Curb the source of terror or learn to live with it

Now that more than 24 hours have elapsed since the Delhi High Court blast, the shrillness of the television anchors has reduced somewhat. The blast has claimed one more victim taking the toll to 12 and we now know that it was caused by a PETN-based bomb laden with nails. We also know that the email claiming credit for the blast was sent from Kishtwar in Jammu and Kashmir. But does it really matter whether the perpetrators were HuJI, IM or some other acronym denoting a jihadi organisation?

Speaking on the day of the blast, Home Minister P Chidambaram informed that intelligence inputs had been given to the Delhi Police in July. But the very next day, Delhi Lt Gov Tejinder Khanna rebutted the same saying that no actionable intelligence was given.

Before we pillory our police force as incompetent, a force incapable of action despite having intelligence inputs, let us first understand the nature of this ‘intelligence’. Based on both human intelligence and electronic surveillance of the airwaves, intelligence operatives pick up ‘chatter’. This could be as specific as place, date and time, but also more general. Experts can decipher that some action is about to happen, but the specifics usually defy us. So the ‘intelligence’ that Mr Chidambaram was talking about could have been something like a list of places on the terror hit-list which included the Delhi High Court or it could have been very specific saying that the Delhi High Court is going to be attacked in September. If the latter were the case, then yes, people must be held accountable. But if the former was the case, then you cannot really shift blame to the Delhi Police for the blast.

Next, the issue of CCTVs. It has been repeatedly stressed that CCTVs sanctioned for the High Court were not in place. Red tape is being blamed. Officials say that the total required was more than the number that had been sanctioned, so the file was put up again seeking an increase. Thus, the delay. The question that begs an answer is – could the presence of CCTVs have prevented the blast? Not really. Yes, the cameras would have given clues about the perpetrators, but that is again retrospective. Also, the blast actually took place outside the security cordon of the court premises.

Given the high density of our population, terrorists don’t really need to look too hard to find a target. We are a nation of sitting ducks. The latest threat alert promises an attack on a market on Tuesday in Delhi. There are literally hundreds of markets in Delhi. Do we expect the Delhi Police to literally patrol each and every market of Delhi next Tuesday and be able to prevent a blast? Unlikely. Terrorists don’t even have to look for a market. If they can kill 12 people and injure several others outside the High Court, they can just as easily kill many more just about anywhere.

What we need to build in the current environment is not a culture of finding a scapegoat after an incident – Shivraj Patil and Vilasrao Deshmukh after 26/11 – but a culture of security. We know that the times we live in are no longer idyllic. We have to build a consciousness among citizens that they are as responsible for their own safety as the Home Minister. If we can be on the alert for chain snatchers and pick-pockets, we can equally be on the alert for terrorists. How many of us would actually even notice an unclaimed briefcase in a parking lot? How many of us would take the trouble of informing the police about suspicious activities in our neighbourhood? We can talk about needing a London-like security system where the police actually identified rioters and pulled them out of their homes days after the riots, but are we willing to live with big brother watching us all the time? We quibble about queues at airports and fume at the cursory pat-downs when we enter movie halls and malls. But we still demand a safe environment.

What it all boils down to is that we need more eyes in the sky, more boots on the streets and the return of the friendly neighbourhood beat constable who knows every inch of his beat and who can spot the new guy in the locality. To back him we need a strong government that does more than mere posturing. If Wikileaks is to be believed, then in the post-Headley days, the then NSA MK Narayanan actually told the US ambassador that India’s demands for Headley’s custody were political posturing and that India did not really want immediate custody of the man who was a key player in perhaps the worst terror attack against our nation.

We have failed on intelligence gathering. We have failed on launching a diplomatic offensive. And we have failed in putting up an effective deterrent. Our efforts to build a National Investigation Agency (NIA) on the lines of the Department of Homeland Security is still fraught with challenges. The NIA has till 2013 to set up the National Counter Terror Centre. It remains to be seen whether anything concrete will come out or it will become just another entry in our multiple agencies. Our diplomatic offensives need to do more than just beg the US to tame Pakistan. We need to learn how to hurt the source of terror against India rather than rely on the rest of the world to rap them on their knuckles. If we as a nation cannot send out a strong message against terror then we really have no business to cry every time we are targeted. Let us just accept that we are a soft nation and fair game for anyone with a few grams of PETN or even the more home-grown ammonium nitrate.

Soni Sangwan is a journalist based in New Delhi