080803.dh.citizenstakeholders
Deccan Herald: Sunday, August 3, 2008
By Maxwell Pereira
The blasts reinforce the conviction that the war against crime, social injustice, terror, et al is not a leader's war but a peoples' war. That the need to mobilise vast masses of citizens is the only permanent deterrent.
Yet again the country is in a spin over an increased threat perception following bomb blasts in two major cities – Bangalore and Ahmedabad on two successive days; more bombs then found in a third city Surat, and to boot - a terrorist module also busted in yet another, Tamil Nadu city. On everyone's mind now is, where next? …and when!
The realisation how utterly vulnerable we are, is gripping; the desperation of seeking a solution that’s eluded us over all these years no less. Following each of the blasts be it in Varanasi, Mumbai, Jaipur, Bangalore or Ahmedabad or the ones earlier, the same deadpan placid faces of leaders with platitudes and promises, political mud-slinging and attempts at opportunistic political mileage; and finally, other inevitable blame game.
No doubt there is more than a grain truth in all the allegations and accusations one gets to hear - but is that where the buck stops? As a society, are we prepared to lie on our back and suffer this state of affairs and terrorist lashings time and again? When will we learn? Each citizen needs to introspect and search within him/ her for a list of commissions or omissions on one's own part that contributed to today’s mind-numbing scenario.
Commenting on police role I would concede there has been unpardonable failure - be in intelligence gathering, be in local policing methods of crime control. It boils down to failure of grassroots policing by leaderships that failed to give ear to the ground to listen to undercurrents and happenings behind the scene. The unpardonable shifting of emphasis from the time tested beat patrol to more and more reliance on technical supports, to the neglect and detriment of basic policing. The sense of complacency that ends up invariably to catch us unawares and unprepared. With the plethora of duties today's police stations are burdened with, the actual presence of the policeman in his beat is nix - where it exists, more on paper than real.
In my district policing days I often refused to lend ear to a complainant who could not identify or name his beat constable. It served a dual purpose: the constable lost his invisibility and anonymity but acquired dignity and status, and in turn ensured the citizen better policing. What more, in the social structure in cities, the colonies are invariably dependent on people that provide services to residents - the plumbers, electricians and linemen, postman, the iron-presswala, the cobbler under the tree, the diligent colony chowkidar and not the least the beat constable.
Add to these those from sanitation, health, census, survey, corporation, security guards, cable and courier-wallas, milk, newspaper and vegetable vendors and so on. The govt has in each one of these, a veritable goldmine of resource; there is nothing that misses their eyes and ears. It is a clever SHO that fails not to tap this potential. But sadly in today’s policing structure and priorities, the vital link to tap this pot of gold is the missing : beat constable.
Every citizen is a stakeholder in today’s terror-scenario, just as the police have no time to relax or take lightly the threats that are just too many. The cracking of terror module in southern TN followed from such a stake-holder’s individual tip off call. A police officer in TN has for some years now been crusading his “Friends of Police”
concept (a platform for such concerned and involved citizen stake-holders). The FoP has not caught the imagination of police leaderships countrywide.
The reluctance perhaps, because it is another’s brainchild. They would do well though to realise that FoP is none other than formal nomenclature to an age old concept of basic community involved policing that empowers the individual to be part of the overall policing in which he has a stake. Where he can be the eyes and ears of the system and share the ‘Intelligence’ privy to him without suspicion of the others involved.
The blasts reinforce the conviction that the war against crime, social injustice, terror, et al is not a leader’s war but a peoples’ war. That the need to mobilise vast masses of citizens is the only permanent deterrent.
(The writer is a retired IPS officer)
