Maharashtra polls: Advocacy groups want police reforms, representation to women, SCs, STs, minorities

By A Representative
The Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative (CHRI), Delhi, and Police Reforms Watch (PRW), Mumbai, will be launching an eighteen-day campaign on September 26 in order to “catalyze” voters in Maharashtra, and especially in the city of Mumbai, to “vote for a representative and a party that commits to and is vested in better policing in the state.” In a statement, the two advocacy groups have said, this is being done ahead of the state elections, scheduled on October 15, in order to “blow the whistle for police reforms in Maharashtra.”
The programmes contemplated include a 19 seconds cinema slide in 56 cinema halls four times a day starting on September 26, and ending on October 10, 2014 in 56 cinema halls of Mumbai where. Especially designed by the two NGOs, each slide has a message with the catch phrase 'I am Mumbai...’ A second programme is radio messages which will go live between October 6 and 13, 2014 on three FM radios -- Radio City (91.1) , Radio Fever (104) and Big FM-92.7. The message asks “Mango, Mango, Mango Kaun Dega Sacha Police Sudhar...” (demand, who will deliver police reforms?).
Then there will be a campaign on social media on similar lines. A Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/FixPolicingNow already exists, with more than 51,000 followers. Proposing to turn it into “a platform for healthy debates and discussions” ahead of the Maharashtra polls, the NGOs says, it will “gear towards crystallizing public opinion online for better policing in Maharashtra for the upcoming polls.”
A major hallmark of the campaign, said the NGOs, is the whistle. Every message whether radio or the cinema Slides begins with the sound of whistle and also ends with it. Asking people to “come and join us in our campaign for making policing an issue in the forthcoming Maharashtra polls”, it wants voters to "blow the whistle in favour of police reforms".
The campaigners have launched a website, www.policereformswatch.org which will go live on September 27, 2014, and provide details of all the activities for 18 days. Meanwhile, they have drafted a people's manifesto for better policing, titled “Ten Giant Steps to Police Reforms in Maharashtra”, which they want the political parties in the fray to commit to, if they are truly vested in better policing.
The manifesto insists on the need to “prioritize the recruitment of women, minorities and scheduled castes (SCs) and scheduled tribes (STs).” It says, “Maharashtra has the highest number of women police, yet it is still to fulfil the Centre’s directive of 33% reservation of women in the police. Police personnel from SCs represent only 11.09% of the police, when the reservation is 13%. Likewise, other backward classes (OBCs) constitute only 11.16% when the actual reservation is 19%. Since there is no data available on the percentage of minorities, we urge the parties to make the representation of minorities in the police a priority issue”.
The police reforms demanded by the NGOs include setting up a woman and child protection desk staffed by women police personnel to record complaints of crimes against women and children; demand to comply with the Union ministry of home affairs (MHA) advisories and standing orders on crimes against women; need to separate investigation from the law and order functions; adoption of eight hour duty norm in the civil police; end of misuse of police personnel for non-policing work; and prohibition of ill-treatment and custodial torture.
The manifesto wants repeal of the Maharashtra Police (Amendment and Continuance) Act, 2014, as it allegedly “dilutes and circumvents the Supreme Court order on police reforms”. In fact, it says, the Act was “passed without much debate and discussion when the house was not full.” It insists on the need to a new police Act for the state that would “incorporate element of good policing with active consultations with people from all walks of life from all over the state.”

---

Click HERE for text of the manifesto

Comments

Was Netaji forced to alter face, die in obscurity in USSR in 1975? Was he so meek?

By Rajiv Shah This should sound almost hilarious. Not only did Subhas Chandra Bose not die in a plane crash in Taipei, nor was he the mysterious Gumnami Baba who reportedly passed away on 16 September 1985 in Ayodhya, but we are now told that he actually died in 1975—date unknown—“in oblivion” somewhere in the former Soviet Union. Which city? Moscow? No one seems to know.

Love letters in a lifelong war: Babusha Kohli’s resistance in verse

By Ravi Ranjan* “War does not determine who is right—only who is left.” Bertrand Russell’s words echo hauntingly in our times, and few contemporary Hindi poets embody this truth as profoundly as Babusha Kohli. Emerging from Jabalpur, Madhya Pradesh, Kohli has carved a unique space in literature by weaving together tenderness, protest, and philosophy across poetry, prose, and cinema. Her work is not merely artistic expression—it is resistance, refuge, and a call for peace.

Swami Vivekananda's views on caste and sexuality were 'painfully' regressive

By Bhaskar Sur* Swami Vivekananda now belongs more to the modern Hindu mythology than reality. It makes a daunting job to discover the real human being who knew unemployment, humiliation of losing a teaching job for 'incompetence', longed in vain for the bliss of a happy conjugal life only to suffer the consequent frustration.

Asbestos contamination in children’s products highlights global oversight gaps

By A Representative A commentary published by the International Ban Asbestos Secretariat (IBAS) has drawn attention to the challenges governments face in responding effectively to global public-health risks. In an article written by Laurie Kazan-Allen and published on March 5, 2026, the author examines how the discovery of asbestos contamination in children’s play products has raised questions about regulatory oversight and international product safety. The article opens by reflecting on lessons from the COVID-19 pandemic, noting that governments in several countries were slow to respond to early warning signs of the crisis. Referring to the experience of the United Kingdom, the author writes that delays in implementing protective measures contributed to “232,112 recorded deaths and over a million people suffering from long Covid.” The commentary uses this example to illustrate what it describes as the dangers of underestimating emerging threats. Attention then turns...

Buddhist shrines were 'massively destroyed' by Brahmanical rulers: Historian DN Jha

Nalanda mahavihara By Rajiv Shah Prominent historian DN Jha, an expert in India's ancient and medieval past, in his new book , "Against the Grain: Notes on Identity, Intolerance and History", in a sharp critique of "Hindutva ideologues", who look at the ancient period of Indian history as "a golden age marked by social harmony, devoid of any religious violence", has said, "Demolition and desecration of rival religious establishments, and the appropriation of their idols, was not uncommon in India before the advent of Islam".

Echoes of Vietnam and Chile: The devastating cost of the I-A Axis in Iran

By Ram Puniyani The recent joint military actions by Israel and the United States against Iran have been devastating. Like all wars, this conflict is brutal to its core, leaving a trail of human suffering in its wake. The stated pretext for this aggression—the brutality of the Ayatollah Khamenei regime and its nuclear ambitions—clashes sharply with the reality of the diplomatic landscape. Iran had expressed a willingness to remain at the negotiating table, signaling a readiness to concede points emerging from dialogue.

Authoritarian destruction of the public sphere in Ecuador: Trumpism in action?

By Pilar Troya Fernández The situation in Ecuador under Daniel Noboa's government is one of authoritarianism advancing on several fronts simultaneously to consolidate neoliberalism and total submission to the US international agenda. These are not isolated measures, but rather a coordinated strategy that combines job insecurity, the dismantling of the welfare state, unrestricted access to mining, the continuation of oil exploitation without environmental considerations, the centralization of power through the financial suffocation of local governments, and the systematic criminalization of all forms of opposition and popular organization.

The kitchen as prison: A feminist elegy for domestic slavery

By Garima Srivastava* Kumar Ambuj stands as one of the most incisive voices in contemporary Hindi poetry. His work, stripped of ornamentation, speaks directly to the lived realities of India’s marginalized—women, the rural poor, and those crushed under invisible forms of violence. His celebrated poem “Women Who Cook” (Khānā Banātī Striyāṃ) is not merely about food preparation; it is a searing indictment of patriarchal domestic structures that reduce women’s existence to endless, unpaid labour.

The price of silence: Why Modi won’t follow Shastri, appeal for sacrifice

By Arundhati Dhuru, Sandeep Pandey* In 1965, as India grappled with war and a crippling food crisis, Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri faced a United States that used wheat shipments under the PL-480 agreement as a lever to dictate Indian foreign policy. Shastri’s response remains legendary: he appealed to the nation to skip one meal a day. Millions of middle-class households complied, choosing temporary hunger over the sacrifice of national dignity. Today, India faces a modern equivalent in the energy sector, yet the leadership’s response stands in stark contrast to that era of self-reliance.

Search This Blog