Bangalore: The training given to police personnel often does not equip them for field-level operations. This was the consensus among participants at the discussions on `Training strategies for behavioural, attitude changes' at the sessions of the 37th All-India Indian Police Science Congress on Wednesday.

Bangalore Police Commissioner Ajai Kumar Singh raised this point and said: "there is a dichotomy between the training and work culture at all ranks of the police. This affects effective functioning. This gap needs to be filled through discussions here."

Kamal Kumar, director, Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel National Police Academy, Hyderabad, said the gap between training and fieldwork expertise existed for long. Senior officers were often forced to tell a new recruit to forget his theoretical training and focus on the reality of training. The old practice of one day in a week for the senior officers to interact with juniors should be revived, he felt. The Andhra Pradesh model of the district superintendent training new recruits on the local situation could also be followed. Joint director, Central Bureau of Investigation, Rajnikanth Mishra said, from his experience, one solution was to select an experienced officer as a resource person to retrain new recruits.

Director-General of Police (CoD) K.R. Sreenivasan remarked: "Not many serving, senior officers come forward to teach at police academies. Their faculty are mostly retired officers who are not in touch with new advancements. As in law schools, professional police personnel should teach at these academies, to teach subjects like criminology or psychology. The constabulary who formed more than 70 per cent of the police force often lacked complete basic training before being given duties. Basic training should last at one year."

Hasmukh Patel, an officer of the Gujarat police, referred to the heavy workload on constables. Sharad Chavan of the Punjab Police Academy said training did not match the actual job responsibility.

Additional Director-General of Police S.T. Ramesh suggested online training modules that can be regularly updated.

Vision

The former Chief Justice of Karnataka and Kerala High Courts V.S. Malimath picked holes in police vision for the future at the meet on Tuesday, embarrassing the police.

The Bureau of Police Research and Development and Karnataka State Police have organised the event. Mr. Malimath was the resource person for the day's deliberation.

"None of presentations had any vision," he said bluntly in his concluding remarks after listening to six presentations made on "Vision for Police-2010 and Police-2020," Mr. Malimath said."Moreover, it is also not clear as whose vision it is-whether it is people's vision or lawmakers' vision. Vision is something like an ideal that needs to be pursued in one's work."

Mr. Malimath said lack of people-friendly attitude was a real problem and the police needed to tackle it first. "Being an essential part of administration, it is important that you become a friend of everybody. Developing a people friendly attitude is most important," he said.

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