The inevitable has struck. Already in news for all the wrong reasons, the top IT hubs of India, Bangalore, has also fallen prey to terrorists’ nefarious designs. The killing of a retired IIT-Delhi scientist and causing grievous injuries to seven others on the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore premises late on Wednesday evening has left the city thunderstruck.



The phenomenon of terror strikes, which had till yesterday been confined primarily to the National Capital of Delhi and the financial capital of Mumbai, has travelled all the way down South to the IT capital of India. And worse, the target was a group of scientists - some of the top brains present-day India can boast of. If some more similar terrorist attacks take place, no scientist would like to be identified as a scientist and many more such conferences will just not happen. So, that way, the terrorists have indeed succeeded in their mission, regardless of the number of casualties in the attack.



In fact, the incident reflects more on the health of security network in India than anything else. It’s disgusting to know that the intelligence agencies already had information on the Indian IT hubs - Gurgaon, Hyderabad and Bangalore - being targeted by terrorists. This was disclosed by some terrorists during their interrogation recently.



Then why should have been their any failure by our intelligence agencies in passing on the information? And if they had passed on the information, why adequate security cover was not provided to the scientists attending the conference? Why is that instead of taking any precautionary steps, we swing into action only after the incident takes place? Why this typically Indian attitude of playing it lethargically cool persists despite so many accidents taking place every other day? Why...why...why???



Those who forget history are condemned to repeat it, they say, and given the state of India’s government machinery, we are perhaps condemned to repeat the contemporary history many more times before we are finally ruined.



Anyway, thanks for being a party to a rather serious discussion. I don’t know why I should have said all that I said. Perhaps, we Indians are better off with the weird and amusing tales of Laloo and Laloo’s Rabri, temple, Bollywood, etc. etc. Let’s get back to our usual-self: be Indian and simply forget what the time demands of us as a nation.



Check Out: Unholy Wars