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December - 2008 - issue > Editor's Desk
India, the Final Frontier
Harvi Sachar
Sunday, December 21, 2008
Normally, it’s not kosher to use the same title for editorial as an article in the same issue of the magazine, but with India being attacked ferociously by terrorists with sinister agenda of hurting it economically, and the stock markets tanking the world over, there are no better words to describe where we are today. It’s 100 percent sure that the Mumbai terror acts were planned by foreign based terrorists and they see India as a threat to their own evil schemes. We are the biggest democracy in the world and have been the second largest fast growing economy in the world, this puts a chink in the armor of their sponsors’ argument to make democracy and capitalism appear unacceptable Western phenomena and declare them unfit for the world’s masses. So, they want to do all that they can to derail India’s growth plans and hurt its vibrant economy by such heinous acts. They would be, no doubt, planning more acts like this and it is for us to be cautious and try to do all that is possible to prevent them.

What is sad is that in India (where I happen to be during this terrible time), the politicians and media as well as the masses are not looking at the terror act as a war declared on India and stand together to fight it single mindedly. Indians must learn from how after the 9/11 terror attacks, all people in the U.S. became one and how for months the media, both electronic and print, was full of reports of heroic acts of the NYPD and the city’s fire department. In India we have a state chief minister who publicly insulted a NSG commando Major’s family who sacrificed his life in fighting the terrorists from the forefront. I have not seen either the coverage of the brave acts of any of the about a dozen or so other special commandos and their ultimate sacrifice. There is no sense seen among the politicians to come together to fight the terror machine with efficiency, no spontaneous urge is visible among the masses to come together as a nation, there are no initiatives by business leaders to contribute to the national security, and there are no stories about innocent Indians who lost their lives so that people can emotionally relate to the incident as an attack on the very fabric of India. All we have is the meaningless tenacity to continue to remain unchanged, even after such a horrible incident.

Let’s awake and work as one to offer all the support to the Indian government to fight this ‘new’ war.

Harvi Sachar Editor-in-Chief harvi@siliconindia.com
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