Last month the Union Home Ministry wrote to police forces “to assess their efforts to encourage citizens to move to cashless transactions and curb fake currency and anti-national activities, so that the objectives of demonetisation are fully accomplished”. The Home Ministry’s letter was sent to all police stations in the country. A status report was to be submitted to Superintendents and Commissioners of Police. The move came about, the letter mentions, from the recommendations made at annual conferences of Directors General of Police and Inspectors General of Police.
The letter was based on the recommendation that “police forces must educate people to enable the move to cashless transactions.” The Home Ministry has recommended, and asked Union Territories and particularly the Delhi Police, “to take the lead role in this exercise”. The letter asks officers in charge of police stations in larger towns about action taken to reach out to shopkeepers and traders in their jurisdictions to educate them.
It is really amusing to even imagine the Indian police interacting with a common man forget about educating him about cashless transactions, which is not a core policing function. It only shows how unaware, ignorant, and moronic the VIPs at PMO and Home Ministry are of the ground situation in India. How can they forget the fact that Indian police is only known for inhuman behaviour, brutality, corruption, the abuse of power, accepting bribes in exchange for not pursuing, or selectively pursuing, an investigation or arrest. They are certainly the most corrupt police forces in the world.
Anyone engaged in the practice of violating human rights, breaking numerous laws, such as kidnapping and drug trafficking or gang-related violence knows it best that they can’t take even one step without the support of the police. And to think about a common man, such is the reputation that people try to be miles away from a policeman even if he stays in the same building.
Surprisingly, this idea came from a very senior official in PMO. Now it was not without reason Britishers used to refer even their ICS officers babu.
