Attack on IISc Bangalore

So, the much-feared terrorist attack in Bangalore has happened. Mercifully, only one life was lost. But the bigger tragedy is that we had to have this happen (inspite of intelligence reports, and media follow-ups) for our government, and IISc itself, to realise that the terror threat is real indeed.

Interestingly, IISc director Balram refused to comment when asked whether his institution had learnt lessons after the security breach during Chinese PM Wen Jiabao's visit to the IISc in April. In March newspapers had front paged a story on how Lashkar was targeting Bangalore.

Nothing happens to VIPs. It's always only the innocents who suffer.

One refrain was: "We will learn only if such a thing happens." It's a very sad commentary on our administration. IISc was very much on the Lashkar radar (newspapers had spoken of it.), though sadly like always only IT companies were in the focus.

But terrorists are no fools. It didn't need our CM, Dharam Singh, to say today morning that yesterday's attack was a planned one. Terrorists obviously knew that Bangalore doesn't care for anything beyond IT firms. (In some respects not even IT firms.) IISc was an easy target. It's one of the dozen of so national premier institutions in Bangalore.

Only three days back all newspapers reported on page one the news of three terrorists being arrested and how Bangalore was among the cities they planned to attack. Now it needs to be found out whether yesterday's attack could have been much worse, had the arrests not been made.

M G Road, Brigade Road and malls are packed with people especially in evenings. Foolproof security in open places is virtually impossible. But at least specific targets need to be made more secure. Bangalore is not used to such things. But better late than never. We need to change.