When you have a threat like this somebody has to decide, what is the threat, what do they perhaps seek to achieve, how are they going about it, who are these guys?

This assessment is based on information that you need to collect very quickly. After this you need to decide what needs to be done. This is well before the military is involved. As Ratan Tata very lucidly put, someone has to find out what is happening. If you read the reports, in the initial confusion the police did not even know what was happening.

The first step should have been to convene a body of experienced people from the administration to take stock. They decide what needs to be done. Let us assume that they found out that the terrorists have no agenda but to kill and it is decided to go in for a military intervention.

The NSG and MARCOS are informed. They prepare, they come close and don't expose themselves like it was done. Perhaps they could have assembled at the army camp in Colaba (south Mumbai), away from the media glare. By then some information would have trickled in about the number of militants, how they were armed, their position in the hotel etc -- this information should have come from the people who initially ran out of the hotel.

Image: National Security Guard commandos look down after an explosion at Nariman House, Colaba, south Mumbai. Commandos stormed the Jewish centre and killed the terrorists after two days of bloodshed. Photograph: Punit Paranjpe/Reuters.

Also see: Marine Commandos brief the media

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