Security of megacities is the prime requirement for everyone. In the backdrop of recent terrorist incidents at Paris and Mali, every place including stadium, five star hotels, restaurants, markets companies, temples, synagogues, colleges and schools are vulnerable for dastardly acts. In a megacity millions of people of different countries with variety of nationalities, religions languages and castes are forced to live together for economic reasons. The urban conglomerates are increasingly becoming a place where the individual has lost his or her identity completely. This identity crisis leads to suspicion about everybody around you. Increasing incidents are reported when heinous crimes are committed by people around you and you become a mute spectator or victim of the same.
In the above scenario, I may briefly mention important concerns which include traffic chaos, street level crimes, terrorism, juvenile delinquency, religious divide, influx of illegal foreigners and cyber security.
1 Traffic management:
As the size of the cities gets expanded, people are required to stay at faraway places. Rarely these new parts are well planned from the point of mass transportation. As a result, heavy vehicles as well as two wheelers and pedestrians continue to be on the same track resulting in daily accidents taking valuable toll of precious lives or injuring the vulnerable. Unless there is immediate intervention, many of these incidents have the potential to create serious law and order situations. Today most of the roads are also witnessing a situation when, hardly 30% of the road remains available to vehicles, since the rest is occupied by hawkers, parked vehicles or other semi- permanent encroachments.
Regulating movements of goods carriers in cities is highly imperative. Truck terminals should be created in the outskirts and huge markets need to be suitable located around these. Goods can be moved in cities in small and medium vehicles. As the number of small and commercial vehicles keeps on increasing in the cities, parking has become an acute problem. The main reason behind this uncontrolled growth is the free availability of parking arrangements. It is necessary to levy heavy duty on these parked vehicles by evolving political consensus.
The traffic problems get complicated with competing number of processions, jatras, melas and fairs organized in a haphazard manner. Though these might have been organized in these places historically, it is advisable that these moves on to suitable places and be permitted to be held strictly in open grounds or specially created halls.
The situation cannot be improved only by increasing the number of traffic constables and signals. Education from childhood in traffic matters and zero tolerance to traffic violations is the need of the hour.
As an immediate measure, a continuous survey should be conducted to identify vehicles on ground and as a policy all vehicles over seven years be prohibited from playing on roads.
2 Street level crimes against women and senior citizens:
Increasing number of street level crimes during day as well as night particularly against women, senior citizens, kidnapping of children for wrong purposes have created a sense of terror among the residents. Importantly, detection of these incidents shows some of the culprits belonged to respectable and well to do families. So it is not unemployment or poverty which is driving them to commit such offenses. The main underlying causes include addiction to drugs, drinks, tendency to indulge in expensive habits and frustration due to breaking of family bonds. These causes need to be addressed effectively through social awareness and improved family involvement and value based education. Technical intervention can contribute to a large extent in restoring confidence of people in police. Maharashtra police has launched Pratisaad Ask mobile app, which can be freely downloaded by visiting app gallery. Once the person registers in this app, s/he can press red social emergency button & get help from registered relative and police beat marshal within few minutes.
There are number of places, buildings compounds in the city which are abandoned by their users and these places have become places for crime including rapes, murders and shelter for addicts. Policy makers need to encourage demolition of such places and development of clusters
Equally alarming is the rise of use of firearms or knives individually or by gangsters for committing property offences. By adopting technological innovations in banking institutions, countries like Sweden have successfully managed to shift to cashless society. It is highly imperative to move to this platform urgently in order to reduce risk to life of gullible citizens. In the absence of these measures we would continue to suffer from gang wars and their intra-gang feud. A section of them are used by terrorists and state sponsored organizations such as Pakistan’s ISI taking disadvantage of their belonging to particular religion.
3 Terrorist incidents:
Neglect to above mentioned routine crimes provides ready ground for recruitment of vulnerable youth as foot soldiers by vested interests towards terrorist activities. Additionally perception of constant neglect and torture on account of religion, race, region, caste, language becomes the raison d’être for rising terrorist activities. Of late, increasing number of educated and technically qualified persons including women are also noticed falling victims to such propaganda inviting them to launch a religious war or jihad being fought in the name of ISIS. This perception of injustice needs to be constantly addressed through intellectual war through sober elements that see reason & are members of the same community. Precaution needs to be taken not to alienate any sections of society and inclusive growth needs to be attempted through conscious efforts. The police should also prepare themselves to fight these incidents through improved intelligence methods, and better combating techniques. Help from local people is an important measure to fight these incidents. Enlightened leadership in the force is the sine qua non to prevent these activities. It is imperative that security personnel do not operate in isolation, but they involve friends of police from society “police Mitra” in a big way by roping in people from all organized and unorganized sections in the society. In Maharashtra today more than hundred thousand citizens are associated with police by registering themselves as police Mitra (Visit App gallery & type policemitra Maharashtra. Download the app freely available) in nearby police station. They belong to all religions, come from all age groups and include ladies as well. With their help police officers are able to percolate in areas which were prohibited some time ago and no police officer dared to enter these areas. One of the important lessons learnt by US after 9/11 was that the State must have human intelligence and depending exclusively on technical intelligence is far from satisfactory. On the other hand these police Mitra in Maharashtra are providing valuable intelligence as well.
4 Juveniles:
Mention needs to be made to increasing incidents of heinous crimes such as murders, rapes, robberies, thefts in which children who are not in conformity with law are being detected. In the atmosphere of violence surrounding them through exposure to violent scenes in electronic media, children as young as five are also indulging in similar incidents. Neglect by families at young age is the fundamental cause for these incidents. The educational system also needs to focus itself to ensure that there are no school dropouts. According to census survey, in 2011, India is the fourth country in the world where nearly one million children at the adolescent age are school dropouts. In case any child is absent from the school for more than a week, special efforts must be made in association with teachers to bring them back to school by all means. Neglect in this regard is causing serious damage to the child, his or her family and to the society and nation.
5 Religion :
Increasingly religion is assuming demonstrative nature. It is also being used as an instrument to divide people and create an atmosphere of suspicion about everybody not belonging to your religion. Even within a religion, there are acute feuds in various sects. While calling ourselves as secure, we continue to be most religious. It is high time we evolve political consensus on minimum civilized behavior, else a divided society cannot rise to increasing challenges of today and tomorrow.
6 Influx of illegal foreigners:
Following several pull and push factors, India is witnessing regular influx of legal and illegal foreigners. Many legal foreigners after reaching here find this country so attractive, that they never return to their place. State as well as non state organizations need to be particularly alert against this nuisance as many a time these persons are also acting as ‘agent provavocateur’ besides indulging in smuggling of various items including narcotics.
7 Cyber Security :
Following ITC revolution and availability of social media, increasing instances of cyber space being used for spreading disinformation are coming to light. Cyber offences are being conducted by few elite and unfortunately the victims are also highly educated persons. Cyber awareness needs to be created through continuous efforts. Social media is increasingly being used to whip up social and caste tensions by spreading rumors and create disruptions. Financial frauds are being attempted by compromising data in credit and debit cards. The criminals indulging in these crimes are located in far off countries including in Pakistan, China and other places.
I would like to conclude by underlining that security of megacity can be improved by taking help from everyone including security agencies.The big challenge is how far we succeed in increasing social regulation and eliminate identity crisis through innovative measures.
