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Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, while addressing the heads of state police, has stressed the importance of new-age policeman", who is "motivated and well-trained”. He said that this is very vital for combating the anti-social forces in India.
He has also stressed the importance of using technology and innovation to combat new-age terror, which had been mentioned by Home Minister P. Chidambaram yesterday.
"We need a new-age policeman who is more professional, better-motivated, suitably empowered, well-trained, one who places greater emphasis on technology for investigation and other tasks. Emphasis should be on capacity building from the police station level itself, so that the police are better equipped," Manmohan Singh said.
He also stressed the importance of police forces operating using the cutting edge technology of modern days.
"Each police station should aim at being self-sufficient and needs to be given the required resources in terms of anti-riot gear, better weapons, the nucleus of a mobile forensic unit and be connected to a networked criminal database management system. Every city should have a modern police control room with digitised maps."
Pointing out the shortage in police personnel, he said that strengthening policing at the grassroots level was essential.
"The police station has to be the fulcrum around which this needs to take place. A large increase in the number of police stations along with raising the strength of police stations has to be undertaken," he said.
"We need far higher numbers of policemen to improve the present low police-population ratio of 145 per 100,000. As a first step, I would urge all of you to do everything possible to fill up the large number of vacancies that exist today at various levels in the police."
He also stressed the police should always keep themselves update on latest technology.
"I understand that on the average a police officer is retrained only once in about 20 years. This is totally inadequate and must be rectified. It would also help if the police were to benchmark their training curricula with the syllabi and training methodologies of police training institutions elsewhere in the world to ensure better quality," he said.
"The world is changing rapidly, and police training must keep pace with the best in the world."
