Comment

Who is accountable? 26/11 was a national tragedy, and if responsibility is not fixed and remedial action not taken, it’s a disaster that will happen again. A fortnight ago, this column had said that the resignation of the Union home minister, the state chief minister and the state home minister weren’t enough:ministers, after all, are responsible for overall policy and direction, day-to-day implementation of those policies is in the hands of bureaucrats. Yet no action had been taken against any civil servant.

Thankfully Maharashtra’s new chief minister has now ordered an enquiry which will look into what the state’s IAS and IPS officers were doing during those agonising 60 hours when Mumbai was held hostage by the terrorists. What was their assigned role? What was the level and mechanism of coordination? Who was supposed to be the leader of the anti-terror action? Was it the state’s home secretary or its chief secretary?

Was one of them to lead the operation and coordinate the actions of the police, NSG commandos, naval commandos and firemen? You didn’t have to be an expert on terror to see that the operators at the Taj Mahal and Oberoi hotels and at Nariman House didn’t have a central command structure and that each group more or less worked independently, though most of them were happy to let the NSG take over. Since that is the case, should the commander of the NSG be the designated commander of the whole operation or will that responsibility be a distraction to the NSG’s core operation?
In case the NSG commander is not to lead the whole action and a secretary to the state government is the designated leader, will a civilian be able to handle what is a quasi-military action?

This column had also suggested that if accountability means anything, the chiefs of India’s navy and coast guard should be asked to put in their papers. Even if they don’t go, should we not know what remedial measures are being taken so that this doesn’t happen again? We do need to know the broad contours of what the home minister plans to do in the near future to improve national security.

In the absence of any information, a lot of panic reactions have set in. Ratan Tata,for example, has said that the Taj will set up its own security systems. The police have been sanctioned modern weaponry, including AK-47s. (A little aside here: one newspaper report said ata meeting chaired by the new chief minister, some top police officials suggested that AK-47s should be purchased from the grey market to save money. This truly boggles the mind. If the police brass is aware of a grey market for this deadly weapon, should they not be trying to shut it down rather than talking of patronising it?)
I have spoken to some very senior retired (and much decorated) police officers and they have expressed alarm at what they see as knee-jerk reactions. According to them, AK-47s should not be given to the police force because it’s not a street weapon. A precision firing pistol is what is required because it has to be aimed at a specific target in a crowd, whereas an AK-47 in the same situation would causea huge number of casualties amongst innocent by-standers.

This is not to say that modern weapons should not be acquired; they should be, but kept at specified safe locations, only to be used in an emergency of the 26/11 kind. And am I the only one to get the disturbing thought of how a weapon like an AK-47 could be misused? Suppose a cop with one of these guns in his hand, suddenly goes berserk?
Or consider the possibility ofrogue policemen misusing this new and deadly fire-power asa weapon for intimidation and extortion?

If alay person can raise so many questions just using common sense, you can imagine what complex conundrums can be foreseen by an expert panel. That’s what we need,a quick-thinking, quick-acting group which takes an over-view and comes up with swift, rational recommendations. And yes, we also need to fix responsibility, and make people pay for what they’ve done. Orhaven’t done.

The writer comments on social issues