Indian police learn to de-stress

By Zubair Ahmed
BBC correspondent in Bombay

Police in India's commercial capital, Bombay (Mumbai), are being offered stress therapy.

Police use breathing techniques to help them relax

The scheme has already been completed in four of the city's 90 or more police stations.

It underlines the new focus on the state of mind of the Indian police officer.

The media and public are increasingly asking why the men in uniform are becoming so anxious - and is stress therapy enough to help them?

Concentration

People in a packed auditorium in the city are united in the performance of sudarshan kriya - the rhythmic breathing technique.

But this is not a trendy upmarket gym. It is a police station in Mumbai.

There's no third party who they could and talk to, such as a counsellor

Dr Rajesh Parikh,
psychiatrist

The policemen sit with their eyes shut and hands raised, and they are all a picture of concentration.

But this is also supposed to be fun. A "stress buster", after a hard week in the office.

The police officers all recite the holy sound "Aum".

The six-day course, called The Art of Living was introduced after a policeman on duty at Bombay's international airport killed his commanding officer and took six people hostage.

Just a few hours after that incident, a policeman killed his wife and child before taking his own life.

The verdict was that the two men were stressed and depressed and the spotlight fell on their working conditions.

Extreme violence

Retired police chiefs say the long hours affect their officers' health, morale and social lives, and in extreme cases, they turn violent.

It is not a flood yet but, on average, five cases of extreme violence are reported every year in Bombay alone.

Julio Rebeiro - the city's widely respected former chief of police - says senior officers are to blame for the predicament of their officers.

"I've noticed over the years that the police officers at the higher level are losing touch with their men," he says.

Officers try to burn off some stress in the gym

"Formerly an officer like me would know them by name to a very great extent. Now that doesn't happen anymore."

However Bombay's joint police commissioner, Ahmed Javed, says stress is part of the job but is often not dealt with properly.

"The problem, I think, probably comes up when the handling of the stress itself is not done individually or at the institutional level and that's what I think we have to look into," said Mr Javed.

In a dilapidated police gym the policemen say a proper workout provides an outlet for some of their feelings of frustration and pent-up anger.

Some say this may be the only outlet they have.

'No outlet'

"There's no third party who they could and talk to, such as a counsellor," says Dr Rajesh Parikh, a senior psychiatrist in Bombay's Jaslok Hospital

Some of his clients are policemen.

"And when the stress builds up and there's no outlet they can very easily take their own lives or those of the people they are meant to protect," he says.

Even those who run the Sudarshan Kriya therapy sessions admit the course can only do so much in combating stress.

Organiser of The Art of Living, Ramesh Raman, says the solution should be seen as a whole package and that the government should also reduce working hours.

It is too early to see how many police officers will attend the stress-busting course, but experts say it is significant that more and more policemen from outside the city are signing up for it.

Several thousand policemen, fighting against Naxalite insurgents on Maharashtra state's border with Andhra Pradesh, have just begun their course in The Art of Living.