Crisis management

Mumbai8217;s return to safety and normalcy after Tuesday8217;s grievous assault is a national project and the concerns relating to its vulnerability to terrorist attack is the concern not just of one state but the entire country. This was the message that urgently needed to be conveyed. By visiting Mumbai and addressing a press conference there, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh went some way in doing this. He also gave evidence of a new willingness on the part of his government to raise the tough questions which needed to be raised.

To pretend that Mumbai 7/11 does not and will not affect the India-Pakistan peace process would be to engage in dissimulation. It required to be iterated by the highest authority of the Indian state that a process premised on an assurance from Pakistan that its territory would not be used to sustain terrorist forces would lose its coherence if that condition is not fulfilled. For the first time, too, we heard this government talking of adopting a holistic approach to fighting terror, from upgrading electronic surveillance systems and improving ground level intelligence to evolving a rapid response plan to handle crises of such proportions. Presumably these words are based on some hard thinking at every level of the government8217;s security apparatus and presumably they will in turn inform every level of its functioning.

But as the prime minister tries to evolve some useful and necessary post-blast interventions, he appears to be getting scant help from his fellow politicians, both within his government and in the Opposition. For the chief opposition party to choose Narendra Modi as its principal icon for its anti-terror march in Mumbai is not just remarkably insensitive but supremely unintelligent. It is the unity of all sections of Indian society that will be the surest bulwark against terrorist designs, not the divisive rhetoric and legacy of a Narendra Modi. As for the prime minister8217;s ministerial colleagues, HRD Minister Arjun Singh and Minority Affairs Minister A.R. Antulay, they are doing no favour to the Muslim community by painting themselves as its principal benefactors. They only end up undermining their own government8217;s image and deepening communitarian divides. Mumbai and its courageous citizens demand a unified national response. And they should get it.