The Delhi Blasts

Do our lives have such little value???

It was only 2 months back that there was shock and disillusionment in Mumbai over the triple blasts. Various politicians visited the injured and showed their faces at the appropriate places after the blasts much to the chagrin of the victims and the residents around that area as life had come to a standstill due to high security arrangements for the VVIPS.

The bomb blast between the Gate Nos.4 and 5 of the Delhi high court on the 7th September, 2011, in which 11 persons died and more that 60 were seriously injured is yet another grim reminder that our security and intelligence system is not delivering and requires serious efforts to improve our capabilities for countering terrorism. There is a need for serious reflection both by policy makers and by citizens as the latter are invariably the targets for such attacks.

This time the Home Minister admitted that a report on 21st July, 2011 indicated the possibility of a terrorist attack in New Delhi. This leads us to two questions:

1)      Whether some efforts were made to develop this input to obtain further details? And whether this input was taken seriously by the Delhi Police? The first question assumes importance as now in daily briefings of Home Minister all inputs are shared. Obviously this input must have been shared but perhaps afterwards no further efforts were made to develop this information. One cannot blame the Home Minister for this. Such efforts can only be expected if there is sharing of information under a professional who understands the functioning of intelligence agencies and can direct the agencies for quick development of leads for taking preventive action. We have Multi Agency Centre where inputs are shared but it has not proved very effective in the absence of an overall coordinator for intelligence. Intelligence sharing remains an important problem. When this was realised by the US after 9/11 attacks, a position of Director of National Intelligence (DNI) was created along with up gradation of Terrorist Threat Integration Centres, which had been working under the CIA, as National Counter Terrorist Centre, which were placed under the DNI. This US did despite opposition from the then heads of US intelligence agencies. Today the DNI remains responsible for all acts of intelligence agencies as well as their failures. It may be recalled that Admiral Blair the previous DNI was made to resign for failure to put Abdul Muttalib, who tried to blow the flight to Detroit, on the ‘no-fly list’. The need for such a position is acutely felt not only to ensure proper intelligence sharing and developing intelligence leads into actionable intelligence but also to plan national intelligence programmes and to take decisions on strategic intelligence operations requiring the resources of more than one agency.

2)      This has been discussed several times and the present Home Minister soon after 26/11 in 2008 had himself admitted in the parliament that the responsibility for taking appropriate action by the security forces or police is diffused. Unfortunately, this remains the problem even today. This requires clearly defining the responsibilities of both the intelligence collection agencies and security/police forces and ensuring that they jointly take decisions for this purpose. This should be done at the earliest. The most surprising aspect is that after this report and a bomb blast in high court complex on 25th May, 2011 no efforts were made for parameter security by placing CCTV and scanners. If there would have been a system for joint planning of preventive action, these steps would have been taken and several lives could have been saved. 

The continuing attacks by terrorists reflect that the present system is not adequately geared to deal with the growing incidence of terrorism. This underlines the need for reforming the system. The most important question is whether there is political will to introduce reforms or not? It needs a functional head to helm the affairs of all these Intelligence Agencies and be answerable directly to the Prime Minister, Home Minister, and the Defence Minister. 

The Bomb blast at the Delhi High Court is a stark reminder of the painful realities we Indians have to live with every day. And since it happened just days before the tenth anniversary of “9/11”—i.e. America’s day of tragedy, when New York and Washington came under attack—it’s worth reflecting for just a moment on the bonds that bind together these two open and pluralistic societies. Buckets of ink, will be spilled in the coming days about the bombing: Is India sufficiently prepared?  What is the state of the Indian Intelligence and the co-ordination amongst the various arms of intelligence, especially in the wake of reforms introduced by Home Minister P. Chidambaram after the November 26, 2008 Mumbai attacks?  Who was responsible for today’s bombing, and how should India pursue justice? What happened to the Security that was beefed up in the Delhi High Court post the last failed bombing attempt at this very place? The security cameras or the lack thereof? Who is responsible and answerable for this costly lapse and if we had the information what the hell was the Delhi Police and the Government doing about it? These are a few questions that may have no answers for a very long time.