When mindsets haven’t changed, how can we deal with another 26/11?

An eminent friend of mine had two visitors knocking on the doors of his office last Friday. They had come with a letter inviting him to an official ceremony at the Gateway of India to honour the martyrs of the Mumbai terror attacks. The ceremony was at 6.30pm on 26/11. The invitation came at 12.30pm on 26/11.

This tells you a thing or two about the government. The authorities knew in advance that they would hold a commemorative service. They knew this would take place on November 26, and that an appropriate place would be the Gateway. But they gave invitees only a few hours’ notice, which means they either woke up late or were not bothered to do things on time.

Am I being too fanciful if I say this reflects on the government’s preparedness for future terror attacks?  I don’t think so. Being ready is an attitude of mind: if you don’t have it, you don’t have it. If that attitude lets you down in organising an important ceremony, it will probably let you down in your overall preparedness.

This is not to say that things haven’t changed in two years. Before 26/11 of 2008, the Mumbai police had only 300 Kalashnikov rifles for a force of 40,000 men, their main weapons still being the good old World War II Enfield .303 rifle. (Even here, there was only one rifle per eight policemen). Their other weapons were equally old and inadequate: only 1,200, 9mm Sten guns, WW-II vintage, and 3,000 self-loading rifles.

The mental attitude referred to earlier needs to be reiterated here: Those 300 Kalashnikovs may have been a small number, but they would have been adequate to fight the terror attack. But a weird thing happened that November day when they were most needed: they were locked up in the armoury, and no one knew where the keys were, at least for the first crucial hours.

The improvements that have taken place include replacing the .303s with SLR rifles,  procuring M4 Colt carbines which can fire upto 900 rounds per minute at a range of 600 metres, as well as Swiss MP9 sub-machine guns for close combat. Similarly, outdated pistols and revolvers are being replaced by 3,000 Smith & Wesson MP 9mm pistols of the kind used by the American police forces. In addition, sniper rifles, which can pick out targets 2.5km away, have been inducted for the first time.

Modern weaponry is only as good as the people who are going to use it. Are police personnel trained adequately for the job? There have been reports about a shortage of ammunition for training and of completely inadequate target practice for most policemen.

This again is a result of our mental attitude, which is made worse by a historical hangover: traditionally, policing in this country had not required the use of guns, except occasionally, in dealing with mafia gunmen or armed robbers, but there were special squads in charge of these encounters. What 26/11 showed was that armed invasion was no longer a problem to be handled by the army alone; now the police need to be ready too.

Yet two years on, here is the situation in the much talked about Anti-Terrorism Squads (ATS) set up in the aftermath of 26/11. As the first line of defence in any repeat attacks, they were formed quickly and 720 posts approved for the purpose. But currently only 300 of these have been filled up. A majority of the vacancies (90%) are in the vital middle rungs consisting of inspectors and sub-inspectors.

You won’t believe why this has happened. While creating 720 positions, the government decided that these wouldn’t be newly sanctioned posts but vacancies to be filled internally by recruiting from within current security forces. What this meant was that existing police units would have to give up some of their men.

They have refused to do so. And reports quote the Mumbai police commissioner as saying that he can’t afford to reduce his sanctioned strength. One recent report quoted the Maharashtra’s home secretary as saying, “we are trying to fill the posts on a war-footing.” From the look of it, the war is inter-departmental and it’s not helping fill up any vacancies at all.

When P Chidambaram was handed over the home ministry after the 26/11 attacks, he had spoken of several plans like setting up a separate ministry of internal security and a National Counter-Terrorism Centre which would coordinate the work of agencies like the Intelligence Bureau and RAW. As we know now, there were tell-tale warnings and signals of an imminent attack which were treated casually or not acted upon.

The most glaring of this was the one given by the US Intelligence on 16/11, which had intercepted a phone call from ‘somewhere in the Arabian Sea’ to a number in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir. The Indian Coast Guard was given this information, did a routine search and did not take further action. If this lead had been pursued carefully, there would have been no 26/11. Yes, ultimately, it does come down to an attitude of mind. And as late invitation cards show, that’s why we should worry.