Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi at bomb blast site at Guwahati, Assam last month

Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi at a bomb blast site in Guwahati, Assam, last month -- PIB

The bomb blasts in different parts of the country should be a wake up call for Kerala and several other States. Intelligence and security arrangements remain inadequate in Kerala that it is impossible for extremists to target any place in Kerala. Security is lax even at important establishments and locations.

Kerala has several factors that would act as a protective net terrorism from within. The first and foremost is perhaps the support for communist ideologies among the populace. Second is the presence of significant population of Christians and large majority of Hindus and Muslims who are not sympathisers of any extremist activity. (Extremists flourish only when they have roots in the communities and get sympathy and support.) The absence of Cosmopolitan cities and limited population of those from Northern States was another advantage. That made it easy for the police to track outsiders. However, this advantage is being lost with the influx of migrant workers from States such as Bihar, West Bengal  and  recruitment of criminal gangs by extremist organisations. However, it is to the credit of the Muslim community that hardly anyone could be recruited from Kerala by ideological brainwashing.

Despite all this favourable factors, it should concern the State that large sums are flowing into the State from foreign sources. There could be sleeping cells across the State that could be called into action by outside forces any time. In a subtle way, there are also moves to open up channels for public communication by several quarters. These have to be watched carefully as they could be used for subtle communal and ideological propaganda. This applies to both majority and minority communities.

Kerala ran into this situation because of the vote bank politics and resultant communal appeasement policies. Even mainstream political parties courted communal parties with extremist views to secure votes. As a result, deeper investigation into incidents such as the Marad massacre, burning of cinema theatres in Malappuram district and Tamil Nadu transport bus in Kochi, bomb blasts at Kadalundi and Thrissur , hawala, money laundering cases and dubious land transactions were undermined. Telltale developments at places like Kottackal and neighbouring areas, training camp at Vagamon and functioning of dozens of organisations with dubious agenda were ignored.

As the Malayalam saying goes, Kerala is now in a situation that it now would have use a spade to take out what could have been removed with a needle (Soochikondedukedathu, Thoombakondu Edukkuka).