Thomas P.M. Barnett

OP-ED: "India's Indestructible Heart: Once again, Mumbai pick itself up," by Naresh Fernandes, New York Times, 12 July 2006,p. A23.
ANALYSIS: "India Is Resilient in Wake of Deadly Blasts: Inured to Terror Attacks, Citizens Resume Daily Lives and Investors Defy Fears of a Selloff," by Peter Wonacott and Eric Bellman, Wall Street Journal, 13 July 2006, p. A5.

Whenever opinion leaders feel the need to declare the "indominatable spirit," you know it felt like one helluva shock to the system.

But as the WSJ piece listed, Mumbai has had numerous significant terror attacks in the past dozen or so years.

I remember being a bit nervous about being in the company of India's PM, President and other senior cabinet members during my spring 2000 trip to Mumbai for the international fleet review I described in PNM. Just being around so many of their special ops guys, the Black Cats who dressed in ninja black from head to toe, made me a bit wary. I mean, if you need that sort of protection, who's out to kill you?

Well, as we know from India's history, plenty of people are out to kill its leaders, and since Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated, I think the ultra-high security around the top leaders has forced terrorists to go after softer targets.

But like the Brits with the IRA bombings in the 1980s, Mumbai--and India in general--basically shrug off these attacks:

The key lesson, say those who have lived through attacks, is that even if markets go down and political temperatures go up, life goes on.

India's stock markets have recently experienced a good correction, so there was little puffery to expel as a result of this shock. That helped plenty:

The [market's] resilience emboldened people from juice salesmen to top government officials. "Your resilience and resolve will triumph over the evil designs of the merchants of death and destruction," Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said yesterday in a nationally televised speech. "No one can come in the path of our progress. The wheels of our economy will move on."

Infosys had just reported a 50% rise in quarterly profits, and when your "GM" does that, things get a lot easier on the economic morale front.

But here is my favorite line, one that undercuts the synchronicity argument of regular attacks (as in, ping the system regularly and keep everyone in a state of freaked out alert):

"We have seen this in New York, Madrid and London. Lots of countries today are dealing with terrorist attacks," Mr. Nilekani [InfoSys CEO] said in an interview. "The people of Mumbai are especially resilient."

In short, it gets harder to shock the Core over time. Big cities come to expect their turn, and no one wants to look any less resilient than others--a point of city/national pride.

So we're not such wimps after all...