We are not just ‘soft’ on terror, a charge often leveled against the UPA government by the BJP. We are a soft nation. We deal with earthquakes and floods the same way we deal with terror. We are an argumentative people and can seldom agree on something. Even terror can’t goad us into a consensus. What was a grave tragedy to us was terror tourism for then Maharashtra Chief Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh and film-maker Ram Gopal Verma. Once we agree to move, we still move slowly. The elephant remains an enduring symbol for how we move on most things. We are like that only, as we would say.

Nothing drives home the point better than our situation a year after the devastating 26/11 attacks of Mumbai. When the terror attacks rocked the financial capital, we seethed with rage, more so than at any other time in the past. After all, it was the mother of all terror attacks we faced. We vowed to act this time. Many of our pundits told us the Indian people will no longer accept the utter lack of security, and politicians will have to ‘deliver.’

A year later, it’s almost as if nothing has changed.

Most experts and civil society leaders believe India is no more secure than it was on the night of Nov. 26, 2008, when Ajmal Kasab and his heinous colleagues from Pakistan literally sailed, unchecked and unharmed, into the city of Mumbai and spread terror. Many believe a similar attack could happen yet again. What’s more, many suspect India will be able to combat it no better the next time around.

Shivraj Patil, the union home minister, is gone, but National Security Advisor M.K. Narayanan is still there. Vilasrao Deshmukh, the Maharashtra Chief Minister then, is gone but R R Patil, the state home minister, is back in his job. We the people are far less demanding, and far more accommodating or even forgiving.

Clearly, our rage has softened. Even the television anchor Arnab Goswami can’t seem to sustain his rage, or fuel it the way he did last year. The efforts of actor Rahul Bose and banker Meera Sanyal, for example, to ‘act’ have fallen flat. Mumbai’s high society has no time to vote or act, unless it is in Bollywood. And, as for the rest of the people, they are consumed by the race for survival to do anything else.

The fact is, India is not Israel, much as the columnist Shobhaa De would want us to be. I believe the DNA of India and Israel are different. It should suffice to say we are an open and pluralistic society, and paranoia has not been a feature of our civilization and will likely never be. It would be absurd to aspire to be an Israel merely for the sake of combating terror. The better model is the US, a liberal society that has reconciled to live with terror and suitably adapted, even though it has caused a fair amount of disaffection.

The American model of civil society’s defence retains a lot of individual liberty and keeps the independence of the judicial system, and combines it with advanced technology and military-like vigilance at the local level, orchestrated by a national agency. Of course, you will find any number of critics. But the fact is the US has never had to face a terror attack in the eight years since 9/11. I think if we can find a comparable balance between liberties and security, our society will be more than glad to accept. But where is the security?