Political leaders at the highestlevels have repeatedly propounded the false sociologies of 'root causes' and thefiction that terrorists and other extremists, who have taken hundreds ofinnocent lives, are best treated as 'our children' who may have 'lost theirway'. At the same time, many political parties have entered into deceitfulpre-election alliances to secure extremist support during the polls, againstpromises of a 'soft-line' in the post-poll order.
Even where political leaders have, in the past, condemned terrorism, they havefound it expedient to qualify their remarks with platitudes about 'waywardchildren', 'legitimate grievances' and the need for undefined and inchoate'political solutions'.
I
n a radical departure from this feckless tradition, Prime Minister ManmohanSingh has now articulated what can be a sound and secure basis for a nationalcounter-terrorism strategy and internal security policy. At the
Chief Minister'sConference on April 15, 2005, the Prime Minister's statement was crystalline inits clarity, sweeping aside the accumulated debris of discredited politicalrhetoric - much of it emanating from his own party and cabinet colleagues - toestablish and impose the beginnings of a consensus on a fractious andopportunistic political community, as he emphasized the dangers of"terrorist groups, organized crime syndicates, drug trafficking andexternal forces interested in destabilizing our polity", and "urgedleaders of all political parties to ensure that such forces and groups are keptaway from our political processes. We need to have zero-tolerance forcriminalisation of politics in our country."
It is unsurprising that such a statement should come, eventually, from aneconomist Prime Minister, as he confronts the challenge of integrating India'seconomy with the emerging global order, and securing for the country itsrightful place among the 'great powers' of the future. For decades, expenditureon policing and internal security has been casually dismissed by planners as'non-developmental expenditure' and, consequently, in some sense, 'wasteful'.