Sunil Sethi: Terrorism's 'unfinished agenda'

Preventive reflex action against terrorist activity has repeatedly shown up to be slow and unwieldy. Seriously more dysfunctional, as the Delhi High Court blasts reveal, is what happens to the victims and their families afterwards. Those who died instantly were probably lucky; the lives of others who suffered serious injuries, are disabled for life, and their kin present a fate possibly worse than death. The “unfinished agenda” of the aftermath of a terrorist strike is infinitely more deplorable than the inadequacy of preparedness.

Many of the dying and critically injured had to be carried to hospitals in auto rickshaws by kindly strangers because of insufficient police or medical arrangements to transport them. Other eyewitness accounts, and stories of those the dead left behind, make for harrowing reading. “What will I do with compensation of a few lakhs?” asked a mother of three teenage children who lost her husband. “All I want is my job back. I had nine years of service left.” Both her husband and she, who worked as government clerks, had their services terminated some time ago. Hers is a classic study of government’s disorderly house and misplaced priorities: on the one hand, it wants to reduce expenditure by cutting back jobs, on the other, it wants more office space for more employees to protect citizens’ safety.

Why is it that the nation’s disaster management experts, like its terrorism handlers, are so often missing in action? Why is one of the richest state governments in the country so heartlessly short on providing succour to its bereaved? One of the acutely embarrassing moments of the week occurred when, while Delhi’s chief minister was seen doing her Florence Nightingale round of hospitals, her son, a city MP, was found with a misplaced bag of ten lakh rupees in his railway compartment.

Perhaps because the strike took place on its premises, two judges of the high court stepped into the breach left behind by terrorism’s “unfinished agenda”. They demanded answers from the Centre and Delhi government on precisely what its compensation and rehabilitation package for the victims entailed; when and how this promise of money or jobs would be delivered; and why the Delhi Development Authority could not treat land allotments as a separate priority for litigants injured in the blasts.

It was no high-flying judge, lawyer or eminent citizen who lost life or limb in the Delhi attacks. The victims were honest-to-goodness people awaiting legal redress. Seeking justice in the courthouse was ordeal enough for these litigants. But what about the “unfinished agenda” of the ordeal they now face?