Flawed histrionics and Swift Rejoinder

I was a bit taken aback by the stupendous applause given by the mainstream media to the high-pitched but gravely flawed speech by Omar Abdullah in the confidence vote debate. The speech is described as "passionate" and so on.

Honestly speaking, the tone and substance of the speech conveyed a very different opinion about the man from what I carried all these years.

I was all set to make a point-by-point rebuttal but Dr. Saurav Basu did my job better than I could have ever expected. So, here you go! Thank you, Dr. Basu for that splendid job. Sorry for taking the liberty to provide a link on my blog to your article. I am not a member on Sulekha, so I cannot make any comments there.

POTA or Abracadabra?

Terrorist attacks come and go and we are back to the same tapes being replayed. The BJP has once again demanded the revival of POTA, while the PM has rejected Mr. Advani’s appeal. His logic is, “The attacks on parliament and Akshardham temple took place when Pota was in force. There is no dearth of laws in the country to deal with terrorism”.

Oh Mr. PM, is it? But the fact is none of those laws seem to be having any impact. For the record, the attack on Parliament took place on December 13, 2001 and the POTA was notified only on 28.03.2002.

Even this apart, no law is magic that you enact it and lo! The terrorist attacks stop. If the PM thinks like this, something is seriously wrong with his intelligence. Or is it that he thinks we are all stupid?

Laws like POTA need to be in place for a long period of time, they have to be implemented with a single minded determination to weed out terrorists, sleeper cells, informers, etc. This will take some time, it will involve some excesses, but it will be far less than the number of innocent lives lost in terrorist attacks.