Sunday, November 30, 2008

Land, air and sea - India vulnerable from all sides

Good morning friends. Each and everyone in Mumbai is so scared. Or Maybe not only there, it's everywhere. We don't know when we are safe or not. With those terrorism made by the terrorist every one were all scared. But let's not be. We all just pray.

This time the terror rose from the sea to strike at the very heart of Mumbai. But political and bureaucratic apathy has virtually ensured that India remains vulnerable to terror infiltration in all the three dimensions — land, air and sea.

If the fledgling marine police forces of coastal states are functioning without the 204 patrol boats promised to them three years ago, with inadequate force-levels of the Coast Guard further accentuating the problem, the story remains depressingly similar in other surveillance and detection equipment, ranging from bulk scanners and air defence radars to ship and vehicle tracking systems.

Terror outfits "regularly" use land routes to smuggle explosives, arms and ammunition but the sheer scale of the traffic makes it impossible to carry out proper checks in absence of proper equipment.

"Explosive-detection bulk and trace scanners installed at various key points on land routes, airports and ports, for instance, can minimise security breaches," said an expert.

The government, however, prefers to sleep, waking up only to flounder from one crisis to another. Consider this: the Army officially requested both the defence and home ministries for bulk scanners for deploying at places like Jawahar Tunnel, Lakhanpur and Zoji La as well as road links being operationalised with Pakistan as far back as in July 2006. Despite subsequent reminders, there is no word on the scanners till now.

Sometimes, the government response is so tardy that even the Comptroller and Auditor General of India gets shocked. CAG's latest report laments the gaping holes in the existing radar coverage over India, holding that the radars present with IAF are grossly inadequate as well as obsolete.

IAF's holding of low-level transportable radars, which provide cover against aerial threats operating up to a height of 2 km, for instance, is only 24% of the actual requirement. After the CAG report, even defence minister A K Antony was forced to admit that the acquisition of air defence radars for IAF had been stuck for one reason or the other for the last 17 years.

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