Well said Sir
Some essential readings on the first anniversary of Mumbai terror attacks.
Amidst the plethora of articles, blogposts, columns and news-items written in the print and the electronic media on the first anniversary of the Mumbai terror attacks, here is my selection of eminently read-worthy material from the lot.
Pratap Bhanu Mehta in the Indian Express and Nitin Pai at The Acorn for the larger social commentary on terror attacks in Mumbai.
Praveen Swami at the BBC on the developments on the internal security front in the last one year.
Vir Sanghvi looks back at the role of the media during the attacks a year later at Medium Term.
B. Raman in the Hindustan Times appraises the progress made by the intelligence community in confronting the challenges posed since November last year.
And finally, here are the words that we cannot afford to forget at any time, anniversary or no anniversary; remember that they were penned in 1962 by Thomas Schelling.
Surprise, when it happens to a government, is likely to be a complicated diffuse bureaucratic thing. It includes neglect of responsibility, but also responsibility so poorly defined or so ambiguously delegated that action gets lost. It includes gaps in intelligence, but also intelligence that like a string of pearls too precious to wear, is too sensitive to give to those who need it. It includes the alarm that fails to work, but also the alarm that has gone off so often it has been disconnected. It includes the unalert watchman, but also the one who knows he will be chewed out by his superior if he gets higher authority out of bed. It also includes the contingencies that occur to no one, but also that everyone assumes somebody else is taking care of. It includes in addition, the inability of individual human beings to rise to the occasion until they are sure it is the occasion, which is usually too late. (Unlike movies, real life provides no musical background to tip us off to the climax.) Finally, as at Pearl Harbor, surprise may include some measure of genuine novelty introduced by the enemy, and possibly some sheer bad luck.
The results, at Pearl Harbor, were sudden, concentrated, and dramatic. The failure, however, was cumulative, widespread, and rather drearily familiar. This is why surprise, when it happens to a government, cannot be described just in terms of startled people. Whether at Pearl Harbor or at the Berlin Wall, surprise is everything involved in a government’s (or in an alliance’s) failure to anticipate effectively.
…The danger is not that we shall read the signals and indicators with too little skill; the danger is in a poverty of expectations, a routine of obsessions with a few dangers that may be familiar rather than likely.
And what was left unsaid, sir!!
The petty infighting among the police brass.
Any serious commentator would have foreseen it coming. A logical outcome of a series of events wherein a reactive, blundering organisation (for hours assuming a gang war- and an oppurtunity to do some ‘encounter’ing) is now credited with pseudo bravery- Karkare, in heaven, would have been surprised of the bravery which he has been credited with (Is that me?).
Now Gafoor (Does he lament the missed oppurtunity of not showing the ‘bravery’ which gets Ashok Chakras, literally by a dozen, and followed by Petrol pumps?) has put his foot in the mouth. And the fellow unbraves are baying for his blood.
A small event at Saichen- becomes the Ketchup incident. It is an entire tomato puree factory out at Mumbai.
With due apologies to the dead.