India hasn't learnt lessons

Many predicted that last year's terrorist assault on Mumbai would prove a turning point in India's struggle against terrorism. But a year later the lessons learnt, and measures taken, are as ambiguous as ever.

Aside from a freshly formed Rapid Strike Unit that was brought out on parade last week, there is no real evidence that the country is better organised for a similar attack. Progress on the Mumbai probe is equally opaque; seven people were charged recently in Pakistan in relation to the attacks, but it is unclear if they are the masterminds or mere pawns in a complex political web.

When bombs ravaged other Indian cities, middle-class India was never directly harmed. The Mumbai attacks were closer to the bone. Perhaps for the first time, the well-heeled became the victims. Mumbai became about ‘people like us'.

Yet despite all the anger, the protest-marches and the sloganeering, more than half of Mumbai did not bother to turn up at the voting booths for the Lok Sabha elections in May. And in the recently concluded Maharashtra state elections, the usual suspects have been returned to power by the masses. What happened to all the rage?

Politicians and intelligences bureaus have admitted to being ill-equipped and underprepared — which is more than we can say for India's much-trumpeted private media outlets.

Days after the tragedy, India's hyperbolic TV channels were stirring mass anger and goading the government towards war with Pakistan. Meanwhile it was the Pakistani media that exposed Ajmal Kasab's national identity — a fact that was being denied by Islamabad at the time. Few in the Indian media have paused to applaud the courage of their fellow journalists across the border.

Sadly, that is not the Indian media's only deficiency. They have failed to own up to their many faults in their coverage of last year's attack.

A year later, they are silent on allegations that their newsroom debates pushed India to the brink of war — which could have had severe implications for regional security. They make no mention of their live telecasts of police movements and reactions being seen and used by the terrorists themselves. As indeed they were, according to a recent documentary.

Dan Reed's explosive documentary Terror in Mumbai — Dispatches gives us video testimony from Kasab right after he was captured and actual CCTV footage that is peppered with audio intercepts between the terrorists and their handlers. Throughout the attack, the handlers keep their boys abreast of what the media is saying. At one point they even warn them of approaching helicopters which they could see live on TV.

No major Indian news channel has given coverage to Reed's documentary — presumably because its content shows how much the terrorists profited from the live coverage. The media became the eyes and ears of the terrorists, allowing them to follow frame by frame how their operation was unfolding.

Reed's work is both embarrassing and damaging for these Murdochian channels that wage daily battles for TRP ratings. Given the severity of this affair, the media has to chin up, give play to the documentary and apologise for their obtrusive coverage which left people endangered and disturbed.

Apologies aside, there is a way for the media to redeem themselves. That would be to explore the uncomfortable, and important, questions being raised by the widow of Hemant Karkare, the late head of Maharashtra's Anti-Terror Squad (ATS), who was killed under inexplicable circumstances on the first night of the three-day carnage. Kavita Karkare asks where her late husband's bullet-proof jacket disappeared to — videos show him wearing it earlier that evening.

Karkare was investigating terror attacks by several Hindu extremist factions when he was killed. Put in charge of the ATS after it drew lots of criticism for its functioning, he showed he meant business. He led investigations and filed a thick charge-sheet against several Hindutva terrorists before he was killed.

For the last year, several observers have pointed to inconsistencies in accounts of Hemant Karkare's killing. An author on a progressive website laid these bare:

"The earliest reports said that Karkare was killed at the Taj. If this was false, why were we told so? And why was the story later changed? Was it because it conflicted with eyewitness accounts? Indeed, screening his final moments, CNN-IBN ran footage of Karkare putting on a helmet and bullet-proof vest, and then a shootout at Metro, where an unconscious man who looks like Karkare and is wearing the same light shirt and dark trousers (but without any blood on his shirt or the terrible wounds we saw on his face at his funeral) is being pulled into a car."

These inconsistencies, and the resulting questions, are stories that the Indian media should be pursuing and probing obstinately. If not for playing the people's sentinel, then perhaps to make amends for their inadvertent complicity in the apocalyptic events of November last.

And if they don't, what answers can India offer Kavita Karkare?

Rakesh Mani is a 2009 Teach For India fellow, based in Bombay. He is also a writer and frequent commentator.