Why BJD sees Red over Sudhanshu Sarangi's all-Pink Special Police Officers?

Bhubaneswar: True to the saying that politics is the art of looking trouble, ruling party spokesperson Lenin Mohanty discovers one in the Special Police Officer concept of Commissionerate Police.

The BJD spokesperson finds the Women Empowerment for Gender Sensitive (WE GS) notion of police Commissioner Sudhanshu Sarangi gender- biased.

He went on to charge the Police Commissioner of dividing the society, especially on a remark made by Sarangi that brides need to check-in the culinary expertise of grooms before tying the nuptial knot, which Sarangi later clarified in a tweet that said, " Women in modern India work in many fields by virtue of talent, yet gender division of household work persists. We need to create respect for women, their contributions & choices. I had talked about boys being taught to respect work that they might think women are destined to do."

But a needless controversy has been cooked up by none other than the ruling party. Since a political party is directly answerable to people during elections, has Commissioner Sudhanshu Sarangi done anything discriminatory in nature by appointing all-female SPOs?

Consider this. Police Commissioner Sudhanshu Sarangi speaking on the occasion had said, "the women SPOs are eyes and ears of Commissionerate Police. They will bring inputs about the ABCD of harassment females face in twin cities.

A look at the statement shows what Sarangi said is plain policing. He is not experimenting, rather, implementing a tried and tested formula. Be it UP's anti-Romeo operation, or Telangana's SHE team et al, Police first have spoken to female members to collect inputs regarding the identity of harassers, their frequent addas, their modus operandis etc

Only, after collating inputs from girls in colleges/schools or women in offices, police devised a crack-down strategy and formed anti-Romeo squads or SHE team comprising of both male and female cops, though IGP rank women officers are helming the entire operation.

Following the plain policing norm, Commissionerate Police appointed SPOs from colleges/offices, so that a female can confide so to the SPOs without fear of rushing to a police station. It's the SPOs who pass on the inputs to police to take necessary action. Moreover, males were not appointed as SPOs, because, girls/women will not feel comfortable with males in sharing such nitti-gritties.

Significantly, this simple policing logic remains incomprehensible for the BJD spokesperson Lenin Mohanty.  The practice of appointing women officers to curb women crime is not a utopian notion.

When Andhra Pradesh government become the first State to pass Disha Act (post Telangana gangrape incident), AP government appointed two women - an IAS and an IPS officer - as special officers to monitor Disha Act. Is BJD then thinking this a gender discrimination?

Moreover, is the 50 per cent reservation for women in State Assembly and Parliament a gender discrimination, whose brand Ambassador is none other than CM Naveen Patnaik.

When latest provisional data from Odisha crime branch suggests the total rape count in Odisha in 2019 had crossed 2500 mark (2,524), with a handful of 9-10 districts stoking the rape count every year and State government staring at it cluelessly.

The footnote: American Economist Thomas Sowell had therefore said "If politicians stopped meddling with things they don't understand, there would be a more drastic reduction in the size of government than anyone in either party advocates.”