Office Reaction to Mumbai

"The stock market's gonna go down today," quipped one of my co-workers.
"Actually, the stock market's closed today," responded another.

The reaction to the bombings in Mumbai by my office-mates was a bit surprising. There's sort of a "eh, another bombing" tone by most. People seem more concerned they can't trade stock than with the bombing itself.

Since the government changed over about four years ago, bombings have not been terribly uncommon. Most of them seem to be centered in Mumbai and Delhi, but there have been several around the country. There was one attack in Hyderabad about a year ago that struck Lumbini Park, an amusement park at the south end of the lake that sits in the middle of Hyderabad.

The general consensus is that India is just not prepared to deal with these problems. About two or three days after most of these attacks, it comes out that the government actually knew about them in advance. They're just not in a position to do much.

A few years ago, a plane was hijacked in Mumbai in an effort to get a Pakistani held prisoner by the Indian government released. India tried to mobilize the NSG to go after the plane, but were unable to do so effectively because the NSG wasn't anywhere near Mumbai. They've since stationed members of the NSG near every major city, which I guess explains why they were able to respond to yesterday's attack as quickly as they did.

But, people seem to doubt the government's ability to do much about it. Someone told me that the Hyderabad government actually staged a mock bombing at a train station earlier this week to see how people would react. I'm not sure if they were aware of what was going to happen in Mumbai, but this highlights how the Indian government is more reactionary and takes less preventative measures.