Political fall-out of the Mumbai terror attack

As the dust begins to settle and a hurting Mumbai (and India) starts limping back to normalcy- as near “normal” as possible, under the circumstances- our politicians have got back to doing what they do best. They have begun the blame game and the search for scapegoats. Don’t get me wrong- I think Shivraj Patil should have resigned a long time ago. But all this talk about what intelligence was given or not given and “he said, she said” is disgusting. And frankly, bulk of the work is anyway done (or not!) by the bureaucracy. And unless that layer of government gets its act together, Chidambaram too may not have much success.

I think the PM did a good thing in calling an all-party meeting to discuss options and reach consensus (as much as is possible) on the next steps. But I was shocked to see the TV headlines that Advani chose not to attend because of his commitments to election campaigning. Is electioneering of higher priority at this time? Or is it that the BJP does not want to participate in decision-making at this time so that (God forbid), it can later distance itself from any failures of such decisions?

I think we the people of this nation need to know our political leaders’ real position on combating terror. A “my way or the highway” attitude which reeks of political high-handedness is definitely not worthy of my vote- irrespective of who the leader is or which party s/he represents.

Children of a lesser God?

The media has extensively covered the funerals of the various police officers and NSG commandos who laid down their lives. I am glad they did this, because the nation- indeed, the world- must know how brave our soldiers are. But spare a thought for the employees of the Taj, Oberoi etc. who lost their lives. They too lost their lives in the course of their duty. If anything, the cops and commandos are trained for such work and in some way, know that each day could well be their last. But not so the civilians. Do chefs and waiters ever expect to come this close to death during their daily work? I wish some channels and newspapers will carry stories of these brave sons and daughters of India as well.