Confusion Now Hath Made His Masterpiece

We can only hope that the inept handling of the Pathankot terror attack is the worst breach of national security and dignity that Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his BJP can inflict on the nation. However, the progressive scale of ineptitude that has been on display doesn’t give much hope.

For too long, it was not clear if all the terrorists had been taken out. Indian Express reported there was a blast even while defense minister Parrikar arrived at the base. Before that:

• The finance minister got into the act saying the siege was over; his statement was followed by reports of more gunfire.
• The home minister put out a tweet announcing the end of the attack and then deleted it.
• The prime minister was purveying wisdom on yoga and Hinduism.
• The defense minister was in Goa, meddling in its seaside politics.

Maybe the terrorists died laughing?

With the BJP, garish spectacle triumphs over quiet diplomacy. In February 1999, Atal Behari Vajpayee took a bus to Lahore with the famous Bollywood actor Dev Anand in tow and signed the Lahore Declaration. In May that year, India faced the Kargil war. With Modi, the Pathankot terror attack came just a few days after his PR stopover in Pakistan.

Meanwhile, the mainstream media appeared clueless. It reported every leak from the multiple agencies in charge, sowing confusion all around.Television news, now bigger and better than in 1999, simply passed off everything as breaking news. The more “intrepid,”not wanting to dig and delve into the hard story, went after the human angle: interviewing grieving relatives of the soldiers who were killed, calling them “bravehearts” like medieval Scots and “martyrs” like Islamic fundamentalists.

The newspapers were no better: they simply bought whatever line the government put out and played up the sentimental angle of sacrifice for the nation. They could not or would not distinguish between reports on the ground from the disinformation being put out by government sources.

In the event, the social media, some uncompromising publications like The Hindu and The Telegraph and a number of hardnosed commentators nailed the truth. Many questioned the national security adviser’s decision to deploy the Defense Security Corps comprised of retired soldiers to assist the National Security Guard at Pathankot. There was widespread derision of Mr Modi’s preoccupation with yoga and Hindu temples.

Mr Modi and his party have failed every test or serious governance so far. Remember: climate doesn’t change, people grow older.  Or Ganesha’s elephant head is proof there were plastic surgeons in those ancient days. Or India can never abuse nature:earth is our mother; moon is our “mama” (mother’s brother), echoing a popular Bollywood song of the 1950s.

This government is also demonstrably incompetent. Never mind Pathankot, even in Parliament, where it commands a majority in the lower house, Mr Modi has been unable to get anything done.Plus he suffered significant political defeats in Delhi and Bihar.Now there’s virtually no hope the BJP can win a majority in the upper house through 2019. As such, the first-ever majority government since the 1980s finds itself stymied.

Mr Modi’sbelligerence swayed many away from their normal predilections to vote for him in 2014; hence the majority. Cocky in victory, he denied Leader of Opposition status to Sonia Gandhi, president of the Indian National Congress. As such, his no-holds-barred approach permitted no negotiation and compromise with the opposition, a sine qua non in a democracy.

In just 18 months, he has shown he is simply not prime ministerial material. Never mind his obvious shortcomings, including gaffes about the flag in Japan and the national anthem in Russia, his cabinet is a distressingly low on intellect and ethics.

The much-admired campaign in 2014 beguiled the electorate: there was dog-whistle rhetoric about Hindutva; a slanderous paid media campaign against a government that delivered a decade of unprecedented prosperity and social welfare; a quixotic promise of a golden age. 

There’s one more thing in play: during the 2008 Bombay terror attack, Mr Modi, then Gujarat chief minister, showed up outside the Oberoi Hotel to castigate the government as soft and directionless. This was while security forces were still battling the terrorists.  In stark contrast, there has been no dissenting opposition voice in the matter of Pathankot.

Mr Modi’s future suddenly seems to be limited. The narrative of good governance is shown up as“a tale told by idiots, who strut and fret their hour upon the stage, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.” 

(An edited version of this post will appear in DailyO.in, January 2016.)

The Failure of the Political Class

The political class is like the public sector, which seeks to run a modern enterprise in a bureaucratic fashion that died abruptly with the Soviet Union. Likewise, politicians and bureaucrats and their cohorts in the academy try to operate a modern nation-state with command and control techniques more suited to the colonial era.

This contradiction was outlined in stark relief by the terrorist strikes in Bombay. Not even the most modern nation-state could have anticipated the strikes; however, the key is the response. Right or wrong, governments in the United States and Western Europe responded swiftly. Certainly in the US there has been not even a minor incident of terror since 9/11. Now compare that to the dithering, uncoordinated response of the Indian authorities. A cogent approach might, at the very least, have contained the number of casualties.

It took nearly ten hours for commandos to show up. Plus the police proved once again unable to do the simplest job of sanitizing the area. Instead, you had crowds of curious onlookers and the inevitable television crews and reporters. What’s more, television reporters, in their eagerness for “Breaking News,” were oblivious of the impact that their coverage could have, especially in keeping the terrorists informed about the commandos’ tactics.

Plus various spokesmen fed the media with information about police plans, government strategy and commando tactics in a random manner. It was clear that no one was in charge: not the union home minister, not the state chief minister, not the state home minister, not the NSG chief, not the police commissioner, not the state and central information ministries…it was a comprehensive failure of governance.

The question arises: could politicians and bureaucrats done any better? Of course, they could have. So why didn’t they? Why did it take the state chief minister so long to grasp the true nature of the attacks? Why did his deputy, who also serves as home minister, downplay the magnitude of the problem? Why did the center take so long to wake up: what was the national security adviser doing? What was the home minister doing? A National Disaster Management Authority office was established recently. Was this not a disaster included in its terms of reference?

Nevertheless, let’s not play the blame game; instead let us analyze why things went so terribly awry. My 27 years of intimate acquaintance with the political process leads to the following answers to questions raised above:

1. The position of a politician in any party is vicarious. Except for the supreme leader, no one is secure. This puts a premium on sycophancy that cascades through the ranks and explains why politicians wear rings, undergo elaborate religious rituals and are deeply superstitious. Their survival is not on the basis of performance or leadership; if he or she should in some way displease the leadership, it’s curtains. Neither chief minister Vilas Deshmukh nor any of the Patils (central and state home ministers) was capable of getting anything done except ceremonial posturing that in their minds would please their overlords. In such a culture, politics becomes process rather than goal oriented. Meaningless gestures and flatulent rhetoric are all you get. Hence Deshmukh’s “terror tourism” trip to the Taj with Bollywood celebrities or Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi’s gift of money to the family of a slain security officer. Compare that to 9/11, when the New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani took charge and directed the response.

2. National priorities are much lower in the politician’s hierarchy of values. Every situation he faces is judged on the basis of whether it strengthens or weakens his position. In addition to sycophancy, the political culture celebrates opportunism. This explains why the chief minister of a neighboring state rushed to Bombay and the Oberoi, where he swaggered before the assembled media, charging the government with failure and calling for new laws and what have you. If ever Modi was stripped of his recent image building sheen, this was it. He was shown up for what he is: a small-time opportunist with an agenda that is clearly too large for him. Meanwhile opposition leader L K Advani, with his refusal to support the government, wrote his obituary as a possible prime minister. Contrast that to solidarity shown by American and European politicians in the face of similar terror attacks.

3. Innovation and ideology are an intrinsic part of modern political cultures. Barack Obama steamrollered his way to the presidency of the United States with a high-tech campaign and a message of change. In India, Mayawati is feted for her ability to rabble rouse among the impoverished and oppressed Dalit castes, wearing diamond rings and disclosing mind-boggling assets. The BJP, with its pursuit of a communal ant-Muslim agenda, offers no real message other than hate and deceit. The failure of the party to emerge as a center right alternative is unforgivable and speaks to a lack of vision. On the other hand, the Congress is hopelessly paralyzed by various competing factions including a socialist left that seeks to return to the days of Indira Gandhi; feudal groups based on caste and religious affiliation; and a ruling progressive section that is held in the check by the various factions. The result is reform by stealth, a hesitant foreign policy and mindless populism.

Sapped by such a cancerous culture, the political class was simply incapable of responding to the terrorist assault on Bombay.

an edited version of this column appeared in the times of india, december 4, 2008

Eyewitness to Terror

BATTLE GROUND : St Xavier’s College approx 9.40 p.m. onwards

"There's been some firing at V.T. station," he said. It didn’t sound too serious. But within minutes, the scenario changed - and how! TV channels blared the news of a possible gangland gun battle at Leopold's Cafe, in Colaba. By 10.15 pm, frenzied reporters on all channels screamed, "we have a terrorist attack…shooting at the CST station reported….and they have entered the Taj Hotel in Colaba."

Suddenly, unexpectedly, all hell broke loose around St. Xavier's College. Machine guns fired (sounds very different from the ' rat-a-tat ' that we hear in movies) and grenades blasted around us. We listened in hushed, frightened silence to the deadly news that the 'atankvadis’ – terrorists- were in the neighboring Cama Hospital premises. Some of us huddled in the recreation room before the TV; some, standing on the long third floor terrace, watched disbelievingly at rifle-toting commandos enacting battle-like scenes before our eyes; and, some slept!

Standing in the corridor facing the Azad Maidan, Paul Vaz was visibly shaken. He saw a man shot in cold blood, just in front of our college driveway on Mahapalika Marg. Proof, that the ‘terrorists’ had scrambled past our main gates!

Peering over the railing of the terrace facing St. Xavier's School, Joe Velinkar and Arun watched in disbelief. Just a few feet from the College side-gate (the one facing Rang Bhavan), two men were crouched behind a white car with a spinning red light atop it. Then, with guns firing in the air, they "coolly," according to Velinkar, walked past the Rang Bhavan, and entered the G.T.Hospital complex.

Sometime between these two happenings, in this same area, brave policemen met their deaths in front of the Corporation Bank, which is situated at the extreme end of the college building. Bullets whizzed - dented the door of the bank and the red, steel electric sub-station. This is the spot where ACP Ashok Kamte (an alumnus of St. Xavier's College), Hemant Karkare, the ATS Chief (his daughter had completed her studies last year at Xavier’s) and Vijay Salaskar met their end.

Presumably, the young terrorists escaped in these officers’ Qualis van - the same Qualis that fired indiscriminately, killing two youth living in houses behind our college. And then later, on bystanders at the Metro junction a few meters away. But, within our college stone walls, surrounded by hours of bloody violence, someone surely was watching over us and our hostelites. That same someone is now prodding us to work harder - in and through our Institutions - to bring about change; to make a difference - in our beloved India.

If you prayed for us…THANK you

Lawrence Ferrao SJ

Fr Lawrie, principal of Bombay's prestigious Xavier Institute of Communications, was the celebrant at our daughter Pia's wedding in Goa, November 24, 2008. He sent me this eyewitness account.