PUNE, INDIA: A country that is not known for snake-charmers or elephants anymore but for its IT brainpower, has still a lot to catch up on when it comes to fighting terror with technology.

In fact, technology plays a key role in intelligence gathering, intercepting communication between terrorists, collecting data on their locations, tracing emails and email accounts etc, as a fraud investigation agency in Pune relates.

"However, it will work only when it is supported by adequate ground level intelligence. So I think telecom companies and ISPs need to have dedicated professionals interfacing with law enforcement and intelligence agencies in tracking the whereabouts of terrorists. Right now, it is on reactive basis, on request of LE or Intelligence agencies.

Proactively gathering data and doing data analysis to identify any suspicious activity can go a long way in providing intelligence." Says a forensic expert.

In the viewpoint of Arun Nathani from Cybage, IT's role in security is not a volunteer-or-industry issue, "It's a national-level and government level issue. India does not lack time, expertise or finance in tech power but lacks highly when it comes to use it with a maturity and vision that can only come when our politicians rise above the petty-things."

As he correctly says, IT needs a different kind of shrewdness to deal with. This is a sentiment shared by Jitendra Tanna, vice president, Fujitsu Consulting India Pvt Ltd who stresses that in India, at the top, IT should be seen as a real driver and not just as a cost center.

"We have all the technical know-how and expertise, in fact we supply it to the world all over. Than why not have our own establishments use it?"

The issue is not just the lack of use of technology in some vital areas but the way it is under-utilized even in areas already deployed. At the cost of making a business case, Tanna ventures to suggest the use of Palm Vein Readers, which are being extensively used in Japan and currently rate second best after the eye-retina technology for security access.

As he points out, despite having CCTVs brickwork all across, India fails to use them sharply whenever a building like Taj is attacked.

"There's so much value lying latent inside technologies like these, both in pro-active and post-event investigation ways. But, some times, technology is used just for the sake of it."

It's not all rust however

The Mumbai Taj attack has on the positive side, demonstrated the exemplary and impactful applications of technology by the Net-savvy, be it blogging, Twittering, Facebooking, Flickering or Youtubing.

Mumbaikar Asfaq Tapia, who works with Pinstorm, a digital advertising company, was updating the website Twitter almost every second using compact 140 character updates or micro-blogs called tweets so as to disseminate real time information faster than other media. He shares his part:

"I was seeing a lot of very useful information like emergency phone numbers etc being passed around on the Twitter cloud and realized that not many people from India are on Twitter and this information has to get out to others too."

This is why he also launched the page helpmumbai.pinstorm.com to put all the relevant information there. Tapia thinks that all the online mediums had a part to play.

Twitter sent out the early updates, Flickr was used to upload snaps from the scene of crime, blogs were used to write articles and FaceBook events are now being used to gather people together for candle vigils, etc. In the information-era, we have thus just seen the impactful contribution that can be done by pushing relevant information out to the people quickly.

"A lot of tension and mis-information is averted. It's a big thing to just blog about the incident." He observes. Responsible Netizens like him were in fact pleasantly surprised to find the police authorities and media following Twitter and blogs etc.

"The biggest lesson is that the world has become a much smaller place, thanks to technology." And while there's a lot that is still early to talk and trace on the use of India's tech prowess in times like these, it's nice to see that small drops that can make a difference to the ocean, are already pouring online. "We're all feeling the shock of the awful attacks in Mumbai….

But their top target was something else: our unity. If these attacks cause us to turn on each other in hatred and conflict, the terrorists will have won…..Let's deny them that victory. We're launching a message to extremists that these tactics have failed, that we're more united than ever:" This is just one of the chain-messages that have started from sites like www.avaaz.org.

The voice of tech-literate India is becoming aloud. If only, we could use it more pro-actively.

And what do you think of using new age communication technology as a powerful weapon to reach out to people?