14th Nov 2002
Dear children, Greetings to all children on the occasion of Children's Day (14-11-2002). For Years we have been celebrating the Birthday of our beloved former Prime Minister Sri. Jawaharlal Nehru as Children's Day in memory of his great love towards children. On this occasion there will be several seminars and discussions on different subjects. As your Superintendent of Police, I would like to tell you all about our organisation and our activities. Police has been in existence for centuries. We come across police even in the ancient puranas. Lord Sreerama is reputed to have had secret police. Quite possibly, the names were different and may be the concepts were different. But the duties of the police have not changed at all over the centuries. Most likely, the achievement of the goals may be different then and now. Basically what is the duty of police? You may say law and order.. True .. but this is only a facet of the work. The main duty or responsibility is to protect the life and property of the citizens. Under protection of life comes traffic (controlling of accidents, protection of pedestrians etc), control of anti-social activity (protecting people from antisocial elements, preventing drunken misbehavior, preventing sale of things harmful to human life etc), preventing crimes against persons, preventing atrocities against women, children and weaker sections and such other different activities. Under protection of property comes preventing of thieving of different kinds, cheating the people in various ways, embezzlement of money, different kinds of frauds etc. There are other things which cannot be categorized under these two heads such as ensuring a peaceful life for the people, dealing with agitations in such a way as to prevent loss of life, public and private property etc, giving helpful assistance to tourists, children etc. In these modern times it is not easy to achieve the above goals. It needs the wholehearted co-operation of the general public including your children. You may ask why we need to help the police personnel. Since they are getting paid, let them do their work etc.. NO !! that is not so. Because policing affects all facts of public life. Therefore, unless people cooperate to achieve the common aim of peaceful and undisturbed living conditions, the police by themselves can do very little . So the cooperation of those who desire a peaceful life is essential and necessary for the efforts of the police to achieve the desired results. Without going into more details let us see what you, the children can do to help the police in carrying out the work of protecting the life and property of the people. You can first of all take a vow that you will all obey the rules laid down for the benefit of the public. What are rules? They are never constraints. They are limits prescribed for your freedom so that your freedom does not encroach on the freedom of others. This is to achieve peaceful living for everyone. Unless you control yourselves to a certain extent, your activities may cause harm to others. Like not obeying traffic rules. It will either cause accidents and injury to you or for others. So strict obedience to rules laid down by the society is essential for good life. Therefore do obey rules. Similarly, all of you can assist the police in their work, like NCC cadets assisting traffic police. Conducting your processions in an orderly manner so that policemen do not have to come and control you, leaving their other urgent duties. Generally, you can learn to be good citizens, doing minimum harm and inconvenience to others. That itself is a very great help to the police since it reduces their work load. The police is now turning to do services to the people also. "Tourist Police" started recently is one such branch. They are specially trained to help tourists and give assistance as far as possible. It has only just started and will be a very great help to tourists in future. "Highway Police" is another such service. This set of police in vehicles position themselves along the National Highways ensuring that the people have a smooth journey. They are expected to control overspeeding, dangerous overtaking, reckless driving etc on the Highways, thus minimising accidents on our busy highways. The police establishment you may already know. The lowest level is the police station. This is headed usually a Sub-Inspector (SI) assisted by Head Constables and Constables and also by Asst. Sub-Inspectors. Two or more Police Stations are grouped into a Circle under a Circle Inspector (CI). Circles are grouped into Sub-Divisions under a Deputy Superintendent (DySP). Then at District level the controlling authority is the Superintendent of Police (SP). A number of Districts form Ranges under a Deputy Inspector General (DIG). The state of Kerala is divided into two zones under an Inspector General (IG). The overall head of the Police Department is Director General of Police (DGP). There are some other specialized branches dealing with specific matters, such as Crime Branch, Vigilance, Special Branch etc. A training wing is also there. These various branches of work as a single machine to protect the life and property of the people. Let us conclude with a story of London Police. While describing a day in the work of London Police it is stated that a call came in the night at about 11pm that in a house where two old ladies aged above 80 live, one of them fell down from her cot. The other lady was unable to lift her up. Since it is very cold in that country leaving her on the floor would end her life. So that did they do? ... They called the police for help. Two police man and a police woman went there and helped the old lady to the cot, prepared hot coffee and gave it to her. They left assuring further service, if it was needed. Here we must understand that the old lady was confident enough to call the police since she was sure she will get help. And the police was ever ready to extend them service. This should be the goal of the service mentality of the police. You, young children and your elders should help the police to achieve this ideal as easily as possible. Together let us make this world a better place to live in. G. Janardhanan Nair IPS |
