What146;s changed?

In a pattern that is becoming too familiar, terrorists identified the heart of India8217;s capital on Saturday evening as sites of ordinary transactions among residents. The geography of ordinary commerce, as our columnist today calls it, busy marketplaces that the city8217;s people gather at for a leisurely evening out, to find in the hubs desired objects of trade, an activity that harks back to the founding principles of cities. If the outrageous sadness of the occasion did not make the exercise so perverse, to look at the areas targeted, from Mumbai, Malegaon, Hyderabad, Jaipur, Bangalore, Ahmedabad to Delhi now, would be to map each city8217;s peculiar ways of sociability. The terrorist carries a clear reading of what makes our cities hum. The state8217;s inability to break the cycle of attacks, to be even seen to have done enough in an attempt to break it, carries danger for this sociability.

Because by doing so it is failing in meeting a key requirement in its contract with the people: to provide and enforce a law and order framework to free them from being on perpetual alert in everyday movements and transactions. More than four years into its term, the UPA government8217;s record on this account is looking even more shocking. Each terrorist strike must invite a repetition of charges against the government and its home ministry. That they have simply not done enough to bring closure to any of the terrorist incidents of the past four years, to follow leads thoroughly, to crack the organisations behind the incidents and, consequently, their ability to surprise at another time, another place. As the blasts in Delhi8217;s Connaught Place, Greater Kailash and Karol Bagh markets on Saturday evening show, both the time and place remain of the terrorists8217; choosing.

There is an innate resilience in modern societies for people to rally around their governments in the face of terrorist aggression. To carry on with everyday life with as much normality as can be mustered. To do so in the face of fear that the appurtenances of ordinary use 8212; in Delhi8217;s case, the municipal trash bins 8212; can be turned against them as instruments of terrorism. On Sunday, the day after, many of the city8217;s trash bins were seen emptied out and turned upside down. Yet, life throbbed on Delhi8217;s streets. But it would be a failing of India8217;s government and its politics if once again a sane response to terrorism was to be offered by the people alone.