Janamaithri Suraksha Project - Kerala Police

March 2005, Sri Oommen Chandy (UDF) was the incumbent Chief Minister following the resignation
of Sri Antony in the previous year. 2005-06 was the election year for the 12th Assembly. The decision
of the government whether to introduce community policing might have been weighed against
other pressing electoral agendas lying before.
In the 12th Assembly elections in 2006, the LDF got the mandate to form the government
defeating the UDF. Sri V. S. Achutanandan was sworn in as the Chief Minister. The police leadership
pushed the agenda before the newly elected government. Buoyant with the fresh mandate, the new
government was convinced to implement the Janamaithri Suraksha Project (JSP) as the overarching
community policing initiative of the state police. The window of opportunity (policy window) opened
when three separate streams of problem, solution and politics come together in August 2007. It was
then that the JSP was launched officially in the state. Government Orders were issued incorporating
the Standard Operating Procedure for the JS, budgetary allocations were provided, and a State Level
Nodal Officer was appointed for training, monitoring and evaluation. Pilot instead of state-wide
implementation was preferred as a policy. The policy got further instituonalised when the Sri Oommen
Chandy was sworn in as the Chief Minister in May 2011. The new government having realized the
constraints of manpower increased the sanctioned strength of each Janamaithri police agenda before
the new political leadership in 2006 as well as other stake holders.
1.4 Triangulation of Theories and Praxis
Having discussed the policy concerns, the interpretation of data has been made keeping in
mind the theories and praxis that have been validated during the field study. The parameters under
each category, pre-implementation, implementation and impact, were evaluated on the basis of
the key words captured in the transcript of the respondent group.
1.4.1 Pre-implementation Dynamics
a) Political Will
A shorthand definition of political will is: the commitment of actors to undertake actions to
achieve a set of objective and to sustain the costs of those actions over time. It will be interesting
to trace out the long preparatory journey of ‘Janamaithri Suraksha Project’ (JSP) before it got the
approval a major public policy. The community policing scheme waited for long three years from
2005 to 2008 before becoming an avowed policy of the government. The ‘window of opportunity’
(Kingdon,1995) opened in the year 2008 when the policy entrepreneurs (in this case the police
leadership) played a crucial role in the intervening period to steer all the three streams, the problem,
solutions and politics, pass through the ‘policy window’ (Ayyar, 2009).
b) Misconceptions in public mind
Misconceptions in Public mind means the lenses through which the general populace overread
or under-read the police attitude and activities as nothing to their interest. More is misconceptions
in public mind about police more is the gap between police and public. Tackling the mind set of
police as well as public is one of the major tasks in the pre-implementation phase. In the year 2000,
Kerala Police drafted a similar scheme and trained its officers. But it was opposed on the
misconceived idea that community will share the burden of police work. It was misinterpreted that
police is going to introduce a system of policing with the help of the community by which policing
will be done by the community itself. So the program could not take off (Jacob). A sustained
campaign by Kerala Police to allay the misconceptions in the minds of the public and to sell the
idea to the public that they become partners with the police to prevent crime, maintain order in the
neighbourhood ultimately paid dividend with the success of Janamaithri.
c) Predecessor-Successor Syndrome
Predecessor/Successor Syndrome was a major obstacle at the pre take off stage of the CP
Initiatives. When an incumbent joins a new post and succeeds his predecessor, he shows a general
tendency not to follow the legacy and do something new. In the process, a brilliant initiative of the predecessor
is given a premature obituary. However, with institutional arrangements in place, a programme or initiative
continues uninterrupted irrespective of the incumbents. Here the system takes care of personal aberrations.
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