Wednesday, August 29, 2007

Bomb blasts again !!!

I was sitting at home watching a movie when I got a call from one of my friends asking me if I had heard the news about the bomb blasts. I was shocked when I heard it since Lumbini park would have been the kind of place I might have visited on a saturday evening (had it not rained) to go for a boat ride or to just hang around.

What I don't understand is, what do these terrorists have in mind? I believe every action has an intended goal or perceived benefit, but in this case I see none of it. When you bomb a religious site you are targeting a community, when you bomb a financial center you want to bring down the economy and so on. But when you bomb a park that most probably the terrorists themselves will visit with their family I am not sure what message they are trying to send and to whom. If the goal is to dissuade investors - then I don't think this bomb blast would have achieved that since they did not hit at where the investment is happening.

It is sad what they have done, they have made everyone very nervous to go anywhere or do anything. I was driving to office yesterday morning and I was thinking at the traffic signal - for all I know there might be a bomb here. The reason for this paranoia is because of this mindless blast. All they achieved is to make every single individual nervous and ensured that everyone will think twice before they visit a place that they want to have fun at.

This is a wake up call to our police to get out of the "kuch bi chalta hai" attitude and get a little more serious about our security. It is sad to see that out of a police force of 70000, 30000 of them are used for the security of our politicians - 296 MLAs and 92 MLCs (i don't even know why we have the MLCs) and the rest are to protect the population from such attacks. It is high time that they seriously look at this lop sided approach to security. Terrorism is here to stay and we have to live with it but if the police force does not instill a sense a confidence in dealing with such incidents then in the long run there is a price to pay.

Another sad thing that I watched is how the injured were treated. Why don't people understand that by standing around and watching all that they are doing is obstructing the injured from getting timely help. Why can't people who are not involved or related to the incident just leave? Why can't the police just clear out the effected area and make sure the right people are given access? Our police force needs to become more professional at handling these situations. They should learn to get to the crime scene quickly and secure the area. I saw no evidence of this. It took them almost an hour to achieve this from what I read in the papers and this is absolutely pitiful as I am sure we would have lost a lot of evidence and the injured also would not have got timely help.

Another sad thing that I read is about a man whose head was totally destroyed in the blast was made to wait for 2 hours on oxygen before the doctors attended to him in Osmania General Hospital. Osmania is the premier state run hospital in Hyderabad and they should know that the first few minutes after any injury is the most crucial time. It was sad that this lack of attention caused the man to pay a big price - his life.

Do we take life for granted in India? Are there so many people in India that live in poverty and hunger and dying of disease each day made us so unconcerned about death? If this is the situation then its a sad situation as a life is a life as precious as your own.

I hope and pray the following will happen
  1. We catch the criminals that did this - more for answers and closure to the whole thing.
  2. The police take protecting the citizen as important as protecting the politicians and are trained to handle crime scenes in a better manner.
  3. Our hospitals wake up to the reality of dealing with mass emergencies and providing quality health care as soon as possible.

Am I hoping for too much. I hope not !

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

The goatheads who carried out this carnage don't seem to realize yet that outsiders *cannot* provoke riots within India by such bombings. We *only* riot when we work ourselves up into a frenzy with no help at all from paki musalmaans across the border.

Killing people through bombings - gruesome though it is - is not going to stop India's progress simply because there are simply far too many people of the same/similar intellectual fiber available for replacement. This is a simple fact that seems completely lost upon our goaty brothers across the border(s).

Thinking from a Lashkar e Tayiba piglet PoV, what is gained from such a carnage?

- Terror, yes. For about 4 hours before people come out again and go shopping.

- Disruption, yes. Until the bloody mess is cleaned up.

- Economic consequence, very little or none.

- Hindu-Muslim riots, no. The truths of life seem to have sunk into the Indian Muslim's head. He realizes now his pak ummah brothers across the border do *not* mean well for him. The Hindus are ofcourse too passive to riot unless they see common Indian Muslims doing things like torching trains... which Indian Muslims have learnt not to do anymore.

If the piglets really want to provoke something major in India, they should go Nuclear. But that will carry consequences...

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