Terrorism - social causes, economic impact in India and possible control measures with special reference to technology–driven avenues

Terrorism is one of the major threats faced by many a nation across the world, big or small, rich or poor and developed or developing. The term terrorism is linked directly or indirectly to the socio-economic set-up of the affected region. The frequent terrorist attacks not only hamper the growth of the country, it eats into the very fabric of the civilized society. World peace at large seems to be in tatters. This article traces the varying facets of terrorism, viz the nature and causes, types, psycho-social influence of terrorism and the impact of terrorism. In addition to discussing the role of the civil society and police in confronting terrorism an attempt is made to focus the possibility of employing the technology-driven avenues such as GPS,VoIP, GPRS, WiFi, Face Recognition, City Surveillance System and Natural Language Processing in combating terrorism. The article concludes that apart from resorting to all the state-of-the-art Hi-Fi gadgets/facilities, there must be a sincere and co-ordinated attempt to improve functioning of democracy, responsiveness to public grievances, effective policing and economic development which go a long way to serve as anti-dote to terrorism.