26/11 From Tragedy to farce?

A top cop accuses 3 other top cops of not being on the scene of action on 26/11/08

He then retracts his statements. In the meantime media has gone to town, and 3 cops come under a public shadow. Net result, we waste the time of 3 critical cops, the time of an under-staffed and poorly budgeted department…and distract them from their duty; keeping us safe.

We are busy arguing about faulty bullet proof vests. Isn't the best test to make politicians wear them and start firing at them? :)
A strange photograph in the newspaper showed us a diagram revealing that all terrorist bullets magically missed the vest and entered Karkare's body through the unprotected areas, thus saving the guys who bought the vests. I remembered the magic bullet from JFK...the one that traveled all over kennedy:)

Two ‘Force One’ commandos....trained to combat terrorism, and engage in urban warfare against them, FAINT during a demonstration to our politicians. I guess they can shock the enemy by fainting on them or in curious formations.

Our S.R.P.F. lie for days on the road. The State Reserve Police Force, the guys who are supposed to protect our STATE, the commercial capital of India, has no place to sleep. Why would these guys give their lives for us? But, they still do.

RR Patil is back, the very minister who was asked to resign after 26/11. His resignation was meaningless, and his coming back is meaningless. He could not have been blamed for the attacks because a state home minister in India is in really no position to fight terrorism. He is just ill-informed and mostly impotent against urban terrorism.

In a hugely expensive trial, we are still entertaining Kasab, the one live terrorist. His trial is now a comic book story in India…kids talk about his theatrics and the drama that surrounds him. We spend millions on keeping the trial going, because we have to SHOW the world we are civilized. Can we wrap this trial up sooner please, it costs us tax money???

Pakistan has disintegrated into chaos, China has started pissing on our feet and the USA plays volley ball with our foreign policy. The only real geo-political consensus is on the arms race and how everyone can make money by creating more and more chaos. India Inc has jumped into the defense business and this will be the next sunrise industry of the region.

Is India safer? Has the underworld been even dented? Has ONE terrorist group been shut down? Is the Indo-Pak issue anywhere closer to being resolved? Somehow the smartest politicians in India can’t fix the Kashmir issue for over 60 years. Somebody must be making shit loads of money? Who?

At the central level we are forming ONE MORE intelligence agency…what about strengthening the IB and RAW forces….either you build a homeland security model or you don’t…no half-ways work. Can we learn from the USA?

Rahul Gandhi, in a moment of rare moral courage, raised the issue of wastage of police forces/security forces. In India, each politician and his relatives are apparently threatened all the time and need Z level security, if not less. This means that security forces waste precious man-power protecting our rich and fat politicians while they should be protecting us! Needless to say, he was shouted down in parliament, even from within his party:)

In the midst of a farcical year, two brave police wives have been showing us the light….Mrs. karkare and Mrs. Kamte…both have been asking tricky questions regarding the circumstances surrounding the death of their husbands, both of them straight cops with great reputations. Mrs. Kamte had to get the post-mortem report of her husband through the RTI. Isn’t that a shame?

In the last year, we have learnt NOTHING. Our politicians have made merry, making strange sounds with no sense, our media has screamed and whimpered its way through every issue…migrated from activism to passive resignation to empty theatrics. There is no real security anywhere. No public security. The only thing that binds us Indians together is our own local bonds, in families, housing societies, small towns and mohallas. The real Indian lives at a local, small level, untouched by the sound and fury, waiting for the next disaster, scurrying around making money and trying to keep his/her family afloat.

If there is any fight-back, it is at this local level, the only real level….where we fight for our humanity, security and keep hoping for a better tomorrow. True secularism, democracy, local governance and accountability are our tools. The state has failed; the fourth estate has lost its way. Every citizen needs to stand up, right now.

Jai Hind!

Zubin Driver
Founder, Fight-Back