The COVID-19 Pandemic from China has forced the human race to take up a number of new working models such as online classes and health track apps- practices that could become the norm in a post-Coronavirus world. Looking at the Pandemic closely in India, the Indian State also has a few lessons to learn with regards to its national capital, New Delhi.
In a matter of days, the Headquarters of two Central Armed Police Forces (CAPFs)- the CRPF and the BSF got hit by the Coronavirus outbreak. Like all other CAPFs, the BSF and the CRPF too have their Headquarters in Delhi, and at a time when the National Capital is one of the worst-hit cities, even India’s two most crucial CAPFs couldn’t keep the novel Coronavirus at bay.
The CRPF headquarter located in the CGO Complex, Delhi was sealed on Sunday after Additional Director General Jawed Akhtar’s Stenographer tested positive for COVID-19. The senior IPS officer and ten other personnel have been home-quarantined following the shocking incident.
A day later, the BSF headquarter located in the same CGO complex was also sealed partially after a Head Constable attached to a senior BSF officer tested positive for the novel Wuhan virus. Both the Headquarters house the top brass of the two Forces including the Director General (DG), the ADGs, some of the IGs, etc., and therefore a Coronavirus outbreak in the Headquarters doesn’t augur well.
This brings us to a more important question- why has the Indian State kept all its eggs in one basket? The entire security establishment, the science and research bodies including defence research organisations, and political/ administrative bodies of the Union are headquartered in Delhi.
When we say headquartered in Delhi, it means a small area of Lutyens’ zone and some pockets of South Delhi such as the CGO complex or R.K. Puram, which exposes a number of top officials- the DGs of security forces, heads of administrative bodies and top scientists to outbreaks like Coronavirus or worse eventualities like terror attacks/ nuclear threats.
Case in point being the CAPFs which include the CRPF, the BSF, the ITBP, the CISF, and the SSB. Needless to say, all of them are headquartered in Delhi and that too in close vicinity as, except the SSB, all CAPFs are headquartered in the CGO complex at New Delhi.
Why can’t the headquarters of at least some of them be shifted out of Delhi? While it may be a good idea to keep pan-India security forces like the CISF and the CRPF headquartered in Delhi, the headquarters SSB which is charged with guarding the Indo-Nepal and Indo-Bhutan borders can be shifted to another location that looks over the two borders which also paves the way for better coordination with the areas of its operation.
Similarly, the ITBP is charged with deployment along India’s border with Tibet and it would not be such a bad idea to shift its headquarters somewhere in Himachal Pradesh or Uttarakhand- states which actually share a border with Tibet.
The BSF could be bifurcated into two different forces- one guarding the Bangladesh border and the other guarding the Pakistan border and respective DGs allocating to two different locations that will also lead to closer scrutiny of the two crucial international borders, apart from reducing the excessive load on the National Capital.
In case of Science and Research bodies too, it is beyond comprehension that if ISRO can manage India’s space programme with unprecedented success from its headquarters in Bengaluru, then why do the DRDO and the ICMR have to work from Delhi?
Defence Research can take place just as effectively from say Pune as from Delhi, and Medical Research too can be shifted out of Delhi so that DRDO or ICMR chiefs are not necessarily affected if there is an outbreak/ disaster exclusive to the National Capital.
The political and administrative bodies too are excessively centralised in the National Capital, and many of them have no real use staying in Delhi. Consider the National Mission for Clean Ganga (NMCG), for example, which is headquartered in Delhi. Why can’t it shift to areas of real concern, that is, cities where the river is in dire need of rejuvenation, say Kanpur in Uttar Pradesh?
And it isn’t as if State agencies haven’t worked outside Delhi- the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) headquartered in Mumbai and the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) headquartered in Bengaluru work just as effectively as any other agency, and therefore it is not virtually impossible for a government organisation to shift its headquarters outside Delhi.
Moreover, the Coronavirus Pandemic has also popularised the idea of video conferencing, and distance is no longer an impediment in the working of State agencies. The most important lesson for India out of the Coronavirus Pandemic is the perils of excessive concentration of the State paraphernalia at one place.
In a post-Coronavirus world, the security and political establishment must deconcentrate, if India wants to ensure that its entire security and political leadership doesn’t get exposed to disasters like a Pandemic.