Over 6,000 people have died in terrorist and separatist violence across the country since the last general elections. Of these nearly 400 belonged to the various security forces, principally the Army. But as the election campaign gathered momentum in December and January, you had to listen hard for any echo of this tragedy in the declamations and statements of various political parties. Then last week came the Coimbatore blasts. In a spate of 13 explosions that took place in 15 minutes, 50 more lives were snuffed out. Scores have been maimed for life.

Political parties have developed a strange reticence to discuss this slow haemorrhage that has led to the loss of more than 50,000 lives since 1980. Yet, most parties, barring the BJP, have simply refused to address the problem with any degree of seriousness in their election manifestos or campaigns. Instead of the national tragedy that it is, these deaths have become the individual pain of families. The cavalier manner in which governments have dealt with the rising tide of violent deaths that has caught Indian citizens unawares, in a train or bus, a village in Kashmir or Manipur, and even the glitzy markets of Delhi, is a painful comment on their collective incompetence.

In its manifesto, the United Front, for example, believes that insurgency and terrorists are bred by under-development and poverty and the anodyne option is to pour money into the "development" of Punjab, the North-east and Kashmir. The Left for its part thinks that internal threats in Kashmir and the North-east have arisen from "alienation and neglect" and the machinations of "imperialism" (read the US). Both these formations suppose the real problem comes from the BJP's attack on "secularism". This may well be so, but it simply ignores the forces of Islamic fundamentalism underlying the Kashmir rebellion and that they are almost certainly responsible for the Coimbatore incidents, notwithstanding the asinine assertions of the Congress president.

In contrast, the BJP manifesto provides great detail on national security and foreign policy. The party accepts that the nation faces "grave challenges to its integrity and security". Not surprisingly, its views on the internal dynamics of the various insurgencies display its ideological angularities. Even while talking of the need to bridge the "physical and emotional distance" between India and the North-east and the success of elections in Kashmir, the BJP's central theme is the need for more efficacious law and order solutions.

The BJP's stand on nuclear weapons is enigmatic. Repeating the formulation of its 1996 manifesto, the party promises to "re-evaluate the country's nuclear policy" and "exercise the nuclear option". L.K. Advani's statement thereafter that a nuclear test may not be necessary does introduce a sliver of doubt to the party's true intentions. For the UF, national security is presumably subsumed in the so-called Gujral doctrine. Though the Left's view on these matters is properly ideological, it believes that the main threat to the country's external security comes from the US' efforts to dominate the world. Its solution: reject the NPT, don't sign the CTBT and depend on the Chinese and the Russians for help.

But the all-round prize for indifference would go to the Congress whose concerns are skewed by the security or the lack of it that led to Rajiv Gandhi's death. The larger issues of national security are dismissed in a few token sentences. Repeating clichés, the Congress declaims that it would continue efforts for "total disarmament", promote peaceful and "developmental use" of nuclear energy but "we will not be found wanting in case of any threat by hostile forces".

The inability of these parties to confront the consequences of China's aid to Pakistan's nuclear and missile programme is astounding. All the more so since this situation has allowed Pakistan to conduct a covert war against India which includes organising gangs for bombing campaigns and arming a slew of dissident forces. Last month, Pakistan declared that it would parade its missile "Ghauri" (named presumably after the Afghan king whose invasions ravaged India in the 12th century) on its Army Day next month.