The weakest link in the largest democracy

The Mumbai terrorist attacks have left an entire nation shell shocked to realize the already doubted truth about our vulnerability to such attacks. With ease 10 or 15, still disputed, number of terrorists landed on the financial capital and held the city hostage for around 60 long hours. At the end of it, we have lot of innocent civilians dead, security forces martyrs and mammoth loss to the nations pride and economy.

Once again our bureaucracy along with politicians betrayed us by in acting on all the intelligence information that was available. Worst of all, today morning media was reporting that none of the bullet proof vests worn by the police forces were capable of protecting against even bullets from a normal pistol leave alone the automatic weapons used by the terrorists. Poor Karkhare (ATS chief), Kamte (ACP) and Salaskar (encounter splist) walked in to the mouth of death unknowing of how they were betrayed for their services to the nation.

The so called “Open” media in India rose to the occasion, and did what they do best, all of them competed with each other in “BREAKING NEWS” first with live coverage, panel discussion, sketches, eye witness narrations and as usual cooked up stories. In the beginning I observed media suddenly stopping the live coverage and highlighting that “we are not showing LIVE because it might cause difficulties to our security forces and help the terrorists”. However soon in another one hour or so the live coverage was back on air. I believe each media was under immense peer pressure assuming that maximum business goes to him who airs LIVE of the carnage ignoring the collective damage it could do. The freedom of speech was such that even the Govt could not restrict them from airing sensitive information.

The incident exposed the collective failure of the bureaucracy and politics in protecting the ordinary citizen. On the last day of the carnage, as a winding up note for highlighting the collective failure of the system, a saddened Barkha Dut of NDTV reminded the audience that each and every one of us is responsible for whom we chose to vote. Yes! I absolutely agree with her. But on second thought whom do I vote next time? None presently in the list appear to be competent. All of them had chances before to make the “change”, none of them had done anything that I could remember. Congress has failed, BJP- I don’t want to see Orissa repeating in entire nation, third front is nonexistent… so whom do I select? Who can make me feel safe? OR Shall I refuse to vote in protest to the existing bastard-ness?

I remember studying in my high school about democracy, as a system “for the people, by the people”, the lesson even highlighted that the citizen is most powerful in any democracy. In spite of belonging to the most powerful entity (citizen) in “for the people by the people” establishment, I feel powerless and insignificant, starring at the dark future waiting for the next “BREAKING NEWS” where I could be either the viewer or the victim……..