To tackle terror, one needs to adopt a preventive rather than a reactive posture. With the impact of terror on both the national infrastructure fabric and the individual & collective psyche being baleful and irrevocable, we need to develop a blueprint that circumvents future terror strikes on the nation. To take an analogy from the healthcare space: Prevention is always more desirable than treatment and care.

In this regard, the Security India 2010 Conference focuses attention on prevention not engagement. With the inadequacies inherent in India’s current security arrangements and our dire need to safeguard our people and our infrastructure from external threat, it is incumbent on the relevant stakeholders – policy-makers; homeland and civilian policing agencies; security agencies; institutional end-users; vendors; transporters; amongst others – to work cohesively in developing a template in foiling terror strikes. The conference highlights the key role played both by technology in surveillance and interception coupled with the human element in providing a comprehensive prophylactic solution to thwart terror attacks. Thereafter, it proceeds to unravel the anatomy of a terrorist’s path – from the port of embarkation to the point of attack – with the intention of fortifying India’s various lines of defense, enhancing competencies and skill-sets of transporters and customs authorities, as well as providing the institutional end-users with a business continuity management plan in the case of strikes. The programme closes with a debate on the impact that terror has on the Indian psyche - economically, sociologically, and politically - keeping in mind India's secularity, rise as a superpower, and multi-ethnicity.