Mumbai Explodes -again

Mumbai, our city of hopes and dreams, our icon of economic growth, shattered into pieces yesterday. The lives lost, including of our valiant policemen, are tremendously saddening. So much trauma, unbelievable tragedies. Today, I shed tears while watching the news, early morning at my end of the world.
I don't know why it feels like the end of the world. While I carp about slowing economic growth and rant against Government inaction, there has always been a sliver of hope. Someday, sometime, things will come together, and India will be back on track to deal with the crushing, grinding, inhuman, undignified poverty that hundreds of millions of its population have come to terms with. I think about enterprising young boys who make a living through jugaad, farmers happy about good monsoons, people coming to Mumbai to find a job and staying on, vendors with their carts and plastic sheets on the ground, all earning livelihoods. In a decade or so, at least people may not have to worry about empty stomachs.
But terrorists destroy a heritage building in Mumbai, attack 9 other popular and crowded areas, and suddenly even that tiny sliver of hope vanishes. India is inextricably drawn into the ever-widening circle of terror, part of the Pakistan-Afghanistan network. It gets labelled as an insecure nation, as ineffective in dealing with terror.
The Government has been appallingly weak in confronting terror. Last week, PM addressed state police chiefs and said we need stronger intelligence. For heaven's sake, he is not an elder statesman! He is the person in charge. He could very well have spent a few thousand crores on better equipping his police and intelligence forces, instead of letting them use carbines that look as if they still need to be greased with animal fat. We have central anti-terror outfits; they are under his administration. There were enough bomb blasts the previous few years all over the country to forecast a major one coming any moment. Surely we could have upgraded and modernised our training, equipment, intelligence gathering, etc. And where is our disaster management set-up?
This is an occasion when the PM should admit defeat and simply walk away into the night. Call general elections as soon as possible and let someone else with grit and determination handle the country. And let us remember that we are a single united nation, not a conglomeration of states with different governments. We need a single administration for national problems, and should not anymore indulge in blame games between state and central governments.
We are India.