That is enough.

 

 

Mumbai is not just the financial capital of the country, but in the real sense it is the gateway of India. If you see, more often than not, new thoughts, new trends, new attitudes come to Mumbai first, and then they reach other parts of the country. Mumbai has always played a leader for other cities of India as far as liberal, secular and modern points of view towards life is concerned.

Mumbai is kind of a mini India – an extremely interesting city. If you look at different parts of Mumbai, you can see why Mumbai has its own culture, but it is not at the cost of the various sub-cultures. Parts of Mumbai are preserved and nurtured – like if you go to Lalbagh or Koliwada or Mohammad Ali Road or Bandra or if you go towards south Bombay, you realise that all these are very different from each other but at the same time there is some sort of commonality between them. That is the energy level, the belief in life. When this diabolic attack took place on Mumbai, it was not on Mumbai alone, it was on what modern India represents; it was on the achievements of that energy, on that ambition, on that endeavour that modern India represents. But obviously the winds cannot blow off the sun…that’s not possible. Yet what has happened is very sad and we should see to it that never, never and never should something like this happen again.

Mumbai is too big, Mumbai is too strong, and Mumbai will survive it and keep moving forward. I do not think our enemies can stop our growth in any way or our march ahead.

What has happened was a kind of a collective nightmare. We have been let down by the establishment, by our political system and there is no point in blaming one particular party. In the last 15 years we have seen, such incidents have taken place in different nooks and corners of India. India today is the worst sufferer of terrorism in the world. Few years back there was another party and after that there was another party and we have seen every party in power and each and every party is responsible for this. Even if one of them had handled it right, we would have seen the difference, but the fact is that each and every one of them has faltered with his or her duty, so the time has come that we mumbaikars have civil society rules. We are tired of slogans and punch lines and emotional and literary and flowery speeches – we want action and by action we mean, we as a state should upgrade our intelligence system and our security system. Our intelligence system is a big joke, a joke at the cost of the lives of innocent Indians. Every third day, you pick up a newspaper and you see that intelligence services have informed about a likely terrorist attack at Goa’s New Year Eve function or a group of terrorists have entered the Kumbh Mela or intelligence services have come to know that terrorists have decided to enter a one-day cricket match at Guwahati… it sounds like an information bureau rather than an intelligence bureau. 99.9 per cent of such news is unreliable …in fact 100 per cent of it is unreliable. Thus their credibility becomes zero.

Intelligence services of this country have to be improved, made more competent and it has to be smartened up through the rank and file of the institution. Similarly, with the security system. I mean, it’s probably understandable if some people land with such inordinate amounts of arms and ammunition in some deserted area, or a godforsaken beach, but right in the midst of a city?! And the marine security guards don’t get to know about it – now that’s not acceptable at all. Our security, our intelligence, our police have to be trained and made better. There has to be some sort of reform; the police has become some kind of a vehicle for politicians to use at their whim and will. There have been recommendations of police reforms by various commissions but they have not been implemented. It should be given better equipments, better training and above all, a free hand.