More spies and police, modern gadgets and a national investigation agency are among a slew of measures India is taking to prevent militant attacks like the one on Mumbai last month, the home minister said on Thursday.The move comes after criticism that the government was not doing enough to prevent attacks, such as the one on India's financial capital that killed nearly 200 people, because there were vast gaps in its intelligence and security apparatus."I have found that there is a tendency to treat some intelligence inputs that are not specific or precise as not actionable intelligence," Home Minister Palaniappan Chidambaram told India's parliament in a statement about the Mumbai attack."Further, the responsibility for acting upon intelligence input is quite diffused."Chidambaram, who took over when the incumbent minister resigned after the Mumbai raids, admitted the coast guard and navy had intelligence that a vessel carrying militants could enter Indian waters.But the boat couldn't be intercepted and 10 heavily armed gunmen attacked several Mumbai landmarks during a three-day siege, a strike India has blamed on nuclear rival Pakistan.India's security agencies have long been criticised for lacking a cohesive counter-terrorism plan and poor intelligence gathering and analysis. Police are badly armed and often have nothing more than a stick with which to fight militants.Highlighting poor security coordination, Indian newspapers have reported that one suspected supporter of the Mumbai attackers who was arrested in Kolkata was in fact an undercover officer trying to infiltrate Kashmiri militant groups.Bombs and other attacks have hit India with such regularity that the country has been called one of the most dangerous places in the world. Some 400 people have been killed in about a dozen militant strikes this year.Bombing investigations too have followed a predictable drill: bombs go off, police round up suspects, usually Muslims, and then the trail goes cold.A flurry of anti-terrorism measures, critics and opposition parties say, has come to be the government's standard knee-jerk response to any terror attack.In September, India said it was building a new counter-terrorism centre and revamping policing and intelligence gathering after a series of bombs killed at least 20 people in New Delhi earlier that month.But Chidambaram is promising change."In the next few weeks and months, it will be my endeavour to take certain hard decisions and prepare the country and the people to face the challenge of terrorism," he said.Among those steps, he said, were decisions to create a Coastal Command to secure India's 7,500 km (4,650 miles) shoreline, fill vacancies in intelligence agencies, upgrade technology, raise new commando units and build counter-insurgency and terrorism schools.Chidambaram also proposed strengthening laws relating to prevention, investigation and punishment of terrorist acts."One of the bills is for setting up a National Investigation Agency," he said.
