After Brussels, Indian Security Agencies Cannot be Complacent

Post-Brussels, India could integrate police and private resources to thwart terrorist designs, writes R K Raghavan.

Every time there is a major terrorist strike anywhere in the world, India shivers in fright. Any other reaction would be unnatural. But then, do we stop just with that wholly negative human response? If we did that and not prepare ourselves to frustrate any future attempt to tinker with our public order, we will only be encouraging more attacks.

Cynics would say that whatever we do, we just cannot prevent the terrorist from succeeding. This is only partially true. The fact that we have not had any major incident in India since 26/11 is certainly not fortuitous. It is an index of the strength of our preparedness and the thoroughness of our standard operating procedure (SOP). If despite this a few mishaps have happened, and a section of the police did not rise to the occasion, we need not despair.

This is because we seem to have done a few things right that have kept mischievous elements with an evil design at bay. Or else how do we explain that successive Republic Day parades in the national capital and in states, and assembly elections in a number of states have generally been incident-free. These are events which are particularly vulnerable and terrorists have not been able to cause major disruptions.