It's time to act

Terrorists attacks are not new to India and especially to Mumbai. There have been many bomb blasts in the past, but this time the form of the attack and the targets of the attacks is very unique. Terrorists intend to hurt Indian economy by scaring foreigners. They want Americans and Britishers to stop coming to India, stop investing in India.

What disturbs me as a Mumbaikar (a term commonly used for people of Mumbai like the term 'Angelions' used for the people of Los Angeles) is that the politicians have done nothing to curb terrorism for the past few years - in spite of the frequent terrorist attacks. There is a complete lack of will on part of the politicians to fix this problem. To certain extent, I think there is even lack of understanding of the implications and seriousness of terrorism. For appeasing vote bank, politicians are even thinking of pardoning Afzal guru - the person convicted for 2001 parliament attacks!

Intelligence organizations are not coordinated and virtually non existent. There is no central organization at national level to counter terrorism. Each state has it's own independent police force and even independent intelligence agencies! The Central Bureau of Investigation does not have enough resources and even jurisdiction over investigating such incidents.

There is no clear laid out plan and chain of command when such an incident happens. It's been absolutely chaos in Mumbai and most of the people even don't know who's in charge.

The local police forces are highly under trained, under paid and under weopanized. An average constable on the streets of Mumbai carries a stick instead of a revolver!

I am glad that this attack has drawn world attention. I hope that the politicians will now be forced to bury their differences, come together and create an unified national action plan to curb terrorism. It's high time that Indian politicians learn lessons from countries such as UK, USA and Israel. We have talked tough on many occasions before, it's time to act.