Wednesday, July 30, 2008

Terrorism Makes India Bleed Again

The “Trust Vote” drama was just over, with the people of India convinced that it was going to be the only hot topic of discussion for some time now. And soon they were proved to be wrong. There arrived another hot topic of discussion, so hot that the Indian people would have been happy if it did not appear.

A bunch of “committed” and “dedicated” terrorists, “determined” to achieve objectives that only they can understand, came up with the “heroic” deed of carrying out blasts in the two cities located in two different parts of India, one being Bangalore in the southern India and the other being Ahmedabad in western India. The natural end result was the loss of several innocent lives, along with lots of injured people going through a traumatic experience in various hospitals and nursing homes.

As usual the government has suddenly become hyper active, with the police forces of different states, intelligence agencies, etc. working overtime to catch the culprits. Our honourable ministers from the Union Home Ministry are visiting the affected areas “to take stock of the situation” (does a person overnight become an expert after becoming a minister?), and then briefing the media about their “carefully structured” course and plan of action. The media has now concentrated its entire focus on this issue, with enthusiastic and hard working correspondents of various TV channels tracking all the relevant developments round-the-clock. The former heads of police, intelligence agencies, self-styled defence experts, etc are appearing in various TV shows to share their “rich experience” in fighting terrorism, with “valuable suggestions” about how the menace can be curbed. There are innumerable articles in various newspapers, offering “in-depth” discussion on the exact nature of the problem, highlighting various socio-economic-political factors behind it and ways to address the latter.


However, we all know that all these will go on only for few days. Very soon everything will be “back to normalcy”, with the unfortunate incidents completely out of people’s mind. We will get back to our callous and indifferent attitude towards terrorism and other disruptive activities, waiting to be shaken up by another repetition of such heinous acts.