Terror Attacks - What I need from my government

What happened in Mumbai starting around 9.30 PM on 26th November is a terrible, terrible tragedy. We lost a lot of brave men fighting the terrorists. We shouldn't forget what happened on that day. We shouldn't let this pass as well and move on as we have done so very often, each time a bomb goes off and a lot of civilians are killed.

There's so much anger and disappointment that I feel right now. But, I wont delve into the negatives, I won't let my emotions decide my response. Rather, in my first post, I'll just list out what we need from the government and the politicians. The following is in no way a comprehensive list, but this is a start.

• The PM and rest of the ministers along with all other MPs, need to come out and accept that they failed! Just start with that; accept that all of them have failed in their duty to keep this country safe. Only then can we start identifying our mistakes and work towards rectifying it. Till then anything they do will remain cosmetic, to keep the public happy.

• They need to come out and tell the nation that they are working as one on ways to tackle this issue. Not coming up with knee jerk reactions, but actually putting their heads together to overhaul the system. Tell us that they will not let the nation down again like this.

• Get rid of the ineffective home minister of ours! (this has been done by now though). This wont make much of a difference, but he needs to not be in that position anymore.

• Get rid of Maharashtra deputy CM and Home Minister R. R. Patil. That spineless man is fit only to ban dance bars and harrass dance girls. His callous attitude towards the Mumbai attacks doesn't make him fit to be a home minister of any state.

• Comprehensive police reforms in the spirit of the ruling of the Supreme Court.

• Setup a Federal agency (not like the extremely politicized CBI) to investigate terror and inter state crimes.

• Setup a Nodal intelligence gathering agency, run professionally, to assimilate all the intelligence gathered by various sources - central/state/HUMINT/SIGINT. This agency should be responsible to analyse and disseminate the intelligence gathered to the right agencies.

• Foremost, increase the pay for the armed forces ASAP. Don't wait for Generals to stand up and ask for it. Improve facilities and use better technologies in our armed services. 

This can just be a start. I know that these changes are difficult come about, the system wont accept it and the realities of economics behind these changes will hit us. But we need to try make this change happen.

Dissing politicians is easy. But all said and done, we need these politicians. We also need to see what is it that we, as a people, can do to bring about a change? What can we do to get our politicians to start thinking about these issues seriously? 

This episode has generated a lot of anger among the general public all over India. We as citizens need to decide how we can channel these emotions in bringing about a positive change. Rioting, dissing, ranting  etc is easy, but, self defeating. Let's try and put our minds together and think of bringing about  positive changes from this terrible episode. We need to stay within the system and bring about a change. It's up to all of us to be a part of this system to change it.

And finally, let's not forget what happened in Mumbai last week. In honor of all the brave men who died fighting, we need to bring about a change in our system. We need to make India stronger and safer!