All our attempts in past years from 2006 through letters and telephone calls had failed to yield any positive results to seek cooperation from BPRD. This year on 06th Jan 2012 we again make the bid but finally after waiting for 4 weeks, we reached in person to meet the DG BPRD As part of Police Reforms Peoples’ Perspective Campaign, Team Nishan took its initiative “Better Together” to BPRD and met Mr.Vikram Srivastava,IPS Director General BPRD on 01st Feb 2012 from 1100-1210 Hrs. and briefed him of participatory campaigning for citizens and police officers and discussed in detail the impending work shop at Kurukshetra University Kurukshetra on 25-26th Feb 2012. This workshop is dedicated to challenges of democratic policing.
It has been experience world over, that if the work culture and police practices have changed and democratized, it was never due to the initiative of Top Police leadership or the front line police officers but the public initiatives of acting as watchdogs and acting as pressure groups. The similar story seems to be unfolding in India too with Nishan’s experience of seeking cooperation from Top Police leadership in some of the state and central police organizations in General and Haryana Police and BPR&D in Particular.
Minutes of meeting with Director General of Bureau of Police Research and Development, Vikram Srivastava, February 01st, 2012.
In preparation for the workshop Nishan will be conducting in February 2012, the team met with the Director General of Bureau of Police Research and Development in Delhi to request his support for the campaign. The Director General agreed to meet with us after reading the letter we had previously sent him about our campaign. He was supportive of our work and mission, advising us on how to proceed further. His advice was much appreciated, and it was informative and interesting to learn what top ranking police officer had to say about our work.
He opened the conversation by asking us what he could do for us, and Ari gave him a short briefing of our previous, present and future work.
The Director General was persistent in telling us the importance of involving the highest ranking officials of the police force of Haryana. During the meeting he tried several times to reach the Director General of Haryana by phone to inform him of our work and tell him to cooperate with Nishan in conducting the workshop. It was his belief that front-line police officers would not talk openly to us about their concerns before receiving a green light from their superior officers. We told him that our approach is grassroots oriented and therefore in the past we have avoided involving the top leadership. Mr. Srivastava voiced his concern that without the involvement of the Directors of Police, our campaign will not carry the kind of weight we would like it to. His opinion was valued and will be discussed further among the team.
He agreed to attend our workshop at the University of Kurukshetra, and the team looks forward to welcoming him there.