Why has the US not faced a major terror attack since 9/11 whereas India has been successfully, some would say easily, targeted more than a dozen times in that period of over seven years?

Some would say the Congress is soft on terror. But the attacks on the Indian Parliament and the Akshardham temple in Gujarat occurred under BJP rule; and more recently, relatively smaller attacks occurred in BJP-ruled states – Karnataka, Rajasthan and Gujarat.

Many consider the revocation of the POTA as a setback to fighting terrorism. But evidence hardly supports it.

Many of the terror attacks are by fidayeen squads. After all, suicide bombers don’t live in fear of the law. They are here to die, not to face the law. Consequently, the most draconian of laws may be no deterrent. At best, POTA has been seen as deterring local terrorists who aid their Pakistani counterparts. But the broad assumption here has been that local terrorists cannot be suicide bombers. This is a fallacy that is likely to be exposed sooner, rather than later.

Remember that when 9/11 occurred in 2001, much of India took comfort by saying there were no “home-grown” “Islamic terrorists” in the country. Even a keen observer like Thomas Friedman was fooled by what he saw. The lack of any Indian Muslims in the ranks of the al-Qaida or at the Guantanamo Bay prison, the New York Times columnist concluded, was because of a “tradition of non-violence and Hindu tolerance.” I guess we now realise how untrue that is today. Similarly, Indian suicide bombers have arrived – the recent blasts in faraway Assam are an example.

To believe that a harsh law that will deliver terrorists to the gallows will end terrorism is foolish. Having said that, I will concede that an incarnation of POTA may be necessary, but it would be far from sufficient to prevent terrorism in our country. What deters terrorists, just like any other criminal or even a speeding motorist, is not only the laws but the odds of getting caught. We can’t stop them unless we tighten security and vigilance, something that is sorely lacking at most places, and ensure that most will get caught.

Days after the Mumbai attacks, a newspaper told the tale of a man who carried a revolver through the Chhatrapati Shivaji Railway Terminus without being caught. Apparently, the men who manned the metal detectors couldn’t care less to check every alarm that sounded. The attitude is similar to that of R R Patil, the Maharashtra deputy chief minister, who believes terror attacks can, do and will happen in big cities, absolving in one fell swoop any blame on the politicians or the security agencies.

Now, who is to blame for this state of affairs when we have become easy targets? The uncaring politicians? Or the pseudo-secularists? Or us middle-class urban Indians who have trouble looking beyond our immediate interests? Or that convenient catch-all “system?”

I am going to pick the last but with the following twist.

We might make a few world-class things but as a nation, we produce cheap things – cheap as in crappy, faulty and dysfunctional. Consequently, we create security that is cheap and unreliable.

The Americans, on the other hand, are in the habit of striving for, not to mention creating, excellence. Consequently, they have succeeded in establishing security systems that have deterred terrorism. Therein lies the story of what has happened between 9/11 and today in two of the world’s largest democracies. While one has suffered a steady stream of terrorist attacks, the other has secured its entire nation and its borders like a fortress.