The Mumbai blasts have demonstrated that those entrusted with the job of ensuring security have failed to prevent the preventable. It was not a failure of intelligence, as argued in many quarters but a failure of those who are supposed to provide leadership and direction.

Unless we make them accountable these disasters will continue to happen and what is being dished out by Railway Minister Lalu Prasad Yadav as fail-safe security for railway property and passengers needs to be examined with a critical eye because whoever has formulated the supposed upgradation is leading the nation up the garden path. The promise that more metal detectors will be set up at all railway stations is the kind of placebo that will lull us into complacency once again. Metal detectors cannot detect explosives. Only properly trained sniffer dogs can. That too cost effectively. The minister did mention that the number of sniffer dogs would be increased to handle this task but he was economical on details, as usual.

The entire security apparatus, be it the military, the paramilitary and the police has been extremely reluctant to make use of sniffer dogs in sufficient numbers. The ratio between the number of dogs and vital installations –the borders, military cantonments, railway stations, airports, VVIP residences and offices, bridges, and what has only just been added as a possible target for terrorists, waterworks –is abysmally inadequate.

There are reports that India-Pak bhai-bhai has induced so much euphoria that the patrolling pattern along the international border and the Line of Control has slackened giving the terrorists plenty of opportunity to fling one-kg packets of explosives and drugs over the barbed wire fence. These eventually find their way as deep as Aurangabad, Ayodhya and Akshardham.

The absence of closed circuit television cameras (CCTV) in marketplaces and crowded localities is due to the morbid fear among security personnel, particularly the police, that their attempts at extortion and collusion in smuggling and other anti-social activities will be caught on camera. In any case a CCTV surveillance system usually ends up as being more useful for post-mortem investigation than prevention of crime largely because the personnel manning the surveillance stations do not have an adequate database to initiate an interception before the crime is committed.

In the case of the Mumbai local train services the close-packed nature of the crowd will itself be a major challenge to the method of deployment of both sniffer dogs and CCTV. The many entrances, which perforce are the first line of defence, will demand that the dog will have an adequate opportunity to get a sniff at every passenger entering the premises because it is impossible to detect anything once the passengers squeeze into the compartments. Therefore, the numbers of dogs per station will depend on the number of entrances multiplied by the attention span of the dog and the tenure of its endurance. Three hours of sustained duty will be extremely taxing on the animal.

Metal detectors do have a place in the scheme of things particularly because hand grenades have become the weapon of choice for the Pakistani trained terrorist mainly because it is easy to conceal and throw into crowded areas and achieve maximum damage. However, the manner in which they are deployed leaves much to be desired. The one in Paharganj ( close to the New Delhi railway station), the scene of a bombing last year, is useless because the crowd is allowed to walk away from the side and rickshaws, scooters, bicycles and cars just scoot past without being scanned.

Only after the Mumbai blasts security experts are also talking of likely threats to airports as well. The major threat to an aircraft is when it is taking off and landing; Delhi airport which hosts the VVIP bay has acquired greater vulnerability by the publication by Google.com of aerial photographs of the complex of buildings.

There has to be better utilization of manpower in the security services. There is a tendency to bunch a large number of armed personnel which does not make for optimum utilization of a resource critical to counter-terrorism which is a manpower-intensive activity.

The sight of four or five constables walking down the platform is neither a deterrent to any terrorist nor does it inspire confidence among the passengers because one is never sure if they know what to look for. One thing is for sure they cannot either singly or collectively sniff out the presence of explosives.

Thus, what is required is a proper mix of manpower, dog squads, metal detectors, and CCTVs before a viable deterrent to a terrorist attack can be put in place at any given vital point. Above all there must be adequate synergy between security forces inside a complex and personnel posted outside. This micro level of synergy in security deployment must be the focus of attention. Sadly it is missing at present.

The serial bombings in Jammu and Kashmir and Mumbai have shown that there is need for a well-networked security apparatus at the national level. Unfortunately, turf wars and jurisdictional contradictions tend to sap the efficiency of whatever is already in place. Forget about learning lessons from the hard experience of the Khalistani terrorism in Punjab in the 80s and the insurgencies in the north-east, what is baffling is the failure of the mandarins to at least read the Kargil Review Committee report which spelt out the road map on the strengthening of internal security at the grassroots level. The blasts in Delhi last year and now in Mumbai show that we have not learned a thing.


Courtesy : Syndicate Features

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