Modi-Obama meet- How real time intelligence helps India

India and the United States of America have decided that they will cooperate in the fight against terrorism. India had always viewed the United States with a certain amount of suspicion in the war on terror and especially when it came to intelligence sharing.

The talks held between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and President of the United States, Barack Obama appeared to ironed out some of the differences on intelligence sharing and have jointly decided to cooperate on this front.

Unlikely partners

Both India and the US have been unlikely partners when it came to intelligence sharing. The constant crib by several officers of the Intelligence Bureau was that the US had been selective in passing on information.

The allegations of selective intelligence being shared by the US reached its peak during the 26/11 attack and the investigations that followed. The David Headley episode only worsened matters with India pointing a finger at the US and accusing it of hiding this man from the world when it all along knew what he was up to.

What has changed today

Going by the joint statement and the discussions that Modi and Obama held, an attempt appears to have been made by both countries to share intelligence regularly and on a consistent basis. This meeting will ensure that in the days to come the US becomes India's most important supplier of intelligence.

What is more important is that the intelligence that would be shared would be actionable and would put to rest the fear among the Intelligence agencies. There had been allegations in the past that a lot of the intelligence shared by the US was aimed at creating war like situations with our neighbours.

Fake currency

Fake currency has been a major concern for India's economic growth. The situation had become so bad a few years back that a rough estimate suggested that there was one fake currency for every 1000 genuine notes.

Fake currency has been pumped into India from various countries and the fact that the Pakistanis have access to high quality paper printed in Britain had become a major concern.

There was a time when both India and Pakistan were sourcing the paper to print currency from the same unit in Britain. The only difference was that Pakistan was printing fake Indian currency.

With the US promising cooperation this menace could be curbed a great deal now. To curb the menace of fake currency India had always maintained the need for global intelligence.

Real time information sharing

The Modi-Obama meet also agreed to share intelligence on a real time basis. This would end another issue faced by India that the US intelligence always came in very late.

Real time intelligence helps in counter terror operations and the movement of operatives can be tracked the agencies alerted even before they make a dissent on to Indian soil.

Real time intelligence also plays a key factor in this era of cyber terrorism. The US has had a great deal of success in addressing the issue of cyber terrorism thanks to extensive snooping and real time monitoring.

India would now have the assistance of the US in handling cyber terrorism as real time inputs would pout in. Moreover with a lot of the servers being based in the US, cooperation on this front becomes even more necessary.