Countering Terrorism With Incompetence

‘Have we learnt anything from previous terror strikes?’ the diva shouted at the top of her pitch. Not only the diva but many alike in our media did pretty much the same when the news of twin bombs going off in Hyderabad broke in. The short answer to this stereotype question is ‘NO’ and the long answer is ‘NOTHING’. Not that we are bad learners but because the powers that be, which need to learn a lot from each of these terror strikes simply don’t want to learn. On the dirty pursuit of votebank and political appeasement we have long turned ourselves into Ostriches and refuse to look at the writings on the wall, much less understanding them.

Now about seriousness in curbing terrorism; I would say we are as serious as Pakistan is with the social upliftment of their citizens. Had we been even thinking about curtailing terror attacks on our soil by 10% we wouldn’t have allowed a clueless person like Sushil Kumar Shinde to be the home minister. Had we been serious about our own people dying a miserable death, we wouldn’t have treated the home ministry as a training ground for the guileless and have battery of individuals thronging the chair on a round robin basis. The moment we put people like Shinde in serious portfolios like the home affairs, we more than just issue a statement to the whole world, along with the potential terrorists across the border and the equal amount of Nanha Jehadis that we are breading out here in our own soil. And the statement is – we really are not perturbed with the terrorists or the terror strikes that so routinely happen in our backyards. As it is a demise of fifty or hundred, thrice a year doesn’t really affect an already billion plus populace.

The debate, the discussions, the usual fine art of pushing the blame; the latest Hyderabad blast has it all that we are so used to after each terror attack. We in fact had a bigger version of all these post 26/11. We have them always and shout our lungs out on the demand as well as promise of change. The chaos starts right after the bombs go off and subdues even before the counting of the dead is complete. The charlatan political class which should be blamed for many number of messes including the advent of terrorism make merry till another rascal blows his ass off at a busy intersection. How many of us remember the promises that the cunning morons made after 26/11 and how many of them really did materialized. The NIA that was formed specifically for this is still a nonstarter. To their credit they have only arrested five people for close to a dozen terror strikes happened in the same period. The Pune blast is already put into the cold storage with no sight of anyone getting apprehended for the crime. The ATS that was formed has never done anything notable worthy. All that they are doing all this while is to pass on the information to different states like a telephone exchange with having no idea themselves on what they are passing on. This is the kind of competence and effectiveness of our premier counter terror agency.

The trend that we see after every terror attack is similar to the previous one. That was no different this time around. Leading the lot was our priminister. Though he for a change decided to speak on this matter, what he spoke eventually was far from desired. The words you speak generally reflect your attitude and what Manmohan Singh spoke after the attack is nothing but the utterances of a true lame duck. ‘The perpetrators won’t go unpunished’ is what Dr. Singh said in his press brief. However we can say he might have mistakenly picked up his post German Bakery blast speech this time as well but the fact is that the perpetrators of Pune are yet to be unearthed, let alone punishing them. Had Dr. Singh cared to go through his statements made earlier and the shoddy investigations followed thereafter, he sure would have not done the mistake of repeating the same lousy lines again. Someone serious, as rightly pointed out by a Tweeple, wouldn’t have used two negatives in his lines, which are meant to boost the morale of an entire nation. A serious man would have howled like George Bush did after 9/11 – ‘Culprits would be hounded out and punished’. These lines of Bush Jr. smells seriousness unlike the spineless words of our PM which sounded more like an outcry of a oblivious and helpless individual. 

What was Shinde doing all this while? Well pretty much nothing. Or may be defining colors for different terrorism acts. When the reasons of his posting for such a serious post is not the real credentials but the credentials of some high end sycophancy for the Gandhi family then we ought to see an indifferent home minister towards the rotten scheme of things in our security apparatus. An indifferent man can only deliver indifferent vocabularies when encountered. That’s what Shinde did when questioned about the specific lacunas and why we largely remain sitting ducks after much fanfare. How laughable it can be when the home minister stands shameless and declares there was no specific intelligence information on the attack? What Mr. Shinde was expecting when he juggled around the specific information nonsense? Was he expecting the terrorists to mail him the details of the location, time and the number of bombs a week prior to the incident? 

World over, the enforcing agencies work on the raw inputs of their respective intelligence agencies and come up with executable options. But here there is a catch with our agencies. And the catch is the lack of accountability. To add to it also the complete absence of taking one’s job seriously. When it was as early as October 2012 that four IM men were apprehended and interrogated by Delhi Police, no one seem to have worked seriously on the leads came out thereof. The four alleged men said to have divulged the details of the reiki they had done on the locations that saw bombs going off. How absurd it looks when we had all the information of some reprehensible intent and yet allowed the attack to happen just because we have absolute nonsense at different levels who should have taken their responsibility with some seriousness. Leading the pack of this nonsense brigade is our very own home minister. The man of the moment when expected to act like a matured statesman and tell the nation on what he has done or planning to do, he rather prefers to go for annoying terror tourism and console the victims with some unspeakable stupid cognitive. 

But hang on; the BJP can’t ask for his resignation just as yet. If morons like Manishankar Aiyar are to be taken seriously, Shinde could just be the best home minister that we ever had. Sardar Patel can go to hail. For Aiyar, a track record of performance as shoddy as Shinde’s doesn’t count negative since he has achieved a lot by elevating himself from a meager police sub inspector to the home minister’s rank. Any person who calls himself sane can’t just conceive the logic that Mr. Aiyar furnishes to defend a highly bungling Shinde. To add to Shinde’s misery further, he does have ornaments in the form of an equally loathsome RPN Singh as his deputy. If the master is clueless, this deputy is brainless altogether. When an entire nation is scratching for answers this master-deputy duo is creating havoc on every kind of sensibility that one expects from the home ministry. But could you guess? We can’t even show doors to this hopeless deputy either since he for many at the Congress block, is doing a fine job.

Among the ruins of the dead a sad fact remains and hounds us Indians like cancer. We could have all the dignitaries like Sonia Gandhi and Manmohan Singh flying down to take a walk on the aisles where innocents lost their lives or meet those who survived by the skin of their teeth and shed gallons of crocodile tears but that certainly doesn’t fleece our ineptitude. People in power can issue new threatening statements after each bomb blast but that can hardly hide our complete disinterest to read the truth and act upon it. We can have all the names of Saffron terror as part of our votebank and pseudo secular package but that can’t answer why the ugly head of IM is popping up every time and why the rascals are not yet acted upon mercilessly. The bottom line is, we are a bunch of people who only have elected another bunch of highly incompetent individuals to govern us. A bunch that doesn’t care much for the people who have elected them and dance around with the naked display of sycophancy and vision bankruptcy. The nation, it’s populace, their security or for that matter national ethos counts nothing in comparison to rear licking. Because, had it been any other way to what I have written; I repeat, we wouldn’t have allowed a clueless person like Sushil Kumar Shinde to be on the post that he is at present.