India, the world’s second largest country with a population of about 1.1 billion, has just 126 police officers per 100,000 citizens. The United Nations’ recommended standard is 222.
Well, be it 126 or 222, why is it sufficient to have just that small 3 digit number of police officers taking care of 100,000 citizens.
This ratio comes out of a simple logic.
That fundamentally most people are “good” and there is only so much “evil” in society. The ratio being the way it is, a handful of police personnel are sufficient to quell those challenges, and the large proportion of the good people in society take care of themselves.
But the danger that the world faces today, I believe, is in the increasing percentages of the ‘evil’ component of society. Due to various factors – the politics of the US, the breaking down of the communist world, the rich nations getting richer and the poor getting poorer, and on top of that, this global economic crisis, and perhaps many other factors – the world is not getting any safer. Simply because the evil section of society is getting larger.
The same happens when there are large scale epidemics. The medical practitioners to citizens ratio is also equally tightly balanced most times. Any unusually large demand of that expertise is just not available on call. For the ratios to change, takes years. There is no quick alternative.
The ratio of good vs evil in society, and based on which the ratio of police vs citizens is based, is equally tightly balanced. If the UN guidelines and India’s numbers are anything to go by, we are in worse shape there. In this scenario, if the balance tilts any further, it can lead us to chaos of the kind that we cannot imagine.
It clearly shows that besides policing and security efforts, there is a need to cleanse society. To convert the evil back to good. Its not an answer enough, just to combat evil. If simultaneous efforts to cleanse the evil are not done, we will always be just so-close to disaster!
Random Musings 