| 02 January 2005 | Sunday | 20 Ziqa'ad 1425 |
The roots of many a Lahore family
At ease in all genres
Pyar Ali Allana remembered
Proposed right to information law to take the BD media nowhere
Crime control: the modern way
One does recall, though somewhat vaguely now, that when the issue of rangers or police occupying schools and colleges first arose years ago, public opinion didn't seem to either approve or accept it. There was at the back of the mind the clear view that this was being done at the cost of education. That somehow we were getting our priorities absolutely wrong.
Of course, there were people who would argue that where else should the law- enforcement agencies go when they have to perform a job, almost like that familiar whimsically used doctrine of necessity! Where should the cops live? After all they are humans. Good! But what should the children do as they are the future. Should they give up schools?
I would have imagined that there would be such visionaries and official planners, with a little more common sense than they demonstrate who would understand that given the kind of society that Pakistan's urban cities seem to be inclined to become, there would be a need for more and more law-enforcement agencies. Mere policing, and that, too, inadequate in terms of number and quality, would naturally be insufficient, and rangers or the army itself would be required.
The rangers are, now, there, protecting the peace and the people, at the Karachi University, for example. And no one would truly want them out. Peace is perceived to be so fragile, and doing tight rope walking that officialdom does not even consider it pragmatic to have the student unions back and operational.
A reason why one focuses on the use of educational institutions and dispensaries by police and rangers is the very significant and comprehensive statement that the Sindh Home Minister Rauf Siddiqui, made on the floor of the Sindh Assembly on Dec 29 while answering a question from the opposition member Humera Alwani of the PPP. And this is what he was quoted as saying: there are 55 hostel, school, and college buildings in the province which are being used either as police stations, headquarters of law enforcement agencies or residences of officials of police or rangers or other agencies. Among these buildings, 27 are located in Karachi alone.
So the question that naturally arises in the public mind is this; when will the law-enforcement agencies move out of these civilian buildings (military and civil). Those often two of the expressions that are used to identify at times. The minister told the Sindh Assembly that it was impossible for him to give a timetable for the withdrawal of these agencies from these civilian buildings. The government, he added, was making earnest efforts to provide the agencies alternative accommodation.
Just a thought: keeping in mind that there is a housing shortage in the city, generally speaking, providing alternative accommodation to the law-enforcement agencies may not be a very easy option, in terms of a time scale.
The home minister, however, advised the opposition to move a joint motion in the house, asking the government to spare an amount of Rs500 million for the purpose, which, he said, was the only solution to the problem. Bear in mind here that the Sindh Government is already spending crores of rupees every month on these law enforcement agencies (over Rs one crore daily), and which surely must be a strain and drain on the provincial exchequer.
It was also recalled by the home minister that the buildings had been occupied by the police and the rangers since 1992, and he termed it "shameful".
A list of the 55 buildings that have been occupied makes a very interesting reading to say the least, and one would like to mention some of them here. There is the hostel block of the Dawood College of Engineering and Technology, Gulshan Iqbal; two hostel blocks of the Karachi University, including the international hostel; one hostel block of the Allama Iqbal Girls College, near the Chand Bibi bridge; 15 rooms of the Comprehensive Government School, in Korangi; one hostel block of the Jamia Millia College, Malir; 22 rooms of the Government Elementary Girls College, Shah Faisal Colony; 27 rooms of the Technical Training Centre, North Nazimabad; 35 rooms of the Computer Science College, North Nazimabad, Block K; 16 rooms of the Sindh Sports Board hostel, Nazimabad No. 2; 16 rooms of the Jungle Shah Boys Degree College, Keamari Town; one hostel Block of the NED Engineering University; 30 rooms of the Veterinary Hospital, Disco Mour, 11/B, New Karachi.
In the medical sector, there are 19 rooms that have been taken over in the Civil Dispensary, Saeedabad, two rooms in the Sindh Government Dispensary and 18 rooms in the PWD building, community centre, F-C Area, Liaquatabad. In the Sindh province as a whole, the buildings being used by the law enforcement agencies are in Ghotki, Larkana, Jacobabad, Hyderabad, Dadu, Badin, Mirpurkhas, and Shikarpur.
Needless to say that this occupying of buildings by law-enforcement agencies, not only dislocates the original occupants, upsets further their work schedules, (which are deficient for other reasons one may add) and creates impediments of sorts, but above all it also creates a dent in the image of the law enforcement agencies. In the interest of this image factor too, if not alone, steps be taken to provide the police and the rangers their own places of work and residence. These institutions are now integral to society, and this needs to be conceded, one way or the other.
It is relevant to mention here an instance in October 2004 where the Sindh High Court asked the police and the rangers to vacate an amenity plot in North Karachi and asked the City District government to provide a report of compliance within four months.
This directive of the High Court division bench came after the residents of Sector 11-A of North Karachi, said through an advocate, that the only amenity plot earmarked for use as a park for them had been occupied by the police and the rangers for the last years. No authority had taken any action, so far, to restore the plot for its original intended use.
Having said all this, one's thoughts drift in many other related and unrelated directions...but all revolving around the larger lucrative theme of land, that has, in the life of this country, also sprung forth a volume of greed that has been a documentary of our collective misdeeds. Also individual lust for material acquisition at all cost. No shame!
The roots of many a Lahore family
There was a time when the people of Lahore, especially the elite, took great pride in their roots, and almost every family had their 'shajjara' - branches of the roots of a family - framed in their house. It was easy to trace the details of every family. This came in handy when a marriage was arranged, for it was considered a marriage not between two people, but of two families.
Tracing the roots of a family was no mean task, for it meant keeping track of every birth, death and marriage of a family. Every development meant an entire new branch being traced, and the sub-branches then took on a new meaning. This was no easy task, for as it was a two dimensional task, the third dimension had to be taken up in another 'shajjara.' For this reason every family had two shajjara maps, one tracing the father's lineage, while the second traced the mother's lineage.
Even this had limitations, for come the third generation and it became too complex to record. For this reason Lahore had 'shajjara' specialists, normally the 'munshi,' or assistant, of the family hakeem. Most of the 'shajjara munshis' sat in Bazaar Hakeeman, and they operated through the hakeems. These people kept records of the entire family, with a few working through barbers, who acted as informants.
It so happened that I wanted to search for my family roots, and a few elders pointed out to the fact that our entire family had been charted and recorded in a number of books. One strand of the family had Chishti roots, while the other has Sheikh roots. As I knew that the Sheikhs and the Chishtis married each other a lot, one accepted that this was because of the family elders. A trip to the old city saw me discussing the issue with an elderly 'munshi' who knew my father well.
He pointed out to a book printed at the turn of the last century, and after much searching, and thanks to some assistance from an aunt and a "fourth removed" cousin, I managed to lay my hands on a book called "Yaadgar-e-Chishti," written by Maulvi Nur Ahmed Chishti who had written this book specially for the British East India Company so as to 'educate' them about the people, families and customs of Lahore. This rare book was reprinted by the Majlis Taraki-i-Urdu, Lahore, in 1972, and is now a collector's item. The reprinted book has an update on families undertaken by Gohar Naushahi.
Here it might be of interest to note that Maulvi Nur Ahmed Chishti was hired by the East India Company in 1849, the year the Sikh empire crumbled and the British took over Lahore, to teach the officials of the company Urdu and Persian. He impressed the new 'rulers' so much that they requested that a book be compiled to be a standard text for all British officials coming to Lahore, a sort of get-through guide of Lahore and its people and families. So came about 'Yadgar-e-Chishti'.
Among the numerous 'shajjaras' given in this book is the one of the Chishti family itself. At the head of this complex diagram is Maulvi Ziaul Haq, a religious scholar who served under the Mughal emperor Shah Jehan. His two children were Maulvi Muhammad Ibrahim Chishti and a daughter who was married off to Mughal court official in Agra. His son was called Mirza Hidayatullah. Ibrahim Chishti had a son Maulvi Ghulam Hussain who further had five children.
We take up the line from Maulvi Ahmed Bakhsh Yakdil, a religious scholar who served the Lahore Darbar of Maharajah Ranjeet Singh. Maulvi Yakdil had a huge family of 15 children, six of whom died at birth. In fact, of the seven first born, only one, Muhammad Ali, survived. Of the last eight, one died at birth. This makes a staggering seven dead at birth out of 15, providing a picture of the health standards before the British arrived in Lahore.
Maulvi Nur Ahmed Chishti was the ninth child of Maulvi Yakdil. One sister, Iqbal-un-Nisa, married Amer Bakhsh Sahaf, another well-known Lahore family. His brother Maulvi Muhammad Ali Chishti had a son Maulvi Hamid Ali Chishti, who had nine children. Not a single child died at birth.
This is the period at the end of the Sikh rule, by which time Lahore had a reasonable health system, put in place by French, Russian and Hungarian doctors, as well as an excellent 'hakmat' tradition, in which the famous Fakir family of Bazaar Hakeeman excelled. One grandson of Maulvi Hamid Ali Chishti was Abdul Qadir Chishti, the first Muslim shop owner in Anarkali Bazaar, those shop China Mart sadly closed down last year after 115 years. His son Abdul Qadoos Chishti died three years ago, and with him a tradition of Muslim entrepreneurial history.
One daughter of Maulvi Hamid Ali Chishti was Syeda Begum, my grandmother who married a Sheikh. Another daughter Zakia also married a Sheikh by the name of Abdul Salam, a police official and a cousin of my father. His son was the famous Dr Ahsasnul Islam of Government College Lahore. One daughter Asghari Begum married a Makhdoom by the name of Muhammad Afzal, and her son was the famous Dr Muhammad Ajmal, an eminent psychologist and Principal of the Government College, Lahore.
It was by the 1970s seen that over 27 members of the family of Maulvi Hamid Ali Chishti were students of the Government College, Lahore, most of whom have gone into intellectual pursuits. It probably is in the genes, and that is why having a family 'shajjara' made sense to the elders of Lahore.
Another 'shajjara' of the mother of Maulvi Nur Ahmed Chishti also is given in the book, and it has a Sahaf lineage. In this complex diagram, we see another 21 children being students of the Government College, Lahore, by the 1970s. Here one sees the Siddiqui family marrying into the Sahaf family. Looking at various family 'shajjaras' one cannot avoid noticing that every one has a strong connection to another Lahore family.
According to the book itself, Maulvi Nur Ahmed Chishti does mention that before a marriage, the heads of the two families would go to their hakeem and consult them if the match was correct. Here the 'munshi' would bring forth his books and break down the connection into 'blood lineage.' This, for me, was a remarkable discovery. In Lahore our elders were, even 200 years ago, in possession of family records to work out the way genes functioned. This is a field that needs much more research. There are scores of books lying with the family of old 'munshis' of the various hakeems and barbers of Lahore.
In the west there is an immense interest in the roots of families, mostly because most westerners are of migrant origin. In a way this is also true of the Punjab and Lahore. For example my dear friend Tahir Azam, more correctly Shahzada Tahir Azam, is of Royal Afghan lineage. His great grandfather ruled Kabul ... but that is another story of adventure and escapes that must be told.
At ease in all genres
The Pakistan Academy of Letters (PAL) gave Hafeez Jallandhri the respect he deserved by not mixing the commemoration of his death anniversary with other poets who had passed away in the month of December. It arranged an exclusive sitting to pay tribute to his memory on the occasion of his 22nd death anniversary.
With Begum Khurshid Hafeez as the chief guest, the function was presided over by Aslam Kamal who excels in many disciplines. He is a poet, an author, an artist and a calligraphist, all rolled into one. A sizable crowd assembled in the office of the PAL that afternoon to hear what Dr Nawaz Zaidi, Mehshar Zaidi, Prof Raza Abbas and Kazy Javed had to say on the occasion. The gathering could have even been bigger but many of those invited there, like Tasneem Kausar, later told me that they were held up at their place of work and could not make it in time.
The poets Iqbal Devana and Shahnaz Muzammil were, however, there to offer versified tributes to the creator of our national anthem and producer of the Shahnama-i-Islam.
Hafeez Jallandhri won recognition as a poet even at the time when Allama Iqbal was at the pinnacle of his fame. In fact, he was the only one after the Allama who devoted himself to the renaissance of the Muslims of the sub-continent.
No one can deny that the Shahnama-i-Islam produced by him is a historical, religious, national and literary document. It deserves official patronage.
Hafeez Jallandhri was equally at ease in all genres of Urdu poetry. His singular contribution to the geet and the ghazal can never by forgotten.
Speakers that evening brought all these aspects of Hafeez Jallandhri's poetry and personality.
* * * * *
Anis Nagi has been churning out books so rapidly that I have lost count of how many he has produced. However, his mind is still as fresh as ever. I say that because a book written by him has just landed on my desk. The title, Pakistani Urdu Adab ki Tareekh, means that it is about the history of Urdu literature produced in Pakistan.
The book has been divided into sections dealing with literary criticism, poetry, short story, novel, other genres, etc. Giving a detailed introduction to each section, he has made a personal assessment of the prominent names appearing in them.
Anis Nagi contends that after the partition of the sub-continent, a lot of difference crept up between the literature produced in the two newly created countries. He has concentrated on the creative work produced in Pakistan after the year 1947. However, he agrees that whatever was written in Pakistan upto the year 1960 was almost an offshoot of what was written prior to partition.
There is hardly any writer mentioned in the book whom Anis Nagi has lauded; he has pointed to a short coming in almost everyone. Even after placing someone on a high pedestal, he adds a significant "but" to shatter his image.
Writing about literary critics, he feels that all of them have been blindly following in the footsteps of Western scholars. Says he about Muzaffar Ali Syed: "He very well knew how to say something, but then he had hardly anything to say....He could be a good literary critic if he wanted to but (somehow) his criticism amounted to polemics of the era".
Writing about Safdar Mir, he accepts that he happened to be the rare intellectual who had read Marx and Engels in the original but criticises him for being emotional while assessing a poet and resorting to rhetoric.
In the entire chapter about literary critics, if Anis Nagi has found anyone worthy of unqualified praise, it is Shaheen Mufti.
Anis Nagi does not have any high opinion about Intezar Husain as a novelist. He accepts him that he is good at the short story but when "he tries to expand the canvas to the novel, his hold on the subject starts to loosen."
About Ghulam Abbas, he says that his short story Anandi, happens to be the only one of some consequence as his other stories are of a limited range. He even considers Overcoat, another popular story by Ghulam Abbas, to be based on the work of Gogol.
Pyar Ali Allana remembered
It was perhaps in May 1978 that the annual Urs of Shah Abdul Latif was held at Bhitshah. This was the first major cultural event being held after the ouster of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. There was apprehension of a public demonstration. The administration was jittery and nervous; exceptional precautions had been taken. Contingency plans were in the pipeline. The entire town despite a massive public turnout had a pregnant and antagonistic ambience.
On 14th of Safar, the first day of the Urs, I was dressing when in walked Pyar Ali Allana with his spirited gait and his hair flying. In his jaunty style, he embraced me and said: Hamid, this place is a siege. How do you breathe? I am here, will my presence be a problem for you? I don't want you to get into any trouble. Pyar Ali was a friend, and had remained my minister. I was aware that his presence might be irksome to those who feared their shadow. I told him he was very welcome and could stay in my room and enjoy the mela.
The minute I left the room, I got a message through a police officer to see the commissioner, IG and the ML officer. They were sitting out on the lawn. The commissioner, an old friend who was also chairman of the Bhitshah Cultural Centre Committee, asked me if I had invited Allana and said that I had created an awkward situation for them.
Allana should be asked to go back. I told him I had no idea that Allana would be coming to the festival and if his presence posed a law and order problem it was not my concern. Allana as minister for culture had remained chairman of the Cultural Centre and I would not ask him to leave. I was then told not to inform him of our meeting and to ensure that he did not sit in the front row or in a position of prominence during the festival.
In the evening when the music recital was about to begin I requested Pyar Ali to come to the auditorium after the programme had started. Someone was to escort him from the rest house to his seat which we had placed off stage, in a corner.
By this time all the artistes performing in the mela had come to know of Pyar Ali's presence and wanted to see him. Pyar Ali walked into the auditorium unnoticed whilst Faqir Abdul Ghafoor and eight other yaktaro fakirs were reciting the Soung. As the item culminated, Faqir Ghafoor and all the artistes made a beeline for Pyar Ali; they kissed and embraced him. The public knew that he was there. There was a big uproar and great applause acknowledging the great service that he had done to Sindh for having organized the international seminar 'Sindh through the Centuries' which was aired live on PTV for the first time.
Pyar Ali was a visionary. He had thought of an independent culture department for Sindh. The international seminar was shortly followed by the creation of the culture department, the first of its kind in any province, which then set into motion the creation of many other attached departments and schemes. The Sindh Archives, the stipend scheme for ailing artistes of Sindh, the school of music, which never materialized due to bureaucratic circumlocution, etc, etc.
He was haughty but kind at heart. Once whilst visiting the directorate of education at Hyderabad, he lost his cool with the principal of the Government College and ordered the then director, Professor Akram Ansari, to suspend the principal. Prof. Ansari very mildly replied: "Sir, I am a teacher. I teach tolerance and patience. I do not punish, I am sorry I will not be able to carry out your orders. Pyar Ali immediately withdrew. He was a simple soul, understanding and forgiving.
Zulfiqar Ali Shah Jamote will recall that he and I went to Pyar Ali during the Sindh through the Centuries seminar and requested him to reconsider the government's decision of bestowing an award upon H.T. Lambrick in light of his book 'The Terrorist' written with a slant maligning the martyred Pir Pagaro. Pyar Ali gracefully accepted the logic. He loved Sindhi music, and perhaps had the best of Allan Fakir's recordings. He loved Sindh and its people.
The last few years of his life were a confinement depicting the cruelty of Mother Nature. Such is life; it needs no reason and heeds no logic. No one knows what crossed his mind or what he felt during these long years of mute helplessness. His ecstatic meditation has ended. And as Rumi says;
You ask the embryo why he, or she stays cooped up
in the dark with eyes closed. Listen to the answer
There is no "other world"
I only know what I've experienced
You must be hallucinating.
Pyar Ali will be missed.
Proposed right to information law to take the BD media nowhere
There is apparently a good news for the citizens of Bangladesh in general and the media practitioners in particular that the country's Law Commission has recently formulated, at the request of the government, a draft law - Right to Information Act - seeking people's democratic right to access to the public information.
The law, if eventually enacted, is supposed to provide all concerned with the guaranteed scope for access to public information and has a lot to do with the freedom of press, which, in turn, helps people to make an informed opinion about the action and inaction of a law that eventually helps people to make the government functionaries accountable.
But this is, perhaps, not going to happen because the commission does not find it necessary to scrap the old legal provisions standing firmly in the way of dissemination of public information.
In this regard, the commission refers to the similar laws, either already enacted or in the process of being enacted, in India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka.
To appreciate the contents of the draft law, it has unambiguously defined 'public information', 'right to public information', means of procuring public information, obligations on the part of government authorities to disseminate information among the public, punitive measures for the public servants in case of any failure to provide people with information, procedure of ensuring the punishment, even procedure of filing appeal against punishment awarded to a public servant for his/her alleged failure, etc.
The draft law has also recognized the democratic right of the public to have access to records of the government, statutory bodies and the registered non-government organisations (NGOs). The inclusion of NGOs is a very important improvement, given the amount of money this sector spends in different social and economic sectors and the amount of influence that the sector exerts in different sectors.
Defining the 'right to information', the draft law has rightly pointed out that it means "the right of access to information and includes inspection, taking notes, and extracts, and obtaining photocopy or certified copies of documents or records of any public authority".
The draft law has rightly underlined that 'every citizen', on request, has "to be given access to information relating to decisions made, proceedings drawn, or acts performed or proposed to be performed by any public authority".
And to ensure this right, the Law Commission has rightly proposed that "every public authority shall be under a duty to maintain all its records duly catalogued and indexed ... to make available to any citizen requesting information from it and shall not withhold any information or limit its availability".
Detailing the procedure of securing information, the draft law says: "A citizen desiring to obtain an information from a public authority will require to make a request, in the form to be printed and supplied by the public authority at a price of five taka, to the designated officer or if no officer was designated, to the head of the office or head of the sub-office, as the case may be, of the public authority, clearly specifying the particulars of the information, document or record and the mode of access, i.e. inspection, copying or taking note, sought for".
The responsibility of the public authority has been laid down clearly. It "shall furnish the information", excepting certain categories of information that the authorities are proposed to have been exempted from providing the citizens with, "within 15 days from the date of receipt of a request". If and when the officer concerned decides to refuse access, he will communicate such decision to the applicant "within 10 days, specifying the reasons on which such refusal is based".
If an applicant finds the refusal illegal, he/she will be free to go to the information tribunal, proposed to be se up in every district, while an aggrieved party will have the scope for filing appeals against the verdict of an information tribunal with the information appellate tribunal.
These are all fine, excepting the categories of the information that, according to the draft legislation prepared by the Law Commission, the citizens should not have access to. But what remains incomprehensible to many in the media sector is that the commission's reluctance 'to repeal those laws which restrict public access to information'.
The first of the laws that restrict free flow of information is the 'oath (or affirmation) of secrecy' that provides the ministers with the impunity to hide from the press and the public the information that they come across while heading the ministries -- a prime source of public information.
Then, there is a section in the Government Servants (Conduct) Rules, 1979, making it a punishable offence for a government servant to "disclose directly or indirectly to government servants belonging to other ministries, divisions or departments, or to non-official persons or to the press, the contents of any official document or communicate any information which has come into his possession in the course of his official duties, or has been prepared or collected by him in the course of those duties, whether from official sources or otherwise, unless he/she is generally or specially empowered by the government".
Similarly, Rule 28 (1) of the Rules of Business, 1996, says: "No information acquired directly or indirectly from official documents or relating to official matters shall be communicated by a government servant to the press, to non-officials or even officials belonging to other government offices, unless he has been generally or specially empowered to do so".
One wonders as to how the government officials, designated under the proposed right to information law, would provide the people with public information without scrapping these rules - not to mention so many similar ones. But in its draft law, the Law Commission certifies that the 'prohibitive laws' in question are nothing but 'reasonable restrictions for the sake of security of the state, privacy of the citizen and good governance'! God bless the Law Commission. Meanwhile, the thinking section of the media community in Dhaka believes that the draft law, even if enacted in the present form, would hardly ensure the people's right to information.
Crime control: the modern way
Through the adoption of a scientific approach in consonance with emerging trends the district police succeeded in checking the alarming increase in robberies, dacoities, purse and vehicle snatching in the posh D-Grounds in People's Colony.
The eastern side of the Rakh Branch Canal and Railway Lines mainly comprises posh localities like People's Colony, Khayaban Colony, Saeed Colony, Madina Town, Kohinoor Nagar, Batala Colony, Gulbahar Colony, Karim Town, Sarfraz Colony, Zubair Colony, having a population of more than a million in 34 Union Councils.
For the security of their inhabitants, there are three police stations - People's Colony, Batala Colony and D-Type Colony - in this area having a strength of 250 personnel, 34 two-wheeler squads, eight police mobile vans and two Elite commando squads.
One of the most busy commercial centres is situated in People's Colony, known as the D-Grounds which is in the shape of a crescent. This area is also known as a major spot for recreational activities for youngsters due to its beautiful environment and a chain of department stores and shopping centres where tycoons and wealthy families live.
However, it used to be notorious for crime and was known as a heaven for outlaws. There was no system to check the suspects. The residents used to feel insecure due to frequent incidents of dacoities and robberies and the police was found helpless.
Three months ago, the local police woke up. It evolved a strategy based on police-public partnership for combating crime here on modern lines. It collected statistics about criminal activities and the modus operandi of criminals in order to devise scientific methods to protect the life and property of the people. DPO Amin Wains prevailed upon notable traders and the Citizen Police Liaison Committee functionaries to set up a modern "Rescue-15 Centre" equipped with latest gadgets, closed-circuit cameras, and efficient police mobile squads to rush to the spot for providing help to the people. A Rescue-15 centre was established in a corner of D-Grounds. It has a crime scan laboratory, capability to collect evidence after occurrence of crime with comparison of previous crime record, photographs of criminals, finger-prints, sketches, map and all other modern contrivances to unearth crime just by a click ona computer having a complete crime-related data of the past two decades.
Computerized data of all vehicles registered in the country, including the Northern Areas, would also be available in this centre and any police team could check the registration of any vehicle on direct hot-line from any part of the district.Apart from this, Rescue-15 has been provided with eight cameras, which work round-the-clock and monitor all activities in and around the D-Ground area. In addition, there are six static cameras and an audio and video digital sound system which transmits messages in an emergency and commands the mobile squads.
Originally, the city had only one rescue centre at the Police Lines which was almost 3kms away from colony. The help-seekers of this area had to wait for 10 to 20 minutes for help. However, with the establishment of the police emergency centre, the time lag has been reduced considerably and the squads reach the callers within minutes as the whole area has been linked up.
The two-wheeler squads which have the facility of wireless, weapons and other gadgets take instructions directly from centre, remain in motion in the whole area. The moment they receive any call for help, they rush to the spot for criminals.
This strategy, the police bosses claim, produced positive results. The crime rate during the 90 days after the introduction of this system came down by almost 85 per cent compared to the corresponding period last year. The Rescue-15 centre also has a number of other features for building police image and helping the needy. Anyone in this police circle can get help for calling the ambulance service, which is equipped with paramedical staff, and a doctor.
Fire victims can also benefit by calling the fire-fighters. This centre also provides the facility of rectifying breakdown in supply of water, power and gas by immediately sending teams for which the police have made elaborate arrangements through coordination with the agencies responsible for redressing complaints.
The DPO told this correspondent that he was bent upon eliminating the centuries-old impression of illiteracy and terror associated with the police.
He claimed that he was determined to bridge the wide gulf of hatred between the police and the public and change public opinion about the force through the Rescue-15 centres. He claimed that even the building housing Rescue-15 Centre in People's Colony had been designed to look like a beautiful structure with an amicable environment instead of the old awe-inspiring fortress-like construction. It has beautiful surroundings and is exquisitely furnished and is manned by a smart, friendly and dutiful staff, who deals courteously with the complainants and acts instantly for redress of their problems.