This week I would have liked to write about some peacetime subject like the Environment Ministry’s latest efforts to clean the Ganga or the World Bank’s new report that shows what a mess there is in Indian secondary education. At 40 per cent, our enrollment rate is worse than Bangladesh and Vietnam, which is beyond disgraceful, but what hope is there for peacetime subjects in a week in which huge chinks in national security got exposed. Within hours of each other last Thursday came attacks from our two biggest civilian enemies: jihadis and Maoists. Had they colluded they could not have proved more convincingly that India’s defences are no stronger than a tattered curtain.

How can the Indian Embassy in Kabul be targeted by an Islamist suicide bomber within a year of the last attack? Did we do nothing to strengthen its security perimeter? And, if we did, how was it so easily breached? After the last attack on July 7, 2008, that killed 58 people, including an Indian Brigadier, a senior diplomat and two security personnel, it became quickly clear that the ISI was involved. American intelligence agencies intercepted communications that proved this. What did our Prime Minister do when he got this information? Did he take the Pakistani government to task? Did he make it clear to the world that a civilian government in Islamabad had not reduced even slightly the Pakistani Army’s involvement in jihadi terrorism?

It is obvious that whatever efforts he made were as usual mild and ineffectual or why would President Obama have agreed last month to give the Pakistanis an annual grant of $1.5 billion for the next five years? It’s true that the Americans are insisting on some stringent conditions this time. They want more tracking of where the money goes but General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani has said aggressively and publicly that he will not tolerate any infringement of ‘sovereignty’ so it’s very possible that Pakistan will get its grant anyway. Undoubtedly, some of this money will go towards financing groups like the Lashkar-e-Toiba whose stated objective is to destroy India. The fact that the Pakistani government is unable to arrest Hafiz Mohammed Sayeed is proof that he continues to have intimate relations with the ISI.

... contd.