The 2007-batch IPS officer Syed Waquar Raza had a trial by fire when he was asked by the Election Commission of India (ECI) to take charge as DIG Murshidabad in April last year, while the country was already gripped with election fever and a major communal strife had broken out in Murshidabad. Mr Raza fist calmed his own nerves, then his colleagues and finally of the violence affected people to re-establish peace in the area and to bring the miscreants to the book.
Please click here to watch full video of his interview …
Mr Raza is an expert on internal security, having written a book – Internal Security and Disaster Management – for UPSC aspirants. The book published by Oxford University Press (OUP) has already come out with its second edition. He has covered almost entire gamut of internal security challenges facing the county.
In this interview, Mr Raza has dealt with all kinds of challenges – past, present and future, their genesis and solutions. He talks about whether Delhi blast is a wake-up call for the security mandarins and whether such incidents can be prevented. Why there hasn’t been another 9/11 like incident in America during past 25 years and why India is still at the receiving end of neighbours’ policies of inflicting 1000 cuts on us?
Have volatile North East states embraced peace permanently? Is the peace in Jammu and Kashmir permanent? Have flames of Naxal violence been extinguished? What is the structure and role of India’s intelligence agencies in maintaining internal security? What are the main sources of terrorist financing in India and how are they being countered? What is the difference between Left-Wing Extremism (LWE) and separatist movements? What role of does technology and cyber capabilities play in modern internal security challenges? How has cross-border terrorism impacted India’s internal security environment?
Mr Raza has answered each of these questions with patience and each of the answers demonstrates the depth of his knowledge. We shall soon come up with another segment of his interview where he talks about how he conceived writing the book, how did he find enough time to write it and what have been the worst security challenges faced by him during his career? Most importantly, how many times did his life came under threat while discharging his official duty; and how?
