Blasts in India mere statistics

While the world has barely recovered from the horrors that visited Boston this past Monday, India’s cycle of terror continues unabated. The blast that took place on Wednesday near the party office of BJP in Bangalore, injuring 16 people, including eight policemen and two students one their way back home from tuition classes, speaks volumes about the absolute apathy with which human lives are treated in India. While the Indian government spends enormous amounts of money in puffing up the security systems, importing more arms and ammunitions in the name of combating terror, none of the benefits of those policies and acquisitions seems to reach the common man, who is usually the target and victim of these incessant assaults on lives and property. It has not even been two months since twin blasts ripped apart Dilsukhnagar, a crowded shopping complex in Hyderabad, that killed 17 people and injured 119 others. And, although the union home minister Sushilkumar Shinde had promised thorough and fast-tracked investigation, deploying the services of National Investigation Agency (NIA) and the National Security Guard (NSG), there are still no concrete reports, despite some CCTV footage that seemed to point at five men who allegedly handled and planted explosives at the blast sites. Now, with the Bangalore blasts occurring within two days of the infamous Boston Marathon bombings, comparisons will be inevitably drawn between the unbelievably shoddy nature of investigation and preparedness in terms of handling security breaches and crises of this manner in India, and the superlative focus that our American counterparts display when dealing with terrorism of any kind.

Now that preliminary probes into Wednesday’s blast have pointed towards use of Improvised Explosive Device (IED), in the same vein as in the Hyderabad case, investigation into the matter needs to pick up pace and culprits be identified and brought to book. Targeting party workers of the ruling BJP in a state, which faces assembly elections next month, on 5 May to be exact, is deplorable to say the least, and shows how grassroot politics is now using the strategies of imported terror to intimidate and instill fear amongst citizens. In this context, the insensitive tweet coming from Congress party member Shakeel Ahmad, saying that the blast is likely to ‘help BJP politically on the eve of election’ is in extremely poor taste. Not only are the political classes utterly callous and disregarding of the daily struggles that the aam aadmi undergoes, but they are incapable even of dealing in a sensitive and empathetic manner with crises like these and the human tragedies borne out of them. Instead of focusing on getting to the root of the heinous incident, the political factions are busy scoring brownie points over each other in a deplorable game of one-upmanship. It is particularly shameful that while we boast of how our cities are soon going to become ‘world class’, and as we look upon covetously at every item of luxury rerouted from America, we sourly fail to learn from their ‘can do’ spirit and the real value that they attach to every American life.