Is terrorism that big a problem?
I was reading Bruce Schneier s comments today on the mumbai attacks. He made an interesting point on how the attacks were so inefficient. His measure was number of deaths caused per terrosist and the result was like 11 dead and 13 wounded per terrorist.
This got me thinking whether the number of people dead is actually a good measure of determining the gravity of an incident. If so then the reaction of the piublic and the media in india does not make much sense to me. People/Actors/My friends are all uproared by terrorist attacks such as this. Everyone has their opinions on how to solve the problem, some more drastic than others The government should do this, the government should do that
well take it to the streets.. politicians are completely inept in providing security.. we should build a stronger navy.. we should equip police with better arms etc etc all pretty viable, I agree.
I am not trying to propose any solutions of my own, cause frankly I dont have any idea as to what should be done and I am sure most people including the media and politicians do not either.
What I want to find out is whether we are concerned about the right problem. Does terrorism really demand such a big reaction or there are other more grave problems which are getting neglected? So I decided to take a look at other recurring incidents that cause the maximum number of casualties/suffering/losses in india.
Let me start with terrorism itself
Terrorism
The times of India reported the following on 27 Aug 2007
All of these vast swathes of the globe lost a total of 3,280 lives in terrorist incidents between January 2004 and March this year. India alone lost 3,674 lives over the same period of three years and three months.
Outside of Iraq, 20,781 people were killed in terrorist violence between January 2004 and March 2007, according to data available from the Worldwide Incidents Tracking System (WITS) of the US National Counter-Terrorism Centre (NCTC). Almost half of them, 9,283 to be precise, were killed in South Asia.
If I calculate based on this then on an average it is like 18 deaths per day world wide, 3 per day in india.
Road Accidents
According to indiandrivingschools 78,911 people were killed and 3, 99,265 injured in india in 2000 alone. Over 80,000 people die in the traffic crashes annually, over 1.2 million are injured seriously and about 300000 disabled permanently.
In 2004 the number of deths due to road accidents in India was 90,000 (highest for any country) it was 42,636 in the US.
This means that on an average 219 people die everyday due to road accidents alone. This is more than the mumbai attacks too. And note that this is everyday.
This is not just my view bio-medicine quotes that
The death toll from car crashes in developed countries is almost 400 times greater than the number of deaths caused by international terrorism, reports a study in the latest issue of Injury Prevention.
Floods
cnn.com reported this on Sep 24 2008
The death toll from monsoon floods in eastern India rose to more than 2,400 Tuesday as authorities reported that another 32 people had perished in the disaster that has affected millions of people. The latest deaths in Uttar Pradesh state brought the countrywide death toll from the floods to 2,404 since June, according to the federal home ministrys disaster management unit.
If you watch the news this seems to repeat every year.
Dowry
In 1995, the National Crime Bureau of the Government of India reported about 6,000 dowry deaths every year according to wsws
Ok so these are old numbers may be the problem has abated now I dont no.
Tuberculosis
The Ministry of Health and Family Welfare says here that
In India today, two deaths occur every three minutes from tuberculosis (TB). But these deaths can be prevented. With proper care and treatment, TB patients can be cured and the battle against TB can be won.
two every three minutes, thats like 960 every day! I hope thats incorrect.
I wanted to check the numbers for HIV/AIDS as well but I believe these are difficult to find for any research since they are not directly a result of the epidemic. A good argument for this is found here
Suicide
Times of india reported here that there were 122,637 suicides last year (2007) an average of 336 every day as reported by the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB). Ok so suicide is an individuals own business so I will not take this any further.
So why is Road Safety and Floods not our topmost priority. They dont get the same reaction from the public. Some may say that floods are just natural calamities, well thats not entirely true, it is an infrastructure problem. The BJP government had plans to resolve it I think but never got anywhere.
Road accidents are an ever better example cause in my view its not just the government that can be blamed for it. Sure the infrastructure is poor, but based on my observations of the driving habits of my fellow citymen & women they can be equally held responsible.
I feel that all of these including terrorism are unavoidable problems, we can only hope to reduce their intensity. If saving peoples lives is what we wanna do then why not start with the most injurious?
