Reading, play time keep children happy at two unique police stations in Odisha
The Hindu
This will act as a bridge between community and police, says DIG
A walk into a police station often evokes fear in mind given the negative perception about policemen. But, children in district headquarter town of Nabarangpur in Odisha do not exhibit such fear when they enter their local police station.
What is it that the Nabarangpur police have managed to do in order to allay the fear? Children get attracted to the newly-built library room, which has a wide range of books and variety of games to spend time inside the police station.
“Creation of library rooms in Nabarangpur and Umarkote police stations will help everyone. People and staff will inculcate reading habits. This will act as a bridge between community and police,” said Rajesh Pandit, Deputy Inspector General of Police (South- western range).
The Nabarangpur district came up with the idea of establishing libraries inside police stations, responding to a call by Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik, who wanted police stations to be children-friendly.
“We thought of giving the idea of making police stations child-friendly an institutional shape. Books in different languages including English, Hindi and Odia have been procured. One would be surprised to also find books in local Kui dialect,” said Parshottamdas Parmar, Superintendent of Police , Nabrangpur.
Apart from books, which are both informative and entertaining for children aged between 3 and 15, games such as chess and Rubik’s cube keep them entertained and busy. Children can search countries and their locations in the globe available in the library.
The libraries in the two police stations have separate entrance with a lady officer deployed in plainclothes. Libraries have been developed in such a way that arguments and discussions inside the police stations cannot be heard by children.
No room for complacency till counting is completed, Chandrababu Naidu tells TDP-BJP-JSP contestants. The TDP-BJP-JSP alliance will register a comfortable victory in the general elections over the YSRCP, he says. Alleging that the YSRCP has conspired to create disturbances on the counting day, the TDP national president advises the chief counting agents and their teams to see to it that the officials adhere to norms related to counting.