No one to blame

14 July, 2011- Thursday

As we saw our little chat on recent blasts taking shape of a bigger debate and arising many questions we thought of continuing it further as a bigger discussion in the volunteer group instead of the scheduled open space event. Mumbai, a city that has suffered four terror attacks in the past decade, was once again targeted on Wednesday, when three bombs exploded within minutes of each other in various locations around the city causing 18 deaths and 131 injuries.

The discussion has gone really intense as some of the entirely different view points came up from different people though one thing which was clear enough was that everyone was questioning their beliefs of non-violence.

People came up with different reasons for the attacks like some thought it is another terror attack, some thought it’s a political gimmick and even as a pre-planned strategy to counter the budding Lok-pal bill hype.

A volunteer Jaiveer said that we get pretty much used to and careless after a while. Moreover repetition of such events makes us don’t care about it and we get inattentive which cause loop holes in our security system.

Puneet said that he’s pretty much concerned about these issues and try to do whatever he could but he just don’t know what he can do to prevent them.

Jimmy, from states, said that he doesn’t like to judge people and he has his beliefs in non-violence, but incidents things like that make him doubt his beliefs.

Khalil, a film-making unit member, said that we just talk on such issues and then we forget about them without taking any preventive measures.

Another volunteer Jitendra who was pretty sure that the root cause of all this is our flawed political system and hence our bureaucratic administration. As he said that our stereotypes are so strengthened that sometimes they overshadow the reality. According to him the current corrupted political status is responsible for every bad thing happening to our country and each one of us is equally a culprit for these blasts as we are not aware of our responsibilties and rights and we’re not giving worthy governance to our nation and neither taking any steps against them on an individual level.

Another PRAVAH member Abhishek questioned are we really playing our part in being active and attentive citizens. We’re blaming our politicians and defence forces but are we really aware of whom we’re selecting as our representatives in assembly elections.

Soon after our discussion came to an end we get to see some of our politicians giving statements on the blasts when mumbai was still struggling to get back on its feet. But it din’t had much effect on our ministers as they continued to get in their blame game once again. As Rahul Gandhi told journalists that 99 per cent of terror attacks in the country had been halted thanks to improved intelligence and other measures. It is very difficult to stop any single terrorist attack. Our home minister P Chidambaram said it’s not an intelligence failure as it was a coordinated terror attack of ISI and IM. At the other end Raj Thackeray aimlessly blaming the migrants from north and east India for the blasts in Mumbai. While Advani pointed out at Pakistan and ISI, senior BJP leader Arun Jaitley commented on TADA. At a time when the political class needed to come together, it's their contradictions which have come to the fore.

But looking at the government’s counter-terrorism record, it shows a complete different picture. The unpleasant truth is that the much-vaunted police modernisation effort the government began after 26/11 has just not delivered. Not one of the five urban terrorist attacks that preceded the latest Mumbai bombings has been solved.

In my perspective, whatever the reason may be but one thing I’m sure of is that these things aren’t going to change any sooner if we won’t start acting like a reponsible Indian citizen. And to some extent I do agree to the point that we all are equally responsible for these attacks. Political statements as such shows us the drastic socio-political status of our counrty and the unprofessionalism of our intelligence and investigation agencies, but that doesn’t mean that we all our innocent. As it is our responsibilty to prompt policemen when we see negligence in security, it is our responsibilty to see in what hands our country’s governance and defence is going in and it is our job to make people aware of such facts by public disussions and awareness campaigns. Otherwise we have no right to blame anyone, so are we really playing our parts?