P. Vijayan IPS is one of the most celebrated officers in the country. He was a school dropout and worked as a child labourer in construction sites and paddy fields before reviving his passion for studies. He went on to complete his Master’s Degree in Economics and cleared the qualifying exams to become a lecturer at college. He joined different government jobs before clearing the Civil Service and joined the Indian Police Service. He had the rare distinction of being the Commissioner of Police at all four metro cities in Kerala and is credited with the conception and implementation of many social change-making initiatives. He was selected as the CNN-IBN Indian of the Year in 2014.
He is in a conversation with Anupam Aysha, Editor, ljrfvoice.com.
Q. Was there any specific incident or event that inspired you to start change-making initiatives and projects like Student Police Cadets, HOPE, Our Responsibility to Children, etc. which are concentrating on the upliftment of the younger generation?
Answer: In 2006, I was the City Police Commissioner of Police at Kochi. One of the steps I initiated in the city during my tenure was to strengthen the bonds of police with the city residents. I focussed on bringing in more community participation in the policing process. When I started by tenure, there were less than 60 residents associations and when I left there were more than 800 of them.
In this connection, I asked to convene a meeting of PRIDE (Police Residents Association Interaction in District Ernakulam) and its first meeting was held at Town Hall. To bring in more participation, I also organised a meeting with children from selected schools in the city as part of this meeting. Something remarkable happened at the meeting. The children who attended the meeting were asked to give their impression about the police. None of them had a good impression despite the fact that they had no personal or first-hand experience of any bad behaviour from any police officer. The historical legacy along with popular narratives that painted the police in bad light worked on the minds of these children. This perception mismatch had to be corrected. So, the children were allowed to spent the day with police personnel and witness their work in real terms. By evening, the children had an entirely different view about policemen and policing. That was the beginning.
Our nation is the best to live in, to work, and to die. But definitely, there are flaws in the system. Instead of harping on the flaws, we need to find solutions and the best way to do it is through children. They are unbiased and highly receptive. If their attitudinal changes can be brought about, they will reflect this positivity in the society they will create in the future. The engine behind all child and youth-oriented activities that I have taken up is the desire to create change leaders from among children, who can build a glorious future for our nation.
Q.Organisations like Mission Better Tomorrow, which are formed out of inspiration from your thought leadership, have been taking up various kinds of initiatives like ‘Pos-Poss’, ‘Break Chain Make Change’, etc. to engage different strata of the society. What is your response to it?
Answer: Mission Better Tomorrow is a way of life, for me. Our daily life is filled with challenges and our task is to respond with positivity. Once we keep a positive mindset, possibilities will open up for us to move ahead in life. I understand that Mission Better Tomorrow is a collective of professionals who are united in action to create this world a better place.
It aligns perfectly with my philosophy of life. In fact, the Pos-Poss Talk Series is all about Positivity which is the Pos and Possibilities that stands for Poss. This group has taken up many social intervention programmes like Break Chain Make Change during the first wave of the Covid 19 pandemic, and Feed-A-Stomach programme under which nearly 10 lakh food packets were distributed among homeless and migrant labourers who were stuck during the lockdown phase.
Q.How can organisations like Mission Better Tomorrow proceed beyond the immediate demands like responding to crises and be more socially engaging?
Answer: I am told the Mission Better Tomorrow has been one of the first responders during crises that rocked our society in recent times, which shows the deep social connection it has. We need to establish that firm connection with our own milieu to refine ourselves as better human beings and also as better social beings. Mission Better Tomorrow has been associated with the Social Policing Department of Kerala Police, of which I am the Director, and working on many projects that can bring about significant changes in our midst.
One such programme was the Compassionate Communication in Police (CCIP) for sub-inspector officer trainees. The programme held at Kerala Police Academy was a first of its kind. Mission Better Tomorrow also has the credit of having implemented the Bereavement Companionship Programme, in association with the Institute of Palliative Medicine, Kozhikode, a WHO collaborating Centre for Community Participation in Palliative Care and Long Term Care. This unique programme was so successful that a session was organised for participants from Bangladesh too. Mission Better Tomorrow is also into supporting children with special needs as its God’s Own Children project is about building a toilet attached bedroom in homes of 50 children with intellectual challenges and from resource-limited families. This is being done in a participatory model with society responding positively to the efforts to identify the right beneficiaries.
Q.Let’s come back to Student Police Cadet, which was a game-changer in the school education of Kerala. How effective do you think SPC was in building up a generation of students who know the law and are empowered in resisting exploitations to themselves as well as the society?
Answer: There is a major flaw in the way law is taught to our children. Even in advanced levels, the utility of law is not discussed. A major fallout of this approach is that children grow up in contempt and fear of law. In a true democratic system, the citizens should feel a sense of ownership for the law and then law-abiding becomes a way of life and not an enforcement.
Right now there are many laws for the protection of children, including the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act, 2012, (POCSO Act). But still, a good percentage of atrocities against children go unreported. Even when they are reported, these cases are most often not properly investigated or prosecuted. The solution for this is better awareness about the law and better ownership among the general society. This is the role that Student Police Cadets can play. The SPCs are trained to become the Child Rights Ambassadors, as envisaged by the United Nations.
Q.As a person who is keenly involved with the younger generation of people in society, what do you think is the bigger confrontation they are facing?
Answer: Unlike the times when we were growing up, the children of today are in the middle of a huge lot of distractions. More than converging factors, the children are faced with diverging factors. Those who can survive this situation and emerge as champion will be the true Information Technology natives.
Their potential will be immense, but the journey to that point is very tricky. The basic human tendency is to drift towards the forbidden terrain and the anonymity of online virtual world lures children with avenues for drug abuse, sexual violation, games and gambling. The situation is worsened by the fact that teachers and parents are not fully equipped either to handle this. We are right now in a transition phase. May be the next generation will be able to handle this distractive world better, but right now there are a lot of confusions and guiding the children through this maze is the hardest challenge. The need of the hour is staying alert and keeping oneself updated.
Q.With the School education going online after the pandemic, were there any challenges in implementing SPC? What were the initiatives to cope up with the situation?
Answer: The Student Police Cadet has been very much active during the pandemic times. To start with they played a huge role in the overwhelming success of Feed-A-Stomach programme. Jeevadhara was another phenomenal work by SPC where a volunteer bank of more than 3 lakh persons were prepared by the Cadets to support the blood banks affected during the pandemic-induced lockdown. The Student Police Cadets took up and successfully completed TV Challenge, where many children from resource limited families were supported with television sets, mobile phones and internet connectivity by mobilising support so that the children could attend online classes.
Q.What is the objective of the Student Police Cadet? What are the new initiatives that are yet to be introduced to reach that objective?
Answer: As explained earlier, the prime objective of Student Police Cadet programme is to create a generation of people who are aware about their law and take ownership in making the law a way of life. It is a youth-development initiative targeting high school students and moulding them as future leaders of a democratic society by inculcating within them respect for the law, discipline, civic sense, empathy for vulnerable sections of society and resistance to social evils. Such people will emerge as change leaders and bring out substantial and positive changes in our society. They hold the key in converting the demographic bulge of India to its demographic dividend. Right now, SPC is being implemented in 1,000 schools in Kerala and it was rolled out on a national scale in 2018. Enquiries have come from many other countries to customise Student Police Cadets to their social context.
Q. You have always been inspiration for many in the society to launch social movements. Nanma Foundation is one such. Your comments on this please.
Answer: This started when I was the Commissioner of Police at Kochi. While handling the regular law and order issue, I noticed issued like people starving in the streets, increasing drug abuse, children without books or facilities to study and many other social issues like that. I realised that these issues could not be solved from the strict police perspective. So, I looked for people who have nanma (or virtue) in mind and were willing to be united in compassion for the downtrodden. This was an informal gathering of people who were compassionate and concerned about fellow beings. On my part, the challenge was to bring together genuine people willing to help others, weed out those who had other intentions and also those who were not real beneficiaries and connect the needy to the first group. Soon, Nanma became a mass movement and spread out to other places outside Kochi. We need only trigger the inherent goodness in every human being, it will grow on its own and spread the message of compassion. Being the catalyst in promoting positivity in our midst is what we can do as individuals. That is what I am always striving to do.
Shri P Vijayan Sir who believes in the potential of the younger generation in helping the world to be a better place continues to inspire us through both his official life and initiatives that are well rooted. LJRF wishes him and his team best regards!
