Still Vulnerable (Mumbai Blasts, 2011)

More blasts in Mumbai, more people dead and all our politicians seem interested in is blaming each other and giving speech after speech telling people to remain calm, stay at home, not worry. My question is why we should remain calm, why should we sit at home and not worry. I watched someone on CNN-IBM say last night that “it is the fundamental right of every citizen to feel safe in their country”. Why aren’t the people we elected protecting this right? Why are we as citizens not getting more pissed off at them?

I remember after the 2008 attacks in Mumbai the entire nation had come together and there were marches and candle light vigils all over. CMs, deputy CMs, Home Ministers lost their jobs but nothing has changed. We are as vulnerable as before. Just like the fight against corruption is an on-going and never ending effort so is the fight against terrorism. So what is the solution? Should we also go the US way and start attacking countries that breed and support terrorism? Can India even handle that kind of war against terrorism? And even if we can, should we be taking this course of action? Aren’t we the country of Gandhiji who taught us non-violence?

Too many questions and I don’t have the answers. But this has to be stopped at the roots. We need to secure our borders; we need to educate our youth in the right way. Communism, the attitude that we are better than others, that my religion is better than yours, that my way of life is better than yours, discrimination, these are the evils we need to root out because these are the root causes.

I want the youth of the country (you and me) to get up and say that we are not going to stand for this. We want accountability but more than that we want to see action and tangible proof that action has been taken to secure our country and its citizens. Give out contracts and privatize the army if the Government is unable to deal with corruption and give us results. They protect themselves, there crores of rupees spent on security for even minor politicians. But these are not the people who are attacked. We are the vulnerable ones. Why not form a committee similar to the Lokpal committee to fight against terrorism. If civilians cannot be involved in the strategy at least we have a right to know where and how the money is being used. There has to be a an investigative report to account for the failure to prevent these recent blasts. Do not give us platitudes and play the blame game because we are not stupid and tired of getting killed in blasts every few months.