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PUBLIC attention in the last few weeks has predictably focused on the latest incident of serial blasts in Mumbai. Coming as they did within hours of blasts in Kashmir targeting tourists and civilians, they heightened fears about a new phase of cross-border terrorism. Equally predictably, the grief and outrage gave rise to renewed demands for tough action – learning from Israel and pursuing a policy of ‘hot pursuit across the borders to dismantle the infrastructure of terror’ and reintroducing a POTA like legislation to strengthen the security apparatus. While there is relief that the government has so far resisted these demands, preferring instead to pursue a diplomatic strategy of pressurizing Pakistan, the overall response of the Indian state, confused and contradictory, hardly inspires confidence.

Most people today understand that terrorism is no routine law and order problem, that tracking down, apprehending and convicting those responsible for acts of terror may involve compromise with individual freedoms and cherished human rights. Such has been the global rationale for strengthening existing laws or introducing new ones. Yet, even in countries with a better human rights record and more durable institutional mechanisms to protect individual freedoms and rights, the experience of misuse of such legislation is troubling. Just think of the Homeland Security Act post 9/11 in the US or the blot that Guantanamo Bay represents.

Our own record with POTA and its forerunner MISA makes for dismal reading. A combination of misuse and non-use resulted in the incarceration of many people, innocent and guilty, often with no connection to any kind of terrorism. It bears repetition that even under provisions suiting the prosecution, the conviction rate under POTA remained pathetically low and a vast number had to finally be released without even a trial. Worse, the overlay of ethnicity with militancy/terrorism – the Naga and Mizo insurgencies in the North East, the Khalistani militancy of the eighties, and the presumed links between international Islamic terrorism and the current acts – resulted in a targeting of communities, further straining our already stretched social fabric.

The security agencies invariably lament the laxity in law, demanding further accretion of powers – arrest without warrant, long periods of detention without trial, and so on. Sometimes, though unofficially, arguments justifying torture and extra-judicial killings are also advanced. Yet, despite the many takers for ‘an extraordinary situation demands an extraordinary response’, is the ‘collateral damage’ of hundreds killed and disappeared, many more tortured and killed and communities stigmatised as ‘anti-national’ ever worth it? Do we not in the process of ‘saving the state’ lose more than a little bit of ourselves, the very qualities that define us as a civilized people and nation?

The fears about special restrictive legislations would be considerably allayed if only the protagonists, in addition to foregrounding the difficulty in securing information and conviction under normal criminal law, also outlined the oversight mechanisms that they find acceptable. This would be one indication that our security agencies are sensitive to potential excess and abuse. To request greater powers without safeguards is a sure step towards an authoritarian state.

The current railing against international Islamic terrorism and the demands for a more stringent law also diverts attention away from more serious domestic shortcomings – our collective inability to professionalize intelligence gathering and counter-terrorism agencies, eschew from reactive and blame-mongering politics, and putting into place social policies and programmes that address the alienation and marginalization of neglected communities and regions.

Would it not be far more productive to examine the links in the chain which connects the abstract idea of attacking the foundations of the Indian state with the explosions that kill and maim people? Surely the groups which planned the attack have local support – be it the criminal underworld or ideologically indoctrinated alienated and marginalized youth? Whether or not we can successfully pressurize Pakistan to rein in the Islamist groups based in its territory, what prevents us from exposing the links between sections of the police force, the criminal mafia and the terror groups, as also elements within the political class?

There is no foolproof strategy against a committed group of terrorists, one willing to sacrifice its life in service of the cause. What, however, is feasible is to reduce its likelihood of gaining local recruits, not by stigmatising a community but by instilling confidence in a shared future. Instead of adding to the paranoia of a society under siege – we would do better to focus on our intelligence and investigative wings to track down on the domestic elements in the terror chain.

Harsh Sethi