Mumbai -26/11 - Reflections

From the onset, let me make it clear that I am neither from Mumbai nor do I have any close relatives there (In fact have just visited the city twice) but last week has been that sort of a torture to me as any I can remember for a long time. 

Somehow I realize only now, how much I love that city (I don’t know for what reason, Would it be the same if it happened anywhere else? I don’t know yet and I hope I never have to learn it in this way) but I have felt a bleakness for almost a week now. The anger, sorrow and helplessness has been terrible and the emotions continue to sway in one way or the other never making me feel good about even a single thing (Though NSG did make us all Indians proud) and it makes me sick to the stomach…

Ineptitude of our country in preventing or dealing with such a disaster has left us really really vulnerable. I know it’s great to say that we wont feel afraid because then we are playing to the terrorists hands but how would I feel that way in the current scenario seeing how vulnerable we are as a nation?

Isn’t this time for introspection and going ahead in implementing precise and objective reactions than saying we are a resilient nation and we will recover easily from this? It’s with shock that I have to say that I was ashamed of the national address from our PM. It was such a cold and passive response that I felt he was talking about distributing participatory notes. I know 90%of the people don’t believe and has no confidence in the government to do anything different this time either but the least he could have done is to have some passion in his speech so that at least the 10% who believe in the governance gets some confidence out of it. Sadly that was not to be. 

With the government functioning like this, it’s up to the people of this country to stand up and see to it that we are not that vulnerable. And believe me its possible if people in this country collectively (and that includes the common man, media people, intelligence agency people, police man and military – ultimately everybody is just a citizen) tries to take the necessary steps despite of the politicians and governance structure. 

As Gail Wynand says of Newyork city in The Fountain head (Written by Ayn Rand), “If a war comes to threaten this, I would like to throw myself into space, over the city, and protect this city with my body”. I think that’s what we all Indians should pledge on a day like this

Now, assuming that governance is going to take its curse, there are several points of concerns and improvements that comes to my mind. I am sure there are a lot more when we put our collective intelligence to it but this is meant as a starting point from my side...So here you go

1. Intelligence failure:  From whatever I understand, there was no intelligence failure. In fact our intelligence agencies had warned of an attack on Mumbai and specifically on Taj, Oberoi and Leela. If this is not actionable information as defined by Jayanthi Natarajan then I don’t know what else is. As Shobha De pointed out, will we say that actionable information is only when Terrorists calls up the CM to say that they are going to strike in a couple of days on Taj??? Why was the security not in place despite the warning? As far as I hear, there are two reasons. One is that people had complained of inconvenience, well if our government really believes our intelligence agencies, people should have been taken into confidence and people also shouldn’t mind going through some inconvenience if it helps to curb the terrorist attacks .I think that’s one thing we need to improve collectively as a society…Rahul Bose says ‘I am concerned about the quality of life in between the attacks’, well I agree it should be good but then with some restrictions It can still be good though we will have to compromise on something. That compromise is needed at this hour because we are dealing with lives of people and they should have a premium value. Second was the fact that police didn’t have enough people and were really over stretched, so at the moment somebody complained they were ready to take the security out. Why don’t we have enough police protection in cities? Why are they underpaid? A figure indicates that in 60 years of independence the police force in Mumbai has increase 15% while the population has increased 400%. We need to make our police force the best in the world and there should be a dignity for police personnel. I feel that if they are properly paid, lot of this corruption would end and they will start behaving bit more responsibly. 

2. Response time and Understanding situation: I am sure Maharashtra ATS chief is a courageous man and a man of principles but I am not sure whether he understood what he is against even as a ATS chief. I would be very concerned if my ATS chief goes to fight terrorists with a .303 rifle. There could be couple of reasons for that too, one he didn’t have anything better like our normal policemen (In that case, government has showed a total negligence and should be bashed for that) while the other more probable case (as I am assuming he is the head of ATS) is that he didn’t sum up the situation well. In that case, I would be very concerned about the preparation of our ATS members and how they go about their business. Need for NSG or similar force closer to the metros who can be deployed within minutes of an attack is a necessity and I am happy that most of the governments are taking the measures to ensure that. Another aspect that could help here is if the NSG can share some of the basic precautions and basic areas where local policeman can concentrate when dealing with such a situation.

3. Role of Media: Media should also take its share of the blame in creating the impression in the minds of people. Its all good that they are leading the crusade against politicians and others during these times (many accepts that Media also has a problem but they don’t want to commit anything for themselves going forward or want to discuss how to correct it!) but how do you go about correcting your end? Are you taking the necessary steps? Media is talking a lot about how things are implemented post 9/11 in US but have they ever looked at how media behaves and how much media is supportive of their government (even when it is temporarily wrong? I am not saying media should be a puppet at the hand of government but they should reduce the sensationalization about anything and when it comes to national security issues, they should be more restrained in airing their opinions). Though on second day media voluntarily stopped airing sensitive information, it took them almost a day to understand the significance and gravity of the situation. I hope such a blunder never happens again and same is with the question to our home minister who told the details about the commando operations (Though it was an unpardonable mistake from Home minister, if there was some sort of real time screening of information by NBA before airing, anybody sensible should have told it is a sensitive information)

4. Investigation/Reaction: I fear the outcome of this investigation to be the same as any other happened previously as I don’t see any difference. And that’s why I feel there is a need for a stricter anti terrorism laws and special courts to try them as we can’t obviously treat them as another criminal. Yes, there is a chance that the new law could be mis-used but any law has a chance to be mis-used in a country like India which has a corrupt judicial system. I feel that with proper reviews and stringent punishments for the mis-used cases, we should be able to get that strict anti-terrorist law into practice. Here again media plays a key role. Putting half information coming from our politicians who just want to make a statement without validating the facts in media just reduce the credibility of our investigations. Especially in cases like that of Gen. Purohit. I don’t have any issue if Sadhvi and other people are arrested and treated the same way as any other terrorists but treating an Army colnel in this way without 100% proof is not acceptable. First ATS say Colnel stole 60Kg of RDX from military (its even funny to assume anybody who has served in MI being so foolish, but lets take that he did), then army comes and says it doesn’t use RDX anywhere in its operations and hence doesn’t stock them. Now, ATS says that the RDX was captured from some criminals and was used by Purohit ( possible!) and how did he use it? To blow up Samjhoutha express and now we realize that government investigations during that time explicitly states that there was no trace of RDX being used in the explosion and we give Pakistan the evidence of a guy who has done it. What does that prove? Either that Indian government faked the evidences and produced false evidence to Pakistan ( Which they are now saying – I just heard a Pakistani journalist saying that they don’t believe what New Delhi is saying as they believe it might be the same as the case with Samjhoutha and as ATS chief who was heading that operation was just terminated in this blast why cant it be a conspiracy theory). That just destroys the credibility of our nation. These are the issues where our leaders and our media need to show restraint. They should understand how it will affect our foreign relationships and how it will be viewed across the world. Don’t panic by the pressure of people, do thorough investigation, provide sufficient proof to world leaders as well as Islamabad and see if they take any action. If they are still unwilling to do anything about it even after having solid evidence, then we need to think about a possible military action.

5. Attention to details: There are lots of information coming out now which says that Indian Navy had intelligence reports that were terrorists coming through sea route. As per the arrested terrorist, they realized it and hence went ahead and hijacked an Indian fishing boat and started its journey on it after killing all the members except for captain. That means that Navy forgot the basic lesson in these cases, attention to details. I wonder whether they have a GPS system which tracks the movement of vehicles through Indian Ocean, if yes, I really wonder why they couldn’t even suspect it if they given enough attention to the intelligence report.

6. Education: One of our main objectives should be on how we can improve the quality of education. Last Sunday, I saw an article on Hindu magazine which spoke about the results after talking to 4-8 year old kids from Delhi…They were so polarized and religiously conscious that it makes me frightened to think that how much we are to suffer in the name of religion. Few of my cousins teach in a primary school in one of the muslim dominated areas in Kerala. Things there has gone to such an extend that the muslim kids in 2nd or 3rd std doesn’t want to sit with a hindu boy because their parents have told them they are ‘Kaafirs’. I am sure the reverse should be also happening at other hindu dominated areas and that really shocks me. If we want to stop this carnage at some point of time, this polarization needs to stop and the fact is that the grown-ups of both the religion are to blame to a large extent for the divide. One person who could make a difference is teacher if he is principled but then we cant expect many of them as the profession has lost lot of its past glory. When will our government realize the importance of teachers and Teacher training institutes? It is mighty important to have well trained teachers who could handle these situations and take the kids slowly out of the harms way. During our times, we didn’t even know the religion of our friends for a long long time (except if its very obvious from the name). In fact, I generally used to tell only my first name to other kids and being from a muslim dominated area, and everybody accepted me as another muslim kid. Really in those times people never cared whether you are a hindu or a muslim. I have very very close muslim friends who are shattered with how things have gone for their religion just because of some insane people. I still remember how I used to take fast with them and how their mothers used to treat us. 

During these troubled times I want to end this blog by reciting two lines from Kabir

“Chhaahe Githa Vaachiye, Ya padhiye Khuran, Tera mera Pyaar hi, Har pusthak ka Gyan’'

I salute all the people who fought with terrorists, the commandoes, cops and the hotel staff who displayed amazing bravery to resist them and rescue most of the hostages.