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The latest incident of Ravi, a call center employee dying in a road accident took my breath away. The youngster hanging by the neck stuck into the railing of the road divider, with the UP and Delhi police mutely witnessing him die on the argument of whose jurisdiction it was. And then; taking him for dead-carrying him straight to the mortuary instead of the hospital; in a lorry instead of an ambulance. Hair rising indeed.
A typically Bollywood film situation – unfortunately a FACT not a Fiction. And unfortunately the loss of life is for real.
This isn’t even the first time when the LACKADAISICAL attitude of the men in khaki has come to the forefront. Firstly, seldom do the police reach while the victim is still holding onto his breath. If at all it does, it rather put the papers and records in order than try to save the person, thereby ensuring he is dead.
It is said in defense of the “Khaki” that dealing with thugs, rouges and hard core criminals toughens them so much that they work mechanically, by the book and minus the heart. They have no place for emotions and sentiments as these could get them killed.
Accident victims are NOT criminals of any kind and deserve much more compassion and sympathy. The foremost thing that they need is “HELP” not paper work.
It’s high time we had DIFFERENTLY SPECIALIZED FORCES for different purposes WHICH WORKED TOGETHER (ensuring they avoid forming pockets of their specialized jurisdiction criteria).
For accidents, police force specialized in FIRST AID and PARAMEDICS could be in place which could be reachable from highways and high traffic areas. They should have so many of these SPECIALISTS that they would be placed at every few meters and INSTANTLY come to know of any accident. OR they should be contactable by PATROLLING POLICE who would inform them of any untoward incident.
Reaching an accident site within moments need not remain an “English movie” thing. Though probably aid reaching by CHOPPERS is still a distant dream for us, a TEAM consisting of a paramedic/doctor with an ambulance, a ‘crime policeperson’, a ‘paper-work’ policeperson and one probably specializing in deciding the jurisdiction, ALL WORKING TOGETHER should save many lives.
And then again, probably we should have a NATIONAL police- NOT bounded by STATE boundaries, who could later on sift and HAND OVER the cases to the concerned state-police. POLICE should be police and not UP police, Bihar police, Delhi police… at least till the time the PRIMARY REQUIREMENTS of the victims are dealt with.
Unless the police have been given the role of ‘GOD’ to decide who should die.
Unless this is one way of tackling the population-to let the possibly dying-DIE.
Unless unemployed, restless hence violent youth is the National agenda. (Creating trained paramedics is going to create lot of employment.)
If so, why not make EUTHANASIA the order of the day? Why not do away with the practice of patients being admitted to hospitals at all?? Why not grant EUTHANASIA (disband) to the defunct police force right away???
RSS 
why can't we move our lazy bums before we can even talk about incidents like the one mentioned by Nandini. we see things all around us...we notice them all the time but do we act...if any day we start doing that we won't see troubling scenes on roads or in neighborhoods or in work places.
Granting euthanasia to the defunct police force...that of course will be the first thought after getting through such a situation but we desperately need major reforms before we even think of disbanding the "Men in Khakis" esp. after the news of cops raping minor girls have surfaced in the last couple of weeks.
Police no matter is corrupt at many levels but they surely deserve some sympathy and a helping hand from all of us who keep noticing things around us.
But at the same time, the fact is that we are becoming too much dependent on the state. Sir Winston Churchill had once remarked” Democracy is utter failure if you look at others”.
We should not nurture notions with pre-set minds. In one case, I was traveling with a friend and the families of the both. These were the summer months in Northern India. We saw the body of a police inspector in dress lying on a busy national highway. His mobike was lying and his teenager son was too lying unconscious. The culprit state bus was also there. No passersby stopped. My friend directed me to take the injured boy to the nearby hospital, about 30 kms. In the meantime, he asked the families to get down and wait in the scorching heat. I took the boy in my laps to the hospital and got him admitted. No one asked me any question. I left my address on my own. After a few days, the brother of the deceased inspector approached me and informed that his nephew too died in the hospital. He just wanted to know that did his nephew uttered any word. Neither any police nor court inquiry ensued.
In another case, the police was rather appreciative of our role of saving an injured. This time too, I was traveling with a friend of mine who never let an opportunity to go to serve victims of road accidents.
My humble submission is that mere state-bashing won’t serve the purpose. With the increase in the vehicular population road accidents are bound to increase. Something urgent is required to take on this problem head-on.
1. Over-dependence on the state agencies for doing each and every thing. Before we attained Independence, six decades ago, a lot of voluntary organisations used to be in every city and town of the country. There were Sewa Dals every where. After independence, they were fast replaced by the sophisticated NGOs who soon became another instrument to pocket money and playing on the sentiments of foreign students in the name of saving mankind and animal world in India.
At the same time the state has become more callous. The non-Congress governments even performed much worst than their Congress counterparts. No one was willing to take bold initiative to serve the people in the right earnest. Would you believe that the first Communist Government in Kerala, the first of a communist government coming to power through ballots, soon after independence of the country, the ministers never shifted to the palatial bungalows from their present residence, They continued to ride by-cycles to reach offices. There was no security for them. They had taken a pledge to serve the people and they were eager to remain truthful to their solemn pldge.
2. Despite the rise in population and innovation of technology, the media presents the working of the police in number of cold statistics, forgetting the dictum ”lies, damn lies and statistics”. The efficiency of the police working in a district or circle is measured in number of crimes. It is assumed that it should decline in any case. Therefore, the police officers, of all ranks, started giving a rosy picture by suppressing crime. The media is equally responsible for such a sorry state of affairs of police.