Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh on Saturday launched the Student Police Cadet (SPC) programme for nationwide implementation at a ceremony in Gurugram, Haryana.
In his address, the Home Minister expressed hope that the SPC would lead to a silent revolution over the years by focusing on character building by imparting moral values to budding minds.
He further expressed concern that education these days stresses more on mere book reading with little attention being paid towards character building of students, which shows negative effects on society in terms of increased crime.
Rajnath Singh said that in order to cope with rapid modernization and cut-throat competition, schools have focused all their attention towards building careers and rising incomes, creating tremendous pressure among the young minds.
While the dawn of new technologies, internet and social media have helped our children keep pace with the changing times, it has adversely impacted our society as we witnessed the breakdown of the traditional family system and worrying rise in incidents of crimes and rapes, he added.
Singh also said the SPC programme would help in making students responsible citizens by inculcating values of respect to the elderly, discipline, social responsibility and through police-student interaction along with providing a healthy interface between schools and police peace and inculcate in the students aspects of public safety, discipline, patience, tolerance, empathy, respect of senior citizens, social harmony, traffic sense and a corruption-free environment.
He said that the youth of tomorrow who emerge out of such programme would bear ethical values of social commitment and be aware of social evils such as drugs, alcohol abuse, intolerance and vandalism. Singh also expressed confidence that this programme would result in overall development of a student's personality and bring big change in society.
The Home Minister appealed to all stakeholders- teachers, parents, students, police and officials- to participate with enthusiasm and execute the SPC as a Mission Mode project. The SPC project will also help the police assess their image in the public eye and strive for improving confidence and winning trust of the people. SPC initially will be launched as pilot programme in all States and Union Territories.
Earlier, the Home Minister launched the theme song and training manual of the SPC prepared by the Bureau of Police Research and Development (BPR&D). He also presented cash awards to winners of Logo and motto competition. He also handed over the SPC flag to Haryana Platoon Commander.
The SPC programme focuses on students of Classes 8th and 9th and special care has been taken to ensure that it does not lead to increase in the workload of the students.
The programme does not have any prescribed textbook nor is any exam envisaged. Only one class in a month is proposed. The programme seeks to cover broadly two kinds of topics, - crime prevention and control; and values and ethics.
Speaking on the occasion, Union Minister for Human Resource Development, Prakash Javadekar said that SPC is a very good initiative which will be launched initially in Government schools and later expanded to cover all schools.
He said talent alone is not sufficient for success and that students need discipline and hardwork which will be imparted through SPC. He said SPC will cover around 4 crore students.
Meanwhile, Haryana Chief Ministe Manohar Lal said the SPC will assist in social construction through personality building of students. He said the students having undergone SPC training will be given advantage in police recruitment.
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