Men in blue come out of blues

Be it a turbulent protest or peace operation, the men in blue or the personnel of Rapid Action Force are replete with the scenario. Braving the violent situations and living a deplorable life inside the dingy vans filled with armouries and rations at distant places which are hither to unsimilar for many of them, the racking profession of men in blue has been viewed with great pity.
The state-wide bandh on Monday may have passed off peacefully, but the meticulous preparation by these men have contributed to the success of its success. Having been deployed at the sensitive areas, even though they belong to armed forces, they are at the disposal of State police. "We work on the clear directions of city police and we don't have any powers to act unless it is specified by the police authorities of the state," said a personnel.
Currently two companies with their head quarters in Hyderabad have been deployed in Mandya and Bangalore. With each company having 150 to 160 jawans, has no shift or change over. Irrespective of the situation, they work all through the day to maintain and restore normalcy in the violent areas. The enduring psyche of these personnel has no comparisons. "Over the years, incidents like these have become common and we are acclimatised to this." With each battalion consisting of jawaans from different parts of the country, the ambience among them is more or less a homogeneous and trans linguistic.
Amid looming uncertainties over their positioning at any place, they start prepared from their HQs with a ration enough to feed a company for more than 15 days. "It's not that we permanent in the platoon, there will be interchange of jawaans from other regiments to RAF and vice-versa," says A P Srivatsava, Deputy Commander of the battalion in Bangalore. "We have seen many threatening situations than these and I feel people in Bangalore are more educated and they have been cooperating with us in a great way which is something special for all of us," he explains.