Me Mumbaikar’s Blog

These are the gallant police officers of various grades who had sacrificed their lives in Mumbai Terror Attacks 26/11. We deepest condolences to their family and friends. We are really proud of you, may your souls rest in peace.

Shri. Hemant Karkare (IPS) Joint Commissioner Of Police, A.T.S., Mumbai.	Shri. Ashok Kamte (IPS) Additional Commissioner Of Police,East Region Mumbai.	Shri. Vijay Salaskar Police Inspector, Anti Extortion Cell, Mumbai.
Shri. Shashank Shinde Police Inspector, C.S.T. Railway Mumbai.	Shri. Praksh P. More Police Sub Inspector, L.T.Marg Police Station	Shri. Bapusaheb Durugade Police Sub Inspector, L.A.1, Naigaon
Shri. Tukaram G. Omble Asst. Police Sub Inspector, D.B.Marg Police Station	Shri. Balasaheb Bhosale Asst. Police Sub Inspector	Shri. Arun Chitte Police Constable
Shri. Jaywant Patil Police Constable	Shri. Yogesh Patil Police Constable	Shri. Ambadas Pawar Police Constable
Shri. Vijay Khandekar Police Constable	Shri. M. Choudhary Police Head Constable, R.P.F.	Shri. Rahul S. Shinde Police Constable, S.R.P.F. Group X, Solapur
	Shri. Mukesh B. Jadhav Home Guard Constable

The aftermath of Mumbai 26/11 makes me beleive that a handful of terrorists can havoc in the peaceful country, and we as ordinary citizens and media people put together makes it sucessful. This makes the “Saint out of a sinner”, for fundamendalists, these terrorists becomes God.

Lets review the post Mumbai 26/11 impact on our political front, we have our Home Minister steps down, our finance minister moves to Home Ministry and our Prime Minister will handle his normal job as well as the finance minstry. At this stage of global recession where we need finace minster in full swing, we have a part time finance minister, and Home Minister who has little expertise in handling Home Land Security portfolio before…this is at the national level. At state level we have our Deputy CM stepping down, our CM has put the papers, and waiting for the feedback from the high command.

Every body is waitng to captilze on the aftermath, this gives them a better platform to start a blame game. This is not limited to our politicans, even companies like LIC, on 30th of Nov LIC has circulated a sms message saying that they have cleared the LIC claim of Hemant Karkare with in 24 hours of the event, what are they trying to do? Hard-Sell that , they are prompt in processing the claim?

The business for tour operators were slow due to the global meltdown and added that the attack will impact tourist inflows to the city, both from within and outside the country. The tourism trade would take a huge hit as the season had just begun, this will also directly impact the currency liquidity in the market as well as the small time traders in mumbai who’s main business are with the tourist.

Wall Street Journal Quotes ….”The deadly attacks in Mumbai, in addition to the human toll, have damaged the city’s ambitions of becoming an international finance capital. The Taj Mahal hotel and the Oberoi Trident Hotel, luxury hotels that were both targeted, are among the most coveted retail address for luxury-goods firms that are tapping into India’s growing number of wealthy individuals.”

I am having a fear of going out to dine with my family or friends , I am having the fear that some one will barge in and start firing, haven’t the terrorists being successful in impacting my thought process about security at my town.  During the initial phase of the attacks the number of terrorists were more than 20, now they are accounting only for 10, so whats the truth, do we still have some terrorists roaming in our neighborhood? Am I panicked? or Am I panicked by the media by providing me with the unwarranted news?

Our Insane Media adds fuel…

If these are not enough, our media is making statements like “We should rage war on the neighbors” , these kind of statements make our investors / foreign investors to think twice before they invest in the business process. And our media is keep on forgetting that there are lot of people in Fortune 1000 companies who are watching India closely, as some of their business process are outsourced here either as BPO / ITES or in terms of Software development / support. These kind of statements can have a big impact to these industries.

If I am a Fortune 1000 Company outsourcing my work to India here is my first thought…What would happen to my operations if a full-scale war broke out between Pakistan and India ? The answer is , I will suffer a catastrophic loss of their operations. These kind of events can bring down the day to day oursourcing operations to stand-still and who will be responsible for this? We dont have a definite answer for this and we will never have it…since for us these kind of teror operations become a day to day event, Oh there was a blast in Kurla last week, but everything is normal today…and the media will what ever possible to blame the politicians and the authorities , not because they are concerned about the people, but, they will get more TRPs ….before the analysis and the report come in we will start the blame game, and the funny thing is they wont even apologize the people whom they have defamed out of mistake…what we are forgetting in the middle of this is, these statements and blame games has direct impact on our small time business man, export business etc., as everybody is watching us through the media….if you give out the wrong information without being official, the people are going to get scared.

At no point any of the Indian officals has said, they are going to attack Pakistan, but the media has started their own view point by saying that we will attack Pakistan, this has created so much panic that Rice has to fly down to India immediately so that the tensions between India and Pakistan has reduced and no war will started…

Can some one leash the media whos unleased and spreading rumors?

There are quite a few mistakes from the government , if not the entire attack , we could have saved some lives.

1. As per the media sources and the points agreed by various defense agencies in India, there was some solid information about the attack. To this our local security agencies response was , we were not aware when they were going to attack and how many are going to be there, all we know was Taj was under threat.  So what do you think the terrorists are going to tell you about the travel plans, so that you can go and catch them.

Mumbai is always a soft-target for the terror events, all the terrorist know about this, they know if they hit Mumbai, the pain will be reflected to the entire nation. Mumbai is also a breeding ground for gangsters, and these gangsters can help these terrorists in logistics need to make their objective successful one…Mumbai is a very good healer, but its not a good defender when it comes to terrorists attacks or as a matter of fact any calamity.

2. Commandos reached the location only after 8-10 hours of the siege incident. How can our government plan like this? Why the commandos reached late ? Our government’s response is , A.K Antony (Minister in charge of securities) has asked for 200 Commandos, so we had to organize all 200 Commandos before sending them across…Cant they send these commandos in batch of 40-50?

3. Preparation part, I think this is the area where our government and security agencies had failed very badly. There was no specific information, they have not done any study about how many terrorists are there, what is the hostage situation, are they using the hostages as human shield , detailed plan of the building etc., nothing. there were very very less informed about these things, in this area terrorists were too good for our commandos, so it took 50+ hours for them to fight 3-4 terrorists (in Taj Hotel).
As a common man if we could think of these things, why being combat specialists our commando team failed, if you take the victims account, 90% of them had not seen any terrorists, all of them heard gun short fired and some rooms are burning…those who had seen the terrorists is not fortunate enough to be alive to tell the tale…..They have not literarily taken every one as hostage, instead the people who had trapped inside assumed themselves as hostage…and the few whom they have actually taken as hostage were killed by them, as they had no plans to keep them alive or negotiate with the government.

It was an easy see-through point that , these terrorists meant business…no mercy, no negotiations…just kill and terrorize the environment…The commandos could have invested couple of extra hours , use air-drop methods, morphine gas, multiple entries at the same time and then try to corner these terrorists. Instead they used the main entry as a normal law respecting citizen and trying to capture them…and during an interview one commando also mentioned that, the terrorists were fully aware of the building plans and secret passages in the building which we were not aware of…isn’t this a failure from the planning front?

3. Our government doesnt have strict anti-terror laws,  our actions speaks we are very very soft on terrorism. If one terrorist comes and bombs your parliament,  even after giving him death sentence , you havent hanged him.  If this is the message you are sending out, then even a child of some unknown country can attack you,  we will not do anything about it. What are you waiting for ? We should have strict anti-terror laws, you can even forgive a rapist (just for the words flow i have used it, i am not asking anyone to forgive a rapist), because hes raping only one women, but you cannot forgive a terrorist as they are raping the entire nation….

4. Vulenrable Waters, even though we have coast guard, naval base everything in Mumbai, why the waters are not monitored , even when the fishermen community had complained about the few suspecting persons with big bags came through sea and left their raft un-attended, why didnt the police reacted to it?

5. MEDIA is the biggest culprit for this entire event and the prolonging the battle with the terrorists.  Every body knew from the 2nd hour of the attack the terrorists were carrying phones with them, and media was giving out running commentary of the events like who entering from which location, going to which window etc., just like a cricket match. Some of the new channels were projecting their reporters in same level of the commandos as they were reporting by putting their life at stake and bringing you the news…hey, first of all we didn’t asked for it, as a responsible media, it was your responsibility to avoid passing information live about the national security.

After 32 hours when few people were rescued, again the media caught that person who had spent 32 hours in the fear of death , asking him about the entire operation , how the commando entered , how they were rescued, on the 34th hour 1 of our commandos was killed and 2 got hurt, because they were going to use the same route to rescue more people…how come these terrorists come to know that the commandos are rescuing people in this manner?  isn’t our media responsible for the death and the injury of the commandos?

They will never say this…!!!!! Our government should have strict law on these kind of media , again this is not the first time….remember Barka Dutt in Kargil War….at that time also we have lot few jawans due to this kind of aggressive , new hungry media…

PS: This blog is not to criticize NSG Commandos or MARCOS or even Mumbai Police on their gallant efforts to help our people , sacrificed their lives to save our city. Instead its a pointer which make common man like us to think about there are certain missing links and uncertain questions which arise in our mind when we walk out of our homes…I salute all the gallant officers involved in the operations to rescue our people and save our city…these questions should not be misinterpreted as criticism