WE AS Indians naturally share the immediate and long-period impact of such unexpected trauma. Let us wish for the peace of the departed souls.

In this context, a few ideas have come to me as a flash that I would like to share with my readers. In the earlier eras after the independence, we were completely unaware of such acts. The term 'terrorism' and its innovators called the 'terrorists' only appeared in dictionaries at that time. They were fully oblivious in real terms. But now, such acts have become a part of our daily life. Everyday we hear about such happenings all over the country that bring us real shocks of life. This negative paradigm shift is really unfortunate, and there are many reasons for this. Terrorism is positively linked with crime, indiscipline, lack of public ethos, and severe lack of good governance, and also with the ills of economic growth. In fact, terrorists are 'misguided criminals'.

If crime goes on unabated, say because of slow and highly ineffective legal system, it gets converted into terrorist activities. The root cause of crime is severe marginalization of the poor, and the desire to become rich over night. It is also linked with the lack of 'informal' education that is imparted by parents to their children. It will not be out of place to mention that public responsibility is almost zero in our country. 'Might is Right' is followed by many people once they are out in public.

They are perhaps aware of their rights, but not at all of their responsibilities. Every one tries to overpower others either by looks or abusive words or threatening body language. All this amounts to terrorizing others in public life, and sometimes also within households. Lack of good and effective governance is also another reason for letting people to get involved in terrorist activities.

Governance has five elements: the rule of law, political accountability, social justice, quality education, and effective free market. It is unfortunate that we lack in all these respects. Political infighting also negates good governance. Our politicians also lack key elements of charisma like self-confidence, vision, communication, style, dynamism, visibility, and enigmatic mystery. They do not have any vision, and hence they have no mission. They only think of the next election, and do not at all think of the next generation.

Even the bureaucrats or the civil servants are neither civil nor do they provide any worthwhile service to the community except for supporting 'their' ruling politicians.Geographically speaking, India does not have 'non-toxic' neighbouring countries. All of them are really toxic in the sense that they are leaners, users, betrayers, control freaks, promise breakers, gossip mongers, self- centered, and competitors. They are in fact like bad apples in a bunch. They hurt us as 'friends' and as a result their superficial friendship harms us in many ways.If all the factors that have been briefly mentioned above are taken into account, no one will refute the fact that the terrorist activities in the country are on a rise.

The trend is upward moving, and there is no hope that there will be any possibility of a downswing. The country has to change its point of view to get together for providing full support to the concerned authorities to negate such nefarious activities. Let us hope for the best.