Solutions

Everyone's angry after the hijack situation in Bombay. There's a lot of finger pointing going on amongst the authorities all of whom failed the city that day when terrorists seemed to swarm south Bombay and hold everyone to ransom - even the ones watching the news from Wednesday till Saturday when it still seemed endless warfare. After the operations came the toll. And then came the stories of people both alive and dead. Now, come the reactions. And you dont expect it to be reasonable or rational, especially when everyone's fuming and heads of those "up there" are rolling.

Yesterday, almost the whole of Bombay gathered at the Gateway of India to hold a candlelight vigil. It was also a silent protest against governmental apathy and ineffectiveness. It was a protest against all those who let this happen and more so, against all forms of terrorism. At the same time, a debate was going on between Indian and Pakistani spokespersons, both of whom were engaged in pointing the finger at each other. The wars came up in the discussion and so did references to "facts" from a newspaper source. Pakistan is asking Indians for proof before extraditing anyone, including a gangster who is stated to know this city like the back of his hand. India came back saying that they had been sending evidence to Pakistan for quite a long time and no action was taken despite their warnings.

At such times when the world has been a witness to your inadequacies, you cannot just blame another country for your problems. The time has come to introspect and make your police and army and NSG force so strong that people will find it extremely difficult to attack you. Innocents who are both citizens and non-citizens of Bombay should not be massacred again.

The sad thing is, no one's talking about this. No politician is drawing concrete solutions or even looking at the disaster and assessing what needs to be strengthened and how they're going to do it. They have proved time and again to be ineffective and yet, they're the people who can do it. Every citizen must protest against their attitude and basic apathy towards the majority who are under constant threat. We've devised a system for navy patrol and control after the attacks but now, instead of concentrating on your forces on land, you want to hog the primetime limelight by blaming someone else for your mistakes.

That is how it looks to a lot of Indians. We definitely need investigation into all training camps that terrorists use in all the countries they have it in. But you neednt stop once your finger starts pointing at the opposite side of the table. Suggest solutions, dont put India at risk of another war once all diplomacy runs out and the situation turns hostile.