Friday, November 28, 2008

India's 9/11 (part 2)

Okay here are a few more thoughts:

1. What if we cancel white elephant deals like buying an old warship like Admiral Gorshkov and use the $2 billion to create an urban counterinsurgency force with the latest in training and equipment? Maye we can just train and arm the current NSG better!

2. What if we decide to have a moratorium on all elections for 5 years and use the money saved to replace the policemen's trusty bamboo lathis and 303s with submachine guns and the flappy cardboard "bulletproof" ponchos (for want of a better word) with Kevlar?

3. What if we institute the draft, where every person between 18 and 20 gets a compulsory one/two years of army experience, like Israel, so that everyone has some knowledge of what to do in emergency situations?

4. Dunno, but here's another thought. What if we have templated rapid action response plans based on a 100 hundred hypothetical emergency situations, so that it does not take 36 hours to realize that the terrorists might be watching TV inside and knowing what is the next step to be taken by the army!

5. What if the PM and Leader of the opposition decided to work as a national government for 3 years to ensure that:
a) all decision are taken by consensus
b) no decision will be opposed for the heck of it
c) all decisions are taken in the national interest

Radical thought, eh?

6. What is Mulayam Singh and company, AND the CPIM politburo are arrested for sedition, for aiding and abetting terrorism, and generally acting against national interest?

Ok, now I am floating into pipe dream category. Scratch the last one, but I believe that all the others are practicable, if there is political will and genuine love for the nation.

Thursday, November 27, 2008

Our 9/11

26th November is our 9/11.

I don't know why, but the fact is that this attack on Mumbai is different from all that has happened before. Bomb blasts are one thing. But this is unspeakable, maybe because this is so preventable. A little better security, a little better anticipation, and we could have given a far better answer to those bastards. Consider the following:

1. What if all hotels had emergency exits, smoke alarms and enough space around them so that fire engines could reach even the floors easily?

2. What if the fire engines and firefighters had better equipment so that they could reach higher into tall buildings is required? What is they had access to floor plans of all the major buildings and complexes in their vicinity. What if these plans were all fed into a central database accessible by all emergency services?

3. What if there were a protocol for all armed services to work together seamlessly in the event of domestic terror attacks?

4. What if they had better equipment than "bullet proof" vests that flap in a weak breeze?

5. What is there is a laid out response plan for several different terrorism situations? Step-by-step response levels so that it does not take 20 hours to realize that cable connections to the hotels should be cut to prevent terrorists from knowing what was happening outside?

Sigh...more later...I guess