NEW DELHI: • A leading Christian organisation that manages India’s busiest churches is shopping for a “complete security package”. It held talks with a visiting high-level Israeli security delegation earlier this week.
• After the successful launch of the “micro UAV” (Unmanned Aerial Vehicle) at the Bangalore air show, the company marketing it is on the verge of signing its first purchase deal with the police in Rohtak, Haryana.
• Among bullet-proof solutions under design is an armoured golf cart which can protect up to six commandos as they move around a hotel or airport under siege.
• A moving platform capable of climbing up to windows 200 m above the ground could have helped rapidly evacuate the Taj and Trident during the Mumbaiattacks. Hotel guests knotted together bedsheets to slide down.
• Given the acute shortage of sniffer dogs, a private company has begun breeding a litter of Australian Labradors and German Shepherds. The plan: to breed 200 sniffer dogs in two years for hiring out by the hour.
Forget the slowdown and the credit crunch, if there is one industry that’s declared boomtime, it’s the security business. Spurred by the recent surge in criminal and terrorist activity and finally, the 26/11 attacks in Mumbai that exposed glaring holes in the security system, the Indian security bazaar — both Government and private — is attracting business like never before.
It’s been raining tenders both in South Block, which houses the Ministry of Defence, and North Block, where the Home Ministry is, as bureaucrats work overtime to get approvals for emergent security and surveillance-related acquisitions, several of which had been bogged down for years.
Even as the high-end security and surveillance equipment is being quietly imported, hundreds of smaller security firms are engaged in fierce competition for signing foreign collaborations, and have already reported sharp increases in sales of protective and bullet-proof gear, X-ray and scanning equipment.
Says G B Singh, chairman of the Indian chapter of Asis International, the world’s largest association of security professionals: “If you take into account the plans for police modernization all over the country, post 26/11, business has gone up by Rs 500 crore.”
That’s just the tip. The boom began since word went out that as India learns its lessons from the Mumbai attack, it’s gearing up to spend an estimated $10 billion on homeland security and strengthening the armed forces. Further evidence came in the enhancement of Rs 4,500 crore in the budget for paramilitary forces (including a 8.5% hike in the budget for the Intelligence Bureau).
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