Revenue policing which is akin to what is called community policing, a force more involved with the people of their jurisdictional limits than regular police can think of, have nudged the State’s top cop to declare it a model for the regular police operating in the mountainous parts of the State to follow.
While talking to The Pioneer, State director general of police MA Ganapathy recently said that they were mulling some changes in policing in mountainous parts of the State. “Police working in the hills must undergo some attitudinal changes to adapt themselves to the ambience of the hills. This is a must, for things in hills and plains are wide apart. A uniform police model that applies in the plains can hardly fetch success in the hills,” he said.
He further said, “As compared to the plain districts, law and order is not much of a problem in the mountainous parts and this is what helped the revenue police evolve its own peculiar model of policing.
Revenue police have enough space and time at their disposal to connect themselves to the people at large, delving deep into the roots of the problems they are to deal with, assisting the people affected by adverse nature more intimately like friends, helping tourism to thrive so as to help the common people to earn a bit more.
The police in the plains are on the contrary so much engrossed in checking and cracking crimes and maintaining law and order that they have hardly time to stand and stare, not to speak of their striking roots in the collective psyche, “he said.
Agreeing to the standpoint from which the State’s top cop has viewed the regular police and revenue police, a circle officer said that the regular police working in the mountainous parts of the State should inculcate the sensitivity that the revenue police shows when they deal with an issue.
“Differences would be clear if we cite an instance. Revenue police deals with a hardened criminal in such a way that the regular police cannot dream. Revenue police befriends him and gives him some freedom, albeit within restraints, to open to them. The strange thing is that the criminal, though tagged with many serious crime cases, is not inclined to escape, giving revenue police a slip.
This is because of the warmth that grows between the captors and the caught. There are instances when hard-hearted criminals turn over a new leaf and start anew. Can regular police allow themselves such liberty of dealing with notorious criminals to change them from withinIJ
This sensitive treatment of things is what defines revenue police. And I am sure this is what the new DGP wants the regular police to follow while they are working in the mountainous areas,” he said.
A retired cop having experiences to work in the hills said that revenue police is effective despite being beset with many problems like lack of basic facilities and modern gadgets, needed now to take on crimes head-on when the pattern of crime keeps changing rapidly.
“They command respect and fear from those who are living under their jurisdictional limits. For, they create a sort of heart to heart relation with the people,” he said.
Observers hail the new DGP’s initiative to re-jig regular police working in the hills on the model of the revenue police that has been surviving for years, braving the inadequacies of wherewithal they should have to work more effectively. “It would definitely give a new lease of life at the psychological level in the least to the revenue police that are an important part of the Himalayan State’s age-old tradition.
This, at a time when they are suffering from deep frustration as they are being relegated to irrelevance due lack of support and succor from the quarters they look up to for survival and revival,” one of the observers said.