Imkong Walling
One notable feature of Nagaland, and its government, has been the endeavour to keeping apace with contemporary global trends. In spite of the poor connectivity in the interiors, alongwith the obvious developmental and infrastructural deficits, the state has made no secret of transitioning to e-governance, while becoming an unlikely IT hero.
There is an abundance of examples, the police department being one that has not shied away from fusing policing with IT. The most recent would be the Police Headquarters, on July 22, introducing a system for “online submission of complaints with regard to Stolen Vehicles and Lost/Stolen mobiles phones.”
Facilitating prompt sharing of complaints/information was central to this initiative, hand in hand with the traditional practice of filing complaints in the police station.
In a system where the public impression of a police station is far from friendly, it was enroute to drawing positive public response. A (online) savvy state police chief did not disappoint, following up with a social media post, hardly three days to the announcement, informing of “encouraging (public) response.”
The aforementioned initiative though is not one that can be deemed novel. The Nagaland Police had introduced a similar system nine years ago. The predecessor went by the acronym NPSVMS— Nagaland Police SMS Based Vehicle Monitoring System. It worked on the same principle as the present system, only that it was SMS-based, with a Hotline: 8415900400, for instant reporting of vehicle theft.
Touted to be a system unique to Nagaland, it was indigenously developed, under the Police Modernisation Scheme, at a cost of around Rs 25 lakh. It apparently was a hit, with “single-window access” to the National Crime Records Bureau’s vehicle database, and even had the Ministry of Home Affairs impressed.
The Morung Express, in September 2015, citing official government inputs, reported of the NPSVMS making significant contribution to curbing vehicle theft, and recovery, in the five-month period since the system’s launch in April of that year. It saw some 500 sign-ups and handling over 5000 user-queries during the same period.
A year later, the NPSVMS was responsible for the Nagaland Police winning the National Award for Smart Policing. How it progressed from that point on remains a blank.
There are other instances, too. Sometime in mid-2019, the state police ventured into what was branded as e-Patrol— a GPS-based system enabling real-time monitoring of street patrols. It was a case of street-policing-meets-IT, merging physical patrolling with the digital.
It came with a 50-unit strong armed motorcycle squad. The then DGP was upbeat about the initiative, asserting that it will be sustained. Five years on, that squad is nowhere to be seen.
Predating this, a motorbike-borne police unit, designed to function as a QRT met a similar fate, hardly seeing any action after the inaugural fanfare.
While supposedly innovative methods come and go, over-worked and poorly paid, NAP (IR) personnel, trained for CI ops, continue to be relegated to the drudgery of good ol’ routine street patrolling.
For a department that accounts for an estimated one-third of the state’s non-plan expenditure, the exchequer certainly has the right to know
The writer is a Principal Correspondent at The Morung Express. Comments can be sent to imkongwalls@gmail.com
