By Maloy Dhar
The Jaipur serial blasts on May 13, 2008 have again proved that there are no proverbial chinks in our national armour.
In fact, we do not have any armour at all. We have inadequate fire tenders in the form of the Intelligence Bureau, State Police Intelligence and several paramilitary forces with hard-to pronounce names.
We have inherited the mirage of a Congress legacy, that has pretended since 1857 to represent both Muslims and Hindus. (In 1885, Sir Sayyid Ahmad Khan had unabashedly declared that Congress was a Hindu party and that Muslims would boycott it.)
This mirage has now been transformed to “vote-bank-secularism.” and whenever any jihadi attack takes place, the politicians suffering from foot-in-mouth disease blurt out names of certain jihadi tanzeems based in Pakistan, Bangladesh and the Directors of the Board of Jihad Inc, the Inter Services Intelligence of Pakistan and the Directorate General of Forces, Bangladesh. These days, the Harkat-ul-Jihad al-Islami and the Lashkar-e-Toiba are the most favourite names with the politicians, intelligence and police agencies.
India has only one competent intelligence agency, the Intelligence Bureau. But it can only meet 40 per cent of the jihadi challenge. It is efficient, but pitifully inadequate in size and logistics.
By the same author: Why Pak won’t leave Kashmir alone | North East of what? | All Maloy Dhar columns
The State police forces have some intelligence branches, but these are staffed by untrained and sidelined officers. There is no dedicated intelligence cadre inside the police forces. A police mess-cook promoted to the constabulary may find refuge in the garbage dump of State intelligence branch. Over 70 per cent of sloths are dumped in this bin.
Also, wherever these units exist, politicians use them as wish-trees, if not kitchen maids. Most State police training colleges do not have specialised intelligence training institutes and expert faculty members.
The police intelligence agencies and the gurgling and babbling political breed lack training and orientation to comprehend complex security issues. They cannot analyse threat perceptions and the ground realities, leave alone the demanding imperatives of a national policy for maintaining homeland security. Or for securing the lives and properties of the citizen, for which our Constitution created these breeds of political and systemic tools.
The political masters who oil and run the Constitution and the systemic tools are far too vote-bank oriented and safety vault conscious creatures. To them the country, national security, internal and external threats are the last pie on the plate. Some of them cover up their fallibility in the name of ‘secularism,’ others use some other ‘ism.’
Opposing the opposite political entity in each and every action, however beneficial it might be for the people, is the basic political creed amongst them. They refuse to unite even on the issue of gravest threat to the very fabric of the nation from internal and external enemies.
Images: Copyright AP. Any unauthorised reproduction is prohibited.
Image: Onlookers examine a train coach destroyed in one of the July 2006 Mumbai train blasts.
