Swadesh Bhattacharya
Even as India was getting ready for the festivities of Deewali and Eid, October 29 turned out to be India's saddest Saturday in recent memory. Tragedy struck in the wee hours when many bogies of a Secunderabad-bound passenger train were washed away in a flash flood in the Nalgonda district of the state of Andhra Pradesh.
Before rescuers could even extricate the dead bodies from the train wreck (their number was going well above 100), Delhi was rocked by three successive lethal blasts that killed at least 70 persons. This was the worst terrorist attack suffered by the national capital.
Clearly, neither the Indian Railways nor Indian cities are becoming any safer. Only a few weeks back, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh reportedly showered a lot of praise on railway minister Laloo Prasad for allegedly bringing about a visible improvement in the functioning of the railways. If the praise was meant to influence the Bihar state electorate ahead of a crucial electoral battle, his bad salesmanship can now only boomerang.
Laloo Prasad — who was forced to resign as Bihar chief minister in 2000 after police implicated him in a major corruption scandal — is certainly taking as good care of the railways as he has taken of his home state and its treasury in the last 15 years!
The serial blasts rocked Delhi just a couple of hours after the President Abdul Kalam had waxed eloquent about the role of "high-tech surveillance" in improving India's internal security! He was addressing the 66th anniversary ceremony of the 165,000-strong Central Reserve Police Force.
If India is not becoming safer, it is also not becoming any wiser in either averting terror or managing the aftermath of a disaster. Disaster-management has just become another empty catch phrase.
The railway authorities were particularly slow in responding to the Nalgonda accident, perhaps the worst-ever train disaster in Andhra Pradesh. Instead of rushing relief and arranging immediate medical treatment, the authorities were busy seeking excuses.
For all the talk about the "information revolution" and right to information, relatives and friends of the victims in all the disaster sites and concerned hospitals were crying out for information while the medical establishment and security agencies remained preoccupied with protocols and the mandatory post-accident VIP visits!
The Delhi blasts, we are told, were very much anticipated but specific intelligence inputs were lacking. This again has become a routine excuse after every terrorist attack. The sites chosen by the attackers, all crowded markets and busy areas, were rather obvious targets.
It has also become customary for government spokespersons and ruling class parties to issue strong statements after every such incident and talk about fighting terrorism to the finish.
Blame is always laid at the expected doorsteps and members of the Hindu chauvinist organisations are soon burning effigies of Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf and clamouring for "teaching a good lesson to" Pakistan, i.e., launching military attacks. This is not just diversionary tactics — it is also a sinister pretext to target Indian Muslims and instigate jingoistic passions.
Sections of the media have linked the Delhi blasts to the conviction of some Pakistani nationals in the Red Fort attack case in which three Indian Army soldiers were killed on December 22, 2000.
The blasts took place around the time when the Delhi High Court was scheduled to pronounce the sentence against the Red Fort case convicts. Incidentally, a couple of hours before the blasts, the High Court had actually deferred the judgement. And the reasons provided by the additional sessions judge — "a power breakdown, volume of the job, and shortage of staff" — read like an interesting, if inadvertent, judicial indictment against downsizing and privatisation of power-supply!
Whether or not the blasts have anything to do with this particular case, Delhi and other major Indian cities are now clearly all the more vulnerable to terrorist attacks. This has more to do with India's foreign policy of increasing identification with the United States than with the complexities of the situation in Jammu and Kashmir or anywhere else in India. A reversal of this foreign policy can contribute more to improve India's security environment than any number of anti-terrorist laws and police battalions.
[Abridged from ML Update, the weekly news bulletin of the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist)-Liberation.]
From Green Left Weekly, November 9, 2005.
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