COMMUNITY POLICING IN ASSAM

Community policing concept in Assam has been pursued in a very focused manner since 1950 when the Village Defence Organization was formally launched at the initiative of late Hari Narayan Baruah. VDO was formally institutionalized with the adoption of the Village Defence Act-1960. At present there are 11,000 nos of Village Defence Parties with a membership of 10 persons in each party and are operative in the state of Assam and rendering yeomen's services in conjunction with the police in prevention and detection of crime and also maintenance of law and order. However, during last one decade with incredible rise of population and its allied increase in crimes, the Assam Police, decided to seek community participation in police in order to bridge the gulf between the police and the public and to bring about their participation in policing themselves. To that extent, Neighbourhood watch committees were formed in Guwahati city by the then SP City, Shri K.Saikia, in some areas in Guwahati.

Nagarik Committees:
A comprehensive plan for meaningful participation of the public in policing in Guwahati City was drawn up and implemented in a successful manner when Shri Kuladhar Saikia, IPS, the then Superintendent of Police, Guwahati City convened a meeting of Police - Public co-operation on 03/07/96 at Police Control Room where he declared formation of the first Nagarik Committee under the Panbazar Police Station. In subsequent such meetings in that year in different police stations in the City more numbers of Nagarik Committees came into existence to provide a platform for peoples' participation in policing their localities by adopting the strategy of 'Watch Thy neighbourhood'. The active cooperations by these Committees led to prevention of crimes against property and apprehension of notorious gangs of dacoits. In 1999, a booklet containing formal guidelines was compiled. As per the structure of Nagarik Committees each municipality ward of Guwahati City has one committee with several sub-committees to take care of the problems of the specific areas of the wards. The president and the other members numbering about 10 are to be selected by consensus and are to have respectable reputation in the society with no criminal record whatsoever. The Officer-in-charge of the Police Station is the ex-officio Secretary of the committee and he has to attend the monthly meeting of the committee. The Dy. S.P of the Division is required to sit with the committees at least once in two months. The Superintendent of Police is the President of Co-ordination committee of the Nagarik Committees and he sits once in three months with representative of all committees. In the monthly, bi-monthly and quarterly meetings the civic and crime related problems in specific areas are discussed and ways and means of solving them are decided. Responsibility of preventive duties to specific committees are also fixed during such meetings.

CLG's (Community Liason Group):
We have formed Community Liaison Group (CLG's) at the state, district and PS level where eminent and non-political persons from the society are called to attend a meeting with police to voice their complaints and to give their suggestions for providing better policing to the society. These meeting are attended by eminent persons like newspaper editors, retired high court judges, literatures, educationists, social servants and women organisations and many useful suggestions have come from them to improve the service that the police can provide to them and when people are taken into confidence, they come out to help the police. A major thrust for it was made when the BPR&D and the UNDP started a project on "Improvement of organisation and Management of law Enforcement Agencies in India", which aimed at changing the attitude of the average police man at the P.S.'s towards the public, to make them people friendly and to improve their living and working conditions. The project was implemented as a trial in three States Assam, Rajasthan and Tamil Nadu, in selected Districts and selected P.S.'s in those districts. In Assam, it was tried in Guwahati and Jorhat district at the Pan Bazar and All Women P.S.'s at Guwahati and Jorhat and Titabor P.S.in Jorhat district. One officer in each rank from constable to Inspector was chosen as a "Change Agent" and trained specially for attitudinal changes by the BPR&D. These "Change Agents" were taken abroad to UK and Singapore to expose them to other systems of policing and behaviour with the public, after which they are being used as Trainers to train other police Officers to bring about an attitudinal change in them towards the public. The results of this project have been very encouraging and hence, we have spread this project to all the districts in Assam. The project has aroused a lot of curiosity in the state police with the majority of them trying to know more about it. Along with the change in attitude, an attempt was made to make the P. S.'s more appealing to the public. However, the response time of the police has been cut down considerably by sending PR vans, on receipt of information. Simultaneously, the visibility of the police on the roads has also been increased, specially at night, to bring confidence to the people.