Would We Have The Criminal Tracking Network and Systems Capabilities In India?

Would We Have The Criminal Tracking Network and Systems Capabilities In India?

New Delhi: Besides having a bad cyber law India also has pathetic cyber security and inadequate cyber forensics capabilities. In the absence of requisite legal framework and expertise, is the government of India justified in spending thousands of crores of hard earned public money on projects that are going to fail? Techno-Legal experts like Praveen Dalal have been reiterating this fact time and again. Will the government of India listen or keep on wasting millions of money upon hit and trial projects?.

The Central Government is working upon a Rs 2,000-crore ambitious project titled Crime and Criminal Tracking Network and Systems (CCTNS). Its purpose is to bring all 16,000 police stations in the country under a single network. The same is designed to counter terror challenges and will become operational by 2011-12. The Home Ministry is working on the CCTNS infrastructure. This linking of all police stations with a centralised system would help in easy and effective information sharing and action taking. However, the real question is will India be in a position to firstly establish and then actually implement this ambitious project? There is no doubt that India does not have experts to establish and manage this highly technical system.

 Further, even if we train enough people to man this system, it may fail to produce results. Praveen Dalal, the leading Techno-Legal Expert of India and Managing Partner of Perry4Law is of the opinion that India should first arrange for good techno-legal experts before jumping upon the technical terrains of CCTNS. He further informs that a similar initiative undertaken by the US Government to modernise the FBI’s crime tracking system known as the Virtual Case File failed miserably due to lack of planning and effective strategies.

The good thing about the proposed CCTNS project is that the government has time to put it in place till 2012. However, keeping in mind the past experience as well as the governmental capabilities this seems to be dream beyond accomplishment. Till the governmental will is there to achieve the results, these highly glamorous projects are at best a bad policy decision to waste hard earned public money.