forces Command (SFC), must be brought into the decision-making structures of the national security establishment, not merely in an advisory role at the NSAB.

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7-group MPs delegation: An outreach that may not move mountains

Image: Atal Bihari Vajpayee as Prime Minister releasing a book written by predecessor P. V. Narasimha Rao. Photo courtesy: Hindu College Old Students Association.

Multiparty delegations for international missions are not new in Indian politics. Prime Minister Narasimha Rao deputing Atal Bihari Vajpayee, then leading the BJP in the opposition, as leader of the Indian delegation to thwart a Pakistan-sponsored resolution against India on human rights in Jammu and Kashmir at the special session of the United Nations Human Rights Commission (UNHRC) in Geneva. The Manmohan Singh government also sent a multiparty delegation to build momentum against Pakistan after the 26/11 terror attacks in Mumbai in 2008.   

A similar initiative is what the Narendra Modi government has initiated with seven groups, mainly comprising members of parliament, including from the opposition parties and some former diplomats, who will visit various nations to ‘explain’ Operation Sindoor and the four-day military conflict with Pakistan.

The larger and multiple delegations, unlike in previous instances, however, have raised questions on their purpose and expected outcomes, and whether the initiative amounts to a politico-diplomatic extravaganza rather than a meaningful campaign.

According to India’s former ambassador to the United Nations and former spokesperson of the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA), Syed Akbaruddin, the primary purpose of this initiative is an attempt at ‘preventive diplomacy.’

Unlike the conventional idea of ‘preventive diplomacy,’ which is “to prevent conflict before they erupt and avert humanitarian crises before they turn into full-blown disasters,” the current pursuit of preventive diplomacy, according to Akbaruddin, is to “pre-empt political apathy, international indifference and diplomatic ambiguity before the next act of terror occurs.”

Consequently, the goal of the seven-group delegation is to “shape global understanding and create the conditions that raise the cost of inaction – for those who perpetrate, enable or rationalise terror.”

In other words, the delegations seek not just to convey the Indian point of view on what transpired with its inimical neighbour in the last fortnight but also frame a global campaign against terrorism and mobilise the support of many nations for that.

While the second part looks like a long shot, particularly since terrorism is dealt with by various United Nations committees and other forums, including the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), the first part is where the initiative may look on shaky grounds, and more importantly cast a shadow on India’s own credibility.

Read together, it amplifies the criticism in some quarters that India did not manage to get backing for its Operation Sindoor, even from time-tested allies like Russia or Japan, even as Pakistan managed to assemble its all-weather friends, including China, and lately, Turkey and Azerbaijan as well.  

For his part, the Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri told the Parliament Standing Committee on External Affairs that the political delegations were sent “not because of a failure of diplomacy, but to engage and inform civil society about India’s position and its fight against terrorism.”

However, Misri went on to underline the main rationale of this outreach as intended to “effectively counter Pakistan’s anti-India propaganda at the United Nations Security Council (UNSC),” of which it is currently one of the 10 non-permanent members, with its term ending only by the end of 2026.

It could be recalled that Pakistan had sought to harness its non-permanent membership by convening a closed-door session of the UNSC to discuss the situation following the Pahalgam terror attack and an expected Indian military strike. It was, however, reported that Pakistan could not muster much backing for its positions at the meeting and was, in turn, confronted with many questions about terror groups operating in the country.

Misri indicated that the choice of destinations of the seven multi-party delegations, which include 32 countries and the European Union (EU), has been largely determined by the current and future UNSC members (other than China), but also has visits to G7 nations, as also some BRICS and G20 member-states. Further, some delegations will head to Muslim majority countries, including the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) members, which had passed a resolution during the recent conflict that had riled India.  

Image: India's Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri briefing the media on Operation Sindoor

Despite such targeted outreach, aimed at the great powers, power blocs and the UNSC members, it may sound like an extravaganza which may not produce the intended results. Most of these nations have proclaimed positions on terrorism, which condemn unilaterally but could hardly be expected to go beyond the symbolism to align with Indian interests.

Neither could the Modi government expect the visit to produce either a new global momentum against terrorism nor build a coalition that could intuitively place Pakistan in the dock when it comes to the latter’s long-running terror campaign against India.

On the other hand, the conception of the bipartisan delegations, headed by or comprising members from opposition parties, could, at least for the time being, create an impression of a national mission and consensus on the issue of terrorism. However, the manner in which dissonance has emerged, particularly from the Indian National Congress (INC) and the All India Trinamool Congress (AITC), indicates that the bonhomie may not be lasting.

The BJP’s attempt to leverage political gains out of Operation Sindoor, through the Tiranga Yatra, attempts to corner the government on various shortcomings and failings during the Operation, and the government’s attempts to muzzle some dissident and pacifist voices, will emerge as inevitable spoilers to the bipartisan and consensual milieu that had developed after the Pahalgam attack, Operation Sindoor and the subsequent when the conflict raged.

The international outreach, hence, might end up be seen as a diversion from more pertinent questions that could emerge around the Operation, including clarity on the alleged losses incurred on the Indian side during the Operation, the need for greater defence spending as opposed to the intense austerity of recent years including through initiatives like Agnipath, the fate of theatre commands, the augmentation of air and missile defence and so on.

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