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Union home minister Shivraj Patil’s finicky sense of sartorial propriety has understandably come under harsh scrutiny. There are some who believe that the media has been unduly nasty and intrusive, but I have no such compunctions. The media is not blameless in all matters, but how personal idiosyncrasies affect the running of a ministry or nation is definitely under the purview of what makes legitimate news.

Mind you, whether Mr Patil wore three outfits made by the same tailor on one day — or one outfit made by three tailors on three different days — is obviously not the crux of the matter. If he wants to be a dude or a dandy, that is his prerogative. But when bombs are going off in the country with such alarming frequency and killing scores of innocents, I’m afraid whatever the home minister does, says and wears will necessarily be assessed with a rather heavy dose of cynicism.

With due apologies to Jesus Christ for getting the time line topsy-turvy, even that gifted musician-king Nero has had to bear the cross of history and is best remembered not for his wonderful compositions, but for fiddling away while Rome burnt. The onus of proper governance — in the current case, ensuring the safety of the nation and its people — cannot be shrugged off, like one more change of clothes.

That said, is Mr Patil’s inability to tackle the problem a good enough reason to change his portfolio, or does it give more reason to change laws and make them draconian, as is the demand from hawkish quarters? Evidence about the efficacy of the latter measures is scanty, and even after that, mixed. Indeed, what is clearer is that the draconian laws are more likely to be misused, oftentimes leading to graver issues.

Some years back I was speaking to a ‘top cop’ from Maharashtra who explained that some “unforeseen and unfortunate casualties while cleaning up a serious problem are inevitable”, so that we don’t remain a ‘soft’ state. While such sentiment purports to drive the process of crime elimination ‘pragmatically’, and has found some favour the world over, to my mind, it remains a dangerous position to take.

Even a single innocent killed is not just an ethical abomination, but can also lead to wide-scale alienation and oftentimes compound the problem as has been seen in cases as disparate as the one at Abu Ghraib prison after 9/11 or, nearer home, involving Khwaja Yunus. Not forgetting, of course, the more recent indictment of Mumbai’s ‘encounter specialists’ for serious sins of omission and commission.

That there should be zero tolerance towards terrorist activities is inarguable, but the provisions of existing laws to identify and eliminate the problem must be completely exhausted before some other measures are promulgated. A knee-jerk reaction can be as much an admission of systems failure or of political capitulation, not necessarily a solution.

The criminal justice system of the country, as many experts have consistently told us, is not lacking in substance, but proper implementation. The hard part, of course, starts from here. To counter indigenously promoted terrorism, the intelligence agencies need to become more robust, the police force more motivated. This is hardly likely to happen if the various organs of law enforcement are diseased by corruption, nepotism and politicisation.

Perhaps most importantly, people of the country cannot absolve themselves of the responsibility and have to be alert to the danger too. In a pluralistic society like India, as has become evident, it is a cop-out to stereotype terrorists: the brainwashed, violent nerds emerging from malfunctioning madrassas are as much an anathema as the gunks from the Bajrang Dal and its ilk with their genocidal intent towards minorities and liberals.

All such deviants need to be tamed, and much of this work can begin in homes, schools, colleges and everyday life in understanding each other. If that effort is made to complement the provisions of law that exist, we can still be a ‘hard’ nation, without becoming a police state.

Email: ayaz@dnaindia.net