The Assam police has embarked on an ambitious plan of task analysis of its forces to identify the gap in knowledge, skill and attitude of its policemen in handling the situation.
Disclosing that Prof. Anil Saxena of National Police Academy was helping the state police force in this mission, the inspector general of the police Bhaskar Jyoti Mahanta told this newspaper that idea of task analysis was aimed to educate and make the police force sensitive in handling the situation.
Pointing out that initial response was encouraging, Mr Mahanta said that they have already started the process at district level.
Stressing the need of intensifying such exercise to sensitise the personnel about police-public relationship, Mr Mahanta said that findings are amazing and an eye opener in many cases as it was discovered that many officers were not even aware about their primary responsibilities.
Regretting that excessive involvement of the police forces in counter-insurgency operations has changed the attitude of the police forces, Mr Mahanta admitted that success or failure of this initiative largely depends on involvement of all ranks of officers.
“We ask constable to assess the tasks executed by their immediate senior and so on in hierarchy through objective type of questionnaire prepared carefully in local language,” said Mr Mahanta clarifying that senior police officers are also asked to assess the task executed by their junior subordinates.
He said that it was not only helping in making the police personnel to think before executing assigned work, but also reflecting the skills, knowledge and attitudes that senior and junior personnel expect from each other.
Admitting certain bottleneck in executing the whole plan of action, Mr Mahanta, however, said that response was encouraging as many senior police officers are taking interest in training programme.