By Md Qaisar Alam
Madhepura: There are consequences if the youth stay forlorn and neglected. Various inimical forces and vulnerabilities keep them surrounded. So efforts should be made to keep the youth ‘hooked and well-connected’.
Keeping this in mind, the Bihar Police decided to take special measures for reaching out to the youth and keeping them engaged on a perpetual basis.
For this, it found a novel way – a motorcycle rally that could aim at striking mass contact with the citizenry, especially youth – It kick-started a cops-on-wheel rally on the occasion of Bihar Police Day 2023, being celebrated between February 20 to 26, 2023.
The motorcycle rally – ‘Jan-jan ki ore badhte kadam’, a brainchild of Bihar’s Director General of Police Rajwinder Singh Bhatti, who flagged it off at Sardar Patel Bhawan in Patna on February 21, 2023. Around 300 policemen on 150 motorcycles thus left for villages and towns to connect with the people.
In Madhepura the rally was flagged off by Rajesh Kumar, the Superintendent of Police of Madhepura district.
Though the weeklong motorized expedition was about reaching out to the public at large, the policemen hoped to make maximum use of this opportunity in striking newer ties, especially with younger people, who would be galvanized in reconstructing orderly social mien.
“It is very painful to witness that many crimes are being committed by younger people, as young as 18-20 years. This is a nasty reality of societal degradation, where unguarded youth drift away from parental or social control. They’re susceptible to misguidance, who may slip into wrongdoings”, Kumar said. So, through this campaign, he said the police are now trying to reach out to younger people and sensitize them to the virtues of abiding by the law of the land.
Before flagging off the rally, Kumar thoroughly sensitized officers and jawans of Madhepura police on the wider objectives of the campaign, which aims at strengthening the connection between the cops and the public in general, and the youth in particular.
“We try to narrow down any gap whatsoever existing between the police and the people of the district. We make a deeper endeavour in dispelling any mistrust or lack of confidence they may have in our policing system. We want to convey the message to the citizenry of the district loud and clear through the rumblings of this motorcycle rally that police are here to help you out. We’re here to solve your problems”, Kumar said. “This is about image transformation, where we want to come closer to the public cementing further our existing bond” he added.
The rally, Kumar said, would help in creating ways for exchanging thoughts, feedback, suggestions, and above all, hassle-free communication between the police and the public.
He has instructed his boys-on-the-bikes to get the contact numbers (and if possible e-mail IDs) of the youths so that the police keep them in the loop and make them cooperate in an institutional way.
“We’ll create a database, where their names, addresses and contact numbers are stored and managed. We’ll treat them as our extended arm, who would help us in maintaining a just, well-informed, safer and smarter society. On a perpetual basis, we will keep them sensitized and better oriented in dealing with questionable habits, behaviours and intents prevalent among younger people of concerned areas of the district”, he said.
Interestingly, Kumar handed out the motorcyclists a list of do’s and don’ts while they would interact with people and spread the message of we-ness, friendship, cooperation, compassion, trust, confidence and walking together in towns, talukas and villages of the district. He instructed that any meeting or get-together or group contact with villagers must take place at public places – most preferably government schools or panchayat bhavans.
“Don’t hold any meeting at any individual’s house or premises as this would give a wrong message,” he instructed them with a clear message that the rally is inclusive in its character as it aims for reaching out to every citizen of the district cutting across socio-economic strata. He also told the cops-on-bikes not to accept food offered by people; rather, he instructed them to buy it from their own pockets.
