The point is not whether one agrees with the NSA or disagrees but whether Doval should have expressed his preferences publicly
It is perhaps a sign of the changing times that articulate, thinking non-politicians in public life — with exemplary career records, it must be added — are increasingly using open fora to voice their views. Whether it is the Chief of Army Staff, Supreme Court Justices or now the National Security Advisor Ajit Doval, they have a clear point of few and little inhibition in sharing it. Gone, obviously, are the days when senior bureaucrats and officers serving the state were expected to be discreet and circumspect. There can be, and obviously are, two different views about which approach is more beneficial to brainstorming, policy-formulation and sharing with the sovereign that is the people of India the thought-processes and beliefs which contribute to decision-making in a democratic country. But that is more a matter of one’s ideological point of view as long as the service rules that govern (non-judicial) public servants in India are not being breached.
It is in this context that Doval’s comments which have become the centre of a political row must be analysed. Delivering the Sardar Patel Memorial Lecture in the Capital on Thursday, he is reported to have spoken on the dangers “weak governments” and “unwieldy coalitions” pose for the country, as they lack the will to take “hard decisions” which are “not necessarily populist”. Saying that India needed a “strong and decisive government for the next years to achieve its political, economic and strategic objectives, he added that in the contemporary information age “false narratives” had the potential to wreak havoc in India as they could lead to “communal riots and social disharmony”. He rounded off his comments, after speaking of how our national will had been undermined by forces inimical to India both within and outside the country’s borders and comparing how a presumably strong China had zoomed ahead of India over the past decades on all fronts, by stating rather unequivocally that “there are plenty of forces, more within than outside, which are probably bent upon eroding the will of the nation.”
Doval didn’t take the names of any leaders or mention any political party in his speech so he is probably okay in terms of service rules but the import of his statements, especially given the authority he wields and the position he holds, was lost on no one. Opposition parties are understandable up in arms against what they termed the blatant pushing of the ideological agenda and worldview of the government of the day while the BJP preferred not to react. Now, while it is fine for the NSA to hold the views he does — though in tarring by implication the many responsible regional parties as well as the first NDA coalition at the Centre led by AB Vajpayee he does them all an injustice — and expound on them, the question of how appropriate it was for him to do so on a public platform is a serious one. We have not, at least not yet, switched to the US system wherein Supreme Court justices and senior Administration officials, while picked by an executive-legislature process in the case of the former and the executive ie the President in the case of the latter, are shortlisted based on their competence but finally appointed to high posts on the basis of the views they hold which are necessarily simpatico with those of the ruling dispensation.