I don't know if there is anything like a really wrong time for writing your blog, but if any such thing is defined, this will certainly belong there. I have got innumerable number of examinations, both 'classified' and unclassified lined up, and am hard pressed for time. Still, this idea came to me just like that, and i have to put it in before, like good ideas, vanishes. The Saturday's bomb blast hurt me at a more personal level than ever before. Earlier, bomb blasts and terror attacks were news items - this time it was about real places. Two days before the blasts, i was out into the busy markets of Nehru Place, and a week before, I was at the Palika Market, using the afflicted main gate. Had these terrorists been a week too early, I would not have been writing this piece - not that I am suggesting that I am back from a brush with death - claiming so would be an insult to the actual sufferers - yeah, I too suffered that Saturday evening - but it more of an uninvited lecture in a room with AC gone wrong - I just meant to say that when these things happen close by, they make a deeper impact.
For days now, I have been racking my trustworthy brain to find a solution to this problem - many suggest that taking a hardliner stance will be the best, as in the USA. It is a known fact that after 11th September, not a single attack has been carried out on the US, and it is the Great Satan according to the Islamists! On the other hand, our supposedly liberal, secular, cosmopolitan (the whole unity in diversity hogwash) country has had uncountable attacks in the past few months themselves. So, what are we supposed to do - just sit back and commend the 'never say die' spirit of Delhi or Mumbai, which is often paraded on the media after every terror attack - the truth is that the people have no option but o come out to work - there is no spirit involved, it is survival instinct. So what can be done. I am a humble mechanical engineer turned MBA student, but I will like to put forth some ideas, which I think can be used to tackle this bomb menace.
First of all, we must be ready for the big brother watching over us. Well, I am the biggest advocate of privacy, but now, the time has come to surrender it for a greater good. I say the law authorities be given complete freedom to snoop around the calls, the SMS, the emails. However, it is important that the information is used to curb terrorism, and terrorism only. Our moralistic police would like to use this open freedom to see listen to amorous couples making plans for their next tryst, or to monitor some frustrated teen surfing for cyber porn - well, they must desist from it. The lesser the activities are classified as 'wrong', the lesser are they driven into the 'dark', and then the 'dark' consists of undiluted dark matter only, which can then be monitored for signs of the next budding plot. People would not take kindly to violation of privacy, because we think some things need not get out - so the authorities need to ensure that any information dug up does not leave the official databases. Secondly, we must loosen the laws on irrelevant stuff, say, for example, drug dealing, romantic liaisons and other things that our police seem to be very involved in dealing with. It all needs to be done away - these people should not be driven into meeting clandestinely, so that whenever there a clandestine meeting does take place, we know it is a terrorist cell hatching its plot.
On the technical side, I think we should start to look for a photochemical equivalent of radars - you know, special beams of em waves, which are beamed all around, and they pick the characteristic of material they impinge on, pass through etc. The return waves could thus tell us about the substances around the probe. Or we could use the method in which heated elements absorb a particular signature wavelength of the incoming em waves - can this be done for things at room temperature? And we can maintain a checklist of substances which should not be lying too close e.g ammonium nitrate and paraffins. It's been 5 years since I've studied physics and chemistry, so I do not have a clue what I am talking about, but I believe the technical support has to come from em wave spectroscopy type techniques.
This is badly put, and I apologise for the erratic flow of ideas, but they are presented as they came. Have a terrorist-safe day.
