To Adopt or Not to Adopt

State Home Minister R R Patil came up with a brainwave idea to curb crimes against the elderly in the city. His idea is, that every policeman must ‘adopt’ (take responsibility) of a senior citizen.

What do some people have for breakfast?

Policemen in our city, and across the country are underpaid, overworked, and hardly find time to even spend with their own family. And looking at the scale of religious celebrations that go on here, one can only admire the effort and great job the policemen are doing at keeping normal functioning smooth and minimizing chaos.

And yet, our great Ministers feel that despite doing so much, the cops still need to add the responsibility of ‘adopting an elderly’ to their To-do list?

I would understand something like, having teams of social workers go to each elderly persons’ home and providing them direct contact details of a cop at the nearest police station. I could understand impressing upon elderly and their families the need for things like friend circles,  so that each one can check up on the other regularly. Or politicians could even have good ideas or suggestions created into the form of small skits and screen them on tv, showing how the elderly can be kept safe and protected.

If adoption is his solution to it, I got a better idea. Why don’t ministers adopt entire cities of the elderly. I mean, after all the scams that have robbed the country, it would still be but a tiny outgo from their overflowing treasuries towards adopting even cities as a whole. Thought about that?

If politicians cannot meet their responsibilities, let them at least ‘adopt’ part of those responsibilities.

Some shameful facts:

• Around 1800 FIRs (First Information Reports) have been withdrawn by the state police over the last 6 years on orders from the home ministry.
• At a Press Conference in the aftermath of the Nov. 2008 attack at Mumbai, R R Patil had commented “It is not like that. In big cities like this, small incidents do happen. It’s not a total failure.”

The reason I raked up that old 2008 comment is, because on those fateful days, a lot more than lives were lost in Bombay. A spirit was attacked. To many politicians, Bombay is perhaps only an ATM for them. But to its residents, it is a lot more. So for a responsible minister to have attempted to underplay the result of such an attack at a press conference; words to describe it should have been chosen more wisely.

Anyway, back to the topic. If politicians adopting cities or the elderly makes you choke on your late morning tea, I got a simpler idea. How about all politicians (public servants, supposedly) re-assign all their security (bodyguards, etc.) towards adopting or checking on the elderly in their respective cities. Are you brave enough to do that, sir?