The Hindu Business Line : Security Net

About one-lakh hits per day. That’s an enviable achievement for a Web site that was launched just a few weeks ago. It also shows the punch behind any project announced by the former IPS officer Kiran Bedi.

Hope, faith, optimism, curiosity, frustration or a mixed bag of emotions have led all these people to check out www.saferindia.com. “There is a crying need to connect an ordinary citizen with the police a uthorities,” says the site launched by India Vision Foundation, of which Bedi is founder chairperson. “There is sufficient evidence to affirm that complaints are not being entertained to the satisfaction of the complainants. This effort is to act as a bridge between the complainant and the police authorities to seek appropriate redressal.” Launched on January 3, 2008, days after Kiran Bedi took voluntary retirement on December 26, 2007, the Web site received its first response on January 4. This was from Secunderabad — a complaint against alleged cheating. The complaints on the Web site span virtually the entire gamut of crime: burglary, bribery, cheating, domestic violence and even murder. Some write in anguish, such as one respondent whose sister was allegedly killed by her in-laws.

There are visitors not only from all over India but also from countries ranging from Australia to Nigeria. And it is not just the NRIs but many non-Indians too who have responded. Some NRIs have offered to volunteer. So have citizens’ groups like the 5th Pillar from Chennai. A retired deputy superintendent of police learnt about the site and wrote in from Bihar.

Complaints are forwarded electronically every day by the Webmaster to the police headquarters concerned. Replies have started coming in too.

Positive policing

Kiran Bedi has been written off by cynics several times during her police career. When she was posted to the Bureau of Police Research and Development, it was believed to be an easy tenure for her. But she has this knack of gleaning something positive out of every assignment she found herself in. She found at the BPRD a “total drought in national police research”. She started off a partnership with about 27 universities and centres of learning, including Tata Institute of Social Sciences. “The more the police is left by itself, the more it suits it,” she believes. One of the first and major studies done was on FIRs. The pilot studies showed poor registration.

That got her thinking. According to the Census, the population of India in 1981 was 683,329,097 and in 2001 it was 1,028,737,436; but registered crime today, including murder and robbery, is about “half of that of the 1980s.” The reason, she points out, isn’t a dip in crime but just that the police are not registering all the cases that come to them.

There are those who believe initiatives like these can force the police to improve its track record. But the site is categorical that it is not an alternative police force. It aims to strengthen the police services for a safer India. It is there for those whose “complaints are true” and have been ignored despite a personal visit to the police station. “Safer India is a bridge between the police and the complainant and not an investigating agency.” Kiran Bedi recalls one of the first responses from the police force to the announcement of the Web site. An SHO called her up and declared this was a true shake-up (“tehelka”).

So, what has www.saferindia.com achieved? “We’ve set rolling a movement. We’ve kick-started a ball which will gather its own momentum,” she says, recalling a Mumbai Web site that asks people to report domestic violence. “It’s like a backlash,” she points out.

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