Living With Terror

By Dipesh Chakrabarty

Only security won’t do; we need better governance too

The most recent Mumbai tragedy points to a general way some of the negative effects of globalisation are bringing us to the threshold of a post-democratic age in the 21st century. Given the diverse global tensions in the world — with terrorism, economic-environmental crises, and civil wars dislocating populations — democratic states will increasingly tend to develop a strong security aspect in the coming decades.

The violence in Mumbai was perceptibly different from terrorist violence that India has seen before. This time the terrorists themselves wanted to create a “global” event. Their targets included many “ordinary” Indians but also the transnational elite that patronises the most well-known hotels of Mumbai, itself the most global city in India. Their technology and targets were global — witness their use of Voice over Internet Protocol system to keep in touch with their masters in Pakistan or their deliberate targeting of a small Jewish community from overseas. Indian democracy has now, sadly, been ushered into a debate of the 21st century: Should democratic states become security-states as well? Security measures are, of course, no substitute for the political processes needed to heal rifts between countries and communities. But they cannot be ignored either.

This immediately raises two challenges. One is related to questions of democracy in general. The prospect of a security-state understandably and rightly concerns rights activists. Yet it is clear that the “security of populations” is itself emerging as a powerful right. In the developed countries today, it is hard to distinguish measures adopted to fend off terrorist attacks from the politics of refugees and “illegal” immigration. Of course, the balance between security and other rights cannot be decided in any a priori fashion, which is why it always should be open to debates with reference to specific contexts. There is, besides, the very important question of ensuring that the pursuit of security does not become a tool for oppression of and discrimination against minorities or immigrants. But the globalisation of this debate is what marks our times.

The second challenge arises from deep within the history of Indian politics. To have an effective cordon sanitaire against terror would require India to inject a degree of efficiency, alertness, and performance into an administrative apparatus that simply has not delivered on these scores for decades. Since the 1970s, government or public institutions in India have gradually ceased to be effective deliverers of goods and services. There is much that democracy in India has achieved by way of giving many low-caste and marginalised communities a sense of participation in the country’s governmental institutions.

The growth of this politics of identity, however, has made elections into the mainstay of Indian democracy. It has distanced politics from issues of governance, and has gone hand in hand with a deepening of corruption, financial and otherwise, on the part of politicians and officials. A large number of the elected members of Parliament have criminal cases pending against them. Media reports and everyday experience suggest an elephantine, unaccountable, inefficient bureaucracy mired in selfindulgent use of resources with corruption and inefficiency often going together.

There was, for example, no effective coast guard force to intercept the Mumbai terrorists. It took the first lot of firefighters hours to respond to the fire at the Taj. It took nine hours to mobilise the commando force many of whom are usually kept busy providing “security” to politicians who often see such security as a matter of prestige. It has also been reported that a very large grant recently given to the Mumbai police for their modernisation was mostly spent on buying luxury cars and other expensive items for the use of senior officers and their ministers!

Creating a security system that will provide effective protection to the population from terrorist attacks will not be easy. Corruption follows public money in India as it does, unfortunately, in many countries, and undermines performance. Secondly, the effective functioning of any institution in India in a non-partisan manner would require that institution to be insulated from political interference. The second condition is not easily met. The required reforms thus call for a certain kind of political will that the political class in India has not quite shown in recent times.

Yet India cannot any longer avoid debates over security and other rights. The government has already announced certain measures making anti-terror laws more stringent. Some other reforms will also certainly follow on paper and perhaps in action as well. Many members of the Indian educated middle classes are angry at the inability of their government to protect them.

We do not know how effective that anger will be. If the nature of the political class remains the same, Indians will probably have to get used to living with a degree of terror the exact quantum of which is difficult to predict. One hopes though that the nation will address both the long-term and short-term problems together so that, important as security considerations are, this tragedy will initiate not just a rethink but also a revitalisation of democratic institutions in India as they cope with the challenges of this global century.