Fwd: Ideas needed to control stone-throwing situations

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: <info@karmayog.org>
Date: Wed, Oct 6, 2010 at 5:39 PM
Subject: Ideas needed to control stone-throwing situations
To: palashbiswaskl@gmail.com

It appears that police, in general, are facing great difficulty in handling situations where there is stone-throwing.

 

Suggestions would thus be welcome on how to control such situations. Please reply via http://www.karmayog.org/messages/message.aspx?id=3395

These will be circulated to the Karmayog group as well as be available on the Karmayog website.

Regards,

Vinay

www.karmayog.org

 

-------------------------------------------------

 

An example of such a situation:

 

"Hands tied, cops brave attacks- Stone-throwing youths mock police with no power to fire"

 

At an embattled barricade in downtown, an inspector threatens tear gas and fire on masked boys if they don't halt hurling stones and retreat. Go on, go on! mocks one of them in challenge, undeterred in his offensive. We know you have no power to fire, your bosses won't let you! The boys press on with their violent barrage, the inspector retreats in defence.

We have been deployed with our hands tied behind our backs, complains a top police officer. We are getting slammed equally for not being able to control violence and for quelling it. They are throwing stones at us, we can't be firing flowers in return, we are almost in a civil war, there will be deaths and injuries if we are to end it.

Another officer, recently returned from failed crowd control sounded harsher and more helpless. The government should realise these are not Gandhian protesters, they know we have no orders to take hard measures, they are emboldened, they are getting harsh on us, what is a policeman like me meant to do faced with an inflamed mob, apply the healing touch? The government is just leading them on, and my jawans are getting trodden over. The chief minister says this is a battle of ideas and ideologies, then let him wage it, policemen are not trained for ideological warfares, we are footsoldiers, have us on the ground fighting or just withdraw us.

The barracks are fuming at being barred their quotidian powers and at being blamed for failure. Let the police behave like the police does to restore law and order and it shall lie restored, they promise. But if strong medicine is what the forces are prescribing, it is a prospect that shivers the government. It doesn't want deaths, it doesn't want crackdowns, it doesn't want street confrontation.

The problem is, the angered street does, it is looping the government into daily confrontation, inviting crackdowns, inviting more deaths. That's the fodder their anonymous backers feed on. They've caught the government in a tight cleft  it can't draw too much blood, it can't be itself bloodied beyond a point, it rocks precariously on that slippery dilemma. The issue is that every death will bring another round of reprisal, says a senior bureaucrat, in defence of the government's kid-glove mode. Things need to calm down, and they probably will in time, we have to wait and watch.

But for how long? Seventeen have fallen to street hostilities. Scores lie injured, among them many jawans. Civil shutdown has become the norm. The adversaries of the State have become the State, they dictate closures and openings, they order disruption and calm, they have the agency on command and compliance.

http://www.telegraphindia.com/1100724/jsp/nation/story_12720934.jsp
-----------------------------
PS: If you do not wish to receive such emails, do inform us.

--
Palash Biswas
Pl Read:
http://nandigramunited-banga.blogspot.com/