Are we still waiting to hit the abyss?

Sometimes you go so down that the only way is the way of up, and what you consider your absolute down is defined by noone but you.

History has it that India is a lazy nation. Its people’s general apathy, and lack-of-interest in everything that is out of their direct line of personal benefit is greatly responsible, I think, of our ant-paced progress after independence & the ever intensifying series of terror attacks in all the major cities of the country. Our widely prevalent chalta hai attitude really needs a second look now. We are in enough of a crisis situation to start acting. We really have hit the abyss after what happened in Mumbai on Nov 26. Haven’t we? I certainly do think we have.... below are my thoughts/questions & some facts to support them..

Shaken & dejected as we all are by the Nov 26 terrorist attack in Mumbai, the umpteen questions that need answers, the need for a complete paradigm shift in the Indian politicians' spectacularly wrong & hoggish perception of how a country should be run and the need to revise our national priorities has come to the fore again. We certainly cannot deny the fact that for the most part, it is our government's stoic attitude that was responsible for the sheer enormity (as we see) of the damage done to the city & the morale of each and every Indian. As I follow (closely?) the developments in Mumbai from the past few days, certain questions come to my mind.

First of all, the 200 NSGs took about 10 hours to take their strategic positions at the terror site & start their operations. Reason being they were flown all the way from Delhi, and that too in an ancient IL 76 plane which is by all means a bad choice at such a compelling hour. It is a slow plane & took 3 hours to reach mumbai. NSG is a 14500 personnel strong force in India. So now the question is why are these 14500 commandos stationed in Delhi only? why are they not divided in all the major cities across the country? Or when the intelligence intimated the mumbai police & CM about the anticipated terror attacks and terrorists infiltrating in Mumbai via sea route why did the CM not fly in a squad of NSGs as a vital precautionary measure?

An even more perplexing question is - Why only NSG? what about the other Paramilitary forces & Special Forces we have, I mean MARCOs (by the way, they were the first ones to be alerted about suspected militants illegally taking a sea route from Karachi into Mumbai), Para Commandos, Rapid Action Force (an offshoot of CRPF) to name a few? Weren't any of these any closer to Mumbai and any readier to combat than NSG? This question might be coming from my lack of knowledge but to me it certainly sounds improbable that all we have is the 14500 strong NSG to protect our 29 states & 6 UTs.

If one looks up at the 2008-09 budget grant to MHA, one comes up with a super huge figure of 24 hundred crore of which 22 hundred crore is spent on Police, close to 92% of all the budgetary grant to MHA. ‘Police’ in MHA definition is Central Para-Military Forces (CPMFs) and Central Police Organisations (CPOs) combined. So where is all the spending going is the next obvious question? After such huge budget allocations to Internal Security demands, why does our police still has to make do with the horse and buggy weaponry? Why don’t we have advanced detection devices to detect smuggling of arms and ammunitions across our borders like other countries have? All we have is some utterly obsolete metal detectors deployed at our borders & at critical check posts which just don't work anymore because terrorist networks are way ahead in terms of finding innovative ways of smuggling stuff that completely render our devices useless.

Finally on the point of personnel and organizational accountability, I reckon, our police force and intelligence are not so much to be blamed. Our Intelligence organizations had prior indications of impending attacks & this intelligence was passed on to all those who needed to know. Police is under state’s command & unless Mr CM is convinced of the gravity of the anticipated incident (and convinced he only becomes after the incident has so painfully happened), all intelligence & exhortations by senior officials fall on deaf ears. Shivraj Patil has resigned but CM is still under the fairy illusion that by making statements like ‘they planed to kill 5000, but only got away with 200, hence we have managed to minimize the damage’ he will able to calm the public outrage against him. Deputy CM is still one step ahead by making statements like ‘such small incidents happen’… such small incidents happen!!!!! Well, Mr. CM and his Deputy, you are miserably failing to act sober. So before the public outrage against you increases to disproportionate dimensions, please follow suit and resign!!!