The mediocre standards of plot, script and logic that characterise mainstream Bollywood cinema are sufficient to mark Black Friday by Anurag Kashyap as a remarkable piece of work. As a look into the banality of evil that marks most terrorist outrages in our country, the sheer ordinariness of the perpetrators of these horrific acts of violence is perhaps their most disturbing feature. As a cultural comment on the recurring crisis of our times, Black Friday squarely captures the terrorist challenge and the state response for what they are: a dance of death between the sure-footed, fanatical and focused terrorist on the one hand and an ill-equipped, ill-trained, blundering, bureaucratic police structure, on the other. The price of this ill-matched tango will always be paid as it was in Hyderabad last Saturday by ordinary citizens. The tally this time: 44 dead, dozens injured.

It is no surprise then that India is the second worst sufferer of terrorist atrocities in the world in the past three years - after Iraq, that is. This in itself should be a reminder that for all our chest-thumping about 9 per cent growth, when it comes to terrorism and the inability to prevent such atrocities, we share space with some of the most dysfunctional and damaged societies in the world. This distinction by itself should ordinarily suffice to make the task of modernising our police forces one of the top public policy priorities in our country. Yet, if you look at the order of legislative business, our elected representatives clearly think otherwise.

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