WHAT IS WRONG WITH US?

Saturday, 10 April 2010

Can you be morally correct when you are drunk?
Now Playing: Cans of beer
Topic: And is a spade a shovel?

“There are various ways of looking at it”, said a friend who had recently become the Asia-Pacific chief of the world’s second largest investment firm. He shifted from his New York office to BKC, much to the chagrin of his wife. But his trepidation didn’t end there. The brazen sweet-heart deals across real estate sector, Indian bureaucracy and its attendant cost and the kick-backs while buying office equipment in private companies stun him. Need to say here that his insight into the world of glitz and glory are beyond reproach. When watching the footage of P.R. Swarup’s address at the North India Offices 2010-12 conference organised by Property World in Delhi, he exulted in disbelief. Swarup, who was the chief guest at our conference, said in his inimitable way that government and Planning Commission figures are usual a matter of theatrics.

What an office clerk presupposes as Rs10,000 would rise to $1-trillion by the time the estimates reach the Prime Minister.“The bureaucrats don’t understand that there can be a flip side to the story. When the government estimates $1-trillion to flow in by way of investments, from domestic as well as foreign direct investors, the spin-off effect on the economy can be humungous”, my friend said leaning back on his swivel chair. I kept munching the chapattis from his lunch box in mute acquiescence.

“Don’t you understand the government should never be taken at its word? The figures are all a matter of indication; if the same was done by E&Y or McKinsey the real figures would have come out. The government is always given to underplaying the causes as well as the effects”, my friend explained without prompting. “I am getting the drift”, I said again, just to let the conversation flow. “But why don’t people, especially the bureaucrats realize that there is going to be stupendous growth and economic activity directly related to these investments around the country. The aggregate investments and the growth in industrial activity around the infrastructure projects of $1-trillion would anywhere be about $4-5-trillion”.I looked at my friend agape. “That’s so bloody true”, I said adding, “and this kind of money is easy to raise from international players”. The debate went on, with me using all my professional acumen to keep it on even keel.

The evening ended with ice cubes in Budweiser at a pub near Kala Nagar.Two days later I took off with my friend from Schindler elevators for a drive through the old Mumbai-Pune highway. He has a rickety old Fiat Uno, which by comfort levels can compare with a Mercedes. But the ten year-old car had a telling effect on the ride through the tortuous and winding road that once was known for its day-long traffic jams. When we reached a place some ten kilometers away from Lonavla he swerved the car into a narrow muddy road. Minutes later he parked the car on the edge of a cliff.

We got down from the car and spread newspapers on the ground and squatted before they could fly away. I didn't notice my friend had a couple of beer cans with him taken from an ice box in the boot. But before he could stave the cans open I made a rider that he will not be driving back home.“Then who will do it?” he asked.“I will take the wheel”.“But you will be just as drunk as I am”.“Well, don’t be so presumptuous. I am not drinking if I am going to drive”.To cut a long story short, the day didn’t end in a damp squib even after the liquor cans were stuffed away ingloriously. By late evening I drove back to Mumbai and we were both at a former highly placed WTC official’s residence, sober and hearty.

The WTC official's son, who is known for his peccadilloes more than anything else, came inebriated and swaying. I always suspected most of his savings went in bottom-fishing United Breweries stocks. After delving into each other's sex life when we finally ensconced on bean chairs in his room, the WTC official's son talked about the grueling interview sessions he had with foreign players who were out to pitch for infrastructure investments through the IPC he was working for.The US-based global player had too many questions for the WTC official’s son about transparency and delinquency among their Indian counterparts.

Finally, the US based investment firm decided after confabulations with its US counterparts that it was not worth the while to get into major infrastructure deals in India, until they could see a modicum of cleanliness in transactions.“After all, it is illegal for US companies to be caught with their hand in the till in a third country”, said the former WTC official's son. “Sad, India lost another big player from the race. Do you think many will stay out because of India’s record in transparency?

Will we be able to get $-1trillion?” I asked still slightly unsure of the drift.“Naah, impossible. We should be happy if we manage to mobilize even half of that”, he replied promptly.“Who did you talk to in the US investment firm and where was this meeting?”“ His name is Ratish Jyoti, and is vice president. We met at his office at BKC”.Small world.

(As usual, this story though is true, the characters are chosenly part-fictional)

Posted by Anil Nair at 12:01 AM

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Thursday, 4 March 2010

For a nail the chariot was lost
Mood:

cheeky
Now Playing: How did the real estate dream go awry
Topic: And is a spade a shovel?

After having driven a Maruti 800 for over ten years, since he became old enough to have a licence to kill, Sachin decided to graduate to a Mahindra Scorpio. At 28, he was priming to get married, and he “preferred to stay with his parents after marriage” if his wife played ball. When Sadanand, a cloth merchant at Kapda Bazaar met him at Hot Plate, a eatery frequented by mostly students, in suburban Mumbai, Sachin was full of beans. Talking about the high prospects of property sector, home loans, cement and steel prices and the PE ratio of real estate stocks, he convinced Sadanand that he was a sub-broker out to find his next kill.

All through his conversation on that Saturday afternoon when orange juice and tea flowed incessantly, Sadanand stayed distant for long enough to make Sachin uncomfortable. Finally, Sachin sensing Sadanand's discomfiture, told him impishly, “I am not here to sell you anything. Though I am a sales man given to making a pitch every moment of my life, I am a humble HDFC home loan salesman”. His humility was revealed when Sadanand later asked him his monthly earnings. Embarrassingly for Sadanand, Sachin earned more than he did, and that also convinced Sadanand that his words about the industry would turn out to be prophetic. When the waiter in brown and white uniform turned up with the bill Sachin did not make any attempt to pick it up. Sadanand got a lesson in parsimoniousness that day.

_________________________________________

June 7, 2009

Mysore Palace The restaurant was dingy, dirty and dark. The smell was obnoxious. The far end of the restaurant had a single chair which meant there never was more than one customer at a time. Rahul disembarked from the bus, after all the passengers did, carrying his backpack in his hand. He saw Sumesh standing near the bookstall with his phone stuck between his head and shoulder and lugging two bags in each hand. Rahul presumed it must be Shailaja on the other end of the phone. This trip to Mysore was a salvage operation planned by Rahul. When Shailaja sent Sumesh the last SMS breaking up their three-year long relationship, Sumesh appeared badly shaken. For days he walked around like a zombie in his office at HSR Layout. At Rx Labs where he worked he had no interest in his latest Hathway project. Then his boss told him to take a vacation for a month. Rahul was equally stunned by Sumesh’s behaviour. Mysore trip was impulsively planned, and worse, inordinately delayed. Yet, the fun was good.

When a bus turned in to enter the depot it raised a cloud of dust, and a collection of thin polyethylene bags also went up in the air. Rahul gestured to Sumesh about eating something at the restaurant. Sumesh first raised his eyebrows to express shock at Rahul’s suggestion, then shook his head to refuse the offer. Rahul could not help stop laughing at his idiocy, as Sumesh’s phone fell and went rolling down the hillock. Sumesh dropped the four bags and went scurrying after the phone. Rahul could see his head bob for a while before he disappeared behind the hillock.

The restaurant had a gathering of six people, mostly farm workers who had come for their mid-morning cup ofchai. It looked as if they had just stepped out of a puddle of mud, their feet had weed stuck on all sides. The restaurant named after some god of the hills, told a story of age, insouciance and failure of a business model. The decrepit old man who managed the hotel, showed a lot of enterprise running errands to serving piping hot tea in crumbled cups which had frayed rim.

Rahul sat down on the only chair in the restaurant, while the farm workers carried on with their conversation in Orriya. They were vacuous, swinging their hands in gestures sometimes obscene and creating a racket. Rahul pretended to be equally indifferent. Minutes later Rahul saw Sumesh come up walking with both feet soiled, holding his shoes in his hands and the phone and the hands-free dangling from his shoulders.

“Was it Shailaja?” Rahul asked him without looking up from the Telugu newspaper spread on his table.

“Why do you pretend to know everything from Shailaja to Telugu?” Sumesh retorted without much mirth. Sumesh looked hurt, but Rahul did not delve further. Rahul closed the paper even as he sighed. Sumesh had bloodshot eyes, and he tried hard to look cheerful.

Second later, the bus driver, after his morning ablutions, also walked into the restaurant bare feet. Rahul and Sumesh listened intently when the driver started to speak in Orriya. They heard him tell the restaurant owner which could have only meant that he was feeling ill. The driver ordered for chai. A moment later he got up after the first sip, and almost on cue Rahul and Sumesh got up to rush to the bus. All the passengers boarded the bus in a single file, and in about more two minutes the rickety old bus was cruising at 60-kmph.

“Do you have any whisky left?” Sumesh asked Rahul and even before Rahul could react he continued, “I want some now”. When Rahul sat staring at him, Sumesh pressed his hands into Rahul’s pocket and drew out the small bottle of Director’s Special. He took a long swig. Rahul still looked bewildered. After a long moment, Sumesh finally spoke in low voice:, "my bank is confiscating my flat in Bangalore tomorrow for non-payment of the last five EMIs”.

Three days later when Rahul picked up the Hindustan Times at the Bangalore airport the picture on the front page was very familiar and the story was even more known to him. Sumesh hung himself in his room minutes before the bank impounders came.
_________________________________________

June 13, 2009

The bell rang without respite, and Sanket woke up with a start. He looked at himself bleary eyed, he was naked. He pulled the thin bed sheet away and wound it up around his waist. His looked at his phone to check the time – 7.43 am. He looked around but Shailaja had left. The bell rang again before he reached the door. He left it ajar, turned around, went into his bedroom and sat on the edge of bed. The maid servant ambled into the room holding a plastic can and a broom. She glanced at the bottles of beer kept near the door for the scavenger to take away. She twitched her nose impulsively, which was strange as drinking binge was commonplace in Bangalore. Sanket tried to collect his thoughts. His eyelids were drooping.. When the night is eventful, the morning after tends to be benumbing. The maid took over ten minutes to clean up the place, swept the floor with a broom and then swabbed it with a wet cloth, which according to Sanket wasn’t much as he was minimalist in furniture these days – no dining table, no television set – no nothing left.

Exactly twelve hours later when Sanket stuck his online ticket under the guard’s nose, he impulsively looked over his shoulders. Sanket entered the concourse and went straight ahead to the Jet Airways counter. The clock behind the counter showed 7.36 pm.

“Your flight is on time, sir. Don’t have any check-in baggage?” the woman behind the counter asked impulsively.
“No check-in baggage. Can I know when will I reach London? It seems to be a crowded flight”, Sanket said giving his most reserved smile.
“ Oh, you should be there in London by 5 am local time”.
Sanket thought the girl did not bite the bait as she barely looked up.

At twenty minutes past midnight the police broke open Sanket’s room. The flat owner was amongst the policemen who trooped in to check if Sanket was around. There was only a Post It message on the wall facing the main door. It said, “Sorry, can’t pay the rent now. Will try paying on my next visit. Cherios!!!”

[This is a true story, but embellished to build narrative interest. Names have been changed for my convenience than anyone else’s]

Posted by Anil Nair at 11:22 PM

Updated: Saturday, 6 March 2010 4:43 PM

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Sunday, 31 January 2010

Why wait to burn in hell, it's here in India!
Mood:

cheeky
Now Playing: Accident victims fend for themselves
Topic: India and worse

Former President and Army General of Pakistan Pervez Musharraf was known for a quirky sense of candidness when in power, which few in international media could comprehend. In his first address to the UN General Assembly in late 1990s, he matter-of-factly stated that Muslims are in majority in most of the hotspots in the world. These regions dominated by Muslims are riddled with strife, violence and brutality. The news media simply failed to make his statement the banner headline. His statement epitomised the prevailing double-speak on security. Measures taken by various government agencies are inevitable, yet we in this country would delude ourselves. But I will come to that in a bit.In his book, In The Line of Fire President Musharraf with unconcealed glee, wrote that cat has nine lives, and he was still counting. He lived to tell the tale after facing so many assassination attempts and death threats, and he was certain the terrorists in Pakistan really had hard luck. About two weeks ago, I felt exactly the same way -- divine intervention interrupted, standing at the bank of the road at Radhanagari at Kolhapur on my way to Pune with my colleagues, minutes after being caught in an ugly accident. I walked out of the ramshackle car like a ghost, just as my two colleagues, except that one was grievously hurt in his head – gods had run out of luck.

About ten years ago, while driving on Mumbai-Nashik road one night, I became drowsy enough to drive up the divider and enter the opposite lane. When the car scraped a tree I was rudely woken up. My friend sitting beside me did not, even after the jerks and jolts, wake up. I had to actually check if he was alive. Bad luck, Gods! But the irony in India lies in the fact that when God proposes, man disposes. At the car crash site at Radhanagari, when the onlookers walked away after watching the tamasha for about 15 minutes, I was struggling to recollect any emergency number that would fetch medical help. My colleague Zafar who was bleeding profusely was losing consciousness and I knew time was running out. In any road accident the first hour, known as the ‘golden hour’, is critical to save lives. My other colleague Liju's presence of mind saved the day. It is tragic that basic infrastructure is sorely missing, though reports of India topping the list of road accidents in the world, make good copy for morning editions. Union minister Kamal Nath a few days ago said, “produce as many cars as possible, we will build the roads for them”!

To talk of medical services, a couple of years ago at a Mumbai suburban hospital (where prospective prime ministers with bullet wounds are known to die unceremoniously) I was admitted with a bad bout of jaundice. At the casualty, one charmingly cheerful lady doctor told me to go through a colour Doppler test. I was wheeled into a lab which was swarming with technicians, doctors, nurses and ward boys. With little or no qualms a nurse walked up to me, checked my name and details on her writing pad and then told me to strip. Even though not an irrepressible exhibitionist, I full-montied after downing the meagerly white pyjamas and shirt. I then mounted an examination table and lay there like that for full ten minutes before I was covered with a green towel enough to cover the essentials. I looked around to find that there were all of six male patients in the lab surrounded by various machines, hanging wires and colourful lights emitting in various directions. All patients lay mostly naked. But the patients undeniably were visibly squirming for having to put up with hospital staff who outnumbered them.

On December 3 last year, in the aftermath of Mumbai attacks, when I landed up at Bhubhaneswar airport to take a connection flight to Mumbai, the scene was equally titillating. Security personnel found the likes of Kasab in every passenger, some randomly picked up and sent trooping to the isolation zone. The tales of the passengers emerging from the examination room sounded incredulously funny, and some edging on profanity.

The difference I noticed was that most people, even the youth, who were subjected to the hands-on approach by the security police were livid, foaming in their mouth, talking about how humiliating the war-on-terror was. “Do I look like a terrorist?” was the common refrain. Not one amongst the patients I have noticed at any hospital complains, at least loud enough, on more humiliating incidents that occur in the labs, examination rooms or the operation theatres. Not that healthcare personnel have any Vatican-endowed morality in not making use of a situation for their own pleasure, any less than the security personnel at airports, who are lowly-paid and doing a tough job in harrowing working conditions.

Security measures, the world over, when highly paid software engineers are turning into terrorists, are considered a necessary evil. But for us Indians it is the best opportunity to wallow in hypocrisy. How often do we see traffic regulations being flouted so brazenly. The inexplicability of the situation adds to the charm. We Indians are scared of the police, and would do anything to keep them at arms’ length. The hidden policemen at traffic islands can be so spooky that even the rich and the famous shudder at using their mobile phones in the parking lot. Yet, look at the way we try to circumvent every traffic regulation and escape the law. Most road accidents, like the one which almost took the lives of two of my colleagues, occur for one reason – lack of respect for the law, to put it mildly. In India successful crime is a virtue like nowhere else.

Recently, at a short-film festival at Bangalore, a docu-drama by a Java-based film-maker who had written, produced and directed the flick on the city life in African state capitals, presented the prevalent lawlessness and immorality with unusual candidness. Though the movie was made for the western audience (something like Slumdog Millionaire), the jeering and exasperation were reserved for the large-scale violence, the unbridled and often clumsy sex life of young delinquents and betrayal. But in one scene which was a re-enactment of real life from police record, the driver (a fugitive) waits patiently at the red signal for it to turn green on his getaway after a felony. And none of his accomplices in the car tells him to jump the signal, though the audience at Bangalore loudly wondered what is the big deal in breaking the law when he has already committed so many crimes in the past. That’s probably honour among thieves, as they say. We Indians don’t even have that.

Posted by Anil Nair at 1:18 PM

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Saturday, 1 August 2009

Meet my friend Prakash
Mood:

incredulous
Now Playing: If you are part of the solution, how can you be not part of the problem?!
Topic: SEX AND SENSIBILITIES

Recently, I met an old friend after more than two decades, when I was in the midst of tying up some loose ends of an official event; and as is the norm we went straight to combining work with pleasure -- hit the bottle. My friend, who works for a mobile network company, has set his eyes on leading the company very, rather very very soon, as a director. From his animated speech and flailing hands that could knock anyone who comes in his way to become the CEO of the company, I knew he was a born success. Success of my friend -- let's call him Prakash for the purpose of this blog, is a foregone conclusion. Just like all my friends are, for that matter.

What is so engaging about Prakash is his rags to riches story, the stuff Mumbai is made of. He was born in Vikhroli, a suburb in Mumbai known for sprawling slums and housing board residents. His father was, incidentally, a lowly peon in a telephone company, and was exceedingly poor even by Mumbai standards.

I and Prakash became friends in college for a reason. He had a fetish for fighter planes and international affairs, some thing I was immensely impressed with. In the 80s he would explain to anyone who cared to listen to him, the latest crises brewing in Trincomalee, Nicaragua, or Johannesburg, with consummate ease. At that age [and even today, for that matter] I had not seen someone with such unbelievable knowledge and ability to decipher complicated international political scenarios. There was no Google in those days to counter-check if he was right about everything that he said, but occasional newspaper reports would testify to his depth of knowledge and understanding. I was one of the few students in the college who conversed in English well, so he chose to sit with me in front benches in the class. He also had, as a hobby, a large collection of fighter plane pictures, mostly Russian. The pictures were stuck into a couple of dog-eared ledger books. He was an ardent admirer of Russian planes and their ability to give Americans back in the same coin, but he simply did not trust Russians. He was an ardent supporter of the non-aligned movement, which was quite fashionable then, because he wanted to keep India away from Russians more than India getting close to the US. Even today I am reminded and struck by his knowledge and insight of global politics when I meet think tank experts who can't make out the difference between Lahore and Islamabad. Prakash belongs to that class of people, specially made by god, with limitless talent and abilities, but who are few and far between.

After taking 12th standard exams, both of us were quite keen not to know the results. I did not have any doubt that I would fail, and he did not have any doubt that he would pass. After all, you have better things to do when you are 16 years of age than study algorithms or organic equations. A day before the results were to be declared by the board, Prakash called me on the phone to take my seat number. His father was in a telecom company who could access state education board results a day earlier.

On the fateful day I bought a fiction novel by Jeffrey Archer from a book shop near my house and travelled up and down the Mumbai suburban line twice. By the time I was on the second trip in the local train, I had finished half the book. Then I finally got down near my college. I was sure that I had failed in the exam as Prakash did not call me even after accessing the results one day earlier. I did not want to meet any of my friends that day. It was a shameful day to go through. Finally, when I reached the counter on the first floor of my college to collect my mark sheet, I saw several of my classmates lined up behind the counter. Some had exhilaration and some quiet disappointment when they collected their sheets. I decided to scurry out of the place the moment I was handed my the results. At the counter the peon only looked at my hall ticket from far without taking it in his hand, and fished out a mark sheet from the huge pile. I wrote my name and details on the foolscape sheet to acknowledge receipt of my marksheet. Even before I could hide the sheet from any prying eyes, the peon had started to fish out the next one for the guy behind me. After I left the queue I slowly opened the sheet. Several friends had gathered around me by then. At the bottom of the mark sheet, the column on percentage read 56 per cent. I turned around to tell the peon he had handed me someone else's marksheet. But then on the top of the sheet the name was mine. Something is wrong, I knew, and my first reaction was to get in touch with Prakash. I ran out of the college and at the electronic shop which had a public phone I dialed Prakash's residence number.
''Congratulations, Anil'', he said the moment I said 'hello'.
''Oh, if you knew I had also passed why did you not call me?'' I asked, a little irritated.
''It was not about you, dear'', he said, still with cheer in his voice, ''I could not make it through''.

I met Prakash that evening at his house in Bumkhana. He was crestfallen. That year, everything seemed to be going against him. Six months ago he had fallen into trouble, the kind of trouble we usually get into in our teenage. Prakash was living in a slum colony. His house had just two rooms with an attached large sink for ablution. For toilet and everything else he had to use common services close to his house.

One day, on his way back home from the public toilet and wearing only a towel, he met his next door neighbour girl. The girl was older than him, but quite an attraction for men of all ages. Prakash was known for his shy, introvert nature in his locality, and had never been seen talking to girls. That day she stood in his way and spoke in Gujarati. Being better in English than most boys in the slums, he was considered a hero by his friends and role model by their parents. After a few minutes of sweet nothings the girl suddenly pulled his towel and ran away with it. Naked, he took to his heels after her. She ran into her house, down the narrow lane, but Prakash noticed a few of his neighbours peering at this ungainly sight that morning. Young boys running nude or girls consorting with boys in slum colonies was not unusual even in those days. If the boy is rich, then the girl's parents don't even take cognizance of it, even if the young couple is found nude in bed. But Prakash was poor and unemployed. When he entered the girl's house he found they were alone, the girl's folks were away. As he entered the second room of her house that was similar to his, he saw her undress in a hurry.

First mistake, Prakash admitted to me later over a beer at a local bar, was that he should have avoided her advances that day. Second, he should have run to his house when he was stripped. And mistake number three was he didn't use a condom that day. He always had various brands of condoms in his wallet gifted by his friends, but he was already nude when he visited the next door girl. After that day he had even forgotten all about her chances of getting pregnant. Until almost a month later all hell broke loose. Police came to his house with an arrest warrant. He was hauled to the station, beaten mercilessly by the police and others in the cell, and finally told to produce Rs50,000 if he wanted to escape, while the police would look the other way. Prakash's family could only muster Rs35,000 that night. In the morning he was produced in the court and branded a rapist. The case has gone from court to court in the last 20 years, the girl is married with three college-going sons, while Prakash completed graduation and is now in senior management in a private cell phone company. He lives in Thane with his wife and two kids. Neither his wife nor the girl's husband knows about his shenanigans and police cases.

It was quite incidental that the same day I met up with another close editor friend who loves to discharge himself in front of television cameras on anything from Manmohan Singh's lack of clarity that is now proving to be an embarrassment to BJP's communal politics. We started chatting about Shiny Ahuja who is, like my friend Prakash, paying for his indiscretion and of course, his celebrity status. But my Leftist editor friend, who I thought would beat me to a pulp for taking Shiny's cause, gave me a patient hearing. Then finally shrugged and said, ''that is usually the case. The guy cannot always be blamed for sexual encounters''.

I thought this was the best opportunity to drive the peg in. I said,''then why does the media not pick up the cudgel on behalf of all those guys who have been wronged?''

''Ah, there are some things we have to grin and bear. Rape is not like terrorism or capitalism that we need to split hair over.''

''Oh, then why is Shopian case threatening to bring the Kashmir government down. People have protested on the streets for almost two months. Why don't they just grin and bear it?!''

[This is a true story heavily embellished to build narrative interest. If you find your life close to this story it's nothing but coincidence. I must thank all those who wrote in after reading my last one on Shiny Ahuja, and guess this piece can further muddy the water!]

Posted by Anil Nair at 7:10 PM

Updated: Sunday, 2 August 2009 1:45 PM

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Friday, 19 June 2009

Anti-terror squad was meant for morchas and bandhs, not jehadis: Maharashtra CM
Mood:

flirty
Now Playing: IN THE LAND OF GANDHI, WHY DO WE NEED BULLET-PROOF VEST?
Topic: ANTI-TERRORISM
Though the Ram Pradhan Committee report on the terror attacks in Mumbai on November 26, 2008 has become a rallying point for the Opposition parties in Maharashtra to take the government to task, there are some incredibly valid points which could question the lackadaisical attitude of the establishment as well as private star hotels in Mumbai, and some preposterous claims on national security. Maharashtra state BJP President Nitin Gadkhari has even alleged that the state government is on a cover-up mode. The committee has, it is learnt, named a few higher-ups and ministers in the report and Mr Gadkhari said that, "the common man needs to know the findings of the Ram Pradhan committee about who is responsible for the deaths of several police officers and citizens." If there is any incriminating role of any minister or bureacrat, it should be made public, he added.

The star hotels including the Taj, Oberoi and Trident have been found to have made a fatal mistake of not taking the security advisory issued by the police seriously. If the advisory had indeed been issued to the hotels and subsequent meetings with the police had taken place then a number of heads deserve to roll in the managements of these hotels. Or so thinks the committee. But then the committee has looked into the flaws in Maharashtra police alone, though the failure can be attributed to several other agencies, including the coast guard, the navy, the central intelligence and the ruling political class.

The police had received intelligence inputs in August and September last year about possible attacks on these hotels, which were promptly forwarded to the latter. The deputy commissioner of police (Zone I) had also held meetings with the management teams of Taj, Oberoi and Trident to apprise them of the security measures to be taken. The police even forwarded written suggestions for beefing up security at the hotels, but none of the hotels seem to have got their act together, according to the committee. They did not ask for any additional police protection at the hotel precincts, and that is the committee’s gripe.

Other than Taj which has issued a standard response to all these allegations the other two hotels have chosen to be quiet. It may not be entirely true that the hotels were so reckless to have ignored the advisory totally, and that seeking police personnel would have helped matters in any way. Even today, the security in these hotels is lax, if you go by the rule book. But then, one should realize that these hotels belong to the industry called hospitality. The basic edict followed in this industry is to make the guests comfortable and not put them through the wringers. And it is not in the interest of the hotels to turn their buildings into fortresses. It is the state and its humongous police and legal systems which have to provide the required security for its people, without the obvious gun-slinging policemen around. Maharashtra today sorely misses the POTA.

The best example of security can be taken from countries like the UK where the prime minister walks to his office every morning without any kind of security personnel surrounding him. That is because the intelligence sourcing is good and police react to intelligence reports professionally. The individual institutions like hotels and their guests are not inconvenienced in any manner. The basic issue which the committee did not deal with in this debate is that if the police were so prompt about releasing advisory, then why did it not have a full combat force ready for any terror attack? The police were caught unawares and it was the on-the-spur-of-the-moment action of the force which seems to have salvaged the situation. The situation with the police was so bad that it did not even have a proper fire power to deal with the terrorists at any of the points of attack. The committee makes it clear that the police have not been getting fresh ammunition for more than two years, and a former Maharashtra police chief has even clarified that training of police personnel was more or less curtailed to nothing because of the lack of ammunition.

The best example, again, of the state government’s insouciant behaviour is reflected by chief minister of Maharashtra Ashok Chavan, who in a debate on CNN-IBN a week ago told the news anchor that the anti-terror squad was prepared for morchas and such public disturbances and not for jehadi terrorists. When the anchor pointedly asked why the bullet-proof gear worn by the slain anti-terror squad chief Hemant Karkare looked so flimsy when compared to the police gear in advanced countries like the US or Israel, the chief minister told the audience without batting an eyelid, “this is the first such attack, the gear given to the squad is to deal with morchas and bandhs!” So by the chief minister’s own admission, the bullet-proof vests given to the ATS personnel are sub-standard and meant only to deal with mobs and unruly crowds, not jehadi terrorists.

This statement by the chief minister on national television was not even clarified later – so much for the sense of purpose and agility. But on the other hand, the committee has been quite straight, cut and dry when talking about police reforms needed in the state on the lines of the Supreme Court guidelines. Even though intelligence inputs could have been monitored to avert the attack, existing mechanism proved grossly insufficient. “Shockingly, top home department officials had no clue about the intelligence inputs. The additional chief secretary (home) and principal secretary (home) are expected to look into the law and order situation in Mumbai and the rest of Maharashtra. They are not only required to coordinate with the police in sensitive areas but also meet the needs of the force”, the report said in a scathing attack on the government machinery.

Even as the media is rife with rumours of three ministers being blamed for the lapses that led to the attacks, the government chose not to table the findings of the committee in the state assembly. The committee had listed out that intelligence overhaul, avoiding dual control of the Anti-Terrorists Squad (ATS), deployment of special forces trained in the state on the lines of the National Security Guard, plugging various holes in coastal security systems by deploying high-speed boats, newly trained personnel and new police posts, filling all the vacancies in the state security agencies, the setting up of the industrial security force on the lines of CISF and deploying private security guards for handling safety and surveillance equipment are direly needed to prevent another 26/11.

But the wife of a slain policeman has a different take on the events of November 26, 2008. Vinita Kamte, wife of Ashok Kamte, who was killed when he encountered the terrorists at Cama Hsopital on the fateful night, told the press that the committee has not talked to lower-level policemen before coming to the conclusions. One of the joint commissioners of police (crime) did not know of the exact position of Hemant Karkare nor his condition for more than three quarters of an hour. The committee headed by Ram Pradhan, former Union home minister along with RAW officer V. Balachandran has inferred that most of the state systems to counter terror attacks are below par, just as various new agencies have to be involved or trained to deal with a similar situation, with a clear chain of command in place. But nothing could actually beat the chief minister’s own admission on the preparedness of the ATS.

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Posted by Anil Nair at 3:35 PM

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