Comment: India’s intelligence, police force part of the problem

It is fine to accuse the Pakistani Army and Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency of complicity in the recent attack by a small army of selected targets in Mumbai, but this overlooks the responsibility of Indian intelligence agencies to prevent such attacks by militants. Those who criticize the ISI are ignoring the recent revelations in Indian newspapers that “clear warnings of a coming assault were ignored” and “that Indian intelligence agencies had precise information at least 10 months ago that Pakistani militants were planning an attack” but failed to act. Even in cases when Indian intelligence organizations did forewarn local law enforcement agencies of possible attacks, the latter were either unable or unwilling to act. According to one  informed observer, this is because “the Maharashtra state police, like any other state police force in the country, could have done little to avert these incidents […]. Today in India the police serve the rich and the powerful. The police are a demoralized state agency that cannot properly investigate petty crimes, let alone prevent terrorism. Rather, they are more likely to promote it”. In essence, India’s police “have severed their contacts with the people, except to demand bribes from them. Corruption is high; efficiency is low”. Add to this the fact that the people who planned and executed the Mumbai attacks “are not ordinary people —they have money, training and equipment. They can bribe the police and are doing so”. Instead of vowing to address the problem of law enforcement head-on, the Indian government is proposing to create a specialized anti-terrorist force, a “super-cop” agency by the name of Federal Investigation Agency. Yet it is feared that this “will further demoralize the ordinary policemen”, which in turn will increase, not decrease, rampant inefficiency and corruption among local law enforcement agencies. [IA]
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