Delhi's Three Fatal Flaws.(International Edition; World View)

New Delhi suffers from bad PR and weak institutions. But just expressing more regret is not going to cut it.

Last week's tragedy in Mumbai may have finally focused world attention on India's terror problem, but the crisis is nothing new. Yet despite the enormous death toll--since 2004, nearly 4,000 people have been killed in India by terrorist violence--and the huge economic and political costs of all the recent attacks, India's government has so far displayed a remarkable sang-froid on the issue. Apart from expressing its sympathy for the victims and promising to prosecute those responsible, it has failed to forge a coherent strategy to curb the menace.

New Delhi's ineptitude has been evident in three key areas. First, Indian authorities have failed to convince the world that their country is a major victim of terror--despite statistics showing that it ranks second only to Iraq in terms of casualties. Second, they haven't made the institutional and organizational changes necessary or expended enough resources to tackle the problem on a war footing. And finally, India's government has (at least until recently) remained in denial about the fact that the terror problem has shifted, become at least partially homegrown.

Start with India's most glaring failure: its singular inability to convince the international community that it suffers from a serious terror problem. Not all the attacks over the years have been foreign-linked. But many, especially in Punjab and in Kashmir, have--and the culprit has been Pakistan. Yet New Delhi has never made an adequate case proving Islamabad's involvement to outsiders, relying instead on crude rhetoric that's convinced no one. Even now, in the wake of the Mumbai attacks, Indian leaders haven't shed much light on the copious circumstantial evidence tying the marauders to India's great nemesis. As a result, Pakistan's major supporters, especially the United States (and, to a lesser extent, the United Kingdom), have never brought sufficient pressure to bear on Islamabad to cut off its backing of armed radicals in India.

New Delhi's PR failure is tied to its institutional one. The country's two main intelligence agencies, the external-oriented Research and Analysis Wing and the domestic-focused Intelligence Bureau (IB), have long been at odds. As a result, critical information on various terrorist groups has not been shared in a routine, seamless and timely fashion. Worse still, the IB has been chronically short of operatives for years, thanks to its failure to recruit aggressively or offer suitable professional incentives to staff. It ...