By Ashraf Padanna/Thiruvananthapuram
Kerala’s student policing initiative, which completed its successful first year yesterday, will be spread to 450 schools across the state this year.Currently, only 129 schools come under the unique scheme proved to be effective in improving the quality of the state-run schools in a remarkable way and reduce the bad tendencies among the schoolchildren like drug abuse. “We will encourage every student to join the initiative. There will be a Student Police Cadet unit at least in one school under the limit of each police station across the state. The government will also extend all support assistance to these units,” Chief Minister Oommen Chandy said after inaugurating its anniversary celebrations.The novel curricular scheme was implemented jointly by the state’s education and home departments for maintaining law and order and internal security in schools. Students work with the police to eradicating crimes, maintaining traffic control and offering social services.The authorities currently give a pair of uniforms to the students successfully completing a year’s training. This will be increased to two pairs. The education department has been asked to submit a detailed report for further strengthening the little force, the chief minister said.“The scheme was a brainchild of the previous government. We decided to continue the project, like the neighbourhood policing that my predecessors launched, since it was found very effective in preventing vices among students and bringing discipline among them especially at a time when the schoolchildren have become soft target of drug pushers,” said the chief minister.According to Thrissur City Police Commissioner P Vijayan, the nodal officer of the project, the SPC has its roots in ‘Janakeeyam’, a school level workshop conducted in 2006 by Kochi Police as part of the neighbourhood police initiative. At the event, more than 400 students from 30 schools interacted with police officers, engaged in wide-ranging discussions on community issues and visited police stations. “At the end of this workshop, the students expressed a desire to have a permanent mechanism to interact with the police. Under the guidance of Director General of Police Jacob Punnoose, I prepared a draft proposal with the help of the National Service Scheme (NSS) of schools and the process got rolling,” said Vijayan.In 2008, the project was launched on an experimental basis in two schools in Ernakulam district and one more school from nearby Alappuzha district joined them soon. Accordingly, the school-level advisory committees were formed and the training program was officially launched by the end of the year. “Within a short time positive results began to appear such as willingness to follow rules, enhanced self confidence among students, improvement in their academic performance, resistance to school level antisocial activities and empowerment of girl students to counter harassment and exploitation,” he said. Today, there are more than 11,000 secondary school students training as cadets and their services are being utilised for crowd management and safety at the mass programs like the annual School Kalotsavam, billed as one of the largest youth festivals in Asia. During the Kalotsavam in Kozhikode last year, the cadets were given separate training in bomb disposal, first aid, fire and safety, parade, traffic regulation and crowd control and deployed them on ‘duty’. They were provided with food and refreshments and travelling facilities in police vehicles right from the training. The entire cadets were formed as a single unit and after giving practice they performed route marches. Their services were utilized in 16 different venues of Kalotsavam and on the roads for traffic regulation with the police. These cadets also regularly attend sports events, drills, parades, camps, study classes and tour programs.