Terror attacks: 110 crore people should behold hawk eyes

We were yet to come out of the jerk of the Bangalore blasts, to the extent that politicians had not even stopped reacting on the blasts and there came more gruesome Ahmedabad blasts. Headlines India might have spoken to more than a dozen people just understanding what could be the first reaction of the masses. And most of them had a common reaction, “these b**tards.... why is it always we, who have to bear it”. What is required here is, no more reaction but a proactive approach towards your country towards your state and towards your own area. Why to always blame it on security agencies and the government. Why don’t we as citizens try and take this blame for once on ourselves.

How is it possible that 16 blasts take place at prominent locations including a state capital and no commoner even sees or senses anything wrong happening around. As a nation we need to be more possessive, more responsible, especially when we know that there is someone constantly eyeing our happiness and peace. Or, is it this that Indians have resigned to their destiny, even without making efforts on their part. As a member of public, one keeps scratching his hair with lots of skepticism that he might be the next on the target list.

Also, there are people who have got the perception that terrorists don't attack the same place twice within a year. It was more evident when a group of intelligentsia was heard saying, Bangalore is safe for one year at least! The turn is over. This is a dangerous formula/ conclusion for our people to arrive at.

However, one of the very encouraging examples of public resilience to fight terror was Mumbai train blasts; perhaps, Mumbai has always set such examples. The very next day of the blasts, Mumbai was on track, as normal as any other regular day. This is of course one of the ways of giving a tight slap on the face of the terrorists outfits. As a nation we need to move beyond expectations because we know that if we switch on television sets to see if there are any revelations, or any significant reactions or information from the government’s side, one can only hear same old record.

While there is a need for the public to wake up, at the same time our administrative and espionage machinery also needs to upgrade itself.

Or, at least change the words while they react to a new blast! Why do they go on yapping the old redundant script? They must learn a bit from the terrorist outfits, which are "very efficiently" increasing number and frequency of serial blasts! So often, they plan and execute a serial blast and we- the people, our security agencies, administration- don't get to know anything about all this, except some regular and vague intelligence inputs.

This time the explosions in two prominent cities were of low intensity but for tomorrow we should even be prepared for high intensity blasts at other places in our country, if nothing improves overnight. And, improvement being only a remote possibility, your guess is as good as ours about any suspected terrorist attack in near future. There is a wake up call and a high alert for Delhi, which is obviously nothing new. But, then for how long will this continue, for how long would we keep tightening our security arrangements and for how long would we be able to keep our tempo high on announcing security alerts.

Post twin terrorist attacks, one can see newspapers flooded with suggestions of how we can avoid such mishaps, one such suggestion is the use of surveillance cameras as much as possible, but for a change can our eyes play the same role with a minimum basic commonsense in place. We are a more than 110-crore people, and we will always crib about being so many but for once can we use this as a huge resource in manning our own country- our home. Why can’t this huge population stop these handfuls of terrorists, who are trying to ruin and barge into our lives without our permission?

There has been one more suggestion of making tradesmen or shopkeepers function like sleuths, as was in practice till the Mughal era in India. Given the circumstances we are in, this is for sure the need of the hour. This practice has proven to be fruitful in accomplishing many fights- both internal and external in past.

There is no denying the fact that there have been some negligence on part of our governance. With this there has been a very interesting fact which puts our thought process into a grilling mode. That, Home Minister Shivraj Patil has been coincidently not present in the Capital whenever such aggressions have occurred. Right from the Varanasi blasts to Hyderabad blasts, followed by Malegaon blasts, Jaipur blasts, Bangalore blasts, and now during Ahmedabad blasts, he has been missing throughout, and people are tired of his stereotype statement; “I was out of Delhi, I do not have the entire update, I would get back to you once I take a full update”. Such statements are only disappointing and put a big question mark on the entire security system of the country. If the Home Minister does not get an update of a terror attack in the country even after a few hours of the incident, how can anyone stop people from expressing their anguish in whatever way they think correct.

There were some more, but essentially political in nature, reports floating in air that the Bangalore and Ahmedabad blasts were an intentional move to target the BJP governed states. Leader of Opposition L K Advani denied it completely but the BJP leader Sushma Swaraj expressed that this possibility cannot be ruled out. Forget about the external forces here, have we as a nation come that long that we have started becoming threat to each other. Well a big question that we need to answer?

But yes these blasts on the other hand are making humanity immune to the fact that when we hear of similar blasts in the neighbouring Pakistan, there is no bad feeling towards the blasts but there is, in fact in some cases, we can see an applause from a section our Gandhian people...."Good! That this happened there, they would now realize that how it pains being hurt by a blast. Humanity is getting quickly replaced by a mere revengeful attitude. Definitely, we need to be more vigilant even in this respect.

Editorial Desk