A day after terrorists armed with automatic weapons, grenades and RDX attacked the Chathrapati Shivaji Terminus, the Taj Mahal Palace Hotel, the Trident and Nariman House, all within walking distance of Mumbai’s financial district, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was on live television to deliver a message to the country.  For Indian business, already besieged by the fact that 10 men took a city of 13 million hostage, and looking to draw courage and inspiration from the political leadership, that deadpan speech and its lack of a significant message was a massive letdown.

As the siege ended, analysts estimated the economic losses of the Mumbai attacks as 50,000 crore rupees. A travel company said the Indian travel business was hit with a double whammy: the global economic recession and then the Mumbai terror attacks.  The chief of a large hospital chain estimated that it would take months if not years for foreigners to venture into India for medical treatments given the state of security in the country’s hotels and hospitals. Some foreign companies were rumoured to have put their expat executives on the first flight home. No surprises then that neither the man on the street nor the business leader in his office is comforted that the taxes they pay can guarantee them a feeling of security.

On reflection, the Mumbai attacks stink of gross ineptitude both on the part of the political leadership and administration in Maharashtra and Delhi. The elite National Security Guards force is based in Delhi, the centre of India’s politics, as if that is the only city in India that deserves protection.   The commandos could not leave immediately because their plane was in another city.  If this is not hopeless crisis management, ask any corporate head what is.

For a full ten hours or so after the start of the Mumbai attacks, its topmost police officials were nowhere on the scene, except for the three top officers who perished in the gunfire. The top-most officer by rank at any of the sites was a sole deputy commissioner of police at Taj Mahal Hotel. The top brass arrived at the scene after daybreak and an investigation into their whereabouts until then would be revelatory.  If the entire political and administrative set-up were to be judged by corporate accountability standards, more heads would need to roll and not just of the three politicians. 

In the past few years, Mumbai has been a target of repeated terror attacks.  Yet, the city that is the engine of the country’s economy has no crack force to fight terrorism.  In the 12 months gone by, there have been at least a dozen terrorist attacks in cities such as Bangalore, Jaipur and Hyderabad. The chief ministers of most states have woken up to petition the central government and its byzantine bureaucracy to station commando units in their cities.

Increasingly all across India, companies that do business are gradually lowering their expectations of the government and the politicians that run it.  They are operating their own power generation units, arranging their own water supply, building their own hotels and even running their own transport networks to supplement the inadequate public systems.  Bangalore’s outsourcing companies have become conscious of terrorist attacks and have metal detectors, entry point checks, and boundary patrolling and even electric fences in place.

After Mumbai, large businesses all over India will soon have to put their own commando networks in place too.  Even if they do, in cities like Bangalore private security agencies can only use dated single or double barrel guns, nothing more sophisticated is permitted under current government regulations.  Companies will be forced to add terrorism as high risk and add it to their cost of doing business. Foreign companies will be even more wary.  If a global CEO were to visit the country, where would he stay and would the local administration advise him to make his own security arrangements? If General Electric were to strike a business deal in India, would they need to add a large security cost to their projections?

Last Saturday, as Tata Group Chairman Ratan Tata stood outside the hotel built by his great-grandfather watching the Taj Mahal Hotel being destroyed in last week’s full-fledged battle between security forces and terrorists, he was his usual civil self, restrained in his criticism of politicians and the administration.

But everywhere in India frustration and anger simmers just below the surface.  It is time business leaders got together for some straight talk, instead of continuing to be nice to politicians, pandering to their egos and opening their purse strings whenever it is demanded of them.

saritha.rai@expressindia.com