Centre for Human Security Studies (CHSS), the first think tank on Internal Security and External Affairs of India with pan India presence, operating from South India, set up its new office at Dr. MCR HRD Institute of Telangana.
The Centre was inaugurated by Mr. Anurag Sharma, former DGP and Advisor to Home Department, Telangana government, in the presence of Mr. B.P. Acharya, Director General, HRD Institute. Mr. Sharma later released research publications brought out by the Centre here on Wednesday.
Speaking to The Hindu , founder and executive director of CHSS Dr. Kanneganti Ramesh Babu, who had worked earlier with the current national security Advisor Ajit Kumar Doval, said there was no think tank so far in South India on internal security and foreign affairs.
It was at the suggestion of Mr. Doval, Dr. R.P. Kaushik, ex-Ambassador of India, Prof. S.D. Muni, former Indian Ambassador to Laos, that he worked to set up a think tank in Hyderabad five years ago, given its strategic position. “ Hyderabad is like a second capital of India and literally the backbone to the country right now in geopolitical, geo-economic and geo-strategic contexts. Apart from being an emerging hub of defence installations, IT and pharma sector, Hyderabad had evolved as a knowledge hub. That makes it easy to tap into good human resources, train them and put them on to the research board of the Centre”, he said.
The Centre works with police of various countries like US, Australia, UK, Israel. It does comparative analysis and research, bringing in the best practices suitable for geo-political and geo-economic situations of our country, he said. “We give policy inputs to the policy makers. The centre has executed ₹1-crore project for the Telangana police on internal security. We trained about 150 interns in the last five years about food security, water security, cyber security, coastal security, terrorism and other issues. The CHSS also extends outreach programmes, goes to colleges and recruits youngsters to make them a part of strategy and security of India, since very few departments are working on strategic studies currently,” he said.
Indian students lack awareness on strategic studies and hence the focus to create awareness among students at the college level itself so that they could be trained at higher level later. The Centre brings retired IAS, IPS, IFS officers into its think tank so that a symbiotic relationship between the government, industry and academia can be established, Dr. Ramesh Babu says.
The centre so far has trained 1,500 police officers in Andhra and Telangana in the last five years in special branch, intelligence, counter terrorism and coastal security. The 26/11 incident in Mumbai happened due to coastal security lapses. The Centre did work exclusively on coastal security aspects of the nine coastal States of India by collaborating with National Police Academy, he said. Dr. Kaushik said it was important to sensitise the local people, policy makers, administrators and have their support to tackle internal security issues.
