India aims to make business more
secure By Siddharth Srivastava
NEW DELHI - As part of a security drive in
the wake of the Mumbai train blasts that killed
close to 200 people and injured more than 700, New
Delhi is looking to change the way international
business is going to be conducted in future, while
efforts are under way to introduce stringent
checks to prevent future terror strikes.
So far, New Delhi has resisted popular
pressures to implement draconian anti-terrorism
laws, but it must still to grapple with growing
public opinion that it is soft on terror.
Meanwhile, bogus e-mails and hoaxes have
also become the order of the day. Cinemas have had
to be evacuated and trains and flights held up
because of phony security scares, while the
prime minister and president
have been recipients of fake e-mails threatening
attacks.
If that were not enough, two
former hostesses with a history of deviant
behavior from a private airline tried to barge
into the prime minister's house in their car, just
for kicks.
On a more serious note, the
government has begun installing closed-circuit
television cameras at crowded public locations
(including marketplaces, railway stations and
malls), while security at prominent installations
(nuclear power plants, heritage sites, temples)
has been enhanced.
An official team
recently toured Heathrow Airport in London to
study the latest security gadgets that could be
installed at more than 50 important airports in
the country. More bodyguards have been provided to
important people, including film stars and
cricketers.
India is doubling troop
deployment at the borders with Nepal and
Bangladesh after investigations into the Mumbai
bombings revealed militants and weapons were being
smuggled from these areas, given the heightened
security presence along the Indo-Pakistan border.
Meanwhile, New Delhi has made it clear
that it blames Pakistan for the attacks, with the
peace process more or less stalled for now, though
there is likely to be some official interactions
on the sidelines of a South Asian meeting in Dhaka
this week.
India complains incessantly
that Islamabad is not doing enough to dismantle
the terrorist infrastructure in the Pakistan,
including taking on the dreaded Lashkar-e-Toiba
(LeT), which is believed responsible for
orchestrating most attacks in India.
Objecting to comments by US assistant
secretary of state Richard Boucher that there was
no clinching evidence about who the perpetrators
of the Mumbai blasts were, India said evidence of
Pakistan's role in cross-border terrorism was
"stronger" than even al-Qaeda's participation in
the attacks in the US of September 11, 2001.
Islamabad has denied any connection with the
bombings. Pakistani President General Pervez
Musharraf has said New Delhi should desist from a
"blame game".
Repudiating Boucher's and
Musharraf's assertions, Indian National Security
Adviser M K Narayanan said in a television
interview that the LeT was an integral part of
al-Qaeda and in "some parts even bigger because of
its contacts".
Narayanan said the
Pakistan-based terror outfit had links in many
countries, including Europe and Asia. "We have not
come across their involvement in the US, but in
Europe and Asia, they are very active. LeT has
many connections ... So the US has to pay special
attention and not treat it as an India-only
issue," he said.
Several experts have,
however, been saying that it may be imprudent of
India to blame Islamabad solely for the terror
attacks. They maintain that Pakistan's
Inter-Services Intelligence has become a state
within a state, accountable to nobody. The ISI
uses drug money to finance the Afghanistan war,
the proxy war in Indian Kashmir, weapons supply
and training terrorists.
New Delhi wants
Islamabad to hand over Hizbul Mujahideen chief
Syed Salahuddin and global terrorist Dawood
Ibrahim and arrest LeT chief Hafiz Mohd Sayeed.
However, should Musharraf initiate any such
action, it is unlikely that he would survive for
long.
In this context, any effort to
derail the peace process because of the doings of
rogue elements within the Pakistani army and the
ISI would mean allowing terrorists to achieve
their aims.
Nevertheless, New Delhi is
under immense pressure to show results after so
many innocent people died in Mumbai. There have
been suggestions of implementing tougher laws,
which in the past have been misused by the state,
especially against Muslims. Opposition leader L K
Advani has demanded that the repealed anti-terror
Prevention of Terrorism Act (POTA) be revived.
One new focus of government attention is
foreign direct investment (FDI). Last week, senior
officials of various ministries met for the first
time to discuss plans to formulate comprehensive
legislation that will empower official agencies to
refuse FDI on security grounds.
Based on
the inputs, the National Security Council
Secretariat headed by Narayanan, who reports
directly to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, will
devise a mechanism to cover the security aspects
of future mergers and acquisitions. The report is
expected in September.
Unlike in the
United States, in India there is no framework to
screen FDI on grounds of security. Security
considerations are accounted in the telecoms
sector, where a representative of the Home
Ministry vets proposals at the Foreign Investment
Promotion Board (FIPB).
However, trade
officials and intelligence agencies have often
been at loggerheads because of the absence of
clear rules (as demonstrated in the
Orascom-Hutchison Essar case that has been cleared
by the FIPB despite resistance by the National
Security Agency). In the wake of the Mumbai
blasts, the clamor for a prescribed screening
process has increased.
The government may
restrict foreign companies from having foreign
chief executive officers in sensitive sectors such
as telecom, media and certain infrastructure
projects. The policy could extend to all sensitive
sectors such as ports, airports, telecom companies
and select sections of the print and electronic
media.
The government has already
expressed reservations about the appointment of a
Greek CEO for the organization that has taken over
the management of the Delhi airport. Tata
Teleservices, which has a foreigner, Darryl Green,
as its CEO, is still waiting until a clear picture
on the legitimacy of having a foreign chief
executive emerges.
However, beyond
technology and business rules, experts say that
Indian security agencies need to ramp up the
human-intelligence network to be effective. There
was a complete failure to nail down a plan that
was executed with such precision in Mumbai. Prior
to the attack, intelligence and security officials
privately prided themselves on the elaborate
ground-level network that saw several potential
attacks in Mumbai, Gujarat, Hyderabad and Delhi
being thwarted.
In June the police in
Mumbai claimed to have preempted an attempt to
strike the ancient Ellora caves, a heritage site
comprising Hindu, Jain and Buddhist temples and
monasteries. Police seized several AK-47 assault
rifles, 30 kilograms of explosives and 2,000
rounds of ammunition from the three LeT suspects
who were arrested.
Police in Mumbai
followed a tip-off by two LeT members, reportedly
from Pakistan and Bangladesh arrested in New
Delhi, that also resulted in security forces
killing Abu Hamza, the leader of an LeT breakaway
group in a shootout last May in south Delhi. The
two arrested terrorists were planning strikes in
Gujarat, a hotbed of communal unrest. Police in
Indian Kashmir also claim to have gunned down one
of the main conspirators behind the March 7
Varanasi blasts.
The Delhi Diwali blasts
last October were described by police as an act of
desperation, as the bombs were crude and the
implementation was by local people not considered
professional. Police claimed that they were lured
by money. Several witness accounts spoke of a
clumsy attempt at Chandni Chowk, a busy market
area. One of the terrorists was almost caught by
the passengers of a public bus, while another at
Sarojini Nagar (another busy market) is suspected
of having accidentally blown himself up.
There is every indication that the Mumbai
blasts were perpetrated at a much more
sophisticated level, with the use of remote timer
devices and RDX explosive. The schedules of the
trains must have been carefully selected, because
the simultaneous blasts were timed to the evening
rush hour and, some say, even the media had been
kept in mind so that the gruesome footage would be
telecast during peak viewing hours.
Such
detailed planning could not have been possible
without local assistance, even though the police,
in a colossal failure, did not have even a hint of
what was coming. It suggests a conscious effort by
the perpetrators to avoid known terror cells that
the security force may have infiltrated.
It also shows that the the security
agencies have their work cut out against those
determined to inflict violence on innocent
citizens.
Siddharth Srivastava
is a New Delhi-based journalist.
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