Risk Perception, Not Paying Capacity, Should Be Considered For Providing Security Cover To Private Citizens
Editor-in-Chief of indiacommentary.com. Current Affairs analyst and political commentator.
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By Sunil Garodia
First publised on 2020-10-28 20:18:27
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Editor-in-Chief of indiacommentary.com. Current Affairs analyst and political commentator.
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The Supreme Court has rightly not agreed with the Bombay High Court view that Mumbai police should provide high-level security cover to anyone who is willing to pay for it. If this was the case, the police would be reduced to being the personal bodyguards of the rich and famous. That, obviously, is not the prime task of the Mumbai, or any other, police force - at best it can be an additional and important task. But if paying capacity was to be the main criterion for providing security cover, then the crime prevention and law enforcing tasks will suffer.
The Supreme Court has rightly said that risk perception should be the main criteria for deciding who deserves to be provided what level of security. That should be the basis of all such decisions. Anyone who is not at a risk from extraneous sources but needs to prevent the public from getting too close for comfort can always deploy his or her own private security, as any rich and famous person worth his salt does nowadays.
Tasking the police, upon payment, to 'protect' private citizens can be disastrous. There is no dearth of people who would be willing to pay to be protected by policemen and if the risk perception is not taken into account, many battalions of the local police forces would be deployed on this 'comfort' duty. Since these duties will not be permanent, it is obvious that the police force will not recruit more personnel but would deploy them from the existing pool. That would mean that they will then get lesser manpower for their regular duty of preventing crime, enforcing the law and protecting the ordinary citizen.
As it is, the police force in all major Indian cities and towns suffers from shortage of personnel. Now, if the existing constables and officers are put on duty to protect those who can pay for their services, the common man will suffer. Risk perception, backed by evidence of threat, must be the only criteria for providing security and periodic review must be done to downgrade or do away with the security cover once the threat perception reduces.
