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Anti-terror reforms can’t wait

Nothing better demonstrates just how ineffectual India’s responses to terrorism has been than the lessons emerging from the ongoing investigation into last month’s court-complex bombings in Uttar Pradesh. Police in Jammu and Kashmir, it transpires, had communications-intelligence that could have led their counterparts in Uttar Pradesh to the terror cell that carried out the bombing – and thus could have saved twelve lives. While counter-terrorism authorities in Jammu and Kashmir knew that a Kishtwar-based suspect was in regular contact with then-unknown associates in Faizabad, they chose not to pass on the available information. No malice was involved. The J & K police had no way of knowing that its wiretaps held the key to preventing a terrorist attack in another State. Nor did the U. P. Anti-Terrorism Squad know that the J & K police had stumbled on intelligence essential to securing Lucknow, Faizabad, and Varanasi. Why? Because there is no institutional mechanism or protocols for the police forces in multiple States to collaborate and share information in the same fluid, seamless ways that terrorists do. In this particular case, different State police forces all had knowledge of a part of the picture – but there was no one to put the puzzle together.

It isn’t hard to compile a long list of comparable failures to collate and correctly interpret intelligence: the Indian Institute of Science attack in Bangalore, or the Mecca Masjid bombings in Hyderabad are stark examples. While it is easy to blame the police or intelligence services for these failings, India’s politicians and people must look hard at the institutional weaknesses that underpin them. Unlike many other countries, India still has no comprehensive criminal-intelligence database available to all end-users in real time. The sale of chemicals that can be used to make explosives remains unregulated. The Intelligence Bureau, which coordinates inter-State counter-terrorism operations, is hopelessly short-staffed and under-funded in comparison with its global counterparts. Setting up modern systems needs both will and hard cash – and here, both the State and Union governments have come up short. Fighting terrorism needs a clarity of purpose and a strong focus but India’s responses to terror have, for the most part, consisted of setting up committees. In 1999, one such committee – a Group of Ministers who considered national security reform – came up with a blueprint for change that won acceptance across the political spectrum. Some of it suggestions have been acted upon; most have not. While border security measures have improved, the promised enhancement of the country’s technical intelligence capabilities has been slow while the necessary upgrading of human resources capabilities has just not happened. The Indian people deserve an explanation – and more important, urgent action.

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