Finally the execrise of identifying local leaders through various research methods, and sustained communications, of emails,what’s up and telephone calls, bonded us to Dr.Seikh Ghulam Rasool and Professor Hameed Naseem, Farooq Kuthoo, A.R.Hanjura,Advocate, Altaf Asrar, who all were so inspiring, welcoming and hard working that we could finally fly to Kashmir and launched Police Reforms From People’s Perspective Campaign on 04th May 2013 by establishing Coalition For Police Reforms From People’s Perspective-J&K.The community leaders from diverse professional back grounds and habitats particiapted in the consultation that was facilitated by RTI Movement of J&K and Anhad and sponsored by Delhi based organization “Aagaaz” with the initiative of Tushar Agarwal and Mr.Mayank Agarwal .
Aridaman Jit Singh,Director,Nishan at Karannagar,SriNagar-Most overwhelming response came from J&K Police constabulary, who felt that there is urgent need to discuss the issue from all the stake holders perspective.
Inspite of all the scepticism of our fellow activists on the fragile peace in kashmir valley and the prevailing security environment, we decided to go ahead and bring people together to begin a creative dialogue between all the stake holders for democratization of J&K Police.
Conlusions that we have drawn from our last 30 years of experience of closely working with various state/central police organization in India and our International experience of working alongside police and Armed forces of various countries, In Indian states, the police needs to be immediately demilitarized, decentralized, flattened with repeal of policing protocols and practices that promote regementation and combatant culture and turns the top positions of police officers into merely the ceremonial and authoritative positions without any direct accountability and needs to be introduced with stringent accountability measures for the performance failures of their Police commands.
The participation of people is needed not only in deciding operational objectives for police in accordance to local community needs but also participation of people’s coalition to monitor its performance and act as watchdog on its organizational accountability mechanisms to make it performance oriented.
Tragedy of India’s colonial Army and Police sysytem is that we train our Police like Army and create a very deceptive police institution that behaves like Army and fails in winning the trust of people and calls for deployment of Army(Army and other Armed Forces-CRPF/BSF/ITBP) for policing duty for which they are neither suitably trained nor equipped, result is that Police fails due to training like Army and Army fails in Policing duty since it is not meant for it and in turn we ruin both the institutions professionally and they fail when needed them to perform and lead to injustices and unprofessional conduct that goes beyong crimnal acts against the own citizens and alienate them from democratically elected governments and create environments, where terrorism and insurgency can flourish.
Police has gifted us with deployment of army and Army has gifted us with its own failures in its acid tests, whether it was, own creation of Kargil, the famous Indian head stolen by counter parts while on patroling. The moment we are surprised, we fail. The endemic corruption in all the apparatus of army, police, judiciary has made commonman its victim and only alternative is to organize and empower the local communities and strengthen political leadership with evidence based informations to reduce their dependence on Babus for realistic policy formulations and implementation strategies.
The only way out from the vicious cycle of violence is the participation of people in democratization of “Security & Justice” sector. The existing “security and justice’ apparatus, makes security and justice to commonman the very first casuality.
PRPP Campaign is dedicated to bridge the gap between policy makers and the grassroot realities through, empirical research on immediate public policy issues and consultations with all the stakeholders and build a positive relationship of trust by strengthening the policy makers.
As part of strategy
being continued…………..!
In the Press;-
Rising Kashmir 04th May 2013-CPRPP Formed
Rising Kashmir News-CPRPP Formed to press for Police Reforms
CPRPP to aware people on Police reforms
Early Times Plus