Terror bombings in Mumbai are, by now, a periodic occurrence, like the cyclones that hit India’s east coast every other year which nobody can do much about.

Like in the earlier instances, the July 13 bombings too have engendered the usual mea culpas — “there was failure but we’ll do better next time” — accompanied by the sight of befuddled politicians and frowning, file-carrying bureaucrats scurrying about accomplishing little.
Maharashtra chief minister Prithviraj Chauhan, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and every official and politician in between has, one way or another, ended up blaming “the system” for the failure, as if the “system” were something apart from the bureaucrats manning it and the politicians presiding over it. As the record of sustained mis-governance and non-governance at the Centre and in the states shows, the bureaucrats and politicians are more interested in wringing lucre and political and career advantage out of “the system”, than doing any good for the people and country. While entirely responsible for the mess, they are loath to own up to failure, leave alone accept the onus for taking wrong decisions or delaying them. So, mistakes, muddles, mayhem, malfeasance, scams, scandals, rail accidents and horrid infrastructure and everything else going akilter is conveniently attributed to weaknesses in “the system”, as are the outcomes of deliberate acts of omission and commission by them. The resulting ad hoc functioning of government and its agencies, including the police, in fact, distinguishes India, notwithstanding the hoo-ha about it being a potential great power, as just another run-of-the-mill, disorganised, grossly mismanaged, and kleptocratic Third World state that does not merit a place among the elite nations.
How much of a Third World state? Comparing India and Pakistan using the “Failed States Index 2011” data provides perspective sorely lacking in most analyses. Pakistan is ranked 12th in the list of failed states topped by Somalia, Chad and Sudan in the latest edition released last month in Washington, DC. This is an improvement over its 9th place finish in 2009. India is ranked 76th — actually dropping down three places from 79th a year ago. Pakistan earns its dubious honour owing to what is judged to be “poor” quality of civil service and police, resulting in bad administration and even worse law and order situation, and “weak” political leadership and judiciary. More specifically, as regards “group grievance” which accounts for violence and strife in society, and insurgency and secessionism, on a scale of 10, Pakistan scores 9.3 to India’s 8.2 — not that much behind a country habitually referred to by the Indian commentariat as a “failed state”. The two countries are both rated 8.5 where “uneven development” is concerned, and graded about the same on the quality of their “public services” — 7.3 for Pakistan, 7.2 for India. In totality, even as Pakistan is deemed to be in “critical” condition, India is declared “borderline”.
Just why India barely passes muster is best explained by considering what the Central government has not done since the 26/11 terror strikes. Nearly three years on, few of the substantive recommendations for streamlining intelligence gathering and dissemination, upgrading police capabilities, and overhauling the law and order apparatus have actually been implemented, with the decision processes mired in turf battles and bureaucratic wrangling. Corrective measures, like acquiring armed and armoured boats for Mumbai inshore water policing, have been neutered by not providing adequate fuel for patrolling and allowing these expensive assets, in effect, to rot in the water from disuse. (Newspaper photographs of one such vessel with an end sunk in the water, was telling.) The problem at one level is the sheer multiplicity of organisations and agencies tasked with the same or overlapping job(s) without a clear authority line or division of tasks. This has led to each of them working at cross purposes — a perfect setup for passing the buck and blame-game that invariably follows in a crisis, permitting everybody up and down the line to escape responsibility.
With the Congress Party ruling in Maharashtra and in Delhi, in theory at least, there was less reason for the lack of coordination between Central and state government agencies and the official helplessness on display during the 26/11 attacks and, again, when the July 13 bombings occurred. In practice, this does not matter. Mumbai may as well be another planet.
P. Chidambaram, the Union home minister, about as effective in his job as his Maharashtra counterpart, R.R. Patil, assumed sole command over all internal security programs and the plethora of intelligence outfits. Despite being aware of the terrorist threat, he has done precious little to inject urgency in implementing the two corrective measures he had accorded priority. The national grid for intelligence information (Natgrid) was conceived as a one-point source for authoritative and continually updated information that Central and state police and other relevant agencies could access and act on in real-time basis. To date, it has mostly proved grist for inter-agency squabbles. The National Counter-Terrorism Centre (NCTC), similarly, is making tortoisey progress because of, astonishingly, invasion of privacy concerns raised by the finance ministry. Banks, for instance, are refusing to part with information about suspect accounts necessary to track the money flows to terrorist and criminal fronts and organisations.
Or, are such ruses meant to shield members of the political class, a surprisingly large number of whom are involved in, and partake of, criminal activity in collusion with law-breakers of every kind (especially the underworld in the case of politicians from Mumbai/Maharashtra)? Even so, shouldn’t Mr Chidambaram have acted more decisively all these years to end the interminable bureaucratic file-pushing and in-fighting as regards Natgrid, and publicly pilloried the finance ministry for its stand, making it hard for Pranab Mukherjee to justify North Block’s opposition to NCTC? Since when has national security become secondary to the privacy of citizens/entities with possible terrorist links?

The author is a professor at the Centre for Policy Research, New Delhi