Fighting terrorism

I won’t talk about the recent shameful and dreadful terror attack on Mumbai per se – but on what to do next. My thoughts on how to fight this menace; not that I’m an expert… but just my two cents I guess.

We can’t hope for situations like this to get addressed by mere rhetoric or patriotism. We do need an investment in basic police infrastructure so that a Karkare doesn’t die fighting AK56s with a .303 rifle and a half sleeve bullet-proof vest! So that a bunch of boys do not come sailing in boats, land on the Gateway of India and start firing indiscriminately and take hundreds hostage; without the Information Bureau having no clue about it!

We do need a solid security infrastructure to fight this; maybe we already have one. But beyond building infrastructure we need reforms as well – why can’t we pay our armed forces and police better? Why do we raise a hue and cry over the 24 eggs that an army officer gets? You pay peanuts and you get monkeys… right?

And, we need to leave politics behind when it comes to fighting terror. Why do we need a Shivraj Patil as the home minister who has no idea about what he needs to do and has the audacity to continue staying in office despite terror attacks every few weeks? Now that he has quit (or fired) it seems fixed – but is it really? Is it about Patil himself, or is this a larger issue? Why does LK Advani have to say “Oh this is worse than the last time…”?

And, we need to fight corruption. It takes a bicycle, and not a passport, to come from Nepal/Bangladesh to India and then 200 Rs for a ration card. How can we allow this to happen? How can we sell our country for 200Rs? Is this how we grow at 8% year on year I wonder!

The Bottom-line: the main culprit is our so called ‘spirit’ to move on… heck how can we get so thick skinned. We’re concerned today, but will soon forget it like the hundreds other terror attacks in this country before. I think we only deserve it. I liked what Suhel Seth said yesterday on a TV channel – we need surgery not band-aids… we don’t need elections; call a national emergency and fix it NOW…