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In the build up to President Obama's first state dinner, news anchors wondered in awe and glee what new surprises --- like the now-immortalized Princess Diana-John Travolta twirl --- the occasion would throw up. Given that their guests were the India Prime Minister and his wife, I didn't expect another dance surprise. But we got our wish in the form of the Salahis, the alleged "gate crashers" who are supposed to have exposed a hole in White House security. ("The word's out that the State dinner's a tough one to crash" -- former White House social secretary. Ouch!!). Thousands of miles away in the chief guest's home country, the White House fiasco fell behind more serious headlines, as India remembered another massive security breach that led to the fateful Mumbai terror attack a year ago. And that is what this post is about. What has happened since then?
First, I am loathe to labeling the Mumbai attacks -- that went on for four days and three nights and claimed over 160 lives -- as India's 9/11. They may have been similar in tact, precision, planning and targeting (both were attacks on wealthy, commercial capitals), but several thousands have lost their lives to terrorism in India over the last decade. Nothing changed then. I ranted about our callousness toward terror in earlier posts here and here and here. In one of my own posts I had wondered if the lack of "twin-towers grandeur" in the attacks was making us complacent. Well, the terrorists delivered on that front too -- what a grand attack it was on Mumbai! Five-star hotels, rich people, international media attention, hostage situation. Could they have done any better?
But has that changed anything? It depends on who you ask. There are cynics and optimists.
Accountability: It's not news that despite a decade of terror to learn from, we were simply not coordinated enough to deal with anything of this scale. The failure was top-down -- from intelligence failures, to political callousness, to weak policing. What's new is a higher level of public pressure to hold authorities accountable. It probably has more to do with the new, hot Right to Information Act and a growing population of educated and demanding citizens, than any epiphany that the government may have had. If we recall, it was public anger that led to the resignation of politicians responsible for the country's security. (One of them, who had to step down for implying the Mumbai attacks were a minor incident, is back in power after the recently-concluded state elections. So much for "moral responsibility" they keep claiming).
The first civilian effort came in the form of a book by the widow of a police officer who, along with the anti-terror squad chief, was gunned down on November 26, last year. In her book To the Last Bullet co-authored with a journalist, Vinita Kamte lays down the events of the night, accusing top police officers of systemic failure and then misinforming her during her inquiries. The duo obtained a lot of their information through interviews, demands for call logs and using the RTI Act. She argued that had her husband and the team got the back-up they asked for, they may well have lived. It is a scathing indictment of the policing system in Mumbai.
Needless to say, one of the top -- and well-regarded -- officers she has criticized has written to the government denying many of her accusations. He claims the facts will speak for themselves. So does Kamte. We are yet to hear the end of it.
The second one gets trickier: The government set up a two-member committee, headed by former bureaucrat Ram Pradhan -- to look into the lapses on 26/11 (26th on November) and ask for what is called an Action Taken Report. Conveniently, all the players decided to shield the report from the public. Except the public, of course. Among the several (a handful compared with post 9/11 lawsuits) Public Interest Litigations or PILs (equivalent to class-action lawsuits here), were those that required that the report be made public, including the ATR. A high court agreed. The Supreme Court did not. The clamor to make it public rose, until the report was allegedly "leaked" to news channel, CNN-IBN, before it was set to be tabled in
