Maybe, time for a Red Bucket Movement
- Hueiyen Lanpao Editorial :: September 27, 2013 -
When he took over the charge of Director General of Police (DGP) of Manipur from his predecessor Y Joykumar on August 31 last, Mrinal Kanti Das (MK Das) announced that his first and foremost duty would be to bring about peace and tranquillity in the State, which he regarded as his second home.
However, at that time, he declined to divulge any information on the strategies to be adopted for restoring peace and tranquillity in Manipur.
But from the recent steps taken up by him or under his initiative, it is becoming evidently clearer that DGP MK Das, who came to Manipur for the first time in 1964 as an NCC cadet and later on as an IPS officer in 1977, has done his homework well and study the situation of Manipur thoroughly before embarking on his mission.
As introduction of anything new in a system which is already accustomed to all is normally looked down with disdain and distrust, some of the measures that have been initiated by the DGP of late, specially with regard to deployment of foot patrolling police in the twin-district capital city Imphal with the stated objective of improving the relationship between the police and the public on experimental basis and the instruction given to the Superintendents of Police (SPs) of Imphal East and Imphal West district to not only supervise the foot patrolling police team but also to take part in the patrolling personally must have surely come as an amusement to the police officers and their sub-ordinates alike even to the extent of the new DGP and his new strategies becoming the butt of their postprandial jokes. This is but natural.
Anyway, one thing that DGP MK Das seems to have understood very well, which many of the police officers before him failed to have seen or admitted despite knowing, is the fact that most of the problems in Manipur could have been solved automatically by improving the relationship between the police and the public. Various workshops and seminars may have been organised and conducted in the past to find out ways and means of improving the public-police relationship, but the effort ended within the vaulted hall of the seminar or workshop itself.
The same police officers, who have given beautiful and inspiring speeches on improving the police-public relations during the seminar or workshop, behaved just the same once they are out on the road in their beacon-fitted vehicles roaring for right of way through the busy road.
The same police officers or for that matter any other VIPs in the beacon-fitted and siren blaring vehicles may take the right of way on the road for granted, but the truth is that it is a right not sanctioned by the law but extracted forcibly from the traffic police and the suffering public.
Here again, DGP MK Das seems to have understood even better when he said that top police officers may be the bosses in their offices, but they are equal to any layman on the road.
So, it is not right to stop the traffic to let the DGP passes first.
Hope, rest of the police officers and other VIPs moving around the busy roads of Imphal in beacon-fitted, siren blaring and security escorted vehicles understand this as well before the harassed public put their feet down like the Moscow residents did when they launched the Blue Bucket movement. It may not be blue, but red for the people here.
And, well, red plastic buckets are available in plenty in the town, right?
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