In a political system that thrives on corruption and vote banks, no one is accountable to anyone. The taxpayer and the voters are sidelined as ministerial godfathers ensure protection to their erring proteges. The system is rotten to the core. That rot enabled ten armed men to hold the entire city to ransom for three days and kill over 185 men and women. The only men who have been held accountable for what happened on November 26 in Mumbai so far are only symbols of the decadent system. The ones that have to be punished for their negligence and for being too smug about their obligations to the citizenry are yet to be hauled up. They still have to be made to account for their dereliction of duty.
Intelligence reports about an impending attack from the sea had been floating around for months. And yet, the Chief of Naval Staff contends that he had “no actionable information”. Commonsense suggests that three naval ships from Surat to Goa could have been enough to deflect the “Kuber” from landing at Colaba with its deadly cargo on November 26.
Kuber was in fact, intercepted by the Coast Guard, which one presumes is under the command of the Naval Chief, and was allowed to proceed when fake identity cards produced by the terrorists were enough to establish their credentials. Had the Coast Guard searched the boat, Mumbai would have been spared the siege and the lives of 185 persons.
The Naval Chief held a press conference to upbraid the media for compromising the safety of the security forces. No one asked him about the conduct of his own Coast Guards. The same defence ploy about “actionable information” was troted by the former Union Home Minister, Shivraj Patil, whose incompetence in that august office was known to everyone in the country, except perhaps the party High Command. His utility had been proved earlier in the way he handled the Bofors Case, and its fallout. Thanks to his contribution Octavio Quattrocchi, wanted in India for his complicity in the case, was able to walk free out of a court in Argentina. He escaped extradition to India.
Top officials of the Mumbai police, who should have been co-ordinating the flow of intelligence from various sources and passing them on to appropriate quarters, were busy trading charges against each other in the Bombay High Court.
Their political masters, perhaps, did not know how to handle vital information like a boat-load of “gora gora chickna log” heading for Mumbai. Sense dawned on them pretty late in the night of November 26, when “actionable information” reached them.
Luckily, they summoned the National Security Guards (NSG) from New Delhi. When the NSG landed at Santa Cruz airport after a long wait for a plane to ferry them to the Gateway of India, they had to be huddled into BEST buses summoned from Santa Cruz bus depot, even as over a hundred police vans, Black Maria and jeeps were permanently stationed in front of the houses of thirty politicians in the city, ministers and some senior bureaucrats.
Politicians ostensibly work for the good of the common people, and get elected as “people’s representatives”. Then, they need protection under various categories listed as X, Y and Z and Z Plus for extreme cases or severe threats to their lives (from the people). Many, of course, treat it as new-found status symbols.

Lesson for citizens
The politician-police nexus is what contributes most to police inaction. Unless the police get orders from the right politicians, they feel no compulsion to act. Service-long servitude to the right politician has its rewards. The officer gets a life-long sinecure in organisations run by leading politicians. These sinecures provide an extra dimension to their retirement life.
When this is the pattern of functioning of the city police in the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) or other agencies, even “actionable information” rarely gets dispersed to hit the right targets.
The Mumbai police, once the pride of the nation, was politicised by the then Home Minister, Chhagan Bhujbal. He usurped the powers of the Director General of Police and the Police Commissioner, to appoint, transfer and promote policemen of all ranks. From 1994 onwards all evil features of Indian politics invaded the ranks of Mumbai police. Even the Home Secretary and the Chief Secretary were kept out of the loop.
Senior police officers with flexible consciences soon became part of the system – amassing as much money as the politicians. Part of such collections went to pay for their promotions or desired transfers. The same Chhagan Bhujbal is back as Deputy Chief Minister, thanks to electoral compulsions. Luckily this time he has been denied the Home portfolio, which had traditionally gone with the office of the Deputy Chief Minister.
The political class has divided the electorate on the basis of caste, community, religion and now, the highly unconstitutional plank of language and regional affinity. The more rabid a rabble-rouser the politician is, the more brownie points he can score. Like the TRP ratings on television.
Television channels came in for a lot of criticism soon after the siege of Mumbai. Television is more vulnerable than the print media, thanks to its immediacy, visual impact and its ability to reach out even to the illiterate viewers. Most of the channels fielded raw and inexperienced reporters available in their offices when news broke out of the attack on CST railway station. Night shifts in the media can do with even inexperienced hands, since major news breaks in the night are rare. Their inexperience showed in their coverage. Inexperience, but not actionable under the law.
Of the three major English news channels two fielded their Managing Editors on the second day of siege. The third, which had one reporter equipped with a handycam, ran home with the highest TRP ratings. An anomaly or the “system” at work?
The newspapers generally had only to pick up from where television had left off, even in 24 x 7 transmissions. They smugly escaped criticism even for the profound but misplaced editorials they carried.
In less than 48 hours into the siege, the city roads had become visually cleaner. All the streamlined yet garish hoardings showing the ugly faces of the political class glaring on viewers had disappeared from the main roads of the city. Political leaders were already wilting under the anger of the hoi polloi.
Days after the attack, the politicians sneaked in through surrogate advertising on hoardings, paying homage to the three heroes of the city – Hemant Karkare, Ashok Kamte and Vijay Salaskar. The sponsors did not care to show their own faces on the hoardings. Two days thereafter came hoardings paying homage to Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar on his death anniversary. This time some political leaders had their mugs overshadowed by the towering image of Dr. Ambedkar. The political class is clawing its way back into public attention, while seeking to come to grips with the situation.
All intelligence needs to be channelised into one agency which should be held accountable for providing actionable intelligence to those who need it. The police must be immunised against political interference on the basis of innumerable reports of Police Commissions. This is a tall order, since the Shiv Sena-BJP government taking the cue from Chhagan Bhujbal had during its rule packed the department with its loyalists.
The political class can be neutralised if only organised citizens committed to the welfare of their bretheren, come together to pick a score of men and women with unimpeachable credentials and experience and put them up as candidates in the next elections. If each of the 27 states in the country can return ten such candidates, half the Parliament could be members with no self-interest, forcing the other half of the members to behave, if not conform. All that is needed is to channelise the public revulsion against politicians and frustrations over the existing situation. There is a way to change the system, to usher in a working democracy.

The author is a veteran journalist and student of political science.

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