Vappala Balachandran

Vappala Balachandran

Columnists

Vappala Balachandran is an Indian national security intelligence specialist and a former Indian police officer who served 17 years in Maharashtra and 19 years in the foreign intelligence service. He retired as Special Secretary, Cabinet Secretariat in 1995.

In 1993 and 1994,Vappala Balachandran led the Indian interagency groups for the annual dialogue with U.S agencies on terrorism. He wrote several papers for the Henry L.Stimson Center, Washington D.C. for their "Regional Voices" project, between 2007 and 2009. His paper "Insurgency, terrorism, and transnational trends" was included in the Centre's publication Transnational Trends. He was a member of the two-man "High Level Committee" appointed by the Maharashtra Government to inquire into the police response during the terror attacks on November 26,2008 in Mumbai.

In November 2009 he was invited by the Governor of Hawaii to be the key note speaker at the 2009 Asia Pacific Homeland Security Summit in Honolulu. Mr. Balachandran has spoken at the Pluscarden Programme conference on "The Future of International Cooperation in Countering Violent Extremism." at St. Antony's College University in October 2010.

His first book National Security and Intelligence Management-A New Paradigm was released in March 2014; A Life in Shadow: The Secret Story of A.C.N. Nambiar in Dec 2016 and the latest Keeping India Safe : The Dilemma of Internal Security on July 5, 2017.