PUNJAB POLICE REQUIRES TO RETRAIN IN VIEW OF CHANGED ENVIRONMENT

Punjab police is known world over for its robust tackling of the crowds and offenders rather than scientific methods of crowd control and policing. No doubt the Punjab Police did a good job in tackling terrorism and now period that phase is over. Now Punjab police is faced with actual hard core policing tasks like maintaining law and order with a major evil of drugs cropping up in a big way. In addition a very fast tech savvy environment is evolving to keep it on its toes where filming an incident does not require elaborate equipment but just a cheap mobile which actually became its undoing.  Punjab Police and  for that matter any police in India is in habit of twisting facts and creating  situations to suit its FIR story /theory is now no more possible that easily. So challenges for these law enforcement agencies are many, varied and ever increasing.

Another fact of increasing crime against women in rate and proportion is also laying bare the lack of training, preparedness, values and quality of human resource of our police force. It is causing constant humiliation for the ruling elite. It is such a situation that ruling party wants to blame others for its failures but is not able to do so despite such high pitch speeches in the parliament. It is thanks to the media activism that the most incidents have been brought in public domain. It is so ludicrous that on one hand the state is not able to give a safe environment to our own daughters but our parliamentarians are busy finding fault with the central government apparatus rather than apply balm to the affected families through their own government.

It is also a fact that not much had been done for women safety previously where as the present government has initiated recruitment of women constables and other women officials which was required since long. This is a very welcome step. But is it enough? As we are all aware that nothing is static in our environment and society hence because of it dynamics it will not and cannot stop for the government to prepare and post enough numbers of well trained and sensitive human beings to its police force.

 If a crowd is tackled well by sincere police officers, nine out of ten times the crowd will listen, sometimes they just want to be heard, it is a very basic right to be heard by Powers That Be who can ameliorate their grievances .The government needs to be proactive in perceiving the future policing requirements and modify their training syllabus accordingly to sensitize the new recruits as well as retrain the old policemen who are now holding positions such as SHO's and others   such posts that matter.

The police needs to study changing patterns of crime, preempt certain incidents, sensitise male police force till we have enough members from the female gender to man the stations as required by their population ratio. Mind you these female numbers are set to increase with such laudable schemes such as Nanhi Chhaan and other women centric welfare schemes set up to decrease infant mortality ratio and provide education to all girls free. These future women as we shall call them generally are going to be more aware, alert, militant in their outlook and ever ready to fight for their legitimate rights.

Hence time has come for our forces to evolve and come out of police functioning of male dominating police force of British era when women mostly stayed at home. We need a police force that is human ,modest, talking to offenders, segregating the first time offenders, employing negotiators to break dead locks, employ psychologists, sociologists and employing scientific proven methods to tackle issues of unruly but rights demanding crowds ,strikes and mobs. The state that is on path of development does not portray a very rosy picture when such videos of merciless beating of innocent public are shown across the world. We need to introspect about our entire administration of policing .Times are changing and the rulers must change accordingly and they should not only promise positive action in public but must practice the same in their instructions to their subordinates in private too when they are away from media and public glare. Any political party which after coming to power becomes a government and this government is directly responsible and is constitutionally bound to provide fair governance and thus treats all its citizens as equal despite their having different political affiliations or no affiliation at all.