manmohan singh to sushil kumar shinde: [long silence]
sushil kumar shinde to public: bullshit, bullshit, bullshit
You’re not scared about your daughters, they probably have way too much security. The common citizen is trusting, not stupid.
Do any of you have the guts to divert all the security personnel that are deployed to protecting you and all the other politicians and their families, towards protecting the people you were brought into power to serve? How else do you plan to make India safe? By a delayed public announcement like today’s?
And it is not only about buses [yes it was in this incident, but hasn’t been in innumerable others]. What about streets? What about dark alleys, what about homes? Your GPS devices on buses wont do. Try figuring out ‘how to make the country safer for women’, while you’re not doing anything important.
You guys just do not seem to be getting the point. Yet.!
Here are my suggestions:
1 – First, the six culprits need to be punished. Now. In Public. Make it an insanely painful death for them. Keep relaying it at regular intervals, on several TV channels, for at least a month. Let it sink in.
2 – You need to put together a team of ‘specialists’ who will understand mindsets, identify vulnerable areas and scenarios, figure out solutions, and work on a detailed list of steps on how to make the country safe, and will then even implement them.
And if you get serious about it, not only will you ensure a “sense” of security in Delhi, but you will help make the country a safer place to live in.
State Home Minister R R Patil came up with a brainwave idea to curb crimes against the elderly in the city. His idea is, that every policeman must ‘adopt’ (take responsibility) of a senior citizen.
What do some people have for breakfast?
Policemen in our city, and across the country are underpaid, overworked, and hardly find time to even spend with their own family. And looking at the scale of religious celebrations that go on here, one can only admire the effort and great job the policemen are doing at keeping normal functioning smooth and minimizing chaos.
And yet, our great Ministers feel that despite doing so much, the cops still need to add the responsibility of ‘adopting an elderly’ to their To-do list?
I would understand something like, having teams of social workers go to each elderly persons’ home and providing them direct contact details of a cop at the nearest police station. I could understand impressing upon elderly and their families the need for things like friend circles, so that each one can check up on the other regularly. Or politicians could even have good ideas or suggestions created into the form of small skits and screen them on tv, showing how the elderly can be kept safe and protected.
If adoption is his solution to it, I got a better idea. Why don’t ministers adopt entire cities of the elderly. I mean, after all the scams that have robbed the country, it would still be but a tiny outgo from their overflowing treasuries towards adopting even cities as a whole. Thought about that?
If politicians cannot meet their responsibilities, let them at least ‘adopt’ part of those responsibilities.
Some shameful facts:
Around 1800 FIRs (First Information Reports) have been withdrawn by the state police over the last 6 years on orders from the home ministry.
At a Press Conference in the aftermath of the Nov. 2008 attack at Mumbai, R R Patil had commented “It is not like that. In big cities like this, small incidents do happen. It’s not a total failure.”
The reason I raked up that old 2008 comment is, because on those fateful days, a lot more than lives were lost in Bombay. A spirit was attacked. To many politicians, Bombay is perhaps only an ATM for them. But to its residents, it is a lot more. So for a responsible minister to have attempted to underplay the result of such an attack at a press conference; words to describe it should have been chosen more wisely.
Anyway, back to the topic. If politicians adopting cities or the elderly makes you choke on your late morning tea, I got a simpler idea. How about all politicians (public servants, supposedly) re-assign all their security (bodyguards, etc.) towards adopting or checking on the elderly in their respective cities. Are you brave enough to do that, sir?
There is this shopping place close to my office (don’t know if it would qualify as a mall, cause even though its got some of the characteristics of one, it does not feel like one). Anyway,I drop in there sometimes to grab a bite at a restaurant there. So once I enter the main gate, there are a bunch of security folk who may or may not check the boot and glove compartment of your car, but more often than not, they will still make it a point to ask you 2 things, your name, and where you stay.
They seem to have cracked the code to a better and safer security process. These folk are skilled enough to supposedly be able to tell the good guys from the bad just by knowing the name and area of residence. Isn’t that terrific?!
So I guess it is safe to assume that all the bad elements usually stay in the same localities.
And that the mall folk know where those places are while our police don’t.
And ol’ Shakespeare was confident enough to say ‘what’s in a name?…..’.
We seem to take absurdity to unimaginably new heights everyday. That, or there is some reasoning behind it that makes this a far more effective tool as compared to searching the car. I don’t know.
***
Look forward to your views. And if you liked this one, consider following/subscribing to my blog (top right of the page). You can also connect with me on LinkedIn and on Twitter.
The Dark Knight is by far the most outstanding Batman movie ever, but what’s even more spectacular, is the Joker.
The Joker, not only inspired horror, but what he said could run shivers down your spine.
Whyyy so seriouss..??
What I liked most about the Joker was the fact that most of what he said, like it or not, is absolutely true in the world today.
I’m still hopeful. Just like Batman was when the two ferries were rigged, with the remotes kept in the other barge. But when you look at the state of things around, the Joker’s words tend to cross your mind…
Hmmm? You know… You know what I’ve noticed? Nobody panics when things go “according to plan.” Even if the plan is horrifying! If, tomorrow, I tell the press that, like, a gang banger will get shot, or a truckload of soldiers will be blown up, nobody panics, because it’s all “part of the plan.” But when I say that one little old mayor will die, well then everyone loses their minds! Introduce a little anarchy. Upset the established order, and everything becomes chaos.
Look at what’s happened in India over the past two decades. We’ve had bomb blasts ripping through cities, over and over again. People are horrified, shaken, paranoid even. The news channels have ‘field days’. Give it a few days, and everyone has put the incident into some low priority folder in their heads, and gone about with their routine like it never happened.
Now while resilience is a good thing, everyone’s missing the bigger point. Can’t the security forces, the police, the intelligence agencies, and even the common man become more responsible. Why aren’t we, as Viper in Top Gun puts it, ‘compelled to evaluate what’s happened, so that he can apply what he’s learnt’? And why do we always go back to being our usual irresponsible selves?
The another blast. And then another. So many innocent people who just didn’t deserve to die, lost their lives in the most gruesome of ways. And still, the intelligence agencies, the security forces and the police expected that if the bad guys are gonna ever attack again, they might do it the same way, so lets keep a watch out for bombs.
How can you just assume everything. The terrorists have been successful so far because of our ignorance. We checked random taxis, buses and trains for explosives or suspicious looking objects, but left such a damn big coastline unguarded.
And, once again, on Nov. 28, 2008, Mumbai (India) was hit in a manner least expected. And for what felt like a lifetime. Like the Joker said, the bad guys here too just introduced a little anarchy, a lot in fact. And that upset the established order. Nobody saw terror come in that form. And then, everything was chaos. And we, with all the security, and all the intelligence, were sitting ducks.
If not as back as 1993, at least by 2003, or for that matter 2006 all the way to the Mumbai terrorist attack, couldn’t the security and intelligence agencies have sat and thought like the terrorists, and prepared themselves accordingly.
There’s this Bollywood movie called Border, which is one of my all-time favourites. It is based on the 1971 war fought between India and Pakistan, where Pakistan decided to forcefully enter India and capture whatever area it could.
Now, whatever I’ve mentioned say here is based on what I’ve read, and parts from the film.
But well, here’s what happened. Expecting a Pakistani attack by Pakistan, a small regiment of the Indian army at Rajasthan was given a choice. Of holding the Longewala post in Rajasthan till reinforcements arrived, or to flee the post. Another strategic post, Sadhewala, had a much larger Indian battalion posted there. The Pakistanis had planned to attack the Longewala post with a much larger tank battalion. The Major heading the small regiment questions his commanding officer before leaving for the post. He asks ‘how can he assume that just because the Pakistani’s attacked the Sadhewala post in the previous war, that they would do the same this time’? Or ‘whether he thinks the enemy is expected to ask them where to attack’.
The 1971 war makes for one of the most amazing war stories, and one that fills me with pride for my country. And rightly so. This war is significant in the history of wars. To date, remains one of the few wars where a highly outnumbered army emerged victorious. Let’s put that in perspective. 120-130 Indian army soldiers guarding an outpost, were attacked by a 2800+ Pakistani tank regiment. At night. Indian fighter planes at the time were not equipped for night flight. They therefore had to wait till dawn to rescue the army regiment. This small Indian army regiment inflicted heavy casualties on the 2800+ enemy soldiers and tanks mostly due to a favourable terrain, accompanied by the soldiers, who courageously held off the enemies till morning, when the air force came and wrapped things up in our favour.
But to think about it; while we sure won that war, we sure beat the crazy odds, and we did what under most circumstances, given the odds, would’ve been nearly impossible otherwise, but; did it have to be that way.
Could we have perhaps had both locations reasonably well guarded. Or if troops could’ve been mobilized to either location at the earliest. We would have beat the enemy much faster. Or better still, looking at the strong army, the enemy probably wouldn’t have attacked in the first place.
A famous quote goes something like this – “It’s better to sweat in peace, than to bleed in war.”
Simply put, that means, if we plan well, if we anticipate things, if we do our homework in a proper manner, it would save us a hell of a lot of damage when things go bad. In fact, in matters of national security, I feel, if we do our homework, if we are more prepared on a continuous basis, there wouldn’t even be situations like that in Mumbai, or for that matter, all the attacks in the past few years across the country, or even in other countries abroad. Is human life so cheap, that people just take national security so lightly.
And if that was not enough, we made a joke of ourselves at the hands of Pakistan. When we kept providing them information linking the terrorists to their country. And they repeatedly deny it, making a joke of the entire thing.
Imagine the families of all those who lost someone to the attacks, or to the blasts. This would’ve just made them feel like a foreigner in their own country.
Now sure like any other guy, I’m crazy about first-person shooter video/ pc games; and absolutely crazy about recon games. And like most of us chaps, I’d love some action, etc. But it’s a totally different thing watching your fellow Indians bleed for absolutely no fault of theirs.
And while we are inherently a peace-loving country, over the years, why have we become so laid-back and meek? While I don’t suggest an Israel-style retaliation to attacks, though, believe me, Israeli’s absolutely rock at it. And while they sure do have a lot of crazy attacks happening there, at least their average citizen knows that their country doesn’t take things lying down.
We on the other hand, on that particular occasion after the Mumbai attack, made it appear as if we were at the mercy of the Pakistani verdict, which was absolutely ridiculous.
Lets think…
Be more prepared and pro-active…
Lets be alert…
And open to ideas. To logical reasoning…
Lets protect our country…
They say “The night is darkest just before the dawn.”
So why not stand together, and do our part in this fight against terrorism; to bring in that new dawn.
***
Look forward to your views. And if you liked this one, consider following/subscribing to my blog (top right of the page). You can also connect with me on LinkedIn and on Twitter.
