The Wisdom of Not Doing

On the fifth anniversary of the 26/11 attacks, a few thoughts on the Government’s response

It is now five years after 26/11, and, on its anniversary, newspapers and television channels pointed out how little has been done by the Government despite a terrorist attack of such magnitude. Hindustan Times came out with an entire supplement. A full page within it appeared under the headline, ‘Holes in Mumbai’s shield on the coast’. On another page, under ‘Crowded Markets: Still Woefully Unguarded’, the paper offered some prescriptions of what needs to be done. Among these were: ‘Streets should be kept uncluttered’ and ‘Building surroundings should be litter free’. One must of course do all these things, but squashing potential Kasabs through cleanliness has to be unique in the annals of counter-terrorism.

A DNA article titled ‘State sits on Pradhan panel suggestions’ pointed out how, besides not finding land to set up five coastal police stations, sub-standard bullet-proof jackets were purchased and the control room has still not been shifted to a fire- and blast-proof structure. A Times of India headline read ‘Only 2 of 7 patrol boats with Navi Mumbai coastal cops operational’. The Indian Express reported that though high-tech luggage scanners were installed at Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus, one of the attack sites, a team of reporters sent there found that ‘security personnel at some of the entry points were nowhere to be seen.’ On CNN-IBN, a reporter, undecided on the amount of shock or anger to insert into his voice, asked rather flatly, “Is the country better prepared to prevent another sea-borne fidayeen attack?”

There is no reason to doubt the assertion that the Government failed in its long term response to 26/11. The natural corollary is that it should be doing more. But in fact, there is a good case for the exact opposite—that the best thing for the Government to have done is to have done nothing.

The argument is at three levels: a) given its level of efficiency, the Government can’t do much even if it wants to; b) whatever it does only serves to make life difficult for the people it is supposed to protect instead of terrorists; and c) the whole objective of an attack is to create an atmosphere of terror and any measure the Government takes only fuels that.

An instance of the last is what the US did after 9/11. It threw human rights to the wind, declared unprovoked war on Iraq on a false pretence and became openly racist toward visitors and its own Muslim population. The myth that such measures were warranted because they made the country immune to terror attacks was shot to pieces after the Boston Marathon bombings this April. The US response to 9/11 claimed many times more innocent lives than the original attack.

In India, extremism in Punjab led to the Terrorist And Disruptive Activities (Prevention) Act, which threw tens of thousands (if not lakhs) of innocent people in jail with scant due process.

Everything the Government does is riddled with incompetence and corruption.

Anti-terrorism measures are no exception. Sub-standard bullet vests are as good as no vests if the idea is to stop a bullet. Or take that strange Hindustan Times solution of keeping streets litter-free: Mumbai’s municipality has not been able to do that for decades. Why and how would it make it happen now?

The main reason for the Government not to react is because, given its corruption and lack of competence, whatever it does will only punish its own citizens. For instance, this demand to deploy extraordinary resources to police the coastline will become an instrument to harass fishermen. Without precise intelligence, there are just too many fishing trawlers for the coast guards to check. After the serial bomb blasts in Mumbai’s local trains in 2006, the Railways tried to create check points at stations. Long queues and chaos forced them to drop the idea almost immediately. All that remains now are token metal detection scanners. No one has a clue whether they work; no passenger has heard them beep.

26/11 Mumbai attacksanniversaryterrorism