A Visit to a Railway Station

Perhaps, is our respected railway minister, Laloo Prasad Yadav, has his say then the day will not be far off that only passengers would be allowed in the railway station. Not only that, for security check, you will have to report at least 3 hours earlier if you are travelling in Sleeper Class, 3-AC and 2-AC could report for boarding upto 1 hour before the departure and 1-AC could avail the tele check in facility. However, the people in the general class - the vast majority of the Indian's whom Gandhiji wished to uplift - will have to report at least 3 days before the departure.

Sarcasm aside, I wonder what is wrong with this country? Sincerely i have no clue. Or perhaps i have but i dont like to acknowledge it. In its entire history, Indian's have been the weakest at intelligence gathering. The attack on the Railway system in Mumbai on 7/11 was nothing but an all out intellegence failure. All countries have their intellegence failure - but India seems to specialise in it. "Intelligence is a game where incompetence is death". Good Intellegence officers are worth their weigh in gold; but Indian politacal masters consider that a person who can spy on his rival to be a good intellegence person. Why cant the Intellegence services of this country be strengthened. Why cant we penetrate these terrorist networks, in the manner that CIA, Mossad, SDECE, MI6 etc do? Why does the government need to nibble away the niggardly funds that are allocated to Indian Intellegence agencies.

Research and Analysis Wing (RAW), the premiere intelegence agency of our country is the laughing stock of the rest of the world. And you wont believe it - you have to be an Indian Police Service (IPS) Officer to be in RAW. What for? Why the hell would an IPS officer give up a lucrative administrative job and get into RAW - where he neither has any opportunity nor the will to gather intellegence. The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) is mainly responsible for economic and corruption charges - something similar to FBI in USA. Going by its track record, CBI is more involved in political scandals rather that gathering Intellegence. The Intellegence Bureau (IB) which is India's internal intellegence gathering agency is mostly shrouded in mystery.

Anyways, i did not mean it to be an article on Intellegence. What i am saying is that - banning relatives is not going to stop bombs. All it is going to do is to make railway travel as drab as the airlines travel minus the time savings.