Are we safe?

This is going to be a sad dossier of a seemingly helpless individual. The question at hand is the ever burning “Are we safe?”. Well leaving the stock political leadership rhetoric aside and looking at the situation from a slightly different viewpoint, the answer is clear. It’s a resounding NO. Simply because there is a gross failure of intelligence infrastructure and a strong inaction on the part of the powers that be.

One thing is very clear – The terror infrastructure has spread its tentacles across the length and breath of the country. The network is growing and gaining active support. you try to track one down, another one takes its place – a proverbial V2.0 which is more determined, more powerful and more destructive than its predecessor.

There are basically 2 ways to attack the problem. Rather I should rephrase it to say that a two pronged approach is required to deal with the problem. Firstly, try to catch hold of and destroy the supply pipeline of these organizations. By Supply I mean ammo, cash and any thing of this sort. Secondly strike at the base and hit them where it hurts the most. Use brute force to clear out the organization in one clean sweep, bring back the POTA/TADA and whatever and deal the problem with an Iron hand.

But the current state of political inaction is surprising. After all blasts and its seemingly macabre aftermath we see our leaders scrambling for vote bank politics. Shame, it’s a big shame. And the intelligence publishes all reports after the damage has been done – what were they waiting for ? Dommsday to strike?

Its not that we cant do this. Punjab in the 80s was in the same state and terrorism was successfully eliminated. But it did require the iron fist of KPS Gill (the then DGP Punjab Police) and the backing of the government to cleanse a state. The problem at hand is a bigger one, with a network of terror cells expanding by the day and it will require much effort to clean even if the process is started today. We have a precedent and we can repeat it.


Till then , sad to say, security in India is a joke!

Questions

I was seething with anger when I read this report (The Report). If the intelligence had such detailed reports of which terrorist outfit had coffee with whom ,met with whom and did what not, were they sleeping over it all this while? Or is the entire piece a figment of some "experts" imagination? Hard to say but assuming the IB does indeed have such granular level of details I find the whole situation very confusing - Why didn’t they act ? Rather than publishing rendezvous records once the damage has been done?

Anyone with any experience in planning and execution knows the importance of "Plan B", In terms of mission critical projects there is a Plan C as well. Terrorist cells operate in the same fashion because the men are known to chicken out of panic and fear - good for us. The difference in their execution is that the cells operate independently and don’t know the other's whereabouts. Cell 1 does not know Cell 2 and in turn Cell 2 does not know about Cell 3, reason being if one cell cracks up then the whereabouts of the rest would not be at stake. The subsequent cell is activated only when the previous one is incapacitated. What’s new? Any well-read high school kid knows this.

As is known the penchant for dates. 16th December (1971-surrender of Pakistani forces in the then East Pakistan) and 26th December (Kargil Vijay Divas) are some of the more memorable dates that are known to be on the probable list of the terrorist’ favourite strike dates – for obvious reasons. Should not the threat perception be heightened in these days.

But what we have is a dismal political scenario with every political party trying to score brownie points over the attacks. Lives have been lost, children have been orphaned and our esteemed leaders are more interested in finger pointing. The congress is blaming the BJP as the attacks have happened in BJP ruled states, whereas a senior leader of the BJP is actually blaming the UPA for staging the attacks. Its the same story whenever the country faces such an attack. The leaders have to look beyond their petty skirmishes and look at the matter at hand. A matter of national security should not be a vote bank issue! please!!!!

What is required is a concerted effort by the law enforcement agencies. They should start cracking the whip ferociously, stake out the suspicious cells and be given a slightly free hand. A soft stand does not curb terrorism, we have a standing example in Punjab, we know what it takes to clear it – we have the state machinery, whats required is a little political backing to go all out and attack the problem at the root and wipe it out forever.

Hopefully we will have more answers than questions soon.

Random Gibberish

A few lines of random BLACK gibberish from the days of "Rumble in the Jungle"


Lost in thoughts
As the hours pass by
Scenes change, fail to pacify

All I see is blood and fear
All I hear is mournful tear

Am I the only one
Am I the only one
Pray to thee
Let this happen to no-one

Blood and Gore
Blast and tore
Whatever remains is too bleak
At the sun I take a peek

Now all is quite on the warfront
Silence beckons me
As I see the west bound sun
I pause to think of thee

I feel cheated

Neither did someone steal from me nor did anyone siphon away any money from me (if at all there is any to siphon that is). This piece is about the fact that I, an avid music lover, is fed up with the sad state of affairs in the Indian music scene. Yes I am sad and livid at the same time. Sad because there seems to be a strange sense of acceptance in the whole scheme of things, livid because these people peddle away other’s music and become the zenith of creative genius in the minds of unsuspecting and (in many cases) ignorant listeners.

The malaise is seriously a big menace in the Hindi Film Industry. In an age where numbers rule the roost, on an average a music director lends his “creative” talent to approx 20+ films – each album having 7-8 songs. If I leave out the recording days and an well-deserved break we are staring at a song a day!!!! A gargantuan task even for our highly paid “motley crew”. So inspiration is easy cheap and instant claim to fame. Pick up a best selling tune, lift it in parts or whole and put in some “Indianness” (Instrumentation, harmonization and beats) – not required these days in the name of fusion(!!!!)- lo and behold, the chart buster is there in front of you.

Is this a new malaise? Is it just the paucity of time that leads people to lift tunes and take a short-cut. Had that been the case, yester year directors should not have to face the problem. A question that has led me to do a bit of research and I came up with interesting observation. The Golden age of Hindi film music had some great plagiarists. And they got away with much of it in the pre-press, pre-internet era as there was not that much awareness about world music. Listen the famous symphonies of Beethoven, Bach, Mozart and you will find quite a few Golden Oldies “buried” in them.

Am not taking any names nor the sources where thy lifted tunes from (Inspiration says many of them). But the list is and everyone from Mozart to Miles (Bangladesh’s band) and everybody in between have their share of woes. Just goes to say that music transcends the barriers of time and space. And I, as an avid listener, would just request the “esteemed” directors to at least acknowledge the originals in their albums. Is it too much of an ask?

"The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources." Said Elbert Einstein.

Visit this site. They have done an excellent work in finding out the original credit for many a “chartbuster”.(http://www.itwofs.com/)

Politics of Colour

This views expressed are my own. I don’t have any political leanings and though I have had voting rights for nearly 8 years, have never exercised it; the likelihood of exercising it in the near future is highly unlikely. In general I wanted to write this more out of my personal frustration than anything else.


Seeing Red!!!!!!


I personally hailed the move of Mr. Karat heading the Red Bastion (in 2005) for some well known reasons. I considered him to be a man of honor, educated and well-respected in the political fraternity. At least the party would have a face amidst the hoodlums crowding it. Maybe he might usher in the new era of good governance and instill some positive direction to the politburo’s archaic thought process. Alas I was overjoyed too soon. All the pedigree he brought in was soon wiped off and the myopic leftist leanings soon ruled the roost. For some reason I don’t really understand the big Anti-US stand of the party and the violent objection to any sort of reform. The party seems to live in a time-warped state since the days of Marx and later Lenin and created a Utopian concept - led more than a generation to mere bogus dreams and created the big fat communist ideology. The result – West Bengal! even if the process of cleansing the state of the Marxist fallout starts today, it will still be eons before the wheel can be re-invented again. Till then Mr. Karat and his band of brothers would have thwarted many a good reform proposal, threatened to bring down some more “stable” government and in general sell the socialism, communism and all ***ism to a few more unsuspecting generations.



The Green Monster! !

Who says Monarchy is going away? Democracy is a mere puppet in the hands of the “G” family. The biggest achievement of the current government – OBC quota. A move with more far-reaching consequences than any other. This actually leads to the dilution of the outputs of the premier Schools of the nation – Tech, Med, Business et al. Can anything be sadder than this? A positive score that the government could score – the nuclear deal- is still on cards but let’s wait and watch for that. Minority appeasement process is another strong bone of contention. Handling of terrorism by this government leaves a lot to be desired, the home minister makes a major faux pas about a terrorist. Inflation is on an all-time high, a populist Budget tht won brownie points from none; tied between the socialism of the Nehru era and the economic reforms of the early nineties, the Congress seems to be hell-bent on reversing the development process it had kick-started nearly 2 decades back. the result – an all time high-inflation. Sorry but after 4 years at the helm there is nothing to right home about.

The Saffron Brigade!!

Torn between the strong hardline stance of RSS leaning members and slightly right leaning moderate party workers, the party is in a weird state now There is a constant leadership struggle with the ageing leadership kind of failing to rope in the new generation. The senior leadership is exhibiting serious senility issues and though a class of people might get a kick of astrologers and the name-calling tactics employed by Mr Advani, the vast majority seem kinda unimpressed. Since the shock defeat in the last general election, the party is yet to recover from the shock and even though it has successfully won quite a few state elections, even broken in to the south corridor the central leadership is an a state of big limbo. Somewhere amidst the likes of Modi and Jaitely and the over-dose of Advani the state of affairs are bleak. I still hail the golden quadrilateral project but probably the India Shining campaign was a bit far fetched. Can we expect some magic in the next general election – Going by the current state of affairs the writing is on the wall “Nada…….”