A shroud of sadness descended on the country as the news came in of the death of 40 CRPF men in a suicide bomb attack. The nation as one joins the shattered families in their hour of grief. But repeated rhetoric of a muscular kind has now been shown to be inadequate in addressing national security concerns. The daily kill count in the Kashmir valley and the extended political celebration of the surgical strikes, recently made into a testosterone-laden blockbuster movie, were insufficient to neutralise the consequences of a disastrous coalition experimentation, repeated governance failures and the sidelining of alternative political voices in the Valley.

The unrelenting security operations with no political solution on the horizon may well have given way to complacency in the Kashmir’s security infrastructure, leading to a grave intelligence lapse that permitted the accumulation of several hundred kilograms of explosives used in the attack. Pakistan is, of course, behind this attack. But we cannot forget that it was a local youth who rammed the car into the CRPF convoy. Continuing counter-insurgency strikes in the Valley are creating a contrarian conflict, which can only be addressed through a political process. The government and people of India cannot win this battle without winning the hearts and minds of the local population.

If the huge cache of explosives establishes the scale of intelligence failure, we need to ask how could 2,500 security personnel be ferried without following the standard operating procedure? We cannot afford to shed more blood in vain. If choppers are the answer, let the government bring in a more expensive alternative. The maximum losses of security forces have happened on the Anantnag-Brijbehara-Pampore axis, yet there has not been sufficient surveillance to deter this murderous mayhem that reduced the CRPF bus to a mangled heap. Pakistan’s deep state will try every dirty trick in its book but we should be militarily prepared to stop, expose and hit at its resources like Masood Azhar. Simultaneously, we should create an atmosphere of political engagement to address the angst of the Valley’s youth.