formation of a much better-educated, better-paid, better-trained national anti-terrorist police, but none was established. Thus the forces available to fight the terrorists in Mumbai were pathetically inadequate in quantity, quality, or both.

This was true of the anti-terrorism squad of the state of Maharashtra, which was in Mumbai itself and could have moved into action immediately, but which had a total of 35 (!) officers - with less than 15 on duty at the start - for a population of 96m (18m in Mumbai alone).

Moreover, their brave commander, Hemant Karkare, who was killed on Wednesday night, was a 54-year-old investigator, not a fighter even at the level of an ordinary infantryman.

By contrast, the National Security Guards (NSG), formed in 1985, are very well trained. But they actually are a military-style commando assault force, with no real experience in the rescue of

hostages in a civilian environment, even though it is one of their official missions.

With 7,500 trained men, they could at least have responded adequately in a military way, but there was no chance of that because of another kind of inadequacy, in the decision-making system itself.

The first terrorist attack was reported at approximately 9.30 pm local time on Wednesday. No Home Ministry system alerted the central government so the call went to the chief minister of the Maharashtra state government, Vilasrao Deshmukh, who happened to be on a trip in the state of Kerala, hundreds of miles to the south. He did nothing of consequence for 90 minutes while receiving calls about the attacks on his cellphone.

Finally, at 11pm, Deshmukh called the home minister. Since Patil had no information of his own - a very peculiar situation for an interior minister anywhere - he asked the key question of the chief minister himself, who was not in Mumbai and only had his cellphone with him: how many NSG commandos were needed?

Deshmukh replied 200, more than enough to fight against ten infantry-trained terrorists (they were not ninjas or samurais), but grossly inadequate to deal even with one target as big as the immense Taj hotel, let alone multiple targets, especially given the lack of local police who could be trusted to secure the outside perimeters. Again Patil had no competent staff to intervene to determine the right number, which was at least 1,000.

By the time NSG commandos arrived in Mumbai it was 7am on Thursday

One more inadequacy was that all the ready NSG commandos were concentrated in Delhi, with none in Mumbai or Calcutta or Madras for that matter, each a megalopolis a long way from Delhi. Worse still, even though by then news was coming in of the mayhem in Mumbai, the NSG commandos and their kit were not sent in the fastest way possible - by boarding one or two of the several passenger jet aircraft that could immediately have been commandeered at New Delhi airport.

Instead, an old and slow Ilyushin Il-76 was summoned from the Chandigarh airport 150 miles away, whose pilots had to be awakened, and which did not arrive in New Delhi until 2am, four-and-a-half hours from the start of the incident.

By the time the NSG commandos arrived in central Mumbai to begin their action it was 7am on Thursday, nine-and-a-half hours from the first reports of the attack. Even then, they had to act with almost no information - not even an accurate floor plan of the Taj hotel - and, of course, in grossly inadequate numbers, given the need to go room by room in a huge structure with an infinity of rooms, broom closets and servant passages.

As a result, the NSG commandos only arrived at the lowest priority Nariman house of Chabad (it was the smallest target by far) on Friday morning, more than 40 hours after it was first entered by the terrorists on Wednesday night.

They then blew in the street door, and after an interval - fatal in itself if any of the captives were still alive - other NSG commandos rappelled down from helicopters, in full view of TV cameras and the uncontained crowd pressing in all around. They were greatly applauded as they left after finding everyone dead inside.

All in all, what happened was a confrontation between ten trained soldiers willing to fight and die, and a hopelessly inadequate security system. But India is indeed a democracy with a free press, and what will soon happen after all the usual recriminations will be the creation of a properly de-centralised system, backed by an information net.

By contrast, those who live in Tel Aviv, New York or London need not fear a Mumbai episode. If 10 infantry-trained terrorists were to attack, local police with their own hostage-rescue teams would quickly deal with them.

Editor’s note: Vilasrao Deshmukh, Chief Minister of Maharashtra, offered his resignation yesterday, December 1. At the time of posting, Deshmukh was travelling to New Delhi to discuss his position with the Indian National Congress leadership.