Mumbai - terrorism and beyond

The November 26th attack on Mumbai put the entire nation in a state of absolute shock, anguish and disgust all at the same time. 10, just 10 people managed to wreck havoc of this magnitude that left almost 200 people dead and hundreds injured. It has scarred people back home and here for life.

As different acts of bravery trickle in, through my blog I would like to salute the brave men and women who gave their lives away defending and helping people in whatever way they possibly can. At the sametime I am extremely disgusted by the reactions from the political parties. When the need of the hour was solidarity each of these parties were trying to get as much political mileage as possible from the situation. Immediately after the attack there were hoardings all around the city with the party leaders' pictures along with the photos of the martyrs.There were quite a bit of mud-slinging between the parties as well.

Deshmukh and R.R.Patil had no other option other than to resign(thankfully Congress had accepted their resignations without a second thought). To be honest for R.R.Patil's comment he should have been imprisoned. Given his position in the state how irresponsible was that. Given all its "Maharashtrian" agenda I have not heard of a single statement of worthiness from the Shivasena. Let's not even talk about BJP at this point. Narendra Modi flies over to Mumbai in a private helicopter to provide *%$@*~ "moral" support. How low can these people really stoop? Everytime I have this question in my mind, some politician or the other never fails to surprise me.

Also recently I saw a video posted here from Al-Jazeera on what is perceived to be a distinct difference in treatment by the government between this Taj attack and the bomb blasts that took place in different suburban train stations of Mumbai. Though this is up for interpretation, I thought it had certain amount of truth to it in the sense that this current attack received much more wide spread publicity and attention primarily because of the no.of foreign nationals involved. I will let you decide on what really the truth is.




I know I have probably rambled on some of the aspects of the attack. Let's get to the point now. Everytime a terrorist attack of this scale happens, there are hordes of questions that come to our mind, predominantly the "How?" questions. How did they manage to do this?, How could they pick us of all people? How could this happen in a big city like Mumbai which we had very conveniently assumed to be a safe haven? How could the government let this happen to us? How should we have prevented this? How can we prevent this from happening again?etc.,

As the investigation goes on, as we time and again hear about different terrorist organizations responsible for this heinous crime, I would like to focus on the last couple of aforementioned questions, to prevent this from happening god forbid- again. I have consciously used the term "we" instead of "them" because it is high time we be a part of this organization called the government. I for one very strongly believe that without the citizens' contribution a deep rooted issue like terrorism cannot be eradicated. Moreover you would have heard and read a lot about what the government should be doing in many other articles.I think measures like increasing the security in hotels and other tourist spots is not going to do any good in the long term.

1) Given the current situation we need to encourage citizens to provide information about potential terrorist outfits as and when they come across. People must come forward to provide details about any suspicious activity without the fear of being harrassed by the police. We live in a society which mandates us to keep our ears and eyes open and we need to encourage everyone to do so. The local fishermen had seen the terrorists involved in the Mumbai attack arrive in a tube-boat, though they did inform the police, if the police had taken some action as soon as possible,things could have potentially been avoided. So there are two sides to this, one is citizens coming forward to give information and secondly the law enforcement taking action based on the information.


2) Instead of focussing just on the terrorist organizations let us start focussing on the avenues they get funding from. Once we dismantle this conduit of support the organizations can be dealt with easier.

3) Whether we like it or not, we will have to most certainly start working with Pakistan to strengthen the border security / surveillance and exchanging intelligence, since both the countries have been ravaged by terrorism in the recent past.

4) Police force and the army must be given a free hand in tackling the terrorists.I have read quite a bit about how terrorism was dealt with in Punjab. It was possible only after KPS Gill and Beant Singh was given the freedom to tackle extremists. The result was there for everyone to see.

5) Given the ages of the terrorists who attacked Mumbai, it is very clear that they were targeted and brain-washed into this crime. Youngsters are being definitely misled. We will need to make sure they receive both education and enough means of living. Again even in this we will need Pakistan's help in making sure youngsters on the other side of the border are also properly guided.

Mumbai attack is yet another warning we all needed. We need to act and nip terrorism now.

...........Will be bak