Black Saturday

Abhinav Kumar, IPS working in Uttarakhand, writes about the low priority that states give to police forces despite continued terror for over a decade and half:

With regard to the resource crunch in the police, the government in its infinite wisdom has maintained that police is a non-plan subject and therefore, other than for disbursing salaries and allowances it will automatically be accorded low priority for resource allocation....The last time I checked the annual outlay for police modernisation of the Government of India was about Rs 1000 crores, and that by a conservative estimate was the economic cost of the Mumbai train blasts of 2006. The question therefore is not whether we can afford to modernise our police forces but whether can we afford not to modernise them.

And he has some advice on long overdue proactive action -

We know that the bulk of participants in terrorist incidents receive support from across the border; we have to adopt more robust policies. Cross-border pursuits, destruction of militant training facilities by covert means and assassinations of key figures in the terrorist hierarchy are all measures adopted by other states in protecting what they perceive to be their right to security. The war against terror is a war. It must be now acknowledged as such. [Black Friday remains with us - IE]

That amazing Anurag Kashyap's movie Black Friday was on real-life display again, this time on a Saturday. But no one is listening. Have to count those votes.