Mumbai Blasts: Is India getting weaker by the day?

Mumbai, Jul 13: On July 13, 2011 SMSs started flooding on our mobiles about the unfortunate bomb blasts in 3 locations of Mumbai – Opera House, Dadar, Zaveri Market (famous for diamonds). This is the fourth major attack on Mumbai – first one was on March 12, 1993, which was a mastermind of Pakistan"s official guest Dawood Ibrahim; second one was on Jul 11, 2006 which caused serial blasts in seven local trains; third one was the Nov 26, 2008 which was a terror attack continued for three days leaving 166 people dead. 2008 terror attacks were planned by Pakistan"s official terrorist department ISI and now a three prong attack on the same day on Jul 13, 2011.

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We don't know yet who is behind Wednesday, July 13 attack. So let us not start pointing fingers until our government officially announces who are the prime suspects. As of now they suspect Indian Mujahadeen (IM) but details are awaited. No group has claimed responsibility so far. We wonder if it is a coincidence, just 2 days ago ISI"s chief Gen Pasha went to Washington DC to "revive" the ties. Ideally India and possibly the civilized world would have liked Washington to spank Gen Pasha to mend his ways.

The body language of Maharashtra Chief Minister Prithviraj Chauhan and India's shrewd Home Minister P Chidambaram were welcome. They handled the situation far better than the 26/11 attack.

According to reports, P Chidambaram was keen on moving out of Home Ministry, soon after the reshuffle he has been challenged for the first time since taking over as Home Minister after 26/11. Indians still believe P Chidambaram is the best option we have for the Home Ministry. After 26/11 we were told the National Security Guard would be on call 24x7 and could leave their base immediately to any location in India.

On Wednesday the first blast occurred at 6:45 PM, till 9:30 PM all we got to see on TV was "NSG is about to leave Delhi and Hyderabad to reach Mumbai". Aren't we moving at tortoise pace? However, chances are NSG had already left their base and the govt was not giving the exact picture to us to keep their plans being accessible to the terrorists. If so, we accept their strategy. If not, we Indians should be worried.

Indians are not weak, our politicians are

1. In December 2001, Pakistan successfully attacked the heart of our democracy, they attacked and killed the Police guarding the Indian Parliament. None of us really care for the families of the slain cops, that is the harsh truth. If a politician had died we would have seen a series of his/her statues all over the country.

The prime accused Afzal Guru is cooling his heels in the jails of Delhi. He has now even applied for a transfer to J&K prison. Why does our system even entertain such requests? Our political system prevents the hanging of Afzal Guru, thanks to vote bank politics. This applies to all political parties.

2. Come November 2008, Pakistan's Army and ISI attacked two five star hotels and a railway station, CST (Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus). The TV channels aired the rescue operations live and ruined the efforts of our armed forces. Mumbai's Assistant Sub Inspector Tukaram captured the lone survivors amongst the attackers – Kasab. Tukaram died, he is a forgotten entity today.

3. Just few weeks ago our sailors were freed from Somali"s thriving pirates, thanks to Pakistan's human rights activist Ansar Burney. However, chances are there that the government of India might have done something behind the scenes, but neither the citizens nor the families of the disowned sailors are aware of what our government did. Somali's pirates are not even a full fledged Navy of that nation. If we can"t take on the pirates, how can we take on terrorists?

4. On July 10, 2011, India suffered two major train attacks. The Minister of State (MoS) for railways, Mr Mukul Roy refused to visit the accident spot, he openly said let the Prime Minister go. After the Cabinet reshuffle on July 12, 2011, the new railway minister Mr Dinesh Trivedi said he visited the accident spot in Assam because his boss Mamata Banerjee asked him to do so. Does anyone in the cabinet respect and fear, yes fear, the Prime Minister? Doubt it.

All world governments are expressing shock and dismay over the incident. Everyone is asking us to remain calm. We need to understand the reality, only we can fix the problem. The world will not. The world will only send us flowers after such incident.

The root cause of India being a target is our thriving economy. We are not willing to go back to stone age, we will only move forward in spite of the government.