One of the primary reasons why India has not been effective against terrorism is because the civil police do not have a clear mandate, role and training to fight terrorism. Whatever strategy exists is police-centric because of the inability to distinguish between 'terrorists,' which demands armed action, and 'terrorism' that requires addressing the root causes of religious and political violence. The former is body-warfare; the latter is mind-warfare.

26/11 has conclusively proved that the police, and even the National Security Guard, (NSG) are grossly wanting in mission clarity, intelligence, and training. It did not require 400 NSG commandos to take 48 hours to deal with ten terrorists! Then they are not commandos. I cannot imagine GSG 9, SAS or Delta Force deploying a battalion to snuff out ten terrorists.

The civil police are mentally and culturally better equipped than the Army and para military forces (PMF) to fight terrorists and resolve the root causes of terrorism. This approach was largely responsible for success in Punjab and Meghalaya. Since Other Forces are tenure-based they lack continuity, and therefore, there is pressure on them to produce results through the 'body-count' game. Comparatively, these forces  lack empathy in ascertaining the emotions and feelings of the community. To make matters worse, they are wanting in local terrain knowledge, cultural sensitivities, and the inter-play of community problems.

The police on the other hand enjoy the advantages of local recruitment, continuity, transfers and job rotation within geographic areas, and neighbourhood familiarity. Moreover, since they are stakeholders there is higher accountability of their actions. It is, therefore, not surprising that the police often enjoy greater acceptability and empathy of the locals than the Army or the PMF.

Following on from this hypothesis, I believe that the role of the NSG should be restricted to surgical intervention in extraordinary situations such as hijacking of aircraft, ships and oil rigs; hostage rescue; nuclear, chemical and biological threats; vertical or submarine insertion; and counter-terrorist operations outside India. Everything else should be within the purview of the civil police.