It is time that National Security Adviser M K Narayanan should be attending to matters relating to security than concentrating on foreign affairs. India requires full focus on steps to combat terrorism. Instead, Narayanan is travelling all over the world but seldom visiting a state where the bomb blast has taken place. He was in a West Asian country when there was a serial bomb blasts in Assam. I do not think that he has visited the state even after returning from abroad. State after state has been found lacking in taking elementary precautions regarding blasts. Intelligence has been found the weakest. He has spent all his life in the Intelligence Bureau. He should be advising the states on setting up proper intelligence network and also coordinating the efforts of different states. I had my doubts when the security job was combined with that of foreign affairs after the death of Mani Dixit. The two tasks need different kind of persons: one, a policeman and the other, foreign affairs hand. Narayanan may have contributed in formulating strategy on certain foreign affairs. But as a Security Adviser he has done little. Terrorists are all over the country and there does not seem to be any well-thought plan to eliminate them. Yet it is not too late. Terrorism has begun to rear its head. It may reach dangerous proportion if something is not done about it immediately. Narayanan knows very well that terrorism is taking communal shape and tearing our pluralistic society apart. Politics in the country will not improve for a long time but we can take care of things we lack in the administrative field. Every blast or act of terror has shown the failure of intelligence agencies. They have forgotten even the 'abc' of intelligence, how to collect bits of information from here and there and how to put them together for a realistic assessment. Narayanan will bring professionalism to the humbug going on in the name of intelligence. Narayanan should not consider the splitting of the two posts a demotion because they should not have been combined in the first place. He has spent the last two years on negotiations on the Indo-US nuclear treaty. When that was over, he got associated with the LTTE problem and went to Chennai to talk to Chief Minister M Karunanidi about it. Then he travelled to Beijing to pursue the talks on India-China border. When did he find time to attend to the problem of National Security? I recall when I met him several months ago he said that terrorists could strike anywhere in India, at any time. He has been proved right. But the nation would like to know what did he do to counter the threat. I am not suggesting that Narayanan can douse all the fires burning in the different parts of the country. But if he were to devote his time to security, he would douse many of them. India can live with the border problem. India can also live with the military dominated state of Sri Lanka and the extremism of the LTTE's. But what India cannot live with is the growing network of terrorists within the country. To crush terrorism which has been politicised and criminalised in India is a big challenge. Someone has to pick up the gauntlet thrown at the nation. Narayanan may not be a Goliath but he may well prove to be David to kill the giant of terrorism. His proximity to Mrs Sonia Gandhi gives him the necessary clout to influence both the centre and the states. True, law and order is a state subject. But the IPS cadre is under the Union Home Ministry. Practically, all top police officers have come into contact with Narayanan at one stage or the other. He knows most of them by their first name. He can unofficially seek their services to develop an all-India perspective on security. I have no doubt that he can string together individual efforts of the states to curb terrorism and develop the whole thing into a well-knit machinery which is capable of anticipating and acting in time. Does he want to wear the two hats, knowing well that national security has become a joke in the country? India will limp through the period of terrorism. It will learn from its mistakes. But Narayanan may one day regret that he could have contributed more to the nation's security than he did. The writer is a former member of the Indian Parliament and senior journalist E-mail: knayar@nation.com.pk