Why netas and public must be banned from tragedy tourism

After so many terror attacks on the country’s cities and towns, Parliament included, there should by now have been a simple protocol in place on how to conduct ourselves in their aftermath of such events. Sadly, it is missing. The protocol consists of a few don’ts and a few dos. [caption id=“attachment_42068” align=“alignleft” width=“380” caption=“Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and UPA Chairperson Sonia Gandhi coming out after meeting with the injured of Mumbai bomb blasts, during their visit at J J hospital in Mumbai on Thursday. PTI”] [/caption] One, political leaders ought to stay away from the scene of the crime. Their visits are said to be morale boosters, a show of solidarity. But all that they actually achieve is waste police time on security duty when they should be spreading out and listening to their informants to unravel the mystery behind the blasts. It is not as if only the Special Protection Group (SPG) protects our itinerant leaders. The local police are deployed in the outer rings, wasting manpower at a crucial juncture when the trail is yet hot. This rule should apply to every politician, from the local ward level worthy to the prime minister, his party chief and everyone in between, including the BJP’s former deputy prime minister. None of them said anything new or even interesting. If these people really inspired confidence in the population, they could very well have gone on TV to say their pieces. Instead, they came, as they always do, and messed around with the vital investigative process. They came severally: first, the deputy chief minister arrived, then the chief minister, followed the next morning by LK Advani, and in the evening by Manmohan Singh and Sonia Gandhi. They stretched an already overstretched police force. After the 9/11 attacks, one did not see the US president trampling around the Twin Towers until much later. Nor did one see the British prime minister make a beeline to the London’s underground after the July 21, 2005, attacks on the transport system. It was the job of the police to track the attackers and the politicians left it to them. Such visits achieve hardly anything except disruption. So what is the point in asking where was RR Patil, Maharashtra’s home minister, on 13 July? At this rate, these leaders would require greater protection than they do now. Two, the same rule applies to us bystanders. When people throng the attack sites, they are coming in the way of the police, who need elbow room to operate. There’s little road space left for the fire tenders to come in and the ambulances to ferry the dead and the injured. The problem is with the last mentioned: despite a major attack every three years on Mumbai, the locals have had to carry most of the dead and the injured to the hospital. This, despite the disaster management teams set up at the civic and state government levels. It was laughable to hear the prime minister saying people were in hospitals within the hour. Within the hour! The curious could instead go home and watch the post-attack happenings on TV, which could give a more comprehensive—visually, I mean, not in terms of insights—view of the serial blasts than the slit view of a single site to which the local crowd has access. [caption id=“attachment_42072” align=“alignleft” width=“150” caption=“Mahesh Vijapurkar”] [/caption] Trampling on the scene of the crime destroys clues that could have been useful for the police to make headway in the investigations. Police complacency is the third thing needing attention. True, it is extremely difficult to have every one pass through metal detectors, say, at overcrowded railway stations on Mumbai’s suburban system. But constables need not sit around chatting or reading newspapers at these places. They need to keep a wary eye on furtive persons carrying explosives. Likewise, a well-trained constable on the street would help too. Instead, they are in the chowkies rubbing lime into tambaku or out collecting, for themselves and their bosses, the weekly hafta. Four, the police ought to cease speculating on the identities of the perpetrators till they have unearthed clear proof and nabbed the culprits. But 24x7 television, which grabs trivia and blows it out of proportion, helps them falsely sustain the impression that advances have been made. If the police could say within the hour that a particular group did it, then what stops them from nabbing the particular group an hour ahead of the deed? Intelligence is poor, very poor indeed. There is a disconnect not only between the people and the force because of the latter’s highhandedness and insensitivity to a citizen’s concerns but also between the police and their informants. This disconnect is one of the biggest drawbacks in any attempt at preventing the attacks, notwithstanding Rahul Gandhi’s estimate that 99 percent of the terror attacks are indeed prevented. One wishes the younger Gandhi’s views were true. Five, the media ought to cease asking the local inspector, who has just arrived on the scene, more or less in tandem with the media crew, ‘who did it’. The smoke is yet to clear, the crowds are being managed, and the inanities he is circumstantially forced to spout do not add to good journalism. Mahesh Vijapurkar likes to take a worm’s eye-view of issues – that is, from the common man’s perspective. He was a journalist with The Indian Express and then The Hindu and now potters around with human development and urban issues.