London: 1.30 am (Nov, 2009)
Me: Is it safe to walk to the hotel (0.8 mile away) at this hour?
Security guard (at work): Don’t worry. You will be on many cameras all the way to your hotel.
Saudi Arabia (Nov, 2008)
Me: Don’t you guys have security issues in Saudi from Al Qaeda?
Colleague (an Arab): All killed. Sent to jail. My cousin was in Al Qaeda. Government put them all in jail. Very good. Government very strict.
Mumbai (Nov, 26 – 2008): terrorists take coastal route to attack the city. 170+ killed. Government of the day makes promises to tighten overall security. One year later, the civilians are no less vulnerable.
What differentiates the first two from the third is a complete lack of political will in the latter case. Sure politicians the world over, by definition, are concerned primarily about their own interest. But one thing that differentiates several nations when it comes to national security is a political tipping point that makes the political establishment of the day act decisively in national interest. For US, it was 9/11. For London, it was 7/7. Even for Saudi, where there is no democracy, there was decisiveness in dealing with terrorists. Heck, even China that isn’t a prime target for terrorists is partnering with IBM to have a system in place where all the 1.3 billion Chinese would potentially be monitored through a very advanced surveillance system. London has 12000 CCTVs each connected to software that monitors any suspicious behavior such as hand-waving, people walking in groups, and such. On an average, every visitor to London comes on CCTV atleast 300 times. The whole of UK has on an average 1 CCTV for 14 people. Will it provide complete protection? Of course not. But it sure shows a strong political will that restores faith in the system and makes citizens feel safe.
Unfortunately, for Mumbai the tipping point wasn’t 26/11. There are merely 820 CCTVs that work in isolation without any centralized software analyzing them. And terrorism is just one example. Law enforcement (or lack of it) is another example where lack of political will is screwing up the system. There are rules, and there are law enforcers. Yet, there is no law enforcement. There will be roads and flyovers, but if there isn’t any law enforcement, laws will be broken openly..and people like me will complain about it.
Ditto for climate change. Example: Bengal taxi association went up in arms when a court order to replace old taxis with ‘greener’ cars was passed. Politicians are scared to shoo away their vote-bank and maintain the status quo. Result: the city is one of the most polluted metros.
The problem is not linear. The solution unfortunately lies with the politicians. No matter how much we despise politicians, we cannot stay untouched by politics on a daily basis. The tipping point will be reached only when decision-making is disassociated from potential repercussions from so-called vote-banks. Till then, status quo won’t change.
