That war resulted in Nehru's slow death, Shastri's short stint and eventually the mutilation of India's institutions by Indira Gandhi. India hurtled towards corruption, nepotism and narrow-minded politics from that point; resulting in today's sorry state of affairs. Last week's aggression portends seismic changes of similar proportions but hopefully opposite polarity.
Three facets of last week's attacks have singed our sensitivity :
Frailty of our borders : When we go to sleep at night, we want to feel secure that our house is secure from intruders. That's why bolts and locks were invented. Likewise for our country. We should be able to sleep soundly at night, secure in the thought that unwelcome and nefarious intruders are not sneaking in from all sides. Over the last week, different people have offered different reasons why our borders can't be leak-proof. A former Navy commander said that even the US sea border were porous. A IIM-A batchmate said that having an enemy neighbour makes it impossible to ward off intruders. I say all that is bull. If we make this priority No. 1, it can be done.
It will take money - that means we have to pay our taxes.
It will take political will - that means that before we fund pilgrimages, statues and other political gimmicks; we fund fencing of our land borders in the North and East, training of our security personnel and patrolling of our coast.
It will take accountability - that means that 100% of the money goes into fence wires, boats and signalling equipment; not into constructing politicians farm houses or their imported cars.
Securing our borders has to be taken up with the utmost urgency so we prevent outsiders from coming in and spreading havoc. This is true for Kashmir, for West Bengal, Assam & North East and for the long coast-line.
The second aspect of this problem is to account for those who are already in. Sadly, today we have no single way of determining if the person behind you in the ticket queue is a real Indian or a Pakistani / Bangladeshi / Nepali masquerading as one. We share the same ethnicity. It is not as simple as White Austalia where a Chinese or a Lebanese can be identified just by looking at one. If the US and Singapore can have a citizen ID card, why can't India have one? This should be a basic mandatory for every citizen. You shouldn't be able to admit your child to a school, open a bank account, get a job, get a gas cylinder or kerosene, buy a vehicle - in short any transaction - without your citizen ID no. Profiling concerns be damned.
I know there are some real practical issues to be solved before we get there. Things like who to count as citizen? The millions who entered India during the 1971 war from Bangladesh? The lakhs who entered India during the Maoist insurgency in Nepal? The thousands who have come from Sri Lanka during the Tamil-Sinhalese war? Should we decide a year after which everyone is considered an immigrant? How would we decide who came when? These are hard questions but their intractability should not be an excuse for inaction. We've had Ration cards, PAN cards or Voter's I-cards but none of them have been able to solve this vexed question. A good starting point would be to take anyone who has either of the above 3 as a citizen and address the remaining on a case to case basis.
At CST, they open fire, killing 57 people. Our security people run - not towards the oncoming terrorists in a well practised counter attack, but away from them - sometimes outsprinting the rushing passengers! And they are not really to be blamed. Their rusted rifles and blunted lathis were no match for the AK 47s of the terrorists. The terrorists then calmly walk out of the station, enter Cama Hospital, fire rounds, walk out, gun down 3 celebrated police officers - Karkare, Salaskar & Kamte, pull their bodies out of the Toyota Qualis, escape in the same vehicle, stop when they realise that it has a flat tyre, snatched a Skoda of another guy near the Trident and run away. This whole episode must have taken at least an hour to 45 minutes. And we didn't have a command and control system to blockade the area and arrest these terrorists to get intell on the broader plot????? If that doesn't make you fearful and angry, what else will?!
Now see what happened at the Taj and Trident. Terrorist enter the hotels, fire indiscriminately at patrons in their restaurants, take hostages, establish command centres in guest rooms, lob grenades to create destruction and panic. And what are our forces doing? First, a posse of ill-equipped policemen come and quickly realize that they are no match for the well-planned attackers. What happens after this is hushed up. But information coming out in bits & pieces reveals that our response was stunted due to bureaucracy and rank callousness. The Naval command centre that is less than 20 minutes from the site of the attacks wanted a written request from no less than the Cabinet Secretary (maybe in triplicate!) before they could send the Marine Commandoes. The National Security Advisor M. K. Narayanan was at a party and which he finished at 11.30, a full 2 hours after news channels started relaying news of terrorist strikes. Eventually, at 2 am, the NSG commandoes were despatched from their headquarters in Manesar (where?). They boarded a rickety bus to get to New Delhi, took a slow Russian plane that got them to Mumbai in 3 hours and then a BEST bus without any steering vehicles navigated the traffic to get them to the attack site at 5 am. It had been 7 hours 30 minutes since terrorists had fired their first bullet!!
What does this tell you? Do you think that if tomorrow you are held hostage by a group of terrorist in your home, there will be policemen or commandoes to save you? No! Files have to be pushed, committee members have to be located, they have to debate the plan of action, buses have to be found, they have to be in working condition and all this is still hostage to the distance between your home and the NSG headquarters. Multiply all this and the possibility of you surviving is zero!!
Callousness of media - India has 120 news channels of various languages, scope and slants. Most of them have come up in the last 5-10 years, some in the last year itself. Most of them are managed by news-anchors who cut their teeth in Doordarshan news. Almost none of them seem to understand restraint and responsibility. What began on our television screens from Wednesday 9.30pm and continues unabated should never have been. Consider this -
I'm one of the terrorists in the Taj, sitting in one of the guest rooms. I switch on the TV to watch the news channel. The reporter tells me that Hemant Karkare, the ATS chief has come to the site. They show him without a bullet proof vest. I now know that it's the police that I'm up against. Ok, they are ill-equipped, I don't have to worry. At 2am, the channel tells me that the Home Minister has announced that the NSG commandoes will be despatched to Mumbai. Cool, I have another 3 hours before they can dream of landing here. Let me kill, maim and burn with impunity. Oh! another channel just mentioned that guests have gathered in the Chamber room. And there are about 150 of them. Thank you, let me go there and kill them. And who are they showing by the window. 201, 202...that's room no. 205 - there seem to be 3 guests there. I can go there and take them hostage.
Imagine another scenario. I'm holed up in Nariman House with the 5 Jew members already killed. The television channel is showing that a helicopter has been pressed into service. Hmmm, so they'll come from the roof. Let me strengthen on that front. Oh, they are showing commandoes come down the helicopter. How many are there? One, Two, three...ok, 8 of them. One of us can take the left door from the roof for providing cover and I can take them all.
What complete stupidity!! How can there be no information dissemination system to take over in such situation of national security? How can our media in their attempt to provide exclusives and boost their TRPs become unwitting pawns in the hands of the terrorists?!
In addition to the security issue, is the insensitivity of it all. There was a news channel shoving the mic in the face of a bawling father who had just lost his son. Camera-men rushed to click a man who had just been shot and was being dragged to a waiting ambulance. Wailing mothers, injured guests, rescued hostages - no one was spared. There is no respect for dignity of life, no regard for human loss - just a naked pursuit of TRPs.
If we are serious about our response to these terror attacks, we have to work on these 3 aspects - the frailty of our borders, the inadequacy of response system and the irresponsibility of our media. Who can do this is another question, left for another posting on this blog.
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