INDIA'S ELECTION DILEMMA - 4

INDIA'S ELECTION DILEMMA - 4

Chaos Vs Governance

The National Security Guard (NSG) casualties in their encounter with ten terrorists, who started the mayhem in Mumbai on Wednesday, November 26, 2008, were given as two dead and eight injured. The terrorists also numbered ten, out of which only one was captured, the others were declared dead. They were the ones present at the scene of crime.

Later reports suggested that 15 terrorists had landed in Mumbai. One eye witness said there was a woman with the group as well. Where are the remaining five ? Gone to blast some soft target like weekly open markets in Delhi, which attract lots of people as they sell cheap goods affordable to lower middle classes. Delhi has not forgotten yet the blasts in Vinay Nagar market.

The NSG casualties are unacceptable, even taking into consideration that they were denied sleep, rest or any other succor before plunging into fight.

It took almost 24 hours before NSG fired a decisive grenade into the Taj Hotel to subdue the terrorists, who had holed up in the Taj and Oberoi Hotels to implement their nefarious deeds.

If the consideration was not to damage the Taj heritage building, stun grenades could have been launched from the very beginning. Or were they not available at the Ordnance depot ?

The terrorists killed unarmed civilians as soon as they entered the hotels and took up positions near the windows in the hotel rooms from where they fired continuously.

One could surmise that they were prompted from the outside of hotels to direct their fire, as a hotel window can afford only 180 degrees vision.

The postmortem of the tragic event has spilled a pack of warms, as far as Government officials and Ministers, both State and the Central, are concerned. Reading between the lines, one concludes that smuggling of contraband got priority over national security. The ray of light comes from the Muslim Council of Mumbai, who has refused to burry the dead terrorists in their cemeteries in India.

The political casualty so far has been Union Home Minister, Mr Shiv Raj Patil, who was asked to vacate his chair for the Finance Minister, Mr P. Chidambaram. The Prime Minister, Mr Manmohan Singh, will handle the Finance.

Mr Patil has been facing a period of bad luck for quite some time now. Earlier, he was projected as the Congress candidate for the President's post, but then he was rudely shoved aside for Mrs Pratibha Patil, who is the President now.

It has also come to light that the Budget allocation of Rs 940 crores for national security has neither been fully utilized nor spent wisely.

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(To be continued)