Developing A Leadership Framework To Address Terrorism In India

Terrorism in India

India is one of the developing countries, a major wicked problem noticed is ‘Terrorism’. It is an issue for which government, political leaders, and other organization of India such as Raw and CBI works constantly. Terrorism is a vital threat to residents of India, where Ethno-nationalist, Narco-terrorism, left-wing terrorism, and religious terrorism are some of the most founded forms of terrorism in India. Terrorism is threatened use or systematic use of violence to frighten a government or population for political, or ideological or religious goals. Jammu and Kashmir, south-central India, east-central India, and Seven sister states are regions with maximum terrorist activities for the long term. According to the United States state department, in India terror attack occurred in 2012 has caused 231 deaths compared to 1,098 deaths caused by terrorism worldwide (Oberoi, 2017).

There are leaders who are responsible for the protection of the country from terrorism, and that is why various leadership issue could be the reason for the increase in terrorism in India. Considering this wicked problem, leadership issues and its application will be discussed in the essay. Moreover, to resolve the terrorism issue in India, an appropriate leadership framework will be framed. India splits terrorism into four main groups:

• Religious terrorism – this type of terrorism focus on religious constraints, in solidarity or presumed duty for a particular religious group, in against of another religious group. One of the Religious terrorism in India was the 26/11 terror attack at Mumbai in 2008, done by Islamic religious group (Juergensmeyer, 2017).
• Narcoterrorism – this kind of terrorism is to create illegal narcotics traffic zones. Narco-terrorism example includes drug violence occurred in Northwest India (Kukreja, 2016).
• Ethno-nationalist terrorism – the focus of this type of terrorism is either on making separate state within a country or in a neighboring country or independent of India or emphasizing response of an ethnic group against one or more group. For example, to address the situation of Tamils in Sri Lanka had ‘violent Tamil nationalist group (Bhattacharyya, 2018).’
• Left-wing terrorism – focus is an economic ideology for this type of terrorism, all social-political structure that exists is seen as the character of economically exploitive, and the need for revolutionary change by way of violence becomes necessary (Narain, 2017).

Leadership issues in India due to which terrorism is still a major concern in India. These issues include:

• Leadership issue of reediness – Terrorism is rare, it is not a regular activity and occurs occasionally. Therefore, leadership issue occurs where the leader is not always ready and aware to handle this situation in their region (Silke, 2015).
• Leadership lack with Prevention activity – it is usually believed, prevention is better than cure. The terrorist attack must be prevented. The issue occurs when the leaders have doubt about the attack and are aware of the risk involved but still unable to protect the happening. This leadership issue leads to major concern to work (Durodie, 2016).
• Leadership lack in identifying terrorist identity– mostly image comes into mind listening to a terrorist group is a group of people or highly publicized a well-organized entity such as the Islamic state. Nevertheless, in reality, there is no such generalize group always. There could be individuals who do not belong to any terrorist organization also known as lone wolves. This leadership issue to identify the terrorist for either of groups, entities, organization, or individuals (Young, 2014).
• Leadership issue while Assigning responsibility – another responsibility of leaders is assigning the right response to the right person. This leadership issue focuses on understanding the requirement of the situation regarding this wicked problem. In addition, assigning responsibility and authority to organizations, who can handle the situation better. For this, a stable leadership and proper chain of command are necessary.
• Leadership failed in strategy development – the strategy making is still a major leadership issue in India. A proper strategic leadership is required if terrorism is to be prevented and reduce the risk. This revolution can only exist with the formation and implementation of a proper strategy to save the country from the problem of terrorism. The political leaders play important role in this regards. However, the strategy is still in the developing stage in the country like India (Kaplan, 2017).
• Leadership in making better policy – one more leadership issue of India regarding the terrorism in policy regarding counterterrorism, India suffers from a disjointed and incompetent bureaucracy, far scarcer assets than that of developed countries like the US, even though it experienced a greater threat level, and a political group concentrated mainly on electoral politics. (theconversation., 2017).
• Leadership failed inadequate developing and training of security forces – leadership issue or major challenge is providing training and development of army, and people that are responsible for the security of the nation in case of terrorist attack. Lack of training and development could be one of the reasons for attacks that occur even after aware of the risk.
• The leadership and coordination of India’s policy are fragmented and poorly organized – India’s police and inside security system is extremely fragmented and repeatedly poorly coordinated. The federal political system of India leaves maximum policing responsibilities and authority to the states that usually hold their own counterterrorism and intelligence entities. These forces, specifically local police, are regularly poorly taught and equipped. (Narula, 2015).
• The leadership inadequacy while applying coordination– leadership issue of coordination can be justified by The combination of central and state authorities is apparently coordinated over joint committees, subsidiary intelligence bureaus, task forces,  and  Multi-Agency Center (Mahadevan, 2017). All of these synchronizing mechanisms aim to synchronize the intelligence assembled by the agencies and to produce shared risk perceptions and accompanying responses, but these are often slow and cumbersome.
• Leadership failed in taking instant action – this leadership issue has been seen in past incident of terrorism in the country. There was noteworthy intelligence proposing a seaborne terrorist occurrence was prospective, and the prominent sites like the ‘Taj Hotel’ could be targeted. Numerous crucial bureaucratic actors— including the Maharashtra state director-general of police and the Coast Guard— because it was not considered actionable, however, ignored this fact. The variances in readiness highlight the degree of fragmentation amongst the security tool. Even after Mumbai police try to take preventive action, they were deficient in the workforce to withstand improved security at the hotel. After the attack occurred, the refuge forces lack sufficient heavy weaponry, night-vision tools, or information regarding attack sites, prominent to a elongated response time, and the emergence of a dreadful obstruction (Paul, 2009).
• Leadership failure in Inspiring patriotism among others – it is the responsibility of the leader to motivate and inspire people to enhance patriotism for their country to prevent and reduce the risk of people involving in terrorist groups, organization and is not influenced by the negativity of terrorists. This activity is very rare in India. People are more influenced by the people in favor of terrorism and violence instead of against such an act. The pitfalls and poor efficiency of this effect must be informed to people (Paul, 2009).

1. Strategic leadership – it is an ability to motivate others to, willingly make decisions for long-term success. Tools and skills are needed to formulate and effectively implement the strategy. This leadership will counter the issue of strategy development. The counter-terrorism strategies made to resolve the problem of terrorism play a vital role.  Some of these strategies are ‘The state police and its intelligence set-up; The national intelligence community; Physical security agencies; Paramilitary forces’ (rediff, 2009)
2. Distributed leadership – it is an analytical approach to understand the working of leadership that took place among people. Instead of concerning on individual leader characteristic or feature of situations, this type of leadership foregrounds the engagement of personnel in a task that is distributed or stretched across the nation. Distributed leadership can be used in equating with many designated leaders, or ideas like collaborative, democratic, or shared leadership. Since, many political leaders and organizations direct terrorism in India, this type of leadership would be best suited to adopt. This leadership could be used to carter the leadership issue of “leadership and coordination of India’s police.”  The collaboration was the main issue that was discussed which could be solved with this type of leadership to move towards resolution (Shapiro, 2016).
3. Culture and leadership – culture and leadership are like two sides of the same coin, they work together. Cultural factors play important role in issue the problem of terrorism. Specific practices of terrorism, happenings involving considerable casualties and harm, suicide bombings, occurrences relating to fatalities, all disclosed relationships with cultural magnitudes. In India culture plays an important role, it is a country consisting of a large number of cultures existing together. With this leadership, the leadership issue of “Inspiring patriotism among others” and “making better policy” that the leadership lack, could be taken, as mentioned above.  This could play important role in resolving terrorism in the country by studying and understanding different cultures and their requirements (Bader, 2015).
4. Worldly leadership – the worldly leadership perception is about attainment of insight concerning leadership performance in native cultures, then the notion of the community might help to reveal important fundamentals of leadership meaning to these native cultures over the way they presented themselves as a community.

There are many approaches to leadership theories. Some of them are trait approach, functional approach, behavioral style approach, situational approach, transactional and transformational approach, and inspirational or charismatic leadership. Among the above-mentioned leadership approaches, most appropriate approach to resolve the issue of terrorism in India is ‘Group or functional approach’

According to this approach, leadership can be developed and learned. This focuses on responsibilities, functional, and accountability of a leader, and feature of a group that examines the effects of a leader’s behavior, and is affected by the followers or group. One main theory of functional approach that is relevant in this case, is Adair’s action-centered leadership. These approaches concern about leaders needs and do balance the requirement of an individual, the team, and the tasks.

John Adair established a model of ‘Action-Centered Leadership’ that consists of relating circles that overlay because:

• The task can be accomplished by the team instead of  one person
• The team can achieve outstanding task performance only if each individual involved is fully developed
• The individuals require the task to be motivated and challenged

This defines how a leader must balance their leadership among task, individual, and teams, how to improve the effectiveness of leadership and focuses on their actions. This is one of the popular approaches to leadership. The focus is on leadership function instead of the leader’s personality and leadership is seen from the perspective of the behavior of a leader that affects and get affected by the follower. As per this approach, one can improve performance through training and education development in leadership behavior.

If this model is considered, individual include residents of the country, workforce, government, and institution working for terrorism. For the leadership issue of coordination, this model could have been applied. To counter the issue of coordination among the workforce, government, and other institutions for this wicked problem. Working, an individual could not help in this problem, teamwork is very essential to handle the problem as a whole and coordination must be done effectively to cater to this wicked problem.

Discussion and justification of critical leadership issues applicable to the ‘Wicked’ problem

Another approach suitable in this wicked problem is ‘Situational approach and contingency model.’ According to this approach, there is no single style and the right leadership approach could be taken in a particular situation. This type of leadership focuses on different situations that the leader is facing. Most effective leadership style is taken and adopted by the leaders according to the current or changing situation. This theory says that there is no one leadership style that is suitable or appropriate in every situation occurring. To be successful in various activities in various situations, a leader should adapt their style for an optimum performance.

For example, various leadership discussed previously like strategic distribute, and cultural leadership must be used in different situations in handling different issues, considering the current situation. If the issue of making proper strategy arises then a strategic leadership must be considered. By using this model for the wicked problem, different leadership can be applied as per the need of the problem.

‘Group or functional approach’ play important role in Terrorism problem in the country. Since the major issue is coordination in this wicked problem, and this approach clearly defines the balance between task, individual, and the team. In the countries, the leaders must also be trained and developed to resolve the problem of terrorism. The three components of John Adair model of action centered leadership, consist of the task which in case of this wicked problem are coordinating, formulating strategies, making policies, assigning responsibilities, prevention strategies. It must be performed by the team, which includes government, arm forces, political leaders, security forces, various organizations all together instead of just one person to make the task successfully accomplished. The team component of the model explains the need for training and development of all the members involved in the task, this is another major leadership issue that was discussed earlier in case of this wicked problem in India. Another leadership issue was motivation, this is considered in the last component of this model where every individual involved in the resolution of terrorism is to be challenged and motivated to perform well the task. For example,

Situational approach and contingency model is also relevant in the resolution of the problem of terrorism in India. Since the environment is, dynamic and so do the situations where different decisions need to be made. Terrorism is not fixed; it means it could be any form of terrorist group, and any type, either an organization, group or individuals. Every terrorist attack or different situations of terrorism in different regions of India lead to taking decision accordingly. Instantly adopting a particular leadership style to resolve the problem in that particular situation would be more relevant than deciding a particular leadership style for all the situations of terrorism. For example, the Mumbai attack must have needed different leadership style than that of the situation of terrorism in Jammu and Kashmir. Therefore, considering this approach in this wicked problem is quite justified. For example, distributed leadership is to be used when coordination issue is to be handled, cultural leadership can be used at the time of inspiring the team and India’s residents for patriotism, or improving policies by government related to safety. Moreover, strategic leadership is used when decision-making or strategies are to be formulated. Similarly, different leadership is used in the different suitable situation under this wicked problem.

• International assistance – to handle the issue of countries capability, and failure of proper training and development to the workforce, this could help. Since India is a deprived country with many persistent needs, and retreat funding reveals India’s deficiency of prosperity. Compared to the budgets of other developed countries, India is not able to provide adequate currency for its security organizations on a per capita basis. International assistance, in the practice of contributions for training and equipping counter-terrorism forces, might diminish the impact of this alteration on India’s budget (Malik, 2016).
• Maintain a degree of consistency – India’s political leaders need to exercise the determination to push historical administrative and state-centric rivalries. This is a vast challenge for an administrative class concentrated above every cutthroat democratic opposition that exemplifies Indian politics. Even after facing these challenges, upholding a degree of consistency is vital so that the revolution process does not stand or end up hampering vast amounts of money and time (Burke, 2017).
• Specific task services controlled by elected officials, and reinforced at the utmost levels, need to be given the authority to involve in oversight above the security apparatus. This will comprise of overcoming a customary aversion to transparency on the portion of the intelligence agencies and the police department. This will able to overcome the issue of readiness, an instant action could be taken at the time of occurrence of terrorism.
• Capacity-Building – the Indian leadership is greatest recommended to accomplish a couple of different projects—first, constructing on the short-term alterations in coordination that can influence existing capabilities and assets, and second, engaging in the considerable length and the broader job of refining training and mechanical capacities through country’s security apparatus. India should chase a series of distinct, practicable tasks if it is to strengthen itself against the fears of rolling both from among their population and from across the border. This could carter the issue of “Prevention activity” rather than taking action after the act has occurred.
• Intelligence sharing with other countries –to recognize the importance of this aspect, one has to reminisce that political deliberations peculiar to every single country influence the insights of terrorism and this is assured to have an influence on intelligence sharing. The important duty of strengthening India’s intelligence collection competence must not be ignored (Amicelle, 2016).
• Good grievances detection – This an important aspect to consider, a good redressed, monitoring and grievance detection machine is required for timely detection of any grievances building up in any community, and alerted political leadership and provide advice to take instant action in order to redress them. The issue of “Leadership lack in identifying terrorist identity” could be handled through this.
• Reverse analysis – this type of analysis is also essential to understand how a terrorist could think or react in a particular situation. This could make understand the possible scenarios as an irrational terrorist and as a better intelligence analyst. The issue of “Leadership in making better policy” can be carter through reverse analysis.
• Active interaction with the media – this must be done to ensure the public is not taking leaders of a terrorist as heroes in the minds of the affected community or religious group or hampering counter-terrorism operations effectiveness (Nacos, 2016).” Leadership failure in Inspiring patriotism among others” this issue can carter through media interaction.
• Well-structured psychological war operations – the reason behind this act of irrational killers can be predicted, to strategize better to take effective actions against terrorists is needed which could be done with this operations.
• Periodic refresher training – this is a very important task that must be conducted. Training should be conducted for those, who are involved in the operations of counter-terrorism, trough special seminars, classes, interaction, and opportunities with those who had separated themselves in operation of counter-terrorism. “Leadership failed inadequate developing and training of security forces” this issue can be handled by periodic refresher training.

Role of following leaderships in resolving the problem of terrorism in India

Conclusion

To conclude the discussion it can be said that terrorism is a major wicked problem in a developing country like India. If history is observed, there have been a number of a terrorist attack in the country that could be due to leadership issues, which need to be, reform. This could explain the role of various leaders and their issues that are essential to critically, evaluate to resolve the problem of terrorism in India. There were many issues discussed where the issue of coordination, development of individuals, budget were a major concern in the wicked problem of Terrorism in India. There were four types of leadership: Strategic, Distributed, Culture, Worldly leadership, which play important role in resolving this problem of terrorism. Moreover, some of the recommendations for further counter-terrorism were provided among which international assistance, capacity building, good grievances were important in this aspect.

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