14-hr duty, where’s time for yoga: Cops

Currently, camps are being organised in the police lines of all districts in which yoga trainers from Patanjali Yogpeeth are giving yoga lessons to the police personnel for free.

Bhopal: The Madhya Pradesh police administration’s recent diktat making yoga compulsory for all personnel has left many of them unhappy. They said it was unjustified given their hectic duty schedule.

Currently, camps are being organised in the police lines of all districts in which yoga trainers from Patanjali Yogpeeth are giving yoga lessons to the police personnel for free.

However, many policemen felt it deprives them of family time besides posing other difficulties. “We totally agree that it (yoga) would help us a lot. But the whole concept ends at the point that do we have time for it? We are on duty for at least 12-14 hours and we hardly get time for our family and ourselves,” said a constable who identified just by last name Rai, while speaking to HT on the issue.

He added that constables and other ground level cops will never be free of the work pressure to take out time for yoga. “We strive to get time to rest after duty. On a given day we join duty in the morning from about 10am till late 11pm or 12 midnight. We get time to have our dinner and a few hours sleep, is more than enough for us. How this yoga concept would be feasible in this entire busy schedule,” said Rai, adding that it was “unfair” to compel the cops to practise yoga.

Many senior police officers agree with Rai’s view. One of them on the condition of anonymity said that the decision to make yoga mandatory is not possible on practical grounds.

“Just to comply with the decision what the town inspector concerned would do is that he would send one of his constables to the yoga camps just to mark their police station’s presence there. There is already staff shortage in the police department and on top of that everyday there is something or the other happening including festivals, mass events or VIP movements. It is also not possible to monitor that if they are actually practising it or not,” said the officer, adding that there was hardly any chance the pressure would decrease on the police personnel in this country full of complexities.

Additional inspector general, (welfare), Anshuman Agrawal, however, said efforts of the police administration are on to ensure all of them practise it.

“There are yoga courses, which are focused on the constables according to the whole concept. About 40,170 police personnel have so far practised yoga in the last six months in the entire state. The whole concept is in initial stage and we are sure that the numbers would eventually increase. To focus on the fitness of the personnel, gymnasiums are also being set up at the district police lines so as to facilitate them to work on their body,” Agrawal added.