Click to play videoNew Delhi: Friday marked a month since the dastardly attacks in Mumbai and CNN-IBN presented the Citizens Against Terror charter to Home Minister P Chidambaram earlier in the day.
The charter, a part of CNN-IBN-Hindustan Times campaign, is a compilation of top ten ideas to fight the war against terror and was drawn up from the thousands of suggestions that poured in on ibnlive.com and hindustantimes.com.
An independent panel including former IPS officer Kiran Bedi, anti-terror expert Major General Afsir Karim and former Jammu University vice chancellor Amitabh Mattoo picked the ten ideas.
These include suggestions like better crisis management and training citizens' groups to fight terror. CNN-IBN Editor-in-Chief Rajdeep Sardesai presented the charter to the Home Minister who said the best way of keeping terror at bay was to remain vigilant.
Excerpts from the interview.
P Chidambaram: Fighting terror can only be a joint or collective effort between people and government. Citizens can help in many ways. The first is to abide by laws. We must become a law-abiding society. Citizens can also help in maintaining a heightened state of vigilance. And finally, they can share information. In fact, communities and neighbourhoods have more information than even police stations. We are trying to work out a system by which such information can be sent to authorities without too many interruptions.
CNN-IBN: Citizens have sent a number of suggestions. Any one that struck you as something implementable?
P Chidambaram: Level of preparedness and our capacity to fight terror must be enhanced very significantly in a very short time. As we do that, we'll incorporate some of these suggestions.
CNN-IBN: Everyone talks of police reforms. Isn’t that a priority?
P Chidambaram: It is. But the average policeman comes under state govt. There are, of course, very large number of complaints about the manner in which the police administration takes place in state. I can only advice, cajole and nudge the state governments. Eventually it's the state governments which will have to set up own systems. We have called a Chief Ministers’ conference and hope that the time is now ripe for them to accept some of these suggestions and put them into place.
CNN-IBN: There was a lot of anger after 26/11, especially against govt. Do you believe the time has come to move from anger to action?
P Chidambaram: Anger in understandable. But it won’t take us anywhere. If governments don’t deliver, the anger must be directed against those who do not deliver. If public opinion is mobilised behind deliverable outcomes and people are willing to ask questions about it, much of this anger would be constructive and productive.
CNN-IBN: One final question: What is the biggest lesson out of 26/11 - both at the state level and at the level of citizen.
P Chidambaram: It's an old lesson - eternal vigilance is the price of liberty. No state can be truly free and enjoy liberty unless they maintain vigilance. This is an unequal and cruel world and we have to be eternally vigilant.
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