INDIA’S COUNTER-TERROR POLICY

POOR INTELLIGENCE KEEPS INDIA VULNERABLE: ANALYSTS

The Economic Times, July 14, 2011

NEW DELHI: India will remain a soft target for militant attacks until it enforces a radical shift in counter-terror policy that prioritises effective intelligence-gathering, analysts said Thursday.

Despite Home Minister P. Chidambaram's insistence that Wednesday's serial bomb blasts in Mumbai could not be blamed on any intelligence failure, experts said India's internal security apparatus remained woefully inadequate.

The three explosions in the country's commercial capital left 17 dead and 131 injured, dozens of them seriously.

Ajai Sahni, executive director of the Institute of Conflict Management in New Delhi, said new security measures introduced after the 2008 Mumbai attacks had only addressed &quota fraction" of the core weaknesses in policing and grassroots information gathering.

“Obviously, you cannot have a 100 percent guarantee against a terror attack, but that said, we have tremendous infirmities in terms of security,” Sahni told AFP.

“Our system does not respond on a war footing to terrorism, it acts like a confused bureaucracy,” he said, adding that India's police force was largely &quotincompetent" with little or no forensic capability or intelligence training.

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