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India really is a democratic country. Hence the prompt resignation of the country's top security official, home minister Shivraj Patil, in the wake of the Mumbai attacks. In his statement, Mr. Patil said he was assuming “ministerial” - formal, not substantive - responsibility. He should have said nothing at all: Since he assumed his post in 2004, some 7,000 people have been killed by terrorists in India without generating any known response by his ministry.

The Indian reality is that local police cannot be expected to react usefully to a terrorist attack - or, indeed, to any form of armed attack - as police might do in other countries (by at least sealing off the area, for example, and calling for more help). Local police hardly ever try to stop interreligious or intercaste violence and are very reluctant to engage anyone with a firearm; they are semi-illiterate constables who deal only with petty crime as they make their rounds, drinking free tea in cafés and accepting small gifts from shopkeepers for chasing away beggars.

The death of 7,000 people in terrorist incidents since 2004 - mostly inflicted by Muslim extremists - obviously called for the formation of a better-trained, better-paid, national anti-terrorist police. But none was created. Thus the forces available to fight the Mumbai terrorists were pathetically inadequate in quantity or quality.

That was true of Mumbai's anti-terrorist squad: It could move into action immediately but had a total of only 35 officers with fewer than 15 on duty; its commander was one of the first casualties. By contrast, the National Security Guards are military-style commandos but with no real experience in rescuing hostages in a civilian environment, even though that's one of their official missions. With 7,500 men, they could at least have responded in a military fashion, but there was no chance of that because of another kind of inadequacy: the decision-making system.

The first attack was reported about 9:30 p.m. on Wednesday. No Home Ministry system alerted the central government, so the call went to the chief minister of the Maharashtra state government. But Vilasrao Deshmukh was in the state of Kerala, hundreds of kilometres to the south. He did nothing of consequence for 90 minutes while receiving calls about the attacks. Finally, at 11 p.m., he called Mr. Patil. Since Mr. Patil had no information of his own, he asked Mr. Deshmukh a key question: How many NSG commandos were needed? Mr. Deshmukh said 200, enough to fight 10 terrorists but grossly inadequate to deal even with one target as big as the Taj hotel, let alone multiple targets. The right number was at least 1,000.

One more inadequacy was that the NSG commandos were concentrated in New Delhi. Worse still, even with news of the mayhem in Mumbai now pouring in, the commandos were not sent to Mumbai in the fastest way possible - by one or two passenger jets that could have been commandeered at the New Delhi airport. Instead, an older and slower Ilyushin Il-76 was summoned from the Chandigarh airport 200 kilometres away; the plane did not arrive in New Delhi until 2 a.m.

By the time the NSG commandos arrived in central Mumbai, it was nearly 10 hours after the first reports of attack. Even then, they had to act with almost no information - not even an accurate floor plan of the Taj hotel - and, of course, in grossly inadequate numbers, given the need to go room by room in a huge structure with an infinity of rooms. As a result, the commandos only arrived at the smallest target, the Chabad house, on Friday morning, more than 40 hours after it was first entered by terrorists. They blew in the street door and, after an interval, other commandos rappelled down from helicopters, in full view of the TV cameras. The commandos were applauded as they left the house after finding everyone dead inside.

All in all, what happened was a confrontation between 10 trained men willing to fight and die, and a hopelessly inadequate security system. But India is, indeed, a democracy with a free press, and what will soon happen after all the usual recriminations will be the creation of a decentralized system backed by an information net. By contrast, those who live in Tel Aviv, New York or London need not fear a Mumbai episode. If 10 terrorists were to attack, local police would quickly deal with them.

Edward Luttwak is senior associate at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies.