“I always wanted to combine firmness with compassion.”

Dr Prateep V Philip IPS currently holds the position of Additional Director General of Police (Economic Offences Wing) in Chennai.  He holds a doctorate in management studies on the Friends of Police Movement that he pioneered in Tamil Nadu.

Dr Philip also developed an innovative concept ‘Equilibrium Thinking’ to bridge the gap between universal values and modern living with relevant application and explanation. He recently caught the eye of global management experts with his theory of ‘Excenomics’, a new global discipline that focuses on studying excellence in all its dimensions.

He has won prestigious awards for professional excellence and outstanding contribution in India and abroad. Some of his awards include: Queen’s Award for Police Training and Development out of all   commonwealth nations in 2002, Rashtriya Suraksha Award at Global Security Conference, New Delhi, Communal Harmony Award, and Rotary award of Excellence.  Dr.Philip has also been nominated for Roman Magsaysay Award and International innovator’s Award at Harvard University

In an exclusive interview, Dr Prateep V Philip IPS talks to Marie Banu about the Friends of Police movement and its impact in our society.

About your childhood, family, work at SBI?

I grew up in Bangalore and studied in St Joseph’s school, the same school that produced Rahul Dravid and Sabeer Bhatia of hotmail fame. I did my graduation at St Joseph’s College and my Masters in Political Science and International Relations at Bangalore University. During school days, I was a mediocre student. Without too much of effort, and studying just before examinations, I used to get a first class.

As a student, my passion lay in studying about great lives. I was always looking for inspiration. I used to read a lot of biographies. I participated in debates and extempore speech. I also had a passion for writing since childhood. Some of my writings were liked by my teachers and they read it out in class. This encouraged me, and I wrote a novelette titled ‘Red Sun’ when I was studying in the sixth standard. It was about a family in Thailand. I also wrote a lot of middle articles for the newspaper, mostly humorous.

In my Pre-University, I took humanities deliberately, although I had scored high marks in Science. I always chose to go by my passion and so took arts subjects.

While pursuing my first year of Master’s degree, I got the opportunity to work as a probationary officer in SBI. I was with the bank from 1984 to 1987 and resigned in order to join the Indian Police Service.

My older brother is a doctor in Australia and my parents are no more. My mother was serving in the health sector and my father was a businessman.

From being an ASP to ADGP. What has been your most difficult moment?

As ASP trainee, I used to take interest in petitioners. I worked with a Superintendent of Police, who is now a DGP. He was very humane and used to say that ‘Life is larger than law’. I started looking at dimensions beyond law.

There was once a petitioner who did not have support from his family to sustain himself. I visited his home along with the Inspector and requested his family members to support the petitioner. In another incident, there was an encroachment and the police were physically uprooting houses. My heart went out to an elderly man who was trying to protect his home from being demolished. I quickly sent a hat out to mobilise funds to support this person. These are scenes that come back from my training days.

I always wanted to combine firmness with compassion. One of the reasons is my sense of biblical values. I began to believe in Jesus since the age of 17, though I was born a Christian. The values I picked up made me think different.

I have been through several difficult situations, which no SP has solved before me. Soon after Rajiv Gandhi’s assassination, I was posted at Ramanathapuram in 1994. There were caste clashes in Rajapalayam that threatened to spread across the state and I handled the situation effectively by ordering ‘shoot at sight’. It appeared in the national news and psychologically deterred the people from indulging in violence. With just two casualties we were able to bring the situation under control.

Managing a million people with just 1000 men is a big challenge for an IPS officer, because only 50 percent would be effectively available at a given point in time. It is only by virtue of your wit, wisdom, and deployment of manpower, you will have to solve a problem cost-effectively. I learnt the basics of man management, police management, law and order management, and solved some major crimes and challenging law and order situations.

Can you tell us about the ‘Friends of Police’ movement?

One morning, when I was sitting in my portico, the idea of Friends of Police or FOP flashed in my mind. I spoke about this in many forums, and it was well received.

When I was shifted to Ramanathapuram, I moved out of my comfort zone. I therefore wanted to do something out of the way. So, without seeking any formal sanction, I decided to start the ‘Friends of the Police’ movement.

I wanted it to be a mass movement in community policing and aimed to enrol 20,000 FOPs to support the 1000 policemen of the district. I said that it should be a mass movement in community policing, and like the freedom movement it should involve the people.

I kept contemplating why God preserved my life and saved me from a major international disaster. I call it creative questioning. When you keep asking yourself questions, at some point you get a creative answer. After a long while, I got the answer: “It is to humanise the police.”

People were encouraged to enrol in FOP and serve the State by partnering with the police. With the media attention it got, I realized that the idea could spread across the state, country and have a trans-local significance.

Police is hated by people, for one reason or the other. I call it police isolation and public antagonism or the “power syndrome”. If you share power, people will like you. If you don’t, they will hate you.

I requested the Hon’ble Chief Minister Dr J. Jayalalithaa to extend this concept to the whole state, and in one government order she gave the approval. Then, it took ten years to be recognized. In 2002 it won the British Queen’s award for Innovation in Police Training and Development. We used the 15000 £ to set up a state- of- the- art training centre in Chennai. That has trained 150,000 people with just 20 lakh rupees as funds per year again sanctioned by the Hon’ble Chief Minister in response to my appeal.

FOP is a force multiplier. One policeman along with a FOP doubles his power and influence. FOP will therefore be a bridge to the wider community to which he belongs. There are FOPs in every police station today. They register with the local police station and are monitored by the Superintendent of the Police. In a year, five workshops are held in every district and commissionerate.  40 police personnel, from the rank of Police Constable to the rank of Deputy Superintendent of Police; and 40 FOP, from students to retired persons, participate in these workshops.

Many cases, FOP has come to the rescue of policemen who were about to be assaulted as it happened in a tea estate in Ooty. Once I received information from a FOP, who belonged to a minority community in Kilakarai, about some explosives being planned to be used against a procession. We could arrest and seize the explosives with this timely information.

The information that I did not receive from professional intelligence agencies, I received from an ordinary fisherman who was a FOP.