[Assam] ABC News Clip-- Did India Know?

[Ram Sarangapani]

C'da,

IMHO, in Ratan Tata's interview with Fareed Zakaria (CNN), the other day, he
clearly stated that the hotels would have still been vulnerable because the
terrorists entered from a back door. He also talked in length about the
nature of the hospitality industry vis-a-vis safety.

Hotels are soft targets by defintion. Not many hotel guests would be
comfortable going thru metal dectectors and having their bags checked. It is
also possible that some of the attackers may have been guests at the hotel.

Hotels can only take reasonable safety precautions (which they did).

Security, on the whole, is a  GOI issue. There were several major lapses it
seems even during the attack

-The commandos took a long time to be activated
-Fire tenders were ill-equipped, and they too took a long time to arrive
-Polce, army, commandos, montri, babus - were all speaking at the same time,
and giving statements - no command & control.

One montri reportedly caused  some casualties by opening his big mouth. He
supposedly told a TV station that 200 hotel guests were hiding in a
particular wing. The terrorists, it seems, heard that too.

-no layout plans etc of landmarks (the Taj is a historical marker). And even
if these existed, they wern't available.
-possibly no emergency plan of action.

It's a miracle there wern't more casualties - like 5000.

Now, having said all that, just because we have an inept governance,
that should hardly be a reason for a terrorist attack. Let us not forget,
that ultimately, the perpetrators are the ones to blame.

--Ram






On Tue, Dec 2, 2008 at 7:38 AM, Chan Mahanta <cmahanta at charter.net> wrote:

> http://abcnews.go.com/Video/playerIndex?id=6371236
>
>
>
> This is extremely damaging , not only to to Indian governance ( as if
> anyone needs anything more ) but also to its business leadership,
> particularly the Taj Hotel Owner, Tata etc.
>
> _______________________________________________
> assam mailing list
> assam at assamnet.org
> http://assamnet.org/mailman/listinfo/assam_assamnet.org
>