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| TALE OF TWO CITIES: The Taj hotel in Mumbai (top) and a vehicle in flames during the Guwahati blast. File pictures |
Cable television captured eyeballs on October 30 when the serial blasts rocked Assam. For a while the nation listened to a blow-by-blow account of the incidents. The usual guessing game of whodunit continued for a while. Then as they say, the “spirit” of Assam rose like a sphinx and things crawled back to normal. But is it really so simple?
A visit to Guwahati airport is enough to tell us that people prefer to avoid air travel for now. The otherwise busy, noisy lounge wears a deserted look. Only government employees, security forces, a few students and a sprinkling of businesspersons who cannot escape air travel are visible at the airport. On December 4, when this writer boarded the SpiceJet flight from Delhi to Guwahati it was only half full.
If air passengers to and from Guwahati drop down at this rate, most flights will probably not be able to take the losses. They will cancel their flights between Guwahati and Delhi until perhaps things return to normal. It is no longer business as usual in Assam. About 10 days after the Assam blasts, the Indian Chamber of Commerce (ICC) organised a meeting to boost investor confidence. The idea was to generate a buzz that that things are back to normal; that the terrorists have not been able to deflate the enterprising spirit of the people of Assam. But the ICC’s knee-jerk reaction betrays a lack of realism.
People are afraid to venture out after dark. They are still haunted by the images of 30/10. The blood and gore that spattered around Ganeshguri and elsewhere is still fresh in their collective memories. Then even before they could collect their wits, bang comes the Mumbai assault.
While Assam is several thousand miles away from Mumbai, the people of Assam identified with the pain and consternation of Mumbaikars as if it happened closer home. Terror unites. Only this time it was a one-way lane.
When the rest of India relived the narratives of past terror attacks they forgot to mention the recent one in Assam. That’s how short peoples’ memories are. Either that or the average columnist is ill informed about the geography and history of this country. Which is really a shame, since a bloodbath that occurred less than a month ago, claimed over 60 lives and injured several hundreds has been blacked out of the national consciousness.
Only Arnab Goswami of Times Now made a sweeping reference to it. But that is because he comes from Assam. Is this yet another lament on the inability of the Northeast to feature on the national radar? Fortunately, it is not. Nor is it a diatribe against anyone in particular.
This article is simply a reminder that every corner of this country is today vulnerable to terrorist attacks and that every state needs to train up its own counter-terrorism squad. This is a call for a more responsive police force and greater coordination between the security agencies, including those in charge of intelligence gathering.
The discordant notes emanating from the intelligence establishments are jarring. They remind us of kids playing the game of “passing the parcel” and afraid of being caught with the parcel lest they be out of the game. Surely India as a country deserves more responsible officers to man its sensitive intelligence machinery.
In the midst of the encircling gloom it was heart-warming to note that a mock anti-hijack drill was carried out at Guwahati airport on December 4. At least we have woken up to the dangers sooner than later. The commandos of the National Security Guards (NSG) and the Central Industrial Security Force (CISF), the state police and other security agencies worked in tandem to foil hijacking attempts after a maximum alert was sounded by the Bureau of Civil Aviation ministry. Such drills are necessary if only to bring order amidst the chaos that follows a terrorist attack.
Turn now to the head-rolling exercise in Assam. What might have been disconcerting at first but seems the appropriate thing to do now, is the reshuffle in Assam police. G.M. Srivastava is the new director-general of police (DGP) replacing former colleague R.N. Mathur. This after the Congress government had gone hammer and tongs at the so-called secret killings during the AGP government when Srivastava was IGP (operations), indicates Tarun Gogoi’s desperation to set things right. Which means that he is finally getting the hang of things.
Tackling terror with kid gloves has the boomerang effect. And politicising terror is even worse.
It returns to haunt the political actors rather than the perpetrators who are now singing the peace jingle (read the Alpha and Charlie companies of Ulfa). Battle-scarred and weary and quite long in the tooth they are now ready to live more staid lives leaving the grenade lobbing game to younger comrades.
Tarun Gogoi is fortunate that he did not have to vacate his seat a la Maharashtra chief minister Vilasrao Deshmukh. Gogoi too has been dismissive of bomb blasts and terror attacks as “happening all the time, everywhere”, a rhetoric reminiscent of R.R. Patil’s infamous one-liner, “Itne bade shahar mein chota hadsa ho jata hai”.
But that is because there is a distinction between being chief minister of Maharashtra and that of Assam. Maharashtra’s capital Mumbai hosts the “iconic” Taj. Iconic because it symbolises class, wealth, globalisation and pomposity. It is not some ordinary man’s facility like a train or bus station.
Here is the epitome of an India divided not just digitally but by the sensex.
Naturally politicians ruling that state and their verbal calisthenics are under the scanner. Those caught with their foot in their mouths have been booed out. Whether the new incumbents are any better is anybody’s guess. But when every card is a losing card one shuffles only for the sake of effect.
Tarun Gogoi on the other hand leads a not so glamorous state and does not own a Taj-like replica where the glitterati of India dump themselves and their money.
So what he says makes news only in Assam. His lexis does not reverberate in Delhi. Gogoi has, however, suffixed his “given a free hand to the police” statement with a “but no innocent person should suffer” suffix. Now that is a tough call when fighting terrorists.
K.P.S. Gill knows could give us a homily on that. Terrorists, particularly those operating from an alien country, are compulsive killers wedded to an ideology, which is higher than themselves. There are no easy options for tackling them. It may sound ruthless but the only appropriate philosophy for counter terrorism is “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth”. A soft option is no option unless we want to see an October 30 replay. Srivastava’s return also means that not every cop is an expert at counter terrorism. Some guys are just cut out for the job because tackling terror also means developing a thick hide which can endure the worst kind of tongue-lashing from politicians and idle critics.
(The writer can be contacted at
patricia17@rediffmail.com)
