Humour
India's Latest Security Measures
by RAHUL BEDI
Students as young as 15 years old were paid 120 rupees (£1.60 or $ 2.50) each to climb trees along the route the Indian Prime Minister's car took. Local police issued the students with special security badges.
"We have been asked to keep a close watch on any movement in the trees," said Jayanta Das, a student at Shantiniketan, near Calcutta, (Bengal, India) where the Prime Minister was presiding over the convocation of the Visva Bharati University on Saturday (December 6, 2008).
"We have also been instructed to shake the trees from time to time to ensure that all is fine," he added.
The latest example of India's chaotic and incompetent security measures comes ten days after the devastating Mumbai terrorist strikes that claimed nearly 180 lives and led to accusations of security lapses.
Local Police Chief L.N. Meena defended using children to supplement the Prime Minister's security detail, as there were far too many trees in the area and not enough policemen to man them.
"The area is full of trees, so to check them to see if there were any anti-social elements or anyone making mischief, we employed the youths," he said.
[Courtesy: The Telegraph]
December 8, 2008
Conversation about this article
1: Resham Singh (Chandigarh, Punjab), December 08, 2008, 10:13 AM.
Should we laugh ... or should we cry?
2: Ajit Singh (Montreal, Quebec, Canada), December 08, 2008, 10:17 AM.
Okay, so it is this Indian Police that is helping the Canadians ... still! ... in tracking down the true perpetrators of the Air India bombing in 1985? Now I can see why 23 years have gone by, and the real criminals remain at large.
3: Harinder (Bangalore, India), December 08, 2008, 1:11 PM.
It is wrong to make fun of such efforts. It is better to offer advice.
4: R.Sandhu (Brampton, Canada), December 08, 2008, 3:44 PM.
What advice can anyone give and to whom, when everyone has his head too high in the clouds to be able to acknowledge all the obvious pot holes that pock-mark the landscape? Denial of grinding poverty, communalism, narrow sectarianism, nationalistic jingosim, xenophobia, in-your-face religious zealotry, in lieu of all the ideals the country was supposedly built upon. Now they shake down trees to get terrorists, and employ kids to do so! Short of busting an artery, laughter is the safest option.
5: G.C. Singh (U.S.A.), December 08, 2008, 4:54 PM.
I don't know what to make of these "innovative" security measures, but we must marvel at the psychic abilities of Indian police/security agencies and the Indian media for giving the identities of the terrorists, their training camps, their national origin, their various associations, the type of weapons and the phones they were using, while the terrorists were still holed up in Hotel Taj. [See http://outlookindia.com/full.asp?fodname=20081215&fname=VCol+Nasim+Zehra+(F)&sid=1]
6: Punardeep (Simi Valley, California, U.S.A.), December 08, 2008, 5:37 PM.
This is indeed most innovative. Especially telling the students to shake the trees from time to time, hoping that the terrorists would fall, like apples and oranges.
7: Suzy Kaur (Oxford, England), December 09, 2008, 8:08 AM.
"... communalism, narrow sectarianism, nationalistic jingosim, xenophobia, in-your-face religious zealotry ..." Sounds like a snapshot of some in our own community today, and the challenges it faces in the diaspora. Unfortunately, too many of us have our heads in the clouds too on these issues. I don't feel like laughing about it though. I feel like crying.