LONDON — It's been a year since Pakistan-based militants struck the Indian financial capital of Mumbai, killing 163 people and creating panic among the city's populace. The attacks drew comparisons with the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in the United States.

Indian public outrage accompanied the expectation that the "26/11" (Nov. 26, 2008) attacks would force the government to address its systemic shortcomings in security. Yet, a year later, little seems to have changed. The country seems as unprepared for handling similar situations as ever.

The fact that there hasn't been another major attack over the past year has little to do with greater governmental efficiency and preparedness and more to do with Pakistan's having become a target of extremists, against whom the U.S. has pushed Pakistan's security forces to launch major offensives.

Although the sheer scale, scope and audacity of the Mumbai attacks put them in a different category from earlier terrorist incidents in India, it would be a mistake to suggest that they were India's 9/11. To do so would skip over issues that have allowed such horrific attacks to take place. After all, the Indian Parliament itself, symbol of India's sovereignty, was attacked in 2001, and India's response was as ineffective then as it was after 26/11.

So, it is no surprise that public frustration has grown since India's prime minister boldly declared a year back that India would "go after these individuals and organizations and make sure that every perpetrator, organizer and supporter of terror, whatever his affiliation or religion may be, pays a heavy price." The government has nothing substantive to show toward this end.

The Indian response has involved issuing statements and dossiers demanding that terrorists be apprehended. India had hoped that pressure from the international community, especially the U.S., would persuade Pakistan to address India's concerns. But it took Pakistan a year just to charge the terror masterminds of Lashkar-e-Taiba with planning and helping to execute the 26/11 attacks.

The realization is dawning in India that the strategic end-state that India seeks is rather different from what the U.S. and the rest of the West is seeking. For the U.S., the priority is to prevent an India-Pakistan conflagration that hinders the war effort in Afghanistan.

India is, therefore, being asked to take Pakistan's security concerns into account. Against domestic pressure, India is being asked to start talking with the Pakistani government. Though the Indian government has made some moves toward reviving the Indo-Pak peace process, there is no public appetite for engagement with Pakistan unless Pakistan dismantles the terror infrastructure in its territory directed at India.

Meanwhile, Indian internal security sector reforms have not gone anywhere. The appalling state of India's internal security apparatus became evident in how Indian agencies confronted the Mumbai massacre. As terrorists wreaked havoc for three days, Indian security forces struggled to get a handle on the situation. Apart from the usual tinkering with institutional and legal frameworks, the Indian government has not made any attempt toward a systemic overhaul.

As the report on the Mumbai attacks has not been made public, whatever debate there has been has occurred in a vacuum. India's ability to prevent attacks through intelligence-gathering and better policing remains questionable at best. Police forces remain underfunded and suffer from a lack of training.

The Indian government's "antiterror" stance has repeatedly been shown ineffective. Not only have terrorists continued to attack India at regular intervals with impunity — not a single major terrorist case has been solved over the past few years — but at a time when India needs effective institutional capacity to fight ever-more sophisticated terror networks, Indian police and intelligence services are demoralized. The blatant communalizing of the process by which security forces were forced to call off searches and interrogations for fear of offending this or that community has made them risk-averse.

Still, the large number of security personnel who die year after year fighting extremists demonstrate the efforts being made by India's security forces. But the Indian government's inability and/or unwillingness to face up to the security threat and counter it could end up making these sacrifices meaningless.

Today the legitimacy of the Indian state is being questioned not only by groups on the margins of Indian society and polity but also by mainstream political parties. As long as India's response to terrorism is characterized by a shameless appeal along religious lines — with political parties trying to consolidate their vote banks instead of coming together to fight the menace — India will continue to be viewed as a soft target by its adversaries and Indians will continue to fight terrorists in their streets.

It's only a matter of time before there's another attack in an Indian neighborhood. No government can make India immune from terror attacks. What it can do is better prepare the country to handle 26/11-like crises more effectively in the future. So far, few signs suggest that the Indian government has risen to this challenge.

Harsh V. Pant teaches at King's College London and is presently a visiting professor at IIM-Bangalore.