Abracadabra! You're safe!

 Indians are nowadays totally accustomed in their daily lives to being wanded, their belongings put through a baggage scanner and their vehicle trunks("dickeys") being searched, apparently in the pursuit of "security". These intrusions on personal space occur at shopping malls, hotels, grocery stores and transportation terminals. The people accept it at face value because, they say, it "keeps us safe". But does it? Without the shadow of a doubt, it does not.

 That's a pretty bold statement to make, you say? Well, look at the facts. Unlike airport security(which is itself quite the farce), these "security measures" do not actually prevent the entry of sharp objects, liquid or solid explosives or even mildly re-engineered handguns. Supposedly, the impetus for these measures is terrorism. But let's be honest: in India, terrorism = ISI(Pakistan's "security intelligence" apparatus) plots, in the larger part of the country not suffering from Maoist insurgencies. And do we realistically believe that the ISI has only the capability of some third-rate criminal outfit? That our security measures are so good that the best the terrorists can do is plant crude little bombs in gutters timed to go off when nobody is awake? No, they have been trained by an agency(the ISI) which is itself the beneficiary of training by some of the best in the business, aka CIA operatives. They have the resources of government, of military and of the industrial complex in Pakistan which is only too willing to co-operate if and when it comes to raining terror on their arch-enemy.

 I have been stopped at the entrance to Bangalore's Metro on MG Road for carrying a bottle of chili oil and a bottle of wine, while walking in sneakers stuffed with Dr. Scholl's gel inserts which could very well have had something other than harmless gel in them. Another time, I was carrying a tiny little pair of scissors, the kind one uses in sewing. They let me keep it, but I had to put my name and mobile phone number in a register, and list what I was carrying. "Just in case of problem, sir!". But what if I wrote down a fake name and fake number? Who, then, would they go after if there was a "problem"? On New Year's Eve, at 6:55 PM, I was stopped for carrying two boxes of pastries because "Today no pastries after 7 PM"! I wasn't about to dump $25 worth of pastries because some "security expert" determined that pastries after 7 PM on New Year's Eve was a security threat on the 5-minute Metro ride. I have been asked to empty out my pockets at malls, when the metal detector beeps because of the coins in my pocket which I keep to hand out to old and handicapped beggars. Ditto at an upscale hotel, while I held in my hand a rather large camera which could have easily concealed a disassembled semi-auto pistol. I've been to Big Bazaars, shopping malls and hotels where they check the trunk for God knows what, when whatever they may be looking for in the trunk could(and would) be under or inside the seats. They look at the underside of vehicles with a mirror, as if somebody is going play Wile E. Coyote and place there a duct-taped bundle of dynamite from the Acme Dynamite Company with an alarm clock and a tell-tale flashing red light, rather than pack remote-detonation explosives into a simulated exhaust system or fuel tank, or stuff the entire rear seat with an armory of assault weapons. I have repeatedly been told to put away my camera(which I was merely carrying, and not using) in the Bangalore Metro system because "photography is prohibited", while people merrily taking pictures and videos with their cellphones had no problems. The fact that my camera was obviously a dedicated device seemed to trigger the "security" people, who seemed blissfully unaware that, in the 21st century, cameras are built into all sorts of devices. But really, what exactly is top-secret about the Metro anyhow?

The promoters of the Bangalore Metro Rail Corporation appear to not understand that, in order to successfully transition citizens to mass transportation, they will need to be able to use the Metro for the same purposes: going to work, to the airport or railroad station, shopping, entertainment and, yes, carrying groceries back. Which means they will be carrying a variety of creams, liquids, gels, oils, powders, lipsticks, eyeglass cases, sharp objects like scissors, tweezers, screwdrivers and even kitchen knives, pastries and other "suspicious" articles, many of them packaged in plastic and glass, or packed into travel bags. They will be carrying lunches and snacks, often with copious amounts of liquids of various hues. They will be carrying "dangerous" gardening implements they purchased at The Home Store or similar, or attars they bought in the bylanes around Avenue Road or Commercial Street, or cans of paint to brighten up the kids room or old furniture. They cannot be expected to write lists of their purchases/possessions into registers before being allowed into the Metro stations. The BMRC seems to have anticipated the inconvenience to airport travellers, and plans on airline bag drops at the stations, Apart from the natural concerns one would have about the bags reaching the airport on time and unmolested, what about those who take buses and trains for their long-distance travel? What about people changing hotels, or students going from railroad station to their college hostels? What about salespeople who need to carry bulky samples? And as and when other stretches of the Metro become operational, the numbers of people using even the existing stations will rise exponentially to the point where these alleged "security measures" will cause inordinate delays and frustration, especially during peak hours. As it is, I see that peak hours find the Metro cars packed, even with only 6 Km of line operational. Keep up this senseless "security" obstruction, and people will continue to use personal or other commercial road transportation, and the Metro will continue to be a white elephant.

 What it seems to be about- and what Indians seem to want- is the appearance of security, regardless of its effectiveness. In that, it is in direct contrast with the rest of the world, which wants effective security with as little intrusion and obviousness as possible. Granted, that is not the case in most airports right now, but I have not had to put up with this nonsense at grocery stores, malls and railroad stations in other countries. In New York's subway system, for a while(under a "credible information" alert), they were checking all packages, but now it is randomized. In India, on the other hand, not only is there no "credible information", but the security measures fail miserably at their proclaimed task. And as they fail miserably, they inconvenience tens of millions of people who put up with the inconveniences every day in the wholly mistaken assumption that these intrusions keep them safe. I remember on a trip within India in the 90s, I was asked to remove the batteries from my film camera and place them in my checked baggage, as "batteries are prohibited" in carry-on luggage, because they allegedly could be used in triggering devices. These days, people freely take on board laptop batteries hundreds of times more powerful than the AAs I had in my camera, and smart phones have apps which can remotely control a host of devices. While this "security" industry employs hundreds of thousands of village rubes, mostly from the north of the country for some reason, I am perfectly willing to demonstrate their ineffectiveness to any organization that uses a "security agency" for this entirely false projection of security. I can breach their "security" all day long, with any of a variety of lethal objects. It's time they stopped waving their magic metal-detector wands and saying, "Abracadabra! You're safe!".