USD 1 billion for India's Homeland Security

India will be spending a whopping USD one billion on internal security modernisation, a senior government official today but the industry sought concrete budgetary figures in this regard.

"The government of India will be investing around USD 1 billion on the internal security modernising programmes," S Suresh Kumar, Joint Secretary (Police Modernisation) in the Ministry of Home Affairs said.

Speaking at the 5th International Conference and Exhibition on Internal Security: Integrating Technologies for Internal Security, he said security forces account for around 60-70 percent of the overall procurements of equipment and solutions for security.

M K Chhabra, IG (Modernisation), BPR&D observed that given the geographical diversity and multiplicity of threats, India is uniquely placed as far as its internal security requirements are concerned. "Therefore, we need customised security solutions as per the expectations and requirements of the Indian security forces."

Meanwhile, the industry requested the government to come out with concrete budgetary figures about the internal security requirements.

"The quantification would help the industry to make its business plans and enter into internal security market with unprecedented vigour," Rothin Bhattacharyya, chairman CII (Internal Security Committee) said.

Gurpal Singh, Deputy Director General and Head Defence, Aerospace and Security, CII said, SMEs are the real source of innovations and therefore, have remained the integral part of the security solutions.

With the defence offsets being extended to internal security and civil aviation, new areas of opportunities have been opened to the Indian industry and SMEs will be the biggest beneficiaries, he said.

Singh pointed out that over the past decade, India's internal security landscape has seen dramatic changes.

He said the need of the hour is effective and intelligent information management.

Effective information management enables security agencies to reduce costs by minimising waste and duplication and using information gathering resources more efficiently.

This, he said can remove unnecessary recording, enable security agencies to share services and systems, help create intelligence from disparate pieces of information, allow for better use of analytics to support decision-making and ensure specialist law enforcement skills are utilised effectively in the community.

"The best, actionable and prompt intelligence on internal security often comes from police stations. Information management also increases the effectiveness and performance of public safety services in a number of ways," he said.

(source PTI)