Representative image The Kerala government’s decision to lower the security for the Chief Minister and other ministers was a welcome change. But should we use the police escort as a symbol of hierarchy at all?
The scene of a minister’s car convoy zooming through the streets is something unique.
Pilot and escort vehicles are reserved for either heads of state or heads of government in the United States, Europe, China, Japan, Arab countries and even our neighbours Bangladesh, Nepal and Sri Lanka.
Ironically, you can’t see ministers following a simple lifestyle anywhere else but Kerala. We have to analyze this contradiction.
Kerala’s ministers hardly had any police escort or beacons atop their cars until the early 1970s, when the Maoist threat increased. Gradually a “gunman” started travelling with the minister.
I have heard about Wellington and other ministers travelling in buses like ordinary citizens. As a child, I have seen EMS Namboodiripad and A K Antony travelling in cars without any fanfare.
In the 1970s, when the student agitation was at its peak, police jeeps were called in to escort the ministers’ cars. The next decades saw the emergence of beacons atop police vehicles and VIP cars.
If you were in a European country or China, you would not even realize that a minister has just passed by you. I have seen their cars waiting at the traffic lights. Those cars would have red or blue beacons kept inside. In case of an emergency, the driver would attach the magnet-fitted light on top of the car and zip away with a siren.
If they have to go somewhere to attend a programme, the organizers take care of guiding the vehicles, not the police as is the practice in India.
We have to change the security system for chief ministers and other VIPS in accordance with the potential threat, rather than reducing the number of cops deployed to protect them. Kerala Police are now equipped with facilities to assess security threats and inform the authorities concerned in real time.
The police have a communication network connecting all police stations and district-level control rooms and a state level control centre. Each police officer can be contacted anytime. The security duty needs a contemporary overhaul to enable the offices assess security threats and arrange for security in accordance with each situation.
The police force can submit before the cabinet committee a report on cost-effective and rapid response in the event of a security threat if it assigns the task to young IPS officers trained in latest changes in the security systems.
(The writer is the Chief Security Advisor of the Human Right Commission of United Nations. His opinions are personal.)
