Although the internal security establishment is rather clueless on which group conducted the last serial blasts in UP courts, little effort has been made to go beyond the usual suspects of HUJI, Jaish or Lashkar-e-Toiba groups. Not one major terror strike since June 2005 has been completely solved by the internal security agencies, yet the operational head, inexplicably, has been given a prized posting abroad. While there is mounting evidence that critical answers to all these terror strikes lie between Ghaziabad and Bijnore, the government is still to summon the courage to take action, given the political sensitivities involved.

Modi’s victory shows that people want a strong ruler who is proactive and has the courage to take the fight to the terrorist camp. Today, Indian entrepreneurs and people at large do not need government support in the form of licences or quotas. They just want the government to provide a terror-free or violence-free environment, so that they can get on with their job. Like it or lump it, Modi was perceived by the majority of Gujaratis to have provided just such an environment.

With 2009 general election only 14 months away, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and the Congress Party must realise that national security is very prominent on the radar of the electorate and that its own managers have increasingly become a liability. Shivraj Patil may be the best home minister that India ever had as far as 10 Janpath is concerned, but the ‘consensus man’ just does not inspire confidence among his own bureaucracy and paramilitary chiefs. National Security Adviser M.K. Narayanan had the gumption to warn Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states about an impending Al-Qaida strike on their oil installations, but still does not know who bombed the Makkah and Malegaon masjids. He gives chits of credibility to a beleaguered Pervez Musharraf in Pakistan even before the Americans, but negates any initiative that his prime minister wants to take on either Kashmir or Siachen. To add to that, interventions by the Centre’s interlocutors on Kashmir are kept hanging. It is said that this window of opportunity could be used by the prime minister when the time comes. A similar indecision marks dealings with insurgents in the Northeast.

... contd.