Over the last few weeks, the gridlocked roads of Mumbai have occasionally been greeted by the rather incongruous sight of an Armoured Personnel Carrier (APC), parked near a busy junction or tailing a Ganesha immersion procession. Travel advisories warning of the possibility of terror attacks have come from even as hardy a country as Israel and spooked visitors. The US Consulate was first off the block with a security drill last week and the Mumbai Police followed it up with one of their own near the mission and at some malls, showing up with commandos and the APC.

It has been 10 months since the November 26 terror attack, and local as well as foreign security establishments have been unable to hide their nervousness in the face of the series of opportunities for the jihad factory across the border: the Ganesha festival, followed by Ramzan, Jewish holidays, Dushera, Maharashtra elections and Diwali. Or the fear of just a random day on the calendar such as November 26 becoming victim to the larger geopolitical crisis in South Asia. And now, a respected American newspaper writes about how the Lashkar-e-Toiba has actually grown in strength and that the Pakistani establishment has pretty much been unable to do anything about it, and more attacks in India cannot be ruled out.

The APC, therefore, is not as much a surprise — even though it would seem more at home on Residency Road or at Lal Chowk in Srinagar — as it is a tactic, one of “area domination” that sends out a clear signal that forces are present and ready to take on the enemy. It is a good deterrent but never fool-proof. Not in the face of the much larger tactical games being played across the border with such regular and predictable frequency that it would be insulting India’s intelligence if it isn’t seen through. To be fair to diplomats who have turned grey dealing with Islamabad and its games, there is an awareness in South Block that the India-Pakistan engagement in the last decade or so has become more a game of chess. And one that they don’t have complete control over even when it comes to their own moves because of the overarching political hand that makes and guides policy as it rightly should.

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