If there’s one thing the July 13 blasts in Mumbai have shown, it’s that the city continues to be woefully ill-prepared when it comes to nipping terror attacks in the bud. No doubt, the usual blame games have ensued among politicians, the police, the intelligence agencies and the state anti-terror unit. What seems to be clear, though, is that the state is yet to plug some crucial loopholes in its counter-terrorism effort.

Consider, for example, the fact that just two days before the blasts, the chief of the Anti-Terrorist Squad (ATS), Rakesh Maria, proudly paraded a couple of Indian Mujahideen (IM) men at a press conference, claiming they had provided vehicles for a bomb blast in Gujarat some years ago. But he obviously was unaware that his own city was about to be bombed yet again, possibly by the same IM — or so goes one theory.

Indeed, when Maria took over the ATS in March 2010, he had raised a lot of hopes. He asked for more funds — which the state government sanctioned immediately — and is said to have revamped the ATS. But according to insiders, in the last one year, the squad has not been successful in busting a single terror sleeper cell.

Experts say that the failure to gather effective human intelligence is one of the main reasons for Mumbai continuing to fall prey to terror attacks. And the erosion of the institution of the beat constable is part of the problem. Time was when the humble beat constable was a fount of valuable local information and an important cog in the wheel of information gathering. Says Madhkar Zende, former assistant commissioner of police, who arrested Charles Sobhraj in Goa in 1986, “We made the best use of the beat constable in our times. When film producer Mushir Alam was kidnapped in 1984, Hawaldar Pansare did his homework and cracked the case for us. The Shiv Sena vada pav vendor murder in 1974 was also solved by a beat cop.”

Says former deputy commissioner of Mumbai police, Sanjay Pande, who was part of the police force handling the Mumbai riots of 1993, “I think instead of just being reactive, the Mumbai police need to be proactive. The beat constable too has to interact with the locals so that they have faith in him and exchange confidences with him.”

POOR PERFORMANCE: Intelligence agencies still don’t have access to state-of-the-art technologies

Again, contrary to some other states like Gujarat, Maharashtra’s intelligence agencies have few Muslim informers. “There is a secret fund for paying informers but in Mumbai it is widely known that all the police departments invariably misuse the funds. The Mumbai ATS has few Muslim officers and there are hardly any informers,” says an officer with the city police on condition of anonymity.

And what intelligence there is, is not collated systematically, points out Col (retd) M.P. Chowdhary, a security expert. “In the West they have computer programmes for collating terror-related intelligence. The whole process is very sophisticated. They collate, corroborate, compare and finally interpret the intelligence data and are thereby better able to deal with terrorism.”

Again, experts say Mumbai’s security agencies are sadly lacking in the use of state-of-the-art technologies to gather intelligence. “You must have cutting-edge technology for monitoring emails and high-end trailing if you want to beat the terrorists,” says Pande.

Others point out that Mumbai’s security network also needs to track the use of explosives much more stringently to make sure that these do not find their way into the wrong hands. “We need to have an accountability register of end-to-end user both in the area of identifying explosives and the movement of explosives or other ingredients used in the making of bombs,” insists Col Chowdhary.

Ammonium nitrate, which has been found in most bomb blasts in India, is widely available in the country as it is used in the manufacture of fertilisers. But unlike in the US, there is no system here to check if it is being put to any mala fide use. After 9/11, vendors of hazardous goods — be it phenol, sulphuric acid, nitric acid or ammonium nitrate — were told to report unusual purchases of these products to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). In fact, in February this year when a US-based Saudi engineering student filled an order for large quantities of phenol, he tripped an alarm. He was kept under the FBI microscope for two weeks. They checked his emails and snooped on his phone calls and finally apprehended him when they found evidence that he was indeed trying to make a bomb.

Strangely, in Maharashtra, the licensing authority for explosives like ammonium nitrate also hands out licences to petrol pump outlets and cooking gas cylinder outlets. “They’ve no idea to whom they are issuing the licences,” says a police officer. Clearly, the security agencies have done nothing to set up a system wherein it can keep tabs on the end user of dangerous chemicals that go into bomb making.

Of course, it would be wrong to say that the state has taken no steps at all to curb terror since the horror of November 26, 2008. It has set up an elite commando force called Force One, 39 assault teams with 586 combat ready personnel have been deployed in different parts of Mumbai, and an intelligence school to train crack agents — the first of its kind in the country — have also been set up. Some other measures in terms of beefing up and modernising combat equipment have also been taken.

But as every Mumbaikar is saying today — it has simply not been enough.