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Securing our cities

Whoever planted the two bombs that went off inside the most important mosque in India on Friday did not intend to kill large numbers of people. Manufactured from low-grade chemical explosive packed into metal water pipes, which in turn had been filed to turn into shrapnel at the moment of detonation, the bombs resembled large firecrackers rather than real weapons of terror. Until investigators make some headway into the bombing of the Jama Masjid, we can only speculate what the message of the attack might have been. Coming just days after the bombing of a celebration of the birthday of Prophet Muhammad in Karachi, the Delhi bombings could have been intended by Islamists to demonstrate their hatred of the syncretic religious practices of most Indian Muslims. Islamist terror groups may also have hoped the bombing would provoke violence by Muslims and a Hindu communal backlash. The perpetrators clearly had one goal: precipitating pan-India communal tension that religious bigots of all hues believe is a necessary precursor to their particular vision of utopia. On this sordid enterprise, the people of Delhi have thrown cold water — for not a stone was thrown, nor a single slogan of hatred chanted.

While the residents of Delhi, like the people of Varanasi following the March 7 bombings, deserve applause for their conduct, urban administrators need to do some serious thinking about just what they intend to do to make Indian cities safer. While urban centres simply cannot be insulated against all terrorist attacks, technologies and procedures do exist significantly to mitigate the risks. The problem is that defensive measures, whether they come in the form of state-of-the-art microwave-based scanners or plain and simple frisking, cost money. Already stretched and underfunded, police forces cannot meet the growing need for counter-terrorism defences. It is imperative, therefore, that cash-rich public facilities like places of worship, commercial areas, and even office complexes are obliged to commit a part of their revenues to protecting their users. Standards for securing such facilities need to be set, much like the rules for fire safety. A supervisory apparatus will have to be put in place to ensure that these standards, settled by an independent regulatory body, are met. Across the world, governments have been working on hardening society's defences against terrorism. Many cities even have protocols in place for handling nuclear, chemical, and bacteriological attacks, however far-fetched such threats may seem; these protocols are periodically rehearsed down to the smallest detail. Not one of India's major cities, however, has begun to consider what it needs to do to prepare itself for a major serial bombing, let alone an act of catastrophic terrorism. The good sense of India's people has so far been the country's best defence against terrorism — but it is time administrators started showing some good sense of their own.

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