Police in the two states ink pact with IIM Indore.
New Delhi: The system of beat policing, which is seen as the simplest yet the most effective way to prevent crimes, is set to receive a major technological impetus with the state police of Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh signing a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the Indian Institute of Management (IIM) Indore on how to improve beat policing in these two states by using technological advancements.
The importance of beat policing and the focus on it of the current political dispensation can be made out from the fact that Union Home Minister Amit Shah, while speaking at an event organised by the Chandigarh police in September last year, while stressing upon the importance of police beat system, had termed it as the most important and powerful tool for effective law and order and had called for making it more effective.
The constables are the first responder at any crime scene and crime analysis has proved that criminals stay away from areas where there is an effective beat policing.
Speaking to The Sunday Guardian, Professor Himanshu Rai, Director IIM (I), said that with the new techniques, beat policing will give more results. “Under the new methods, the beat system would become more effective as there will a real-time updation of crime, criminal data.
The strengthened beat system would have longitude and latitude encoded. It will become very easy to monitor, verify and confirm that all the beat points are covered,” he said.
As part of the understanding, experts at IIM (I) will be introducing new techniques in the way policing is done in UP and MP to make sure that the beat system under which the constables patrol on the ground, is made more effective.
One of the main problems being faced by the police force across the country is that the constables, most of the time, are not present at the area where they are deputed as a result of which crime is neither prevented nor criminals identified once the crime has taken place.
The experts at IIM (I) will be working to tackle this issue.
A former IPS official, who served as special commissioner in Delhi, said: “The beat policing is the most ancient and still the most effective way of preventing crimes. There are many places where the CCTV cannot be installed and it is in these locations that the beat policeman comes into the picture. The main problems that we face are that the constables are found missing from where they are deputed, this is what we need to look into.”
After UP and MP, experts at IIM (I) will be approaching Bihar police to suggest how to improve beat policing. It is pertinent to mention that Uttar Pradesh shares it border with both Bihar and Madhya Pradesh.