Fidayeen attack or accidental explosion? RDX or ammonia gel? Jaish-e-Mohammad or Al Qaeda? The blast at Delhi’s Red Fort called to mind a vocabulary of violence that was familiar in the 1990s and 2000s but was blurred in public memory by a decade and a half of relative peace. Now, the continuing vulnerability of metropolitan India to terrorist assault has been explosively revealed. As concerning as the bombing itself is the inevitable fallout, in terms of its impact on the public psyche and the creation of a climate of fear and suspicion.

The blast is a fearful reminder that insurgents evolve to remain one step ahead of law enforcement. They can always slip through the interstices of border security, counter-terrorism measures and technology-enabled surveillance. Even worse, they can infiltrate social institutions, thereby lurking undetected. For every hundred foiled plots, there is one that might succeed.

Earlier this year, Union Home Minister Amit Shah inaugurated the Multi-Agency Centre (MAC) to coordinate counter-terrorism efforts of government bodies across the board. Some 28 agencies share minute-to-minute intelligence on this platform. No doubt intelligence agencies have upped their game. Back in 2020, the National Intelligence Grid (NatGrid) was set up to monitor the mobility, financial transactions and telecommunications of known terror cells. Media reports suggest that the integration of security-related databases and the application of AI/ML to analyse trends........

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