GUWAHATI: Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Sunday said police force of modern times should be ‘SMART’ in true sense of the term to be able to live up to new challenges.
Addressing the 49th annual conclave of the DGPs of state police forces and Central police organizations in presence of all the chief ministers of Northeastern states barring Manipur here, Modi unveiled an acronym (SMART) urging the policemen of the country to be strict and sensitive (S), modern and mobile (M), alert and accountable (A), reliable and responsible (R), techno savvy and trained (T). He said these qualities were essential to install new confidence and enthusiasm in the police force.
Modi also asked the police force to lay more importance on intelligence, and said that there would be minimum need of arms and armed personnel if intelligence gathering was of high standard.
“However sophisticated weapons and armed forces a nation may have, the success in ensuring security to the people depends finally on quality intelligence inputs,” the Prime Minister said.
The Prime Minister rued the poor light in which policemen are projected in the media, and particularly in the most popular medium of cinema, and called for concerted efforts from filmmakers to produce films where the image of the police was projected in a positive way.
“Films show police in such poor light that the people of the country have developed a very negative image of the police force. I would suggest that the government hire a PR firm and hold a meeting with producers to request projecting the positive rather than the negative image of the police,” Modi said.
“There are shortcomings, but there are also ways of removing those shortcomings. One negative news about police runs for a long time, but hundreds of good things about the police never get the focus,” the Prime Minister lamented.
He prescribed for creation of a website for each police station in the country so as to upload on those at least one positive story about the police station every week. “There have been lakhs of good instances of good work done by our police, which have increased common people’s trust in police. Why don’t we project them?” the Prime Minister said.
Pointing out that over 33,000 police personnel have laid down their lives for the country and the people since Independence, Modi called for documentation of their episodes of sacrifices.
“Sacrifice of these 33,000 brave and dedicated police personnel should not go in vain. I would suggest we collate the stories of each of these martyrs, and develop textbooks for use in training of police personnel in their respective state police academies. These will inspire our new recruits. An e-book can also be developed with these stories uploaded in all the languages of our country,” Modi suggested.