— Abdun Nasir Ali Delhi

• A few terrorists hold a city like Mumbai to ransom. Innocent lives are lost and efficient police officers die. How could this happen despite the security alerts and despite the intelligence agencies at work? Terrorists strike India’s financial capital with impunity again and again and again. But we never seem to learn; at least, the government doesn’t. Mumbai will rise again from the ashes. But one suspects that such coordinated, well-planed and well-executed attacks can’t involve only domestic elements. There’s a strong possibility that there is some powerful foreign backing behind these operatives.

— S.N. Kabra Mumbai

Words don’t do

• As we express our heartfelt sorrow for the families of the victims, we should request the media to not broadcast and print the hollow words of assurance from politicians, especially those of the home minister, Shivraj Patil. Patil has spectacularly failed in his primary responsibilities as home minister. It is best that he keep away from Mumbai henceforth as well as every other site of terror and let professionals, such as the unfortunate Hemant Karkare, do their work.

— Hilda Raja Vadodara

• The Mumbai attacks show the moribund state of our intelligence networks. We can no longer predict attacks nor work out even a mechanism to prevent terror, let alone implementing such a mechanism to root out terror. We’ve now become the victims of endless terror. It’s no longer a question of if, but merely when and where the next devastating attack will come. After an attack, there’ll be the usual platitudes from politicians and then things will be back to square one: that is, another attack.

— Sourabh Jyoti Sharma

New Delhi

New approach

• It’s obvious that both the Union and the state governments had been sleeping. It is infuriating to find them clueless every time. All that comes from our political class is a knee-jerk reaction. Terrorists are exploiting the fact that we are a very porous and diffuse society when it comes to security. To top it all, efficiency doesn’t exist in the professional lexicon of the law enforcers in India. It is time a few heads rolled, beginning with the home minister and the intelligence chiefs. It is time for a fresh approach to terror.

— S. Kamat Goa