People's surge needed to fight security failure

All day long on Wednesday, the blast near the High Court premises in New Delhi has been the highlight of the international media. In between meetings, my ringing BlackBerry updated every miniscule details of the fact that a very important Indian establishment was again under attack. Such attacks has become so frequent these days that it becomes difficult to maintain a proper chronology of events, so much so that during the previous blast at Mumbai my cousin, although a resident of the commercial capital of India, was not aware of such an incident till I called him up from London.

Terror attacks are not infrequent in India and the danger is that everyone, from the security apparatus to the administration to the ordinary people, gets used to it. They take it as a destiny with the politicians making a mockery of themselves by indulging in childlike blame games. What the BJP is saying today was the usual retort of the Congress when they were out of the treasury benches in parliament. It is a pity that politicians fight for political gains while ordinary people suffer. After every attack, as grisly pictures fill the prime time slots of all the Indian television channels, melancholy grips the heart for the lost lives; someone somewhere must have lost their near and dear ones.

One of Mark Tully’s books is titled: ‘No full stops in India''. Although written in a different context it seems that actually there is no full stop of terror and violence in a country which is known and adored worldwide for love, brotherhood, non violence and peace. Reading about the ghastly blasts and seeing the bloody pictures, I often wonder what is the justification of having such a robust security apparatus if it is brought down to its knees at regular intervals. I was in Delhi recently and had to undergo six layers of security checks within a period of two hours, despite being in the airport lounge all the time. Each time the khaki-clad security men searched my bags and used a metal detector on my body, I was filled with anguish. I heard a disgruntled fellow passenger telling to a security man, what I wanted to communicate. ''You can’t do anything to the terrorists and are unnecessarily harassing us’’, quipped the fellow passenger at the swanky Terminal 3 of the Delhi airport.

Like any other country, the security apparatus in India is also very insensitive and arrogant. Despite all the discomfort and uneasiness of the passengers, the stone faced security men are in no mood to comply with the minimum decorum of civilities. They behave as if they are the masters and we the ordinary people their subjects. In the context of what has happened today at Delhi, the readers might be aghast with my way of seeing things. However, it should be noted that an insensitive attitude on the part of the security apparatus only makes things worse and any ordinary citizen fails to understand the moral necessity of complying with the security arrangements.

Given the intensity of the attacks on India in recent times and the potent of instability and anger worldwide for various reasons, it is a foregone conclusion that terrorism, violence and bloodshed cannot be controlled only by the security mechanism. What is necessary is the ‘people’s surge’ or as celebrated BBC presenter Nik Gowing refers to in a different context as the ‘civilian surge’, where the responsibility of the necessary security level would be bestowed on the people. It would put the people under an ethico-moral obligation to ensure physical security for the society at large. Such a social arrangement would possibly transcend beyond physical security and ensure greater stability within the wider societal space.