The Jaipur bomb blasts, which claimed 66 precious lives, are a horrible reminder of how vulnerable Indian citizens remain to the depredations of fanatics who consider mass murder a legitimate means to further political goals. Police and intelligence agencies haven't so far been identified the crime's perpetrators. Some experts say the blasts bear no unique signature. It isn't clear if the motive was to ignite communal strife, as many policemen believe, or sabotage the India-Pakistan peace process, as Prime Minister Manmohan Singh alleged. But the blasts need a rational, cool-headed, resolute and united response. However, the Bharatiya Janata Party, which rules in Rajasthan, has politicised the issue to polarise, not unite, opinion.. It has tried to cover up the ineptitude of its police, by accusing turning the Congress of being "soft" on terrorism. The BJP indulges in deplorable doublespeak. It said for four years that terrorists were striking at Congress-ruled Maharashtra and Andhra. But there was no terrorist incident in BJP-ruled Gujarat after Akshardham (2002) thanks to Narendra Modi's "tough administration". Yet, the BJP leadership is speechless at Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje's statement that she won't allow Rajasthan to become another "Gujarat"--through anti-Muslim violence. Raje claims the culprits have "external links", but the men haven't even been identified. After accusing the Centre of asking her to create a "Guantanamo Bay" by detaining Bangladeshis, she's arbitrarily rounding up scores of Bengali-speakers, many from West Bengal, by branding them "infiltrators". Their demonisation is similar to the abuse ("asylum-seekers") that poor South Asian migrants face from Western xenophobes. Worse, the BJP attributes vile political motives to people who migrate for economic reasons from a dirt-poor society to a slightly less poor one. They deserve compassion, not hatred. The BJP is clamouring for an anti-terror law along the lines of the Terrorist and Disruptive Activities (Prevention) Act, 1985, or its nationally aborted successor, Prevention of Terrorism Act. Yet, the BJP had with most other parties opposed TADA's extension in 1995 because of its extensive abuse.. It also wants a special federal agency created to deal with terrorism. The BJP demands a "hard state", which would threaten and practise maximal violence against terrorists. Some retired police and intelligence officials also advocate tit-for-tat approaches to terrorism--even if this means blatant violations of human rights. They contend that terrorism has now entered a particularly malicious phase under pan-Islamic extremism. It can only be fought if the state wages all-out war and resorts to intrusive surveillance and laws that allow preventive detention, reverse the burden of proof, and admit confessions to the police as evidence. They say the Jaipur bombings wouldn't have occurred had TADA/POTA been in force. These arguments are silly knee-jerk reactions to Jaipur. The cures they propose will be worse than the disease. To start with, the utility of a harsh anti-terror law will at best be limited to punishing, not preventing, terrorist acts. It's unlikely to deter suicide-bombers. A law is no good if those responsible for its enforcement are incompetent, corrupt or both. Regrettably, that's the state of much of South Asia's police, in which recruitment at the lowest level involves a hefty bribe running into lakhs. The police routinely violates procedures it's meant to follow--for example, writing station diaries in serial order in ink to prevent tampering. It rarely exercises elementary care even in investigating ordinary crimes. India already has a plethora of surveillance measures, including roadblocks, X-ray machines, metal detectors and closed-circuit TV cameras at airports, train/bus stations, offices and cinema halls, besides citizen identity documents that contain a huge amount of personal information. But blocking traffic without a clear purpose in mind is utterly ineffectual. The solution lies in using measures intelligently, not in multiplying their numbers. India has excessive, unacceptably intrusive electronic surveillance. All Internet service-providers and cellphone operators must maintain full transaction records for three years. The government can tap all e-mail conversations. This hasn't produced useful clues to terrorist activities. But malice, mistaken identities or colossal incompetence has resulted in innocent people being jailed for months--as happened with Kashmiri journalist Iftikhar Geelani and IT professional. Lakshmana Kailash. The limits of surveillance should be obvious. Britain has nearly 5 million CCTV cameras, one-fifth of the global total. London alone has over half a million. The average citizen is daily tracked by some 300 cameras as s/he goes about his/her business. Yet, these yielded no warning of or clues to the July 2005 bombings. Cameras have helped solve less than 3 percent of UK street robberies. Recently, the Royal Academy of Engineering warned how such "Big Brother tactics" could put lives at risk. It warned that a security system like CCTV is "vulnerable to abuse, including bribery of staff and computer hackers gaining access to it". Take the "special" anti-terrorism law the BJP insistently demands. Any law that routinely allows preventive detention runs foul of the fundamental principle that nobody should be deprived of liberty unless held guilty by a court of law. The idea of detaining suspects for months should be repugnant to a civilised legal system. Such colonial laws have created havoc in the form of popular discontent in Kashmir and the Northeast. They must be repealed, not replicated. Similarly, inverting the burden of proof violates a basic tenet of the legal system: namely, an accused must be considered innocent until proved guilty, however grave the crime. The demand that confessions to a police officer must become evidence is equally misguided. Confessions can be extracted under duress, sometimes torture. They cannot have evidentiary value in a just and credible legal system. The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights prohibits such obnoxious practices. It's simply wrong to contend that India doesn't have laws to deal adequately with terrorism. It does. The police want still tougher laws because they can detain suspects indefinitely without doing their job of gathering evidence and building a strong prosecution case. They can also harass groups against whom they nurture prejudice. The story of TADA is horrifying. Some 67,000 people were arrested under it, but only 8,000 put on trial, and a mere 725 convicted. Official committees found the law's application untenable in all but 5,000 cases. Under TADA, religious minorities were selectively targeted. For instance, in Rajasthan, of 115 TADA detainees, 112 were Muslims and 3 Sikhs. Gujarat had an even worse pattern under POTA, when all but one of the 200-plus detainees were Muslims, the remaining one a Sikh. Nor is a federal anti-terrorism agency a magic wand. Besides, many states, including NDA-ruled Bihar, oppose it. Talk of waging war on terror is dangerous--witness the US's "Global War on Terror". Since 2001, it has caused a sevenfold increase in terrorism globally and implanted religion-driven extremism where it didn't exist (Iraq). GWoT has entailed enormous human rights violations, with Abu Ghraib, Guantánamo Bay, and harassment of thousands of US citizens. In the last four years, US immigration authorities have detained over a million people, including 311,312 last year alone, creating an "American Gulag". That's not the way India should go. Terrorism can only be fought if we improve our policing, revamp intelligence agencies, and respect human rights. There's no militarist shortcut to fighting terror.

Praful Bidwai, a fellow of the Transnational Institute, is a senior Indian journalist, political activist and widely published commentator. He is a co-author (with Achin Vanaik) of New Nukes: India, Pakistan and Global Nuclear Disarmament

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