An ‘Army of the pure’ (Lashkar-e-Taiba) from the  ‘Land of the pure’ (Pakistan) attacks the biggest Indian City and kills hundreds. The Pure people from the land of the Pure, do not even want to acknowledge a captured terrorist is one among the pure!

It is very frustrating to deal with Pakistan. My first instinct was to think ‘this is it’. We need to do what US did, go attack pakistan and exact our revenge.

But, I think what Indian govt. is doing is rather wise. We need to cool our tempers. We need to think this thru before formulating our response. We are not a banana republic like ‘land of the pure’, and neither are we an arrogant & Rich super power like US.

While I do not for a minute want to trivialize the tragedy of Mumbai, in reality we have a much much larger problem in our midst. My Maid servant’s family earns about $4 a day, and she has to see her children through the school. She is lucky she  somehow manages it, majority can’t even do that.

We need to lift about 40crore (400million) people out of griding poverty. We have been managing about 1cr every year in the past 5 years, but at that rate it’ll take us 50 years (Considering the population growth) to irradicate poverty. We can’t afford that. We need to accelerate the growth. Which means, a growth rates of 10% or above. We can’t do that by going to a war.

Pakistan has ruined itself. From having a better economy than India in 1970s, it today doesn’t even have half the Indian per capita. It has larger number of poor people per thousand than India. It can’t even afford its army, and does it on borrowed money. It has  a constitution and a political system that is effectively define-the-game-as-you-go system.

I saw a couple of ‘pure’ Journalists (or are they retired generals?) making comments about India’s atrocious record with regards to its Minorities, and its own poor people. While it is laughable when such comments come from  the ‘land of the pure’, the thought should be how can we correct the rot within before without. Our real war should be to make sure we do not have extremists among our midst, so that we can take on any country in the world as a united whole.

The perfect way for us to defeat terrorism is to have an economically strong country. A per capita income that is approximately 4 times of what it is today, will get our unemployment rates to less than 10% (comparable to most developed countries). Poverty would all but be gone. Not many of our citizens will be swayed by hate campaigns and terrorist philosphy.

The best way to defeat ‘Land of the Pure’ is not through war.The ‘pure idiots’ will do it themselves as they are scoring self-goals in sequence. All we need to do is not let the ‘pure’ people drag us down as they find their way to Abyss.

There have been suggestions from People like Stephen Cohen, that India should help Pakistan from the disaster it is facing. Lot of members within western intelligentsia think that Pakistan can be ’saved’. The reality is otherwise. If Pakistan should stand any chance of climbing out of the depths it has plunged, the only people who can do that are people of Pakistan. If they can stop being in ‘pure’ denial and stop the ‘pure’ idiocy of the people they support, they may have some chance.

While the ‘pure’ people do not do that, what we should do is set our house in order, make sure attacking our land becomes very tough by revamping our Governance, Police and security apparatus. We can do that at a fraction of the cost of a war. A limited conflict like Kargil can cost us around $5billion dollars today. A full scale war may wipe out half our Forex reserve, and set us back financially by around 10 years.

No! We can’t let that happen. We should have single minded focus on growth. We should only target removal of poverty in our lifetime, and becoming a developed nation in our life time as the goals.

I know that we want our revenge for the people who died. I know the families of the dead would seeth with anger if we can’t find a way for retribution. But, retribution against a country is more complex, than individuals. While we should make every effort to get the fugitives in the land of the pure to justice, we should do that intelligently, but not at a cost of sacrificing another generation’s future.

If Pakistan can’t make up its mind to take action against the ‘pure’ idiots among them, then sooner or later the ‘pure’ country will descend into a huge chaos, which will then threaten the safety of whole world (with Nuclear weapons and what not), then the whole world will have to share the cost of demolishing that threat, instead of we sacrificing our future by going to war with this idiotic country.

If world can’t do it now, it’ll have to do it a bit later at a higher cost.But, it isn’t a cost that India alone should bear.

If we focus on growth now, We will certainly have the last laugh.