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| Task before new Home Minister | | | Lalit Sethi
How will India be able to respond to the latest terrorist attack, which has left the nation and possibly the world stunned and shocked beyond belief? How will Mr. P. Chidambaram, known to be somewhat ruthless, a man of administrative acumen and ability to go into detail with tireless effort, be able to deliver in the face of great odds? He has been credited with raising India's revenue, almost tripling it in four years since the United Progressive Alliance led by the Congress came to power in the summer of 2004. He set high targets for tax collection and chased the income tax officers at all levels to reach them, if not exceed them. He modernized the machinery by computerizing it rapidly to give the taxman the tools to collect information and chase the taxpayers. He might have carried out a number of reforms, at the command of his Prime Minister and his party leadership. He might have been an able Minister of State for Personnel and Internal Security 20 or more years ago when he tried to streamline some administrative systems, but those very systems, went back to their old lethargic and bureaucratic ways of the chalta hai syndrome?
There are great expectations from him, but now in his sixties, he is somewhat a mellowed and mature man rather than one endowed with youthful arrogance of a man in his early forties. Even Mr. Chidambaram might wish to insist that he is no miracle man and there are limits to what he can achieve. Although if he is a good ten years or little less younger than Mr. Shivraj Patil, who must be very happy indeed to own up responsibility and resign. He might have been wishing to resign for quite some time and he was possibly hoping early last year that he would be allowed to leave the Union Cabinet and be nominated as the Presidential candidate, but he was told at the Congress Working Committee then that he could not be spared because he was the Union Home Minister and the nation needed his experience and services. Twenty years ago, he was indeed a very meticulous and able Minister of State for Science and Technology, given to going into great detail and standing up in the two Houses of Parliament during close question with a degree of aplomb. If he is given to dressing well, that is his psyche and government and political leaders are forced to be savvy in today's world, as indeed is Mr. Chidambaram in his well-tailored suits, but generally in his well-starched white veshti (dhoti) and trim collared shirts when in Delhi or most of India except when meeting foreign delegations or corporation or business leaders.
India's tryst with destiny started long ago, not just on August 15, 1947. The British Imperialist policy sowed the seeds of a divided polity with separate electorates for Hindus and Muslims in 1935 itself, which India's Constitution abolished in 1952. But the separate electorates sowed the seeds of Pakistan and its creation as the price of independence for a divided subcontinent. Freedom arrived in India at a great price: the mass migration of non-Muslims from the new Islamic State of Pakistan and a large number of Muslims from India. This transfer of people, mainly by train, was marked by a holocaust in which close to a million people died. That was mass terror.
In 1947 and early 1948, Pakistani troops and hordes of Afridis invaded Kashmir and the State was rescued from capture by rapid landings by troops airdropped by Dakota planes, civilian as well as military. The then Pakistani Foreign Minister, Mr. Zafarullah, admitted in the United Nations Security Council that Pakistani troops had indeed invaded Kashmir. That was the beginning of terrorism, which Pakistan now claims, is hurting it as well. But terrorism continued in some form or other through infiltration from India's north-west and eastern flanks. It might be worthwhile recalling that throughout the 1950s, there used to be bomb explosions in the Jama Masjid area, especially on Friday evenings. The Pakistan Foreign Minister has promised to cooperate with India in the fight against terror, but does the writ of his Prime Minister and President, who have made friendly noises towards India, run against the agencies which sponsor terrorism or even with the Pakistan armed forces, which plan to re-deploy themselves on frontiers with India and withdraw substantial forces from their north-west in the war on terror going on in the NWFP bordering Afghanistan?
In the light of India's recent history, is it proper, is it appropriate to describe the November 26-28 Mumbai terror as India's 9/11? If it bears any resemblance, it is the meticulous planning, preparation and execution, but on an altogether different scale. The New York attack was confined to the twin Towers; in Western India, it was nearly all of South Mumbai? Critics and analysts often ask: if America can prevent new terror attacks with heightened and enhanced security, intelligence and preparedness, why can't India do it? The plain and simple answer is: India is certainly not America, nor is America India. America has for 200 years or more prided itself as isolated from the rest of the world. Only World War II and subsequent concepts of a global village changed that thinking somewhat. Somewhat, and that is the key word. America does not have Pakistan or Bangladesh or Nepal as neighbors. It does not have China nor Indonesia, which have their own terrorist hubs. America has two hostile neighbors: who are they? Cuba, a small island, hardly hostile any more, and Venezuela, which engages only in verbal wars. Nearly all of Latin or South America has been tamed. America faces several countries hostile to it, far from its shores and it is engaged in two wars, seven and five years old, in Afghanistan and Iraq, and these wars have fatigued the American military, if not diplomacy.
The Mumbai terrorist attacks are a great opportunity for politicians of all hues and intellect as well as the smart alecks and the well-heeled to criticize the authorities and berate the police and blame the intelligence agencies for monumental failures, but they are waxing eloquent and raising the toast with their beers at the 133-year-old Leopold Café in spite of mayhem, streams of bloodletting, shootings and bombings. What have they done to protect themselves? Even the owner of the Taj Hotel has admitted to having received threats much before the attacks. He must have informed the authorities, but did he organize any enhanced private security? Perhaps he could not, because some boyish terrorists had possibly settled down in the hotel weeks earlier before their reinforcements arrived. |
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