Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh launched the Student Police Cadet (SPC) programme for nationwide implementation at a ceremony in Gurugram, Haryana on Saturday. In his address on the occasion, 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 expressed concern that education these days stressed 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 coping 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 witness the breakdown of the traditional family system and worrying rise in incidents of crimes and rapes, he added.
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. The Home Minister said the SPC programme will provide 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. 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. He 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 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 8 & 9 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 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. Students need discipline and hardwork which will be imparted through SPC. He said SPC will cover around 4 crore students.
