After strike - Building better response networks

After the horrifying Mumbai carnage the word “intelligence” relating to terrorists is becoming a kind of buzzword and an awesome amount of suggestions and ideas are coming in a torrent. Unwittingly it is leading to a situation where ordinary people are made to imagine that once a good, reliable and dependable intelligence network is in place, terrorism as a problem will be fully and squarely met.

At the same time, it is equally vital that we do not allow ourselves to become collective victims of mass fright and community hysteria. The leadership, both at the political as well as the administrative levels, has to act fast and firm to restore the pubic confidence in the systems without allowing scare or helplessness to overtake us. From out of the rubbles of the gruesome setting of 26/11 of Mumbai, perhaps the following action points can be culled out for a closer look — reviewing and strengthening the Intelligence networks, developing a public ethos which enables a greater appreciation of public response to various aspects of law enforcement and which prompts a more willing participation by the common citizens to the laborious and at times irksome security drills of myriad kinds, police reforms (inclusive of reasonable augmentation of police resources, that will make the police worry more about the law of the land than the political bosses) and putting in place comprehensive calamity response structures.

Tackling future threats

In fact, many international security experts have very rightly observed, more specifically after the tragic events of the so-called 9/11 of the USA that ‘you are at best, prepared to deal with your last experience’.

It is surely pragmatic to infer that we will again be left high and dry if the satanic and diabolic minds conjure up a hitherto untried path to set off a new lethal tremor. There is an urgent need to review the entire edifice of intelligence gathering in the country. The mentally etched scene where a constable armed with a .303 rifle in contrast to an AK 47 wielding terrorist and the risks that the fire force personnel really faced during the rescue missions that unfolded before our television screens may rouse our feelings to seek immediate augmentation of arms at par.

Yet, we have to take a broad view in the context of not only terrorism but also of various other threats to peace so that the basic concept of ‘civil police’ — a hallmark of democracy — is not destroyed. Surely the constabulary needs to be provided with better resources and support and that necessarily does not mean arming each of them to the teeth. Firearms with the police can surely appear to be consistent in times of grave disorder and that should not be a customary and patent picture during normal times. After all, a policeman is professed as a friend, philosopher and a guide of the citizens.

Law enforcement

Anxiety and urgency spurred by the recent events must not force us to hurriedly alter basic features of law enforcement without really seeing any valid need for a dramatic transition in the make up. Fighting terrorists, even in a close quarter battle with weapons ought not be performed by the civil police and units like NSG or ATS have to deal with that type of threats. We would be prudent in not forgetting that strikes by terrorists, howsoever horrendous are not daily events and normal civic life has to go on and at the same time our daily existence has to face various other forms of threats to peace and order.

The task is comparable to the efforts to keep a beach clean – by removing the debris thrown by the visitors as well as clearing the refuse dumped by the sea waves. That task has to be done and repeated without a break. Indeed that is the charter before us. Rightly it was well said that eternal vigil is the price of liberty.