Column

Mumbaikars, national and state leaders, and the media are finally compensating for putting the killings at Taj and Trident higher on the hierarchy of grief and outrage than the slaughter at CST.

And it took Aamir Khan and Rahul Gandhi to tell the nation that the life of every Indian counts. That feeling of protection and security, which the celeb sentiments afforded to Indians this week, is a historical attribute of Israeli society.

At any rate, the media was able to abandon class-based priorities which were driving, by default rather than by sinister prejudice, its coverage of the 26/11 horror. But will the government be able to calibrate its security response as swiftly?

To change its security assessments, the government will have to review its infrastructure biases. According to a 2006 estimate, only 9% of Mumbaikars use cars or two-wheelers. Let us assume that the figure grew to 15% from that point until the pre-meltdown phase this year.

There are no records to prove that prodigious jump of course, but we want to set up as watertight a case as possible. Even factoring in the dramatic projection, it means that 80% of Mumbaikars commute by trains and buses. We are not considering those who cycle to work or can afford to take an auto and/or taxi.

While air passengers benefit from stringent security, and armed marshals on certain routes, bus and train commuters get only patchy protection. Yes, the volume of train travellers makes it impossible to frisk every passenger. But can the government not attempt to remove some of the security impediments? I can think of one right away. Some weeks after the serial train blasts, I was in a ticket queue at Andheri station and was appalled that a police sniffer dog was being challenged by a stray.

The well-behaved dog and the handler were able to ignore the threat and focus on their business.I am a dog lover, but the petty distractions that our cops are exposed to really alarms me. Then there are the slums that clutch the airport and scores of railway tracks. The dark labyrinths were once thought to be only mild deterrents to development. The netas got the vote, the slums got bigger, and the investors just shut their eyes till they reached their hotels. But those dingy quarters where many hardworking, decent people live, are also vulnerable to infiltration. What should worry the netas is the proximity of some of the slums to railway tracks and runways. Should some subhuman want to fire a rocket and disappear, slums will prove to be an impenetrable maze.
raghu@dnaindia.net