The blame for the triple coordinated bomb blasts triggered by yet unidentified terrorist groups in Mumbai on July 13, which has taken a toll of 24 lives and inflicted severe injuries, shock and trauma upon 131 lay citizens, must be laid squarely at the door of the scams-tainted Congress-led UPA-II government which has lost its mooring and is drifting aimlessly in a sea of troubles. On 26/11/2008 when Mumbai was attacked by reportedly Pakistan-based terrorists who sailed into the city with impunity via the Arabian Sea route, captured two five-star hotels and shot up the historic Victoria Terminus railway station taking 166 lives and injuring 293 citizens, the Central government and Union home minister P. Chidambaram gave the nation a solemn undertaking that substantial initiatives would be taken to tighten the country’s internal security services and agencies to prevent and forestall terrorist strikes.
Typically, despite the gravity and urgency of the situation with terrorist groups having struck Mumbai 11 times in 18 years including the bombing of local train commuters in July 2006, very little has been done to fulfill that promise. A proposal to establish a National Crime Research Centre (NCRC) which would gather and store intelligence about criminal and terrorist groups, has not yet got off the ground. Neither have the proposals of the Ram Pradhan Committee, constituted to investigate the security lapses which facilitated the 26/11 bloodbath in Mumbai, been implemented.
Quite clearly, in light of the latest terrorist atrocity in Mumbai, urgent initiatives are required to prevent motley terrorist groups striking civilian targets at will. The proposed NCRC supplied with the latest equipment, labs and highly-trained professionals, needs to be established immediately to start feeding information into the National Investigative Agency Service and Intelligence Bureau (whose top personnel should be US-trained), which should be invested with the power to supersede state-level police and other investigators to hunt down terrorists. Moreover it’s of utmost importance that NIAS and IB should (on the lines of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, USA) be completely autonomous crimes detection organisations whose directors are invested with suo motu powers of investigation and prosecution. All this needs to be completed within 60-90 days, not spread over years in typical government style.
Yet even this is unlikely to mitigate terrorist activity on Indian soil unless long-pending police reforms recommended by the National Police Commission (1979-81) and the Justice Malimath Committee (2003) are implemented. With aggregate annual expenditure on internal security less than 1 percent of GDP (cf. 3 percent on external security aka defence), terrorist-targeted India is woefully under-policed with a mere 130 police personnel per 100,000 citizens (cf. 233 in the US and the 222 recommended by the United Nations). Moreover it’s critical to contemporise the curriculums and training given to police officers. Coterminously, a coordinated diplomatic effort needs to be orchestrated to improve relations with our neighbour nations. A country hated by all its neighbours cannot be free of exported terrorism.
Global porn wave reversing women’s emancipation
One of the more anti-social and unchecked developments in contemporary India is the rising number of crimes and atrocities against women, particularly teenage and minor girls. According to latest data available, the incidence of reported rape cases filed countrywide was 21,307 (i.e 58 per day); sexual harassment 11,009 (30 daily) and kidnapping and abduction of women and girls 25,741 (70) in 2009.
A widely ignored prime cause of the meteoric rise in sexual crimes against women in recent years is the unchecked growth of the pornography industry in the West, whose anti-social output is disseminated globally through the internet and worldwide web. This new development driven by 21st century technology has had a particularly deleterious impact upon the largely illiterate and functionally literate societies of third world nations. Within their educationally backward societies, easily accessible pornography has revived and reinforced subliminal, historical perceptions of women as sex objects and slaves.
Almost a quarter century ago in the landmark civil liberties case People vs. Freeman (1988), the US Supreme Court by a process of somewhat convoluted reasoning, held that while soliciting the services of a prostitute is a criminal offence, performance of explicitly sexual acts on video for payment is protected by the First Amendment of the US Constitution which confers an absolute right to freedom of speech and expression upon all citizens. Since then, the global porn industry has grown into perhaps the largest business worldwide spawning the growth of evils such as human trafficking, abuse of minors and child pornography.
Quite clearly the US Supreme Court needs to review its judgement in People vs. Freeman and ban the production and dissemination of pornographic audio-visual content, and other Western governments and courts should follow suit. Apex-level courts and justices in the developed OECD countries need to take judicial notice of the rising spate of crimes against Caucasian women in developing countries, who because of the thriving western porn industry, are incrementally being perceived as sex objects who welcome sexual abuse and degradation. This is endangering their freedom of movement, safety and dignity worldwide.
Meanwhile back home in India, it’s imperative to revise and upgrade police training to include gender sensitivity and protection against sexual violence. An enquiry application filed recently under the RTI Act, 2005 by this publication with the police commissioner of Bangalore reveals that the simple stratagem of deploying undercover plainclothes policewomen to trap sexual aberrants and offenders, is unknown to the city’s 13,000-strong police force.
Moreover women citizens need to speak up and demand accountability, while enforcing their fundamental rights of liberty, safety, employment and freedom of movement. Slowly and perhaps imperceptibly the women’s emancipation movement is being reversed by global forces of sexual deviance and greed, compounded by this country’s uncaring and inept establishment.