Surat Police Commissioner Rakesh Asthana is today known as the man who’s made the city a safe place to live. Earlier he was known in the bureaucratic circles as the man who supervised the investigations in the fodder scam cases as the SP CBI, and DIG of the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI). The 1984 batch Indian Police Service (IPS) officer of the Gujarat cadre became Surat’s top cop in 2011, and he immediately initiated a traffic awareness campaign, named ‘i-follow” with the help of youngsters,and college students. That campaign created a massive awareness about traffic rules and regulations and soon morphed into first CCTV project in the country that had a direct participation of the people. The result of that direct participation is that the safe city project, which is costing Pune around Rs1600 crores, is being implemented in Surat for less than Rs150 crores. In an interaction with R Swaminathan and Pratap Vikram Singh, Asthana narrates how he and his team managed to achieve this

Can you tell us a little bit about the financing model?

Our money is coming from the people. We want to make best use of it, and cut costs at every level. For example we called a local company to provide the networking solution for the feed from the camera to the control room. The company already had a fibre optic network in the city and had functioning processes associated with it. As a result the company gave us an extremely competitive price. For five years it is charging us just Rs2 crores, that is Rs14 lakh per year. If we had done the same project with big companies like Tata, Reliance or BSNL it would have cost us at least Rs15crores per year.

There are other ways in which we have optimised intelligently. We told the vendor that we will design the camera poles ourselves. We contacted the civil engineering department of the local engineering college SVNIT and requested them to give us a design as per our specifications. They did and it cost us just Rs30,000.  We divided the entire project into several components and asked companies and institutions to implement each component in the most competitive price. And since everything was done according to our specifications and with people’s involvement, it turned out to be quite successful.
 
When I joined Surat in 2011, we got youngsters and college students to design a programme to make people aware about traffic rules and launched a movement for traffic awareness. That movement generated a lot of interest and so we already had a people-centric platform for the CCTV project. We already have a trust by name Surat Traffic Education Trust, since 2005, wherein leading citizens of the city from all walks of life are trustees. Police Commissioner is the ex-officio Chairman of the trust, but entire business of the Trust is being run by the President, Secretary, and other private members of the trust. Entire scheme of i-follow campaign and subsequent CCTV project has been implemented and monitored by the aforesaid Trust.

What is the role of the trust?

Every state has a shortage of policemen. Surat has a population more than 50 lakhs, but our sanctioned traffic police strength is only 200. You can’t manage traffic with this strength. Through the trust we have started “traffic brigade”. The brigade is composed of people drawn from the community. We train them and they help us in managing traffic. We pay them on a daily basis, and take care of their insurance and health related issues. In order to motivate them we have many incentive and training programmes for them. Entire cost of the Traffic Brigade is borne by the Trust, and substantial part of it is reimbursed by the government through its Marg Suraksha Nidhi, which has been created with the traffic fines collected by the Police.
So when the CCTV project came up for implementation we thought it would be better if the trust collects money from people to eliminate any allegation of misappropriation and transparency is maintained in all respects. So we used the trust for collection of fund and they have maintained proper accounts and subjected it to audit. I am proud to say that money thus collected and involvement of people in the project has enabled us to procure the best technology in the world at very reasonable rates. The Command and Control Centre was created in the Police Commissioner’s Office at Surat.
 
Can you tell us more about it?

Our Command and Control Centre has a 280 square feet Video wall, which is having the latest Projection technology, which not only saves power and less emission of heat, but also ensures excellent quality of picture. It is a sheet of glass embedded with LEDs. The feed comes from the cameras and gets reflected at the back of the wall. In front of the wall you see an image that’s as clear as the one that you see on your digital cable TV. The heat generated in the process is very less and so the life of the equipment is prolonged. Additionally we are saving energy. This is the best technology in the world. It is costly, but in the long run we are saving on energy. The solution providers claim that for next five years it will be trouble free, even if it runs for 24x7x365 days.
 
Who are solution providers?

Video wall is from M/S Delta,whereas the cameras and the software (NEXTIVA-PSIM) are from M/S Verint (Israel based company). It has Video Management System, and Incident Management System. Servers are from M/S IBM where the video feed is stored for 30 days. We have a provision of 250TB storage, and can automatically increase storage capacity depending on the amount of video time that we need to capture. The feed is managed by the video management software, which is embedded with video analytics. The incident management solution is synchronised with the 2D GIS map of the entire city on the video wall.

Let’s suppose a fire has broken out near railway station and we have cameras there. When you receive a call regarding the incident you just have to click on the area where fire has taken place and automatically that camera nearest to the fire will appear on the screen. Simultaneously calls get generated to the police station, ambulance and fire services, among others.


Is it helping in reducing crime?

In areas where CCTV has been installed there is a reduction of 27 percent in crime. These include a reduction in violent incidents; bag lifting, chain snatching and molestation.

Is there a similar impact on traffic behaviour?

It’s too early to comment on traffic behaviour of the populace as the traffic sense has to come from within, but it is a fact that the areas where cameras have been installed in the first phase, people are conscious of the fact that the violations are captured in the cameras, and as such they are more careful. Moreover, the fine for violations is small for any kind of effective deterrence. So this will take some time to improve. But our fee collection has certainly gone up (he smiles). We are using more video footages to issue challans. My idea is that the traffic police should not issue challans. It should do traffic regulation. All challans should be automatic. We have a target of issuing 3000 to 5000 challans a day through the CCTV footages. Right now we are issuing around 900 to 1000 challans per day. Between April and October (2013) 1,11,866 challans were issued and a fine of Rs 30 lakh was collected.
 
Are you also responding to incidents on real time basis?

Yes. Whenever incidents take place, our people call the Control Room which directs PCR vans to reach that place. We will soon be fitting GPS on PCR Vans and other Police Vehicles, and synchronise them with the Control Room. It will then help us to direct policemen in more efficient manner to the place of incidents.

Still the CCTV project is in its initial phases and it is operational in just 23 locations. The city is quite big. Our plan is to cover 500 locations through 5,000 cameras within three to four years. The total cost works out to around Rs150 crores. The Surat Municipal Corporation is contributing money, and we have also requested for funding under JNNURM. Further we have asked the government to give us back the challan fee we submit annually, which is around Rs 15 to Rs 18 crores, to be reinvested into the CCTV project.

Can you tell us about contribution of citizens and corporate houses?

We received Rs 12 crore in the first phase. Out of Rs12 crore, Rs 5 - 6 crore came from the diamond industry. The textile industry contributed Rs 2 crore. Another Rs 2 crore came from the Surat Municipal Corporation. Reliance, Essar and Larson and Toubro together gave Rs 1 crore. Salaried people too contributed individually, though I don’t have an aggregate figure now. In one of our public meetings, a person got up and said he would give his entire salary. People have contributed anywhere between Rs3,000 to Rs50 lakhs.

How about capacity building?

We have trained 150 policemen already.