Indocracy: SAPI organises seminar to mark India’s 75 years of Independence

New Delhi: To commemorate the completion of the glorious 75 years of Independence of India the Delhi-based Think-Tank, Security and Policy Initiatives (SAPI) organised a special Webinar on August 06. The theme of the webinar was "Indocracy: A Framework of Democratic Governance to Optimise National Security of India." The key Speaker was Jitendra Kumar Ojha, a former securocrat and currently a public scholar on Geopolitics, Governance & Security. He has been advocating the idea of Indocracy as a futuristic framework of democratic governance, driven by our ancient humanist-pacifist civilisational values but backed by contemporary scientific principles and practices. The session was chaired by well-known security and strategic affairs expert Dr Ajai Sahni and attended by a couple of parliamentarians, retired senior civil servants and defence officers, eminent academics, members of the strategic community, media and young professionals among others.

The webinar began with the founder of SAPI Pradeep Gupta explaining the purpose of holding a discussion on such a subject besides briefing about SAPI while Co-Founders Sarang Nerkar, Alok Tewari and Sangeeta Goel also participated and spoke in the webinar.

Dr Sahni in his initial observations referred to a research paper authored earlier by Jitendra Ojha calling for a paradigm shift in India's approach to national security and emphasised the relevance of such a discussion in today's continually changing geopolitical situation wherein new alignments were taking place and international power equation has been undergoing transformation.

Jitendra Ojha presented a very broad interpretation of national security that amalgamated all dimensions of governance of both state and society. Emphasizing on a unique civilisational journey of India with its own ups and downs, he referred to certain distinct attributes of the Indian value system that had helped sustain a vibrant democracy amidst extreme adversities. He argued that Indocracy is not about going to the past but a futuristic perspective on an integrated framework of institutional governance, where individuals and institutions mutually empowered each other.

In the context of wider contradictions surfacing in the Western model of democracy as well as expanding asymmetry of power in favour of an opaque and authoritarian compared to China, we needed to explore a model of governance that could optimise our capacities as a state and society. He argued that in the prevailing global context, the rise of a plural, secular and democratic India could be the biggest guarantor of security and opportunity not only to 1.3 billion Indians but even the rest of mankind. He maintained such an idea would remain only wishful thinking unless concrete and specific scientific structural reforms were not initiated in political, bureaucratic, corporate, civil society and media sectors along with our education-healthcare and R&D sectors to foster excellence, innovation and integrity.

Ojha called for engagement among leaders and stakeholders in different sectors to chart out a more effective course of governance and national security in India. He offered a broad overview of external geopolitical-security challenges, especially the threats from China and Pakistan and internal governance constraints. He stressed that the threat to India was unlikely to be resolved on their own or in sheer alignment with the West. Some of the details are also available in his research paper on India's National Security. Read it by clicking here.

Dr Sahni complimented Jitendra Ojha for offering an extremely comprehensive approach to national security with the very idea of Indocracy. He maintained that most discussions on national security are tactical and begin with a balance of power or sinews of economic and military power, which are important and cannot be ignored. But national security cannot be confined to military and firepower alone. We have looked at the human resource profile especially health, skills, education values and culture of trust among people. He endorsed Mr Ojha's idea that we cannot go back to the past but we needed to learn from the mistakes of the past where waves after waves of external invaders ran over our state and civilisation.

Sahni stressed that we must derive inspiration from the past and our ancient civilisation but needed to build a vision for the future. But this in itself would not be sufficient in absence of resources and means to pursue and achieve this vision. He also highlighted that the phases of the prosperity of our civilisation have been the ones where rest of the mankind also benefitted from the same. Hence our security must radiate outwards. In the context of the general decline of democracy,  he called for building the idea of Indocracy to address our needs, goals and challenges in our own unique context and cautioned against missionary tendencies and polarisation of identities.

Member of Parliament Kalanidhi also underlined the civilisation and issue of growing asymmetry of power with China and called for exploration of newer ways to address this anomaly. Lord Rami Ranger, a PIO and a Member of the UK House of Lords emphasised that the ancient civilisation of India was decimated by our poor approach to national security. He highlighted that Indians were responsible members of the community almost everywhere in the world and this was mainly due to their values.

Prof Awasthi, an eminent academician highlighted the threat from Internal Security due to rising inequality and communal fault-lines and cautioned that a nation which is internally weak will find it difficult to fight the external threats.

Pradeep Gupta, while delivering a Vote of Thanks mentioned that all our Asian peers and also West look with awe at the capabilities of India in producing a large number of the World's Top CEOs. He noted that this is the strength of our Nation and the Indians.

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