Intelligence failure

It has been a shocking weekend. It is the first time that Bangaloreans had to face a Bomb Blast situation. Just when we were getting a false security feeling, these terrorists have planned and conducted this heinous crime against humanity. But the resilient Bangaloreans have not given up in the face of this disaster. Although this is a good sign, it also shows how we are almost getting used to the fact of terror strikes in our homeland. People are not shocked anymore. It is no where close to the panic during the 1993 Mumbai blasts. A lot has changed from that fateful day. Almost all the big cities has faced the wrath of the terrorists. And the terrorists have greatly succeeded in their goals, creating fear in the minds of innocent people, creating political, social, communal divides and tensions. But one thing that hasn't changed is our Intelligence Agencies.

We have 2 Intelligence agencies at the Center level, the CBI and IB. And every state has its own intelligence agency, which is just another department in the police force of the state. I have some facts about these agencies:

• The GC Saxena committee probing the Kargil fiasco had recommended setting up a multi-agency centre and a joint task force on intelligence. However, nothing much seems to have followed the report.
• The agencies don’t even have a proper database of terror groups, finger printing or even photographs.
• There is no centralized database. So a culprit in one state is a free citizen in another state's record books!
• The Saxena committee also recommended recruitment of 3000 more IB agents but of the 3000 agents required eight years ago, 1400 have been hired, 700 of them just last year. The current requirement is arround 8000.
• There is no Federal Agency like the FBI in USA or the MI-5 in the UK. The opposition leader Mr L.K.Advani has ruled out a Federal Investigation Agency though, noting that the Indian Constitution doesn't permit it. "Moreover, there is no agreement among the state governments to create such an agency." What the heck, we create new laws for all kinds of stuff, why not for this?
  
• India has got only a single satellite for the purpose of tracking and assisting these agencies. That too, this satellite is a low level one, with no capability of recording live pictures. I heard that even Sri Lanka has one such satellite, to track the LTTE! and that country is smaller that Karnataka!
• There is no special law to deal with the terrorists. So a person who commits murder is treated as an equal to a terrorist! What kind of democracy is this? When there were laws like POTA, it was scraped as soon as governments changed.
• India's Defence Budget for 2008 was Rs 72,000Cr. The budget allocated to the agencies is a fraction of this. When will India realize that WE ARE AT WAR. But this is not the kind of war where two countries fight for no apparent reason, it is a war currently fought by all the nations against one force - terrorists. So there is not point in bolstering our Air Force buying F-18's, when we can't use them. Even if we enter a conventional war, if we are right, we will have the international support.
• After the 2001 strike on the twin towers, there has not been a single terror attack on the US, even though they have been in war with two Middle Eastern nations (one of them again for no apparent reason). It is not because terrorists are sympathetic to US, its just that they know it is near impossible to strike again on US soil. It is because they have Agencies which are ages ahead of ours, and they have tougher laws and intend to implement those.
  

I would like to conclude this topic by stating that currently we are a soft, weak and a vulnerable target to the terrorists. Unless and until we can find a way to PREEMPT these attacks, we will be in for more such shocking news. At this point, I think, IT IS BETTER TO HAVE A STRONG AND GOOD DICTATORSHIP RATHER THAN A WEAK DEMOCRACY.
My consolation to all those who have directly or indirectly suffered from the blasts.