Hitherto unknown and isolated villages which have undertaken Prahari project activities are now attracting media attention. Enthusiasts from TV Channels, press circuits and other social organisations are visiting these villages and openly engaged in discussion with the villagers.The positive and encouraging media reports have become a source of inspiration for these people and the local police personnel.The frank feedback and unbiased evaluation by the national and international media people have given Prahari villagers a moral boost. Some of the media write ups are :

8 June, 2003
PEOPLE'S POLICE
Citizen's Force
An Assam Police project that began as a PR exercise has ended up reducing crime, creating jobs Samudra Gupta Kashyap Guwahati: In Assam's remote villages police is not a dreaded word. And that's all due to the efforts of a project started by the present DIG (CID), Kuladhar Saikia. Three years ago when Saikia was DIG at Kokrajhar, five villagers of Thaigerguri were killed. It was a case of a witch-hunt. But Saikia saw this not just as a law and order problem. An award-winning short story writer, Saikia toured the village and found that illiteracy, ignorance and poverty were the demons that lived with these Bodo tribals. Their situation was made worse by the refusal of the civic administration to enter this militancy haunted zone. Saikia got cracking. He made the community fix its small problems themselves and promised that the police would watch over. He called this new project Prahari-an acronym for Pragatir Hake Raij which means people's initiative for progress. ''It is a wonderful initiative for participatory development and community policing,'' says Dipali Basumatary, a resident of village Thaigerguri. As a result of the project, awareness about social evils has shot up in these villages. So, witch-hunting has become a thing of the past. The project also started self-employment schemes and today women in Thaigerguri own 15 electric spinning machines. Saikia's experiment prompted Assam Police director-general Hare Krishna Deka to declare Prahari a state-wide project. Today 40 villages in the state are covered under it. ''We don't give them any money. We just show them the way to do things with whatever is available locally. This way we have prevented the villagers from looking at the government for small things like repairing the village school or draining out excess water from the fields,'' says Saikia, the nodal officer for Project Prahari. After the police, it's now the banks who have joined the effort. For instance, in Lauripara over 60 women now have bank accounts. The project has also contributed in improving the health of these villages. With more people visiting government hospitals instead of quacks, the number of malaria and water-borne diseases has come down. The police presence in these villages has also reduced crime and helped keep militants away. Clearly, this is one region where the police has arrived on time.

27.10.2003
Community Policing
plan to bring more villages under "Project Prahari"PLPplPlan to bring more villages under 'Project Prahari'
With 'Project Prahari' becoming popular in rural areas, the Assam Police is contemplating to bring in more villages under the project. Currently, 48 villages in the state are covered by the project. Launched in August,2001 at Thaigerguri village in Kokrajhar district to flight witchcraft, Project Prahari (people for Progress) has now become a major component of Assam Police's community policing programme. Recent survey shows that the crime rate has decreased in the Prahari village ................ The Assam Science, Technology and Environment Council (ASTEC) has agreed to provide solar lighting system to Prahari villages, which do not have electricity connections. ASTEC Director A.K. Barua, following his meeting with Prahari officials has provided two solar lamps to Thaigerguri villages, where the project was first launched. Police officials associated with Project Prahari said that efforts are on with the ASTEC to provide rainwater harvesting system for drinking water facilities in the North Cachar Hills and Karbi Anglong districts. The Guwahari based Cane and Bamboo Technology Centre (CBTC) of the United Nations Industrial Development Organisation (UNIDO) has also decided to help Prahari villages by imparting training in cane and bamboo technology . Tdwelve people from three villages of Bongaigaon district of Lower Assam have already been trained and these trained persons are now trying to produce Venetian blinds which have expert potentials. With the help of CBTC, police officials are planning to set up a plant for recycling of bamboo wastes to produce charcoal at Prahari villages. Police sources said that a team from Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Guwahati, comprising faculty members and students would soon be visiting some of the Prahari villages to study their needs. This has come about following an understanding between the police department and IIT Guwahati. N.K. Choudhury , a member of IIT, Guwahati's governing body, is coordinating with the police to help the Prahari villages. Sources said that IIT Guwahati is trying to devise a technology for mechanised looms which can be run without power in these 48 Prahari villages. During their visit to these villages, the IIT Guwahati team would find an appropriate technology for the villagers as per their requirements.

16.6.2002
A tale of two villages
This tale starts more than a decade ago. Ten kilometres from here, in the twin villages of Bedbari and Charapara, where 5,000-odd Rajbongshi, Sarania and Bodo tribals live...............
However more than anything else, what stands as a concrete evidence of the improved police-public relations is a jointly built 30-feet long wooden bridge. "The bridge has bridged the gap between us. Without it, the villagers had been suffering a lot, with patients not able to reach hospitals and students unable to cycle to this town for their college," Borgohain observed. "The inherent commitment of many subordinate police officers towards social welfare was ventilated through this project." With the bridge, the Police hit two birds with one stone. The district police chief said "The bridge is of strategic importance to us. We can now go for counter insurgency operations in that area."

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THE HINDUSTAN TIMES

25.11.2002
'No returning to dacoity even if I have to starve. For 10 years, he wrought have in Assam's southernmost Karimganj district, his hideout in Khagail village even being called a " mini Chambal". No matter how hard the police tried, Netal Mian's 21 member dacoit gang armed with just three pistols and two rifles smuggled from Bangladesh via Agartala, were just invincible.Then, the police changed tactics, became a froce with a human face, and today Main and his men vouch against crime. In fact, Netai says he would never again take to dacoity even if he has to starve. "Poverty forced me to take up dacoity" the reformed 42 year old dacoit told Hindustan Times. In 2001, Project Prahari was launched and the district S.P. approached Mian's mother and family, offering help in rehabilitate Netai if he surrendered. Netai and his men laid down arms and were sent to jail as under trials." had 22 cases against me. Most of them have been disposed of and only for cases remain.". He has now returned to farming and is all praise for the police, "who helped me regain my human nature."

Docoits turn sentinels of peace
In village after village across Assam, a silent revolution is changing the face of the once superstition-ridden society and giving a new mantra of life to hardened criminals. Consider this: In Khagail village of Karimganj district, former dacoits are now actually serving as village policemen and helping the people combat crime at the grassroots level. Indeed, just two years after its launch, Assam police's ambitious Project Prahari has brought back smiles on the faces of thousands of people and proved the sceptics wrong. An acronym for "people for progress", Project Prahari first got under way at Thaigarguri village in Kokrajhar district in September 2001. Kuladhar Saikia, an IPS officer, initiated it to combat witchcraft. After witchcraft was eradicated in Thaigarguri, police chief Hare Krishna Deka made Project Prahari a state-level peace and development initiative as part of the community policing scheme and extended it to 35 villages across the state. The rate of insurgency-related crime has declined in eight villages under Kochugaon police station of Kokrajhar district. Before Project Prahari was launched, nine persons had been killed or injured in these eight villages in 2001. Project Prahari entered Kochugaon one-and-a-half years ago and immediately succeeded in lowering the crime rate. In 2002, only three persons were killed or injured in the area. This year, only one such incident has been reported and not a single abduction has taken place since last year. Saikia's concept envisages prevention of crime through non-conventional policing. It also aims at encouraging the youth to be involved in constructive activity instead of veering towards militancy. In Khagail village of Karimganj district, 11 dacoits surrendered and volunteered to work for Project Prahari. "These dacoits are now helping the police combat crime at the grassroots level. They are convincing other dacoits to surrender and lead peaceful lives," R.M. Singh, commandant of the 7 Battalion of Assam police said. Singh is the nodal officer for Project Prahari. Prior to Project Prahari, the number of dacoities in the Khagail area was 28 in 2000 alone. After the project was launched, such incidents came down to eight in 2001 and six in 2002. No such incident has been reported this year. In Kokrajhar, the public response to Project Prahari has compelled Bodo militants to leave the Kochugaon area. The militants could not stop the project because it was the catalyst for development of these remote villages, which had long been neglected by government agencies.

April 28, 2003

Sept. 5, 2003
Assam leads in community policing - Presentation on Project Prahari impresses all at Shillong officers' conclave

Project Prahari is an initiative in community policing, one that aims to improve the police-public relationship and the lives of the people, especially in the countryside. The main objective of the project is community participation in development, with the police force playing the role of a catalyst...H.K. Deka,DGP Assam said the project had been extremely successful in Kokrajhar district, building public opinion against both witchhunting and insurgency. Apart from DGPs and inspectors-general of police, Meghalaya chief minister D.D. Lapang and officials of the Border Security Force and Assam Rifles witnessed the presentation. To Lapang, the best thing about the presentation was learning that Prahari was launched "without spending a penny". A senior official of Meghalaya police echoed him, saying Prahari was a model worth emulating. "We must experiment with such ideas," he said. The special director of the Intelligence Bureau, N.C. Padhi, was impressed, too. Addressing the gathering, he called for "co-ordinated efforts towards achieving the common goals of the northeastern states". Meghalaya is reportedly planning to send an official team to the areas where Prahari is being implemented for a study. "The project is definitely good. With some planning, it can be initiated elsewhere," the state's additional director-general of police, W.R. Marbaniang, said. Representatives of the Union home ministry said the initiative by Assam police could be the answer to militancy and other law and order problems. "This a great example in community policing. It gives the community a stake in development and the inspiration to stand up against militancy," a senior ministry official said. Deka offered help to any state that wanted to break new ground in community policing. "If anybody wants our help, we will definitely do so," he said.

DECCAN HERALD
SUNDAY SPOTLIGHT

Dec. 1, 2002
A new dawn
A development project by policemen in Assam
has helped people get over superstition
and lead better lives
It was May 25 in 2000. At Thaigarguri, a remote and backward hamlet in lower Assam's Kokrajhar district, village-headman Samarendra Narzary presided over a nocturnal meeting of elders. The agenda was to decide the fate of four men and a woman whom a quack-priestess had detected as 'witches' and held responsible for a number of deaths in the villages. The village-court pronounced capital punishment to all the five. The sentence was executed on the same night itself. A frenzied and ruthless mob bludgeoned them to death. Narzary had no qualms about witnessing silently and, of course, approvingly the gruesome execution. Neither had he any remorse when cops came to the village next day and arrested him with 17 others. After three months, they were out on bail, still not repentant for what they had done to "free the village from the clutches of witches ". But, more than two years later, Narzary is now touring Guabari, a village in neighbouring Bongaigaon district, where another 'witch' was recently beaten to death. With him are around 20 men and women from Thaigarguri. They are now telling villagers of Guabari that witches do not exist on earth. "If anyone has died in your family, it must be because of a disease, not because of any witchcraft performed by any of your neighbours. So, don't look for witches. Rather, if anyone is ill, take them to the hospital," 60-year-old Narzary, who had once believed that a witch was responsible for the untimely death of his brother, tells people in Guabari......Click for more

Oct 2, 2002
Project Prahari’ aims to end witch hunt
Very low level of education and lack of medical facilities lead to belief in witchcraft in different backward places of Assam, particularly in the lower Assam districts of Kokrajhar, Bongaigaon and Dhubri and many innocent persons became the unfortunate victims of this superstition in the last few years. However, the encouraging thing is that due to police efforts of eradicating the social maladies under ‘Project Prahari’, in one particular village, the persons, once involved in witch hunt are now encouraging others to root out this practice. The DIG (CID), Kula Saikia told The Assam Tribune that at one point of time, witchcraft was practiced even in Europe, but in Assam the basic factors which lead to the belief in witchcraft include low level of education, helplessness in a life-threatening situation, lack of medical facilities etc. He pointed out that due to lack of medical facilities in the remote areas, the people are forced to depend on quacks and when they fail to cure the diseases, the quacks put the blame on someone else and sometimes, the quacks themselves face the wrath of the people. There are also instances when witchcraft was used as an easy way to make money during dull season. Saikia said that the ‘Project Prahari’ of the Assam Police, which aims to eradicate social maladies through community policing and community development, was first launched in a remote village Thaikarguri in Kokrajhar district, where five innocent persons were brutally murdered by villagers. He said that five persons — four males and one female — were killed by the villagers on May 25, 2000 as they were accused of practising witchcraft. The incident occurred after the deaths of several children due to various diseases...click for more

Jan 4, 2003
Project Prahari brings ray of hope to Lakhipar village : Project Prahari has got a positive response in the insurgency infested Nalbari district and brings a ray of hope to Lakhipar village under Barbari Police Station. Lakhipar was infamous for its NDFB stronghold just before the launch of the project. Now the situation is fast changing as the villagers are coming forward to avail of the scope of Project Prahari which gives employment to the women folk besides extending facilities of education, agriculture etc. As part of this project, the Nablari police set up a primary school at the village supplying text books to the students. The police are also providing special help to the orphans of the village. So far, the police under the project provided mechanical training to seven youths of the village and gave engagement to 15 youths in different personnel security agencies. The women with the help of police set up different weaving units at the village. The police supply the necessary yarns and purchase the woven products at remunerative prices.

Sept 2, 2003
Assam Police ties up with IIT, Guwahati
The Assam Police has entered into a tie-up with the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Guwahati, for transfer of appropriate technology to the remote villages of the State covered under the Project Prahari of the Police. The Assam Police recently held a meeting with the officials of the IIT in this regard and three key sectors have been identified for immediate attention. The Assam Police was represented in the meeting by DIG(CID) Kula Saikia, who is the nodal officer of the project Prahari, assistant nodal officer RM Singh and AK Sinha Kasyap, while the IIT was represented by its Director, Deputy Director and faculty members of the Departments of Mechanical Engineering, Design, etc. Former Vice-Chancellor of the Gauhati University, Dr KN Choudhury, who is a member of the Board of Governors of the IIT, coordinated the interactions between the Police and IIT. Sri Sachin Kakati of the Department of Mechanical Engineering of the IIT has been appointed as the nodal officer to coordinate between the Assam Police and IIT for implementation of the projects. The three key areas identified for transfer of appropriate technology include designing of bamboo furniture for schools and primary health centres, improving the traditional irrigation system used by different ethnic groups of the State and improving the efficiency of the looms by using mechanised system without using power...Click for more

May 28, 2003
Project Prahari' helping in improving police-public relations
From a small beginning in a remote backward village in militancy affected Kokrajhar district, the Project "Prahari" of the Assam police is gradually being spread to all the districts of the State to improve police-public relation. ..The basic objectives of the project include making the law enforcing agency an integral part of the community development process, ensuring appropriate environment for people friendly policing and ushering in better police community relation. Under the project, villages which are either communally sensitive or terrorist prone, socially under privileged etc are being selected. The thrust areas under the project include improvement of the communication system including roads and water ways, health and hygiene, formal and informal education, adaptation of appropriate technology to local needs, etc. The local police is acting as a catalyst in the whole process by organising support from different agencies like District Administration, DRDA, Health Department, PWD, ASEB, PHE, banks and other financial institutions etc. The project was launched in Thaigarguri village in Kokrajhar district in August, 2001...Click for more

March 5, 2003
Project Prahari helps transform village into a role model
Under the Samaritan scheme of the Assam Police called Project Prahari, at least one remote village in the district is set to see a happier future. The project is a brainchild of the Assam DGP, Hare Krishna Deka. Ordinarily used to round up ruffians and maintain law and order, cops of the Khowang police station in the Dibrugarh district are taking up an altogether different role as society peers and thereby helping villagers to help themselves. Project Prahari was launched at the nondescript Bokahulla village on March 17 last year. During the past twelve months, the hundred odd families of the remote village - it is located about 3 kms away from the Khowang police station - have developed their area into a role model, with each villager participating in the development process. Today, the agricultural fields of Bokahulla boast of multi-cropping, the lone lower primary school has undergone a drastic facelift, and the severely potholed PWD road passing through the village now is a lot better, after locals volunteered labour. Says Bipula Nanda Choudhury, deputy superintendent of police: "All we did was to motivate the villagers to do certain things by themselves, without waiting for the official departments." Project Prahari, he says, is all about empowering the people. "We in the police just liaise with government departments, so that existing development schemes reaches the people through an express window." The villagers of Bokahulla area today empowered and motivated. They do not think twice about rendering community service voluntarily. However, this change of mindset took some effort on the part of the police. DSP Choudhury gives full marks for this to the officer in-charge of the Khowang police station, sub inspector Surjya Kanta Neog. He was the key person to help form a community management group in the village. This group today is taking up several other development works for sustained improvement of the area. As a part of this, the villagers have been induced to multi-cropping on their farmlands. Cultivation of Ahu and Bodo paddy has just been initiated on an experimental basis on a 50-bigha plot of the village. DSP Choudhury said the Bokahulla experiment has been successful due to unstinted cooperation from various government agencies, like the DRDA, irrigation and other departments. Currently, the villagers are actively considering poultry farming, piggery and fishery rearing as viable avenues. For the police, Project Prahari has helped to get out of the monotony of chasing thieves, smugglers and insurgents. And the rewards, though nothing material, include the satisfaction of helping a society stand up on its own steam. For the Bokahulla village, which is populated by poor people and a socially backward community - it is yet to boast of a graduate - the change is indeed most welcome.

June 8, 2003
Project Prahari providing self-employment avenues to State youths
The change in attitude of the people of backward villages towards militants is the biggest gain of the Project Prahari implemented by Assam Police as after being provided with avenues of self-employment, the villagers have started to denounce militancy. Recently, 10 persons of three backward villages of Bongaigaon district - Betbari, Chiponsila and Sorapara - were sent to Guwahati for training in the Cane and Bamboo Technology Centre (CBTC) of the United Nations Industrial Development Organisation (UNIDO) so that they get self-employment opportunities and the trainees were very enthusiastic about the whole experience. Talking to this correspondent, three of the trainees, Sujit Kumar Roy, Niranjan Roy and Chatra Singh Roy said that the Project Prahari was launched in that area in 2001. They admitted that some ULFA men frequently visited their villages and "we were harassed for the same." But the situation has changed after the project was launched as the people got closer to the police as all the villagers are definitely not the supporters of the militants....Click for more

29/ October 2002
.. bid to make villagers equal partners in development
A ssam Police under the banner of 'Project Prahari' is trying to play a significant role in igniting a feeling of self-respect, self-belief, self-confidence, self-help and community enterprise in the villagers to make them an equal partner in development and peace. Lauripara, an adivasi village in Kokrajhar district is having a community centre with "Tatsals" where all the village women work together to weave cloths. Two sewing machines are being run on community basis and women folk are eagerly learning stitching to increase their earnings. A giant fishery is being developed which will make significant impact on the economy of the region. Recently, a team of fishery experts explained to the villagers about scientific methods of pisciculture . Village Thaigerguri under Kachugaon police Station is another pioneer in such endeavours, where local community is actively progressing through community spinning, common cultivation, women run micro credit society. The village will soon have a community piggery project. With the advent of development, old beliefs and superstitions like "watch hunting" has become a thing of the past. The villagers are today in fact, eager to educate others as was done recently in Guabari under Dhaligaon police station of Bongaigaon district. Several villagers of Thaigergaon interacted with Guabari villagers and were able to convince them to eradicate this social evil, Assam Police is also making a concrete approach to wipe out this malady from all over the state. A cluster of villagers around Thaigarguri namely Ouzargun, Islampur, New Islampur and Domdoma of which last two are Rava- inhabited have taken up several developmental projects. In addition to their strenuous duties, police has been successfully co-ordinating, monitoring and assisting these self-employment schemes. A general sense of peace and conflict resolution is dawning and is bound to dilute the ethnic tensions for which Kokrajhar is so offer in news.

Octber 7, 2002
Editorial : Ending witch-hunt,
:No society, not even those of Western climes, can claim itself to be totally free of superstition. Neither can any segment of the social strata. Educated and ostensibly enlightened individuals are as suspceptible to mindless superstitions as their illiterate and credulous counterparts. The difference lies in the consequences. While most superstitions are relatively harmless and serve merely to highlight the folly of the believers, there are pernicious variations which can result in murder and mayhem. The spate of witch-hunts followed by the slaughter of innocents in Assam in recent years, particularly in the districts of Kokrajhar, Bongaigaon and Dhubri, belong to the latter category. Barely two months back two people in New Dhoradhora village near Kachungaon were killed by a mob for practicing 'witchcraft'. One of the most brutal killings took place in May, 2000, when five persons were butchered by enraged villagers of Thaikarguri in Kokrajhar District, because they had been accused of witchcraft. In June last year two individuals were murdered in similar circumstances in Uttar Patgaon village, while a woman was recently killed in Guabari village under the Dhaligaon police station. It is believed that there are many more murders of 'witches' each year all over the State, though more often than not the motive for the killings are attributed to other causes. Given the number and nature of such heinous offences that smack of medievel mores rather than of the 21st century, it is heartening to note that the Assam Police is cognizant of their ramifications, which are too complex to be treated merely as a law and order problem.....Click fore more

7.10.2002
Police launches projects for uplift of tribals affected by militancy
Till a few years back, villages like Thaigerguri, Nayak Gaon, Laoripara and Demidema Gaon in the Kokrajhar district were not only dubbed as militants' hubs, but were also victims of severe communal riots. But today it is an altogether different story, thanks to Project Prahari, a development project launched by the Assam police. More than 180 families from the Bodo and Santhal communities in these villages have come together and geting regular training and capacity building exercises that are being carried out by experts from the Agricultural Research Station and the district development agencies for dissemination of knowledge on agriculture, sericulture and other related occupations....................... Because of its difficult terrain and geographical isolation the terrorist had been using the area for their unsocial activities. And the villages with 100 per cent tribal population lacks all sorts of modern amenities. Now the Assam police's Project Prahari encourages people to understand and appreciate the fruits of empowerment community participation, decision making and development and changing of community potentials to socially meaningful purposes.. ............. the majority participation of women folk in the Community Management Group has ensured a platform for freedom of speech and expression to come out of age old veil of social isolation. Several bighas of community land had been reclaimed and tilled for cultivation of horticultural crops and spices, Significantly, community house built by the Community Management Group has become the centre for regular.

19.4.2003
Project Prahari helps in bridging canal
An irrigation canal in Kokrajhar district of Assam, which was the bone of contention among the people of four adjoining villages in the past, has now turned out to be a model of concord for them. Thanks to the tireless efforts made by Project Prahari, an Assam Police project for socio-economic development, that made this dream come true. Project Prahari achieved this feat when the canal under Surfanguri Police Station, which was the bone of contention among the villagers ,was reopened by them recently.

Indo-Asian News Service
Dec 3, 2002
Police in Assam also battles witch hunting and sorcery
By Syed Zarir Hussain

Besides battling insurgency, police in India's northeastern state of Assam are also waging a different battle - combating mounting occult practices. Furious mobs have killed at least 200 people during the past five years for allegedly practicing sorcery and witchcraft, mostly in tribal-dominated areas of western and northern Assam. The bizarre killings have prompted the police to launch Project Prahari, a community policing mechanism to fight a spurt in witch hunting. .......