Posted by Maddy on November 29, 2008
\nI write this with tearful eyes as I watch the nation salutes its martyrs. The operation in Mumbai has come to an end after sixty hours. I have spent all these hours, like billion others in this planet, following what the enemy would call their most spectacular attack on Indian soil.
\nI am seething with anger and I am not alone. I have little connection with Mumbai , but does that not mean that I am any less angry.
\nI believe that we are a great nation with very competent people, but the defining hours from last two days have changed my views. How can so many competent people allow themselves to be ruled by a state which is so callous?
\nI have lived through this hell since my adulthood, first as a young sikh man who was a soft target for both the police and the militants during days of terrorism in Punjab.
\nI remember getting out of my house everyday and wondering if I would ever return back to its safety. The militants would drive and spray bullets on all and sundry on streets. Every loud noise would seem like an end. As a young Sikh, one would not know who would get you first, the police or the militants.
\nTwenty five years later, the grit and intellect of the people of India has transformed India economically. But, the same people have allowed its leaders to continue playing havoc with their lives.
\nThe people of India have chosen to be swayed by leaders, who haven?t been able to provide the very basic that the civil society needs. Security, water, roads, energy and health and education. I have always been proud of Indian Defence forces. But our political leadership with its skewed thinking and narrow vote-based agenda., has reduced even that to tatters…..<\/p>\n
\n……A nation can allow terrorists to strike once, maybe twice but to allow them to strike almost every month in some part of the country causing devastation and loss of human life is only a demonstration of a very weak and clueless nationhood. The fact that we can?t watch our borders and coasts using our enormous human resources (a billion and counting) and scientific talent befuddles me. It?s plain simple callousness. Nothing else explains why and how can we allow unauthorised men, arms and ammunition to be smuggled inside our country. Try doing that anywhere in the west or in china or even in Singapore?
\nThe answers lie in bringing paradigm shift in how we govern. We need to create a brand new police force, greenfield law & judicial systems, national identity system and a much different bureaucracy. The Prime Minister needs to show the same passion and fervour as he did while taking this country on nuclear energy path. He would know that Energy security comes much later than physical security.
\nIn next six months of his term he should do things to permanently change the dynamics of this country which will not win him the next election (and which in any-case he is bound to lose), but the nation will always remain eternally indebted and grateful.
\nAm I hopeful ? Yes , Do I have a choice?
\nPosted by Maddy on November 29, 2008<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Posted by Maddy on November 29, 2008 I write this with tearful eyes as I watch the nation salutes its martyrs. The operation in Mumbai has come to an end after sixty hours. I have spent all these hours, like billion others in this planet, following what the enemy would call their most spectacular attack […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-459","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-current-events"],"yoast_head":"\n