Indian Businesses Push for Security
Industry Leaders Fear Recent Attacks Will Deter Investors and Derail Growth
Four days after gunmen struck Mumbai, prominent business leaders met in the distant southern Indian city of Bangalore to vent their ire.
The leaders, from India’s biggest technology, software and biotechnology companies, said the attacks on the nation’s business hub would shatter investor confidence in the Indian economy, participants recalled. They demanded that the government provide them with automatic weapons, grenades and military support to safeguard their facilities.
"We feel vulnerable; we are the soft targets for terrorists. In Mumbai, they attacked the heart of our economy," Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw, chief executive of the biotech company Biocon, said in an interview. "We have to be prepared. It is a wake-up call for the business community in India."
Biocon and the other business technology companies are working with the authorities in Karnataka state, of which Bangalore is the capital, to develop a security force for the city’s industry sector. And last week, the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry in New Delhi offered to pay a special tax if the government did not have the resources to counter terrorism.
