THE ‘POLICE RAJ’ IN KOCHI

There are still countries in the world controlled by military and armed forces. One understands that living in countries such as Myanmar is such a misery for its people. However, in a democracy such as India too, there are several instances of the police raj, employed by brutal undemocratic rulers, in many States. The exploits of police in places such as Nandigram in Bengal and many parts of Bihar & Orissa still break our heart. It is either the over-action by the armed forces or their absolute inactivity, which gives warmongers a free day.

I see something similar happening in Kochi, Kerala. This has been there for more than a year. Everywhere one sees cops. This doesn’t mean that they are everywhere trying to keep up the law and order or catching the thieves. They are everywhere on the highway, the traffic junction and at different unobtrusive places in the guise of trying to catch drunken driving, for using mobile phone while driving, wrong parking etc.

Some time back I was driving back to home after picking up my German friend from the airport. It was night. On the way down, which was about 30 KMs, we were stopped at 3 places by the cops to smell us to see whether the driver had (it was me driving) taken drinks. My friend was astonished to see so many cops on the road. Being a regular visitor to Kerala (he visits at least once an year) he was amazed to see this change and asked me why it is happening. I told him about the increased efficiency of Kochi cops in catching people for small and silly trivia and the target that they had taken to increase the state exchequers with money collected from the fines that they levy. It is indeed true. The official collections of fines on these types of offences had increased from Rs. 7 million in 2006 to Rs. 27 million in year 2007 for Kochi alone. Please do not mistake that suddenly the offence went up in Kochi. Nothing like that. It is that the target of collection had gone up. When this is the official amount, you must also take an approximation about the ‘unofficial’ collections that they do. I am not venturing to quantify that. Suffice to say that the amount is nothing small. The only difference is that it gets distributed.

It is indeed a fact that the cops are overdoing it. In many instances, they are causing interruption to public and vehicular movements. The nuisance value is very high. People and commuters silently suffer.

The method employed by the cops to catch the drunken drivers is so un-scientific. Mostly they do not employ the breath analyzer but the cop smells out whether the driver is drunk. Therefore if the driver has taken smaller doses, or he has taken milder forms of alcohol (such as wine) or if he had taken drinks yesterday only, does not matter. He gets caught and then the hell starts for him. It takes not less than 24 hours to complete the process of booking (the traffic cop station, the hospital, the FIR etc all). To top it, the misbehavior of the lowly placed constables! These guys never know a good word to speak. It looks like that it is mandatory for one to know all the foul word in the language for one to become a cop. I was indeed amazed by this unique methodology of catching drunken driving. I think all the cops who smells out would immensely qualify to work in the police dog squad, with their amazing lung and nose power!

Today in the local daily I read the lamenting of the Inspector General of Police Mrs. Sreelekha IPS. She had confirmed through writing in the public medium (news paper) that the cops are doing a terribly wrong thing and it does not augur well for the image that the police must keep. If an IG cannot take on the cops, think about such docile and powerless citizens as us?

What we see happening here does not actually happen in any developing society. In fact in countries like US, UK, Singapore etc one hardly sees the cops of the roads. But when there is an offence, they are immediately there. Such is the system and their efficiency. Most of the cops are well behaved and they explain to you everything in details. Compare that with what we see here. People dread talking to constables and inspectors, as they do not know what to expect from them.

It is such a pity, living in cities such as Kochi. All one can pray is “be God with you”