A splinter-proof film for the glass facade of your office. Infra-red cameras that detect a gun. A personal CEO-guard who can shoot. Thermal sheets, cell phones that send out voices and location alerts.

This is not scenes from an American sci-fi thriller. All this and more could next be part of corporate offices in our cities.

India Inc, the core of our economy, could be a sitting duck for terror attacks and needs to do a lot to safeguard its people and assets, according to Mr Harry Dhaul, founder-President of Security Watch India (SWI).

“Do you feel safe in this hotel,” Mr Dhaul asked this reporter. The now-mandatory checks at hotels, in his view, are so formatted and perfunctory that they are not foolproof.

Equally vulnerable are power plants, refineries, airports, ports and railways, global events that are hosted in the country, large, visible companies and strategic establishments, as much as popular shopping places and hotels.

Mumbai's 26/11 has changed the way companies should look at the security of their chiefs, staff and infrastructure and there is no escape from raising the level of alertness within their systems, said Mr Dhaul, who dons the hat of safety evangelist when he is not espousing the energy cause as Director-General of the Independent Power Producers' Association of India. He spoke to Business Line on the sidelines of a seminar organised by his not-for-profit organisation in Bangalore.

Since June, SWI arm and private security solutions provider IndianEye Security has trained some 40 hand-picked men and women for free at its academy on a privately owned place at Belgundi near Belgaum. When they come out, these ‘Close Protection Officers' will be well-versed in driving, hand combat, life protection, rifle shooting, quick getaways for themselves and their employers.

These CPOs can do evasive driving and take VVIPs to safety, double up as half-doctors, can shoot, fire-fight and a lot more. Companies should be ready to hire them at monthly salaries nudging six digits.

Trained in a tie-up with UK's Amaratus Risks, these officers , Mr Dhaul said, were far better than the 80 lakh private guards that the country has today; most of them come from poor families and hunger zones, are underfed, unfit, uneducated and get paid a measly Rs 2,000-5,000 a month. The well-trained guards are exposed to how a VVIP, HNI (high networth individual) or corporate honcho lives, and learn social graces and communication skills. The Maharashtra Government plans to send 500 of its police and other candidates to go through the IndianEye rigours there.

Was he pressing the panic button? “We are probably five years ahead of our times. Today, we are not even half-ready for what is required. CCTVs are not enough, you need multi-layered monitoring. Companies also need to get their security systems audited externally. A US estimate has estimated that the Indian demand for such homeland security will be $1 trillion in ten years,” he said.

Security expert and commentator Mr Maroof Raza, who mentors SWI, probably summed it up when he cited a study, “If you guard your economy the rest can be handled.”

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