ONE KHAKI NATION

The recent proposal by the PM to have one uniform for all police in the country may be a radical idea a little too early. Instead, the need of the hour is to focus on police reforms instead of cosmetic feelgood

- Vikram Kilpady

PRIME Minister Narendra Modi last week suggested that police forces across the country could have one uniform which would make them easily recognisable. Speaking at a meeting of state home ministers and police chiefs at the Chintan Shivir in Surajkund near Delhi, the PM said One Nation, One Uniform was an idea and not an imposition. He asked the ministers to think about it since the time for such a measure may come later.

At the outset, one wonders why not. Nurses wear white, doctors too. The PM said that like postboxes are uniform across the country, why not the police? Police across India have the same ranks, have a central IPS and are bestowed with the same philosophy in policing. So why not have all of them wear the same uniform? Newspapers were flush with articles explaining the minutiae that differentiate police in the country. Almost all had the same PTI collage handout of cops from Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Punjab, Karnataka, Jammu and Kashmir, West Bengal, Maharashtra and Puducherry. None of the cops' religious beliefs came through, with three exceptions. A Bengal policeman had a tilak on his forehead, a Punjab one wore the Sikh turban and a Jammu and Kashmir policeman wore a beret and a long, ostensibly Muslim beard.

If one looked closely at the photos, all but two were wearing khaki. The two were the Bengal policeman, who was in white, the police colour in the state, and the Jammu and Kashmir policeman, who had a much darker khaki than the rest. The belts were black, barring those worn by the cops in Uttar Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and Punjab. The headgear ranged from berets, hats, peaked caps, a baseball cap and a helmet.

In other times, the collage would have been a good image to use for Unity in Diversity. Now, diversity is getting the shortest straw.