WE were sad to hear of a number of traffic policemen falling sick owing to heat at the peak of the summer. Although Goan summers are not typically an Indian summer, the rise of the mercury can cause severe discomfort and also illness.

We wish and pray our traffic policemen suffering from heat-related sickness get well soon and are back on the street. For we need them there. And we need them in good numbers.
And we need them to be working truly like traffic policemen. There are several things lacking in the average traffic policemen of Goa that they personally, and the top brass of the police departmentally, need to overcome in order to be efficient and effective. One of the first things expected of a traffic policeman is his ‘presence’ on the duty spot. We do not mean by this just the physical presence of the policeman, but presence in the sense of users of the road being aware and respectful of it. It is not very uncommon to find a traffic policeman standing round the corner of a road, rather than standing right in the middle of it. It is also not uncommon to find a traffic cop standing under the nearest tree to his post—and what is more appalling, talking on his cell phone. Sometimes you can see a traffic policeman standing right in the middle of the road, directing the traffic casually with one arm while holding his cell phone to his ear with another.
Now, we have this highly objectionable and despicable phenomenon of arrogant motorists, stuffed with US presidential power in their face, who have never ceased talking on their cell phones ever since they were invented and grabbed by them. God knows whether they let the cell phones go off their ear even during their sleep! Now, for such telephonomorons not long ago, the SP (north), Mr Bosco George had found a cure, which we were not very happy about, but anyway it was some curative move instead of none and we said okay. Mr George had worked a Buddhist middle path for teaching the telephonomorons some law. In Delhi and other cities, traffic police challan you if they catch you using cell phones while driving. But in Goa, traffic police were not willing to do that. Why? Because, said Mr George, “In Goa, if a policeman stops a four-wheeler, it hurts the ego of the ‘so-called’ law-abiding citizen, many of whom start dropping names to get away. To avoid this, we have decided not to stop four-wheelers.” The path chosen by Goa police for enforcing the law as well as avoiding a direct confrontation with the well-connected offenders was to note down the registration number and post a notice to their residential address.
What a pussycat police we have got! The best nobility-phobic, plebeian force of the world! Have you not seen—no wonder—men (and forgive us feminists, more and more women in the likeness of their oppressors too) whizzing past you in cars with tinted glasses, fancy number plates and other-worldly lights? When power drives on the road, why only ordinary folks in their cars and scooters, even the men in uniform who are supposed to exercise absolute power over how one drives give them way! Such privileged treatment to the most arrogant tribe of motorists cannot be permitted in a democracy one of whose central principles is that all are equal under law. If there are unequals and equals in our society we would be an Orwellian society of 1984 where the hooligans and offenders with powerful men in their front, back and side pockets will rule and the others will be reduced to the existence of tongueless, eyeless and armless creatures, including the instruments of the state such as police. When motorcyclists and scooterists are found violating traffic rules, they are flagged down and hauled up on the spot. Why? Just because the poor fellows do not have any names to start dropping at once to send shivers down the spine of the uniformed, poorer enforcer.
The discrimination must stop. The police must expel fear from its heart. All must be treated with equal disrespect—if they disrespect the law. They must be seen as delinquents, as potential murderers. Thousands of Goans have sacrificed their lives at the demonic altar of the traffic offenders. Let us stop the murderers on their way. Let us give them exemplary punishment—and public humiliation by stopping them in the middle of the road will be something nice to begin with. Break the hubris to make them gentlemen.