The resignation of Union home minister Shivraj Patil has come not a day too soon. Reflecting the bitter public mood, we had urged the home minister in these columns on Sunday to put in his papers. We are gratified he has lost no time in doing so. Now we do know that for some time past the intelligence agencies have been consistently warning the government to expect an attack from Pakistan on Mumbai.
Such intelligence can never be pinpointed as regards time or location of attack. But the reports by the Intelligence Bureau and the Research and Analysis Wing were ominous in some of the details they offered, and they have proved to be accurate enough. The frequency and consistency of material contained in their reporting indicated quite clearly the direction in which enemy plans were moving.
It is the government which was not sufficiently attentive to the dire warnings. The Maharashtra administration was downright shoddy in its response. But so was the National Security Council secretariat, which took its own time interpreting and analysing the available intelligence. If the mood at the emergency meeting of the Congress Working Committee on Saturday was angry, and the tendency was to pointedly blame the home minister for the lapses leading to the fiasco in Mumbai, we may be quite certain this was on account of the fear of a popular backlash in the forthcoming Lok Sabha election, and a likely negative fallout in the Delhi and Rajasthan Assembly polls. If the Congress leadership had a surer grasp of political reality, damage control of this nature should have been effected long ago.
Taking urgent steps in the aftermath of Mumbai does amount to an acknowledgement of failure, any which way one looks at it. All things considered, it is reasonably clear that this is not enough to satisfy the public mood, which is grievously hurt. There is abroad a sense of national injury. Pakistan’s protestations of innocence are not being taken seriously —neither by the people nor by the government.
Duplicity and obfuscation by Islamabad over nearly three decades on the terrorism issue have made Indians inured to phoney Pakistani denials. The overall desire in the country is to see that the terrorist elements in Pakistan are made to pay a heavy price. This cannot be achieved by simply amassing troops on the border, as was done by the government of Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee after the terrorist attack on Parliament House in 2001. Taking refuge in the so-called “coercive diplomacy” on that occasion was a dead giveaway that India was shying away from armed action. We are once more faced with a similar dilemma.
Given the situation in Afghanistan, and Pakistan’s Waziristan area being under the American scanner, Washington would not like Pakistan Army units to move from that region to face India in the event of an Indian deployment. We may be reasonably certain that the United States and its Western allies are urging India to take meaningful steps short of mobilising the armed forces. Those familiar with the nuances of state practice will no doubt recognise that other options are available, and a mix of variables can also be successfully attempted. But this calls for a wide national consensus and determination on the part of the government.
