Absolutely No Preparations to Mitigte at JNU

Terrorism in India and the State response

R.Rajaraman Emeritus Professor of Physics Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India

Co-Chair, International Panel on Fissile Materials

[For the PMP on Terrorism Mitigation, Erice, 2010]

Introduction

Although this was not adequately appreciated by the international community, India has been a victim of terrorism for many decades. Although, as with the rest of the world, there have been no CBRN attacks so far, there have been plenty of conventional terrorist strikes and suicide bombings. These have been going on in one form or another for decades.

Unlike the US, which identifies its major terrorist threat as coming from the Al Qaeda and other “Jihadist” groups, in India we have had several different terrorist groups and insurgencies. Past examples include Sikh separatist terrorism in Punjab which was finally contained and gradually eliminated in the early ‘eighties. We have had other violent insurgencies in the north-east of the country involving the Nagas, the Mizos and the Bodos, each with its own ideology and agenda. These have by now been partly (but far from fully) co-opted into the democratic system but spurts of bombings and killings still happen. This was followed by a surge of terrorist violence in Kashmir, which has been going on for more than a decade with no signs of abating in the near future.

1 In fairness it should be mentioned that all these groups, including the militants in Kashmir, viewed themselves not as terrorists but as freedom fighters, seeking separation or autonomy from the Indian state. But their violent actions— bomb blasts, derailing trains, burning buses, disrupting the local infrastructure, killing policemen and minor government officials --- are all no different from what terrorists do. Besides, many of them have been aided and abetted by neighboring countries, with no particular interest in the grievances or aspirations of the regional groups in question. These outside supporters have their own agenda, as for instance the spread of Islamic fundamentalism in the case of the support to Kashmiri terrorism from across our western borders.

On a different front we have also had violent Leftist activists who claim to be motivated by the oppression of the poor and underprivileged by the state machinery. In the ‘sixties and ‘seventies, the Naxalites, a militant Maoist group, were very active in the eastern part of India, primarily West Bengal. They were gradually contained at that time, but have now re-emerged on a much broader front and with much greater success.

Thus, even as some militant groups were variously pacified, politically accommodated or defeated, others have taken their place. The scourge of terror plagues India stronger now than ever before. Only Iraq has the dubious distinction of having more terrorist-caused deaths this past 15 years than India. Just in the state of Jammu& Kashmir alone 30,517 people have died because of terrorism between January 1988 and December 2001.Since then, overall fatalities connected with terrorism and insurgency were 2,765 in India in 2006, 2,598 in 2007, and even higher earlier, with a peak at 5,839 in 2001.

Today India faces terrorism mainly from the two major groups mentioned above, namely, (i) A new resurgent form of Maoists and, (ii) Militant Islamic fundamentalists from across the border, who have terrorized not only Kashmir bur also other parts of India, including the notorious attack on Mumbai in November 2008. Of the two, the Jihadist terror would be of greater interest to our Erice workshop. For one thing it is closely related to the Taliban-Al Qaeda family of terrorists that is of so much the concern to the US and Western Europe. Unfortunately, this relationship was realized by the West only after the massive attack on Mumbai in 2008. That event, and the escalation in Taliban militancy within Pakistan itself, has made it clear that long standing acts of “Jihadist” terrorism in India are not just some bilateral skirmishes between “long standing rivals” India and Pakistan. They are in fact manifestations of the same problem that has come to plague not only the western world, but also Pakistan. They stem from the extreme militant wings of Islamic fundamentalism which have been unwisely nurtured for decades. Thus it is also relevant to the Af-Pak situation in which the US and its allies are embroiled. So Jihadist terrorism in India will be of greater interest to the international community than the Maoist campaigns, which are largely limited to India and the neighboring Nepal.

2 Secondly, the prospect of Al Qaeda and related militant groups engaging in a radioactive (RDD) type of attack is a serious possibility. Even the probability of their being able to get hold of enough fissile material to build a rudimentary nuclear fission weapon is considered significant by many experts. This is reflected in the increasing urgency felt by the West to secure all the fissile material in the world and to curb their further production by enacting treaties like the Fissile Material Cut-off Treaty. The recent Nuclear Summit organized by President Obama and attended by an unprecedented number of heads of government represents a manifestation of this concern over Islamic fundamentalists getting hold of nuclear materials. By contrast it is generally believed that the Maoists would not have the wherewithal to get hold of CBRN material or the know-how to weaponise it. More importantly, as a “liberation “movement, the Maoists would not have the motivation to kill a large number of civilians. For all these reasons, the Jihadist terrorist is of more direct interest to MTA-PMP.

However I will first give a brief summary of the Maoist terror activity before going on to the Jehadist group. This is in part because Islamic fundamentalist terrorism has been around for more than a decade. People are more familiar with it. The Maoist brand of terrorism is relatively less widely understood at the international level. Its current manifestation has seriously affected only Nepal and now, India.

Furthermore, since the terrible Mumbai attack by the Jihadists in 2008 and the international condemnation it received, the scale of their activities has come down. It has not altogether disappeared, but most the action on that front has been confined to Kashmir. We believe this to be only a temporary respite for India from Jehadist terrorism, which is bound to re-emerge with increased vigor once the US pulls out of Afghanistan. But at the moment it has been pushed on to the backburner by the Maoists, who have been steadily gaining ground and taken the center stage in the Indian government’s efforts to combat terrorism.

Maoist violence in India

The Maoists are violent leftist extremists whose activities have spread to large portions of the eastern and central eastern parts of the country. They have gradually increased their grip over the underdeveloped rural districts of the Indian states of Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Orissa, West Bengal and Jharkhand. According to some estimates they control about a third of the land area of India, although to put things in perspective, being largely rural and forest covered, it does not contain a proportionately large number of people. But it is a vast area, larger than that of most European countries.

The original cause behind this Maoist movement lies, as was the case with other leftist guerilla movements elsewhere, particularly Latin America, with poor governance and corruption of government officials in connivance with major moneyed interests. The regions where the Indian Maoists have their strength are among the most backward areas of the country, mostly occupied by tribal people in forests who were, prior to modernization and “development”, quite self sufficient by the standards to which they were accustomed, by employing their traditional skills. Then the process of development, with its requirements of land for industrialization, roads and other infrastructure began to encroach on their habitat. On top of that the lumber industry flouted

3 forest conservation rules with the connivance of corrupt forest officials, and cut down vast swathes of the forest lands which had supported these people for centuries.

While some of this was the unavoidable conflict between modernization and traditional ways of life, even in those cases where land re-allocation could be justified in the interest of development, adequate attention was not paid by the local government officials or the industries that displaced the people to rehabilitate them elsewhere. Not only did the displaced people require land and housing to replace their earlier homes, but also suitable employment, since their traditional skills designed for their forest habitat were of no special value in the modern sectors.

Another group oppressed by the System, especially in the North and central parts of the country are the and people from the lowest caste (often called the “untouchables”, now referred to by the politically correct term of the Scheduled Castes) who have been at the receiving end of atrocities by the landed gentry and other higher caste groups for centuries. In the post independence period they have begun to shake off the timidity, fear and despair instilled in them by society and seek some liberation from exploitation. This in turn has generated retribution from their oppressors, inflicting further hardship on them.

4 Under these conditions, the untouchables and the tribals have been alienated from the state machinery. Years of experience with forest officials, the police, rural administrators and crooked politicians has left them disillusioned with the government or the judiciary as institutions for seeking justice. They are angry and bitter from the apathy, cruelty and corruption of the officialdom. They have also lost faith in peaceful democratic protests to gain attention to their plight, and see armed confrontation as the only available route to salvation.

Clearly, such conditions make these regions fertile ground for the Maoists. Hundreds of angry people, particularly the young--- men and women-- joined the Maoist movement. The growth of the movement, like that of many terrorist groups, is characterized particularly at the recruitment stage by noble ideals (liberating the poor from their exploiters) and personal courage (in taking on the might of the state and its police). But soon after joining the movement, they also get acclimatized to the ruthless violence that comes with armed confrontation. There is shrill fanaticism and discipline enforced by imposing severe punishment for the defaulters. As with any group that has to stay underground or be on the run, there is the daily danger of being exposed. This in turn leads to suspicions, sometimes paranoid, about betrayal by compromised members from within as well as by residents of the areas they control.

Like Maoist terrorists everywhere, they have employed a mixture of intimidation of villagers with guerilla strikes on the police and the state machinery with doing some public service for the residents of the region.. The past year has seen well organized Maoist attacks on police patrols and even their headquarters, with scores of policemen and paramilitary personnel massacred along with similar casualties on their own side. Amidst this violence they also make attempts to open medical clinics and sometimes even schools for the children. But the price asked is complete loyalty to them and shelter as and when needed. To ensure such cooperation and to avoid betrayal by the people to police forces, the Maoists sometimes commit deliberate violence on the villages in retribution and as warning . Adding to the problem are similar demands made on the villagers by the state security forces and the police, seeking information about the Maoist’s movements . The police have also tacitly encouraged the setting up of private vigilante groups to protect upper caste interest against the Leftists. Thus the populace is squeezed between a rock and a hard place, under great tension to steer their day to day life through the conflicting demands of loyalty from the rival groups, with macabre punishment from both sides in the event of suspicions of helping the other. They also suffer plenty of collateral damage in the shoot-outs between the state and the Maoists.

Another party in this troubled region is the set of “Gandhian” social activists. These are non violent groups of volunteers who try to help the villagers in all possible ways —getting them medicines, legal help in bailing them out of jail when wrongly confined by the police, give advice on how to get their due share of food rations, daily wages , benefits of various government assistance schemes and so on. These are groups of dedicated admirable people, who work without at a pittance in the way of salary and without any real support from the local law and order machinery. While the Gandhian groups do not condone the violent methods used by the Maoists, they do tend to be sympathetic to the plight of the villagers at the mercy of unhelpful and corrupt state officials. In turn the officialdom tends to view them as Maoist sympathizers and periodically harasses them.

5 The Maoist movement and the associated terrorist acts have been steadily growing in the past decade. While the local police has launched attacks on them and in then been raided by them, the central government had not given its highest priority, preoccupied as it was with dealing with cross-border Jihadist terrorism. It is only in the past year that the central government has given it top priority. In India’s federal system, the police come under the different state government and not the Central Government in Delhi, although the latter’s Home Ministry has ultimate responsibility for the nation’s internal security. Since the State governments are often headed by a different political party than the Center, coordinating between them on strong action of any sort is a difficult and delicate political exercise. After the 2008 Mumbai attack, the Home minister was replaced by a dynamic and very efficient politician who has been trying to intensify action against the Maoists in coordination with the governments of the different states where they are active.

Attempts by the government to solve the Maoist problem is not just based on force alone. There is widespread awareness that it was corruption and poor governance that led to the problem in the first place. Consequently the government is also making a major effort to tone up the administration of those areas and improve the living conditions of the residents. . In any case, in a vibrant democracy like India, the government will never have a free hand in using unrestrained force against its own citizens, which the Maoists after all, are. But introducing reforms and improving living conditions is not easy amidst the violence of the police-Maoist confrontations. It is much easier to do when violence has ceased and peace restored. On the hand, restoration of peace and ending the Maoist movement requires some improvement in the life of the citizens. It is this vicious cycle that the Indian state is trying to break in its attempts to bring Maoist terrorism to an end.

At the time of writing the conflict is still on, and attacks and counter-attacks between the terrorists and the police continue.

Jihadist Terrorism in India

The second major perpetrators of terrorism in India today are the Jihadists. Indians widely believe that they have been largely funded and trained by elements in Pakistan’s intelligence agencies. In fact India, as a neighbor of Pakistan sharing a long thousand mile border, was being subject to cross-border terrorist strikes long before the terrible 9/11 tragedy in New York that shook the world. They not only continue to terrorize Kashmir where they started, but have spread gradually all over India.

Among other things, the Jihadists have attacked railway trains packed with people, bombed shopping centers in New Delhi during peak hours, shot delegates at an academic conference in the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore, and launched an assault on the Indian Parliament while it was in session in 2001. The largest such attack in terms of casualties was the series of thirteen coordinated explosions on 12 March 1993 in Mumbai (Bombay), in which 257 persons were killed. More recently, 11 July 2006 saw the execution of a series of eight bomb explosions at seven locations on local trains and stations in Mumbai at peak hours. Nearly 200 people were killed in that attack.

6 To cap it all came last year’s attack on Mumbai. The worldwide shock and condemnation that followed the Mumbai tragedy has temporarily put a halt to further strikes, but they seem to be reviving again. Soon thereafter, in early June 2009, intelligence agencies in India uncovered a plot by three terrorists who have infiltrated across the Pakistan border, with a plan to launch a string of attacks in South Indian cities like Bangalore, Hyderabad and Chennai. Security warnings have been issued to all major cities in that region.

In terms of annual fatality counts, only Iraq has the dubious distinction of having more terrorist- caused deaths this past decade than India, which comes second in the world. Just in the state of Jammu& Kashmir alone 30,517 people have died because of terrorism between January 1988 and December 2001.Since then, overall fatalities connected with terrorism and insurgency were 2,765 in India in 2006, 2,598 in 2007, and even higher earlier, with a peak at 5,839 in 2001.

Efforts to prevent conventional terrorism

Therefore terrorism is a very serious issue in India. In fact I would say that, no less than in the United States, terrorism is viewed here as perhaps the single biggest threat to national security .Consequently there is a major effort by the government to anticipate and prevent terrorist attacks. Our intelligence agencies spend a major fraction of their energies and funds towards this end.

Among the measures taken are:

Where individual security checks are possible at public places which are potential targets of strikes, such checks are done regularly. These include airports, movie theatres, major sporting events etc

7 Airport security checks are done not just before entering planes but even when entering the airport itself, where non-passenger entry is forbidden

There is fairly sophisticated surveillance of communications between terrorist and their suspected safe havens. Surveillance is also done of underground financial transactions that could be instruments for funding terrorism. New Delhi, an especially attractive target for terrorists, sees much more visible evidence of anti- terrorist measures. Near the airport and train stations you will see police bunkers with policemen squatting behind sandbags wielding automatic weapons. You will also see police barriers on major roads leading out of the city, which slow down the traffic to enable cops to inspect individual vehicles as they go by. Considerable police protection is provided to a large spectrum of “VIP”s, such as high risk politicians, movie starts and sports icons. Some times their motorcades hold up traffic, causing resentment and irritation among the general public. Both groups, especially the Jihadists, derive considerable support from other countries. In particular much of the jihadi terrorism is funded from Pakistan and Bangladesh either directly or through conduits in the Persian Gulf. Therefore our external intelligence agencies (the analogues of the CIA) also come into play in trying to prevent infiltration of terrorists, their arms and their funds from outside the country.

It is not easy for people outside police and intelligence agencies to make their own independent estimates how successful these preventive efforts have been. While successful terrorist acts get a lot of publicity, the ones thwarted by the vigilance of the police don’t make news. Statistics like the decrease or increase in the annual number of terrorist incidents or deaths are indicators, but not definitive ones. The number of “successful” assaults has to be matched against the number of attempts, about which there is little public information. The resources and capabilities of terrorist groups vary year from year as do their strategies, so one does not know to what extent the increase or decrease in the number of their attempts has been affected by the preventive measures. With this proviso, however, some statistics are very encouraging. That the nationwide terrorist fatality has fallen from almost 6000 in 2001 to about 2600 last year is very heartening.

Plans for coping with nuclear disasters

8 Unlike the case of the Maoists, the possibility of the Jihadist terrorist groups launching a CBRN attack in India cannot be dismissed lightly. They have much more technologically sophisticated cadres, widespread international contacts and could have access to funds and infrastructure comparable to that of many state actors. Indeed, a substantial segment of the security community in the US considers them capable of building even a full fledged nuclear weapon if they could get hold of the required fissile materials. Therefore a CBRN attack does fall within the range of capabilities at the technical level.

Despite this, and despite the extensive efforts in India against terrorism by conventional means, efforts to prevent and mitigate the effects of CBRN had been minimal until a couple of years ago. The many institutions and agencies related to disaster management that we had were mostly focused on natural disasters like the Tsunami, earthquakes, cyclones , floods, drought, landslides avalanches, forest fire, pest-infestation and so on.

Of course, many of the disaster management measures suggested for natural disasters will also be of use in the event of a CBRN attack. Having said that it remained until recently that there were no measures specifically to tackle CBRN attacks developed in any agency in India.

[Aside: Exceptions to this are the great security precautions taken around India’s nuclear reactors. Our nuclear complexes have always been guarded heavily and the concrete shells of the reactors fortified against penetration by physical assault. Of the several possible modes of attack on reactor complexes listed in Table (1a) of Professor Steinhaeusler’s excellent 2008 article for our PMP, most are probably protected against, except possibly assaults by missiles or large airplane impact a la 9/11. Similarly the dangers arising form spent fuel transport listed in his Table (1b) are greatly reduced because most of the spent fuel still lies in tanks within the reactor complex. Where the fuel is reprocessed to separate Plutonium, whether civilian or military, this is also done within the reactor complex. There is very little transportation of spent fuel over public highways.

But these measures have been around for decades, not so much because reactors contain radioactive materials that terrorists could exploit but more because they are considered major national assets and symbols of technological achievement. Their protection is aimed against not just terrorist attacks but even against conventional commando or air strikes during, say, a war with Pakistan].

But things have rapidly changed for the better in the last couple of years with the formation of an apex level National Disaster Management Agency (NDMA). Established in 2005 with the Prime Minister as its Chairman, the Agency has been gradually establishing the chain of command in the event of a disaster and also developing detailed expertise and action plans in the event of a nuclear or an RDD attack.

The Agency held a major National Workshop on Nuclear Disaster Management was organized

9 in 2006 where all the possible scenarios of nuclear/radiological emergencies were discussed in detail. A Core Group of experts was set up, consisting of 20 specialists that included many from the Department of Atomic Energy. The Core Group deliberated the various technical and administrative issues to arrive at a national consensus during the course of eight meetings, to prepare the draft document of the Guidelines on the “Management of Nuclear and Radiological Emergencies. The draft document was subsequently discussed with members from various ministries of the Government of India, state governments, specialists from the Department of Atomic Energy, the Defense Research and Development Organization, the National Technical Research Organization, the Indian Army and the Air Force, After detailed discussions with the Department of Atomic Energy and the Atomic Energy Regulatory Board which overseas nuclear safety issues, their concurrence was obtained. The final Guidelines document was released in 2009.1

This is an excellent report and interested experts are invited to read the Guidelines document in full. We will give below a very brief summary and some extracts.

The guidelines cover five categories of nuclear disasters: i) Any accident taking place in any nuclear fuel cycle facility including the nuclear reactor, or in a facility using radioactive sources, ii) A ‘criticality’ accident in a nuclear fuel cycle facility where an uncontrolled nuclear chain reaction takes place inadvertently, leading to bursts of neutrons and gamma radiations. iii) An accident during the transportation of radioactive material. iv) The malevolent use of radioactive material as a Radiological Dispersal Device by terrorists for dispersal in the environment. v) A large-scale nuclear disaster, resulting from a nuclear weapon attack (as happened at Hiroshima and Nagasaki) which would lead to mass casualties and destruction of large areas and property.

It was felt that normal nuclear or radiological accidents are within the coping capability of the plant/facility authorities. A nuclear emergency in nuclear fuel cycle facilities, including nuclear reactors, or malevolent acts of using Radiological Dispersal Devices are the two scenarios that are of major concern. The impact of a nuclear attack (scenario [v] above ) will be well beyond the coping capability of the local authorities and it calls for handling at the national level.

The Guidelines, over a 130 pages long, contain, apart from sections devoted to Prevention of nuclear disasters, five chapters on various aspects of Mitigation, of direct interest to our PMP. A short summary of their contents is given below.

1 National Disaster Management Guidelines—Management of Nuclear and Radiological Emergencies, 2009. A publication of the National Disaster Management Authority, Government of India. ISBN 978-81-906483-7-0, February 2009, New Delhi. 10 Mitigation of Nuclear/ Radiological Emergencies:

The chapter on Preparedness for Nuclear/Radiological Emergencies requires that the preparedness be integrated in an all-hazards approach with the planning for response to conventional emergencies. Agencies like the police, fire and emergency services, medics, paramedics, non-governmental organizations, civil defense and home guards, etc., have to be fully integrated into the nuclear emergency programs both at the state and district levels. Nuclear facilities are required to have a comprehensive emergency preparedness plan for on- and off-site emergencies. For handling an off-site emergency in a nuclear power plant, there are off- site emergency committees of civic authorities, for the implementation of countermeasures such as, sheltering, prophylaxis, evacuation, resettlement including providing civil amenities and maintaining law and order. All these activities will be guided and controlled from a pre- designated emergency response centre located outside the boundary of the nuclear facility. Another chapter addresses capacity development for Nuclear/Radiological Emergencies:. A sufficient inventory of radiation monitoring instruments and protective gear will be built up by all State and District Disaster Management Authorities and the selected first responders will be trained in their use.

Four battalions of the National Disaster Response Force are being trained to provide specialized response during nuclear/radiological emergencies. In addition, there are four more NDRF battalions which can provide a supporting role.

The maintenance sufficient stock of essential medicines, which are specified in detail, and database for experienced medical professionals will betaken up by the government on a priority basis.

Apart from this, the chapter emphasizes that the confidence level in the community to handle any nuclear/radiological emergency can be enhanced only through education and awareness generation and preparedness. The main focus will be on the student community, which is the most effective segment of the society, to spread disaster awareness in the community. The topics pertaining to radiation, effects of radiation, nuclear/radiological emergencies etc., will be included in the syllabi at the school and college levels nationwide. The training of First Responders, through mock drills and emergency exercises is made mandatory

The chapter dealing with detailed responses to Nuclear/Radiological emergencies points out that while the response to a nuclear/radiological emergency has many elements in common with the response to other man-made and natural disasters, in terms of services like medical, fire and emergency services, police, civil defense, etc., special features of nuclear emergencies need to be taken care of additionally. These are discussed in detail.

All in all, the Indian Disaster Management Agency‘s Guidelines document and the care and expertise that has gone into preparing it are very commendable. But it is still an intellectual exercise at the planning level.

11 The next step, which is much harder, is one of implementation. This is largely outside the scope of nuclear and security experts alone. It will require a major political and bureaucratic resolve and allocation of funds to ensure that these guidelines are put into practice at the ground level soon and efficiently. It remains to be seen how quickly and how well this is one.

In this India, along with many other developing nations in the world, faces serious limitations. We discuss these in the next section.

Perceptions on WMD terrorism and limitations on mitigation efforts

While the efforts by the Indian NDMA to address CRBN attacks is impressive and commendable and will hopefully give rise to concrete some action on the ground around the country, it is worth thinking about two things: (i) Why had the level of concern over CBRN terrorism been relatively modest in India for so many years as compared to say, the US or UK?, even though we have been victims of terrorism for decades. (ii) Even though the authorities are now taking the possibility of CBRN very seriously, to what extent can they actually institute the preparatory measures their guideline document, in that vast country with its limited financial resources ?

12 The answers to these questions would apply not only to India but also to many developing nations in Asia, Africa and Latin America. The psychological attitudes and infrastructural problems faced in India in this connection are likely to be shared by other developing nations – in many cases to a larger degree. Therefore the Indian story is also representative of how the Third World reacts to the possibility of WMD terrorism.

It is important for the developed world in Europe and North America to acknowledge and understand the prevailing indifference in the Third World to possible WMD attacks, and if possible, understand the reasons behind it. Even though the former are the more likely targets of any WMD form of terrorism, the problem cannot be dealt with by them alone. Manpower and materials for a WMD attack are just as likely to come from a developing nation, where security requirements are relatively lax, as from a developed one. Hence the problem has to be addressed at the global level, requiring cooperation from all those countries which could potentially be sources or conduits of ingredients like radio-active materials. People deeply worried, with good reason, about WMD terrorism in the US and Western Europe must develop some insight into why such concerns remain relatively more tepid in the rest of the world. That is a first step in enlisting the cooperation of the rest of the world. Agencies and individuals interested in instituting robust mitigation measures throughout the world should keep these difficulties in mind.

There are two major reasons for why India had not, till recently, put in place adequate preparations for mitigating a CBRM attack. One is that while India is assaulted by terrorists all the time, these are all “conventional” strikes, usually with RDX explosives. So, the possibility of these terrorist groups resorting to any form of a WMD attack has not really entered into the public consciousness. If asked, members of the public and the polity would make a polite token acknowledgement of those dangers, but would not rate the danger as imminent. As far as I know, this perception is not based on any hard evidence or quantitative analysis, but is nevertheless widely shared in the country. Prevailing terrorist groups are seen to be doing sufficient damage with conventional explosives. Their periodic blasts with conventional explosives at public places seem sufficient to serve their purpose of grabbing headlines for their cause and consuming a chunk of the Indian state’s funds and energies.

Aside from the perception that WMD attacks are unlikely, there are deeper cultural and economic reasons behind the absence of any special preparedness to mitigate their effects. In fact there is not much in place to mitigate even conventional terrorist strikes with chemical explosives, although those do happen so frequently these days, often killing dozens in each episode. The willingness of a society to take steps to mitigate the consequences of a particular emergency depends how that potential emergency compares with the level of risk and hazards with which people live on a day to day basis. It also depends on the affluence of the society – whether it can find the funds to pay for such mitigation precautions -- and on its technological capability to put in place sophisticated mitigation plans.

13 Hundreds of millions people in India live in tin shacks and mud huts that could collapse on their heads in a storm, and eat food that keeps them permanently undernourished and ill. Compared to such problems of day to day survival, they simply cannot afford to worry excessively about the comparatively miniscule probability of CBRN attacks. As a corollary nor can their political leaders.

It is also useful to note ways in which natural disasters are different from terrorist attacks. Earthquakes, floods and tsunamis can kill thousands of people. But they don’t claim their full quota of casualties in seconds. If medical help can reach them within an hour or two, and if transportation to temporary shelters, sanitation and food can be provided within a day or so, that is enough to greatly mitigate the tragedy and save thousands of lives. This calls for relatively traditional low-tech modes of preparedness that many developing countries can manage to provide to a fair extent and may find it worth preparing for in view of how many lives that can save.

As distinct from natural disasters, terrorist strikes are of a different magnitude and have a different time scale. Their damage, usually because of blast effects, happens within seconds or minutes. There is no time to bring in additional mitigation facilities, beyond whatever civic services are already available nearby – ambulances, neighborhood hospitals etc. For instance two bombs exploded in New Delhi’s popular Sarojini Nagar market during peak Saturday shopping hours on 29th October 2005, killing about 50 people. Police vans did rush to the spot within minutes and ambulances soon thereafter and the casualties were shifted to hospitals quickly. Many more would have died of their wounds if this had not been done. This is mitigation, but done only within the normal day-to-day capabilities of a city’s hospitals and police services. Enlarging these normally available facilities for the sake of better mitigating a low probability terrorist attack is just not feasible, since those could occur in any district of any major city in the country. Their civic services are already as good as they can be, given the overall financial constraints of a developing country and the prevalent levels of governmental efficiency and corruption. Since the fatalities of any given conventional terrorist attack is in the tens rather than hundreds , and since they don’t occur in the same municipality every time, the level of response remains limited by pragmatic political and financial considerations, as compared to other more serious things that require attention.

With the establishment of the Disaster Management Authority in India, more funds may be made available at the town and city level of this vast country, but given overall financial constraints and competing demands, the funds and attention that can be devoted to terrorism will remain limited.

14 It may appear to people in the US and Europe who are (understandably) deeply concerned about the prospect of WMD terrorism that the Indian attitude I have sketched is too complacent. It might well be, but that is human nature. Consider what the American response has been to the prospect of major US cities being hit by nuclear weapons, fired either in anger or by accident. Fifteen years after the end of the Cold war, there are still thousands of ready-to-launch nuclear missiles in Russia, each capable of killing millions in an instant and wiping out whole cities. Yet how many Americans are actively worried about it? In the early days of the cold war several nuclear civil defense measures were initiated in the US and the UK, including basement shelters in every home stocked with food and Iodine. But most these plans have just petered out, largely because the anticipated disaster doesn’t seem to have happened and people have become blasé about living in the shadow of the nukes. By comparison, the 9/11 tragedy which killed “only” a few thousand people and destroyed a couple of buildings has caused a deep national trauma in the US that had affected its foreign and defense policies in a fundamental way.

The low key nature of the Indian efforts to mitigate CBRN menace has its good and bad sides. The good side is that the public, with so many other problems of more compelling urgency to deal with, is not additionally burdened with the panic and anxiety associated with the threat of a CBRN attack. Keeping such threats in the day-to-day consciousness of the public, in order to facilitate vigilance and speedy mitigation, can also lead to distrust and suspicion in society, often pitting brother against brother.

The bad side is obvious. The current levels of preparedness will prove to be disastrously inadequate if an attack does really take place tomorrow. Certainly, if there were to be even one actual RDD terrorist attack in India, the level of preparedness for the next one will increase greatly, to perhaps paranoid proportions. Look how things changed in the US after the 9/11 event, and how India’s preparedness cope with oceanographic disasters improved greatly after the giant tsunami hit us in 2004. Similarly, public psychology being what it is, until a WMD terrorist attack happens in India (heaven forbid!), worrying about that prospect will remain just one among many priorities here.

I fear the same attitude prevails in most developing countries in the world. Pakistan has offered another example of the same phenomenon, in the context of conventional RDX terrorism. For many years, the Pakistani public and even much of its intelligentsia was in a state of denial about the menace of Jihadist terrorism that was being nurtured on its soil. It was only in the past year when the terrorists turned their guns towards Pakistan itself and suicide bombers began to inflict serious damage on Pakistani heartland that there was significant public acknowledgement of the Jihadist terrorism. Steps are now being taken by the Pakistani army to counter them. In the interests of India, Pakistan and the rest of the world it is hoped that these measures will help contain the Jihadist menace.