Context: Recently, Indian home minister asked to all Director General of Police (DGPs) for more intelligence input through Multi Agency Centre (MAC).

Key Issue

• States are often reluctant to share information on the platform.
• There are several gaps in sharing critical information at the right time.
• Plans are afoot for more than a decade to link the system up to the district level.

Multi Agency Centre (MAC)

• It was established by Intelligence Bureau (IB) in 2001.
• It is the nodal body for sharing intelligence inputs.
• It functions on 24x7 basis for real time collation and sharing of intelligence with other central Intelligence Agencies and all state polices.
• Establishment of MAC was suggested by  Kargil Review Committee, 1999.

About Intelligence Bureau (IB)

• The IB, established in 1887, is an Indian domestic internal security and counter-intelligence agency. It includes counter-terrorism tasks too.
• The Research and Analysis Wing(RAW), established in 1968, specifically deals with foreign intelligence.
• It is working under the aegis of Ministry of Home Affairs, Government of India.  
• IB Officers are either directly recruited or are deputed from Central Armed Police Forces (CAPFs) and Indian Army.
• IB is headed by a director, called Director of IB.

NATGRID (National Intelligence Grid)

• NATGRID is an intelligence-sharing network that collates data from the standalone databases of the various agencies and ministries of the Indian government.
• It collects and collates a host of information from government databases including tax and bank account details, credit/debit card transactions, visa and immigration records and itineraries of rail and air travel.
• It came into existence after the 2008 Mumbai attacks.
• It is accessible to only authorized people from 10 security agencies on a case-to-case basis for investigations into suspected cases of terrorism.

The NATGRID database will be accessible by main federal agencies including: Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI); Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI); Enforcement Directorate (ED); Central Board of Indirect Taxes and Customs; Central Board of Direct Taxes (for Income Tax Department) (CBDT); Cabinet Secretariat, Intelligence Bureau (IB); Directorate General of GST Intelligence; Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB); Financial Intelligence Unit and National Investigation Agency (NIA) etc.