Manas Dasgupta
NEW DELHI, Oct 28: The prime minister Narendra Modi on Friday called for a common uniform for all policemen in all the states, a police technology mission for mutual cooperation among all states for crime detection and guard against spread of “fake news” that have the potential to snowball into national concern.
Addressing virtually a ‘Chintan Shivir’ of Home Ministers and DGPs of States in Faridabad via video conferencing, Modi made a call to defeat all form of Naxalism who can either hold the guns or hold the pens misleading the youth.” Modi said.
Stating that the intellectual capacity should be increased to defeat the forces that could destroy the unity of the country by exploiting the emotions of the youth, Mr. Modi asked the police to tread cautiously. “If an incident has happened, States should send experts to examine the case. They speak the language of law and constitution, put up an innocent face”. The security forces should be able to identify such forces (Naxals), the Prime Minister said.
Stressing the need for modernisation of the police forces, the prime minister advocated for ‘multi-storey police stations’, where the police stations could function from the ground floor and the residential flats could be built on the upper floors. This would solve the problem of policemen staying far away from the cities, the Prime Minister said and appealed to the police to avoid using old vehicles as per the government’s scrapping policy.
Calling for “one nation one police uniform,” the Prime Minister said States should deliberate on it and he was not imposing his views on them. “Just like a post box has a distinct identity, police uniforms should be identifiable uniformly across the country,” Mr. Modi said.
Dwelling on the problem of “fake news,” Modi re-iterated that the social media should not be underestimated as it could create chaos in the country and emphasised the need to come up with technological advancement to check them. Mr Modi stressed on the need to educate people about analysing and verifying any piece of information before forwarding it to others.
“One should think 10 times before forwarding any information and verify it before believing it. Every platform has tools to verify any information. If you will browse through different sources, you will get a new version of it,” the Prime Minister said. Fact check of fake news is a must. Technology plays a big role in this. People must be made aware of mechanisms to verify messages before forwarding them.
Modi recalled the losses that India had to face due to fake news about job reservations in the past. “During the reservation issue, we saw the kind of fake news that was spread and the subsequent violence. “We have to come up with technological advancement to prevent the spreading of fake news,” the Prime Minister said and appealed to erect a technological strength to challenge a fake news-driven society.
On war against terror, the Prime Minister said laws such as UAPA had given an impetus to law enforcement agencies in a decisive fight against terrorism. Mr. Modi recalled that even as the country is achieving great strides it is facing challenges too on the development front. “Some powers, first they ridicule you, even then when you progress, they will start looking at you like an enemy. There are some who think India should not enter a particular production or manufacturing field because it has been their fiefdom. They are forced to think of India becomes a manufacturing hub, where will our products go? Such challenges don’t take time to turn into enmity,” Mr. Modi said.
Mr Modi also insisted on having a police technology mission that would enable all states to have the best common technology and mutual cooperation for crime prevention and advised the states not to allow budgetary constraints to come in the way ensuring adoption of technological advancements.
Pointing out that the criminal world had globalised, he said “we need to be ten steps ahead” of them (criminals). The prime minister pointed out that crime is no longer localised and instances of interstate, international crimes are going up. “That is why mutual cooperation between state agencies and between central and state agencies is becoming crucial,” Modi said.
He said whether it is cybercrime or the use of drone technologies for the smuggling of weapons or drugs, the government needs to keep working towards new technologies to tackle the menace. “The law and order system can be improved with the help of smart technology,” the prime minister said.
He said 5G technology, along with its benefits, brings the need for a heightened alert. “With the help of 5G, the performance of facial recognition technology, automatic number plate recognition technology, drone and CCTV related technology, are going to improve manifolds,” Modi said. But, the pace we move forward to, the world that is into committing crime has also been globalised and they have also become interstate, he said.
“They have also become forward in technology, meaning we need to be ten steps ahead of them,” the prime minister said. He requested the chief ministers and home ministers to seriously assess the need for technology, going beyond the constraints of the budget as this technology will percolate the confidence of security among common citizens. “We need to make our law and order system smart… My request is that please don’t weigh technology with budget (constraints),” Modi said.
The prime minister mentioned the police technology mission of the central government and stressed the need for a common platform as differing technologies of different states do not talk to each other.
“Many states are working on it (technological upgrades) in their own capabilities. But what has come to the fore is that our technologies do not talk to each other and that is why our energy gets wasted,” Modi said. He asked the states to “think with a big heart” about a common platform. “We should have a pan India outlook, all our best practices should be interoperable and should have a common link,” Modi said.