It is clear from the re­sults re­port­ed so far that im­me­di­ate re­wards are ac­cru­ing from the de­c­la­ra­tion of the state of emer­gency by the Gov­ern­ment. A drag­net of over 300 ar­rests, in­clu­sive of al­leged gang mem­bers and lead­ers, and the seizure of guns and am­mu­ni­tion amount to a good ini­tial haul. As the emer­gency con­tin­ues, the ex­pec­ta­tion must be that ad­di­tion­al larg­er num­bers of want­ed peo­ple and their weapons of crim­i­nal de­struc­tion will be cap­tured. In this re­spect, the se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cers car­ry­ing out the emer­gency reg­u­la­tions must be praised for be­ing com­mit­ted to do­ing a good job for the na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty.

How­ev­er, the point ex­pressed by At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan that a dis­tinc­tion has to be made be­tween ap­pre­hen­sion by the se­cu­ri­ty forces and the ju­di­cial process of find­ing peo­ple guilty of crim­i­nal of­fences and sen­tenc­ing them is well tak­en. Un­doubt­ed­ly, that dis­tinc­tion has to be made and so should it al­ways be to en­sure the con­ti­nu­ity of jus­tice in a so­ci­ety such as ours. How­ev­er, it can­not be that even­tu­al con­vic­tion of al­leged crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty does not come in­to reck­on­ing in even­tu­al­ly mak­ing a de­ter­mi­na­tion of the suc­cess or oth­er­wise of the call­ing of the state of emer­gency.

Sure­ly, while the sep­a­ra­tion has to be made be­tween the en­force­ment of the emer­gency and the con­vic­tion of peo­ple, it can­not be that large num­bers of peo­ple are sim­ply roped in dur­ing a pe­ri­od of emer­gency and then it is found that there was no good rea­son for such peo­ple be­ing de­prived of their lib­er­ty. And this is re­mem­ber­ing that dur­ing this pe­ri­od of emer­gency the law en­force­ment of­fi­cers are re­quired to have lit­tle jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for ar­rest­ing and de­tain­ing peo­ple. If when the time comes for a full as­sess­ment of the emer­gency the num­ber of con­vic­tions in re­la­tion to to­tal ar­rests is not tak­en in­to con­sid­er­a­tion, then the Gov­ern­ment would have sim­ply car­ried out a pub­lic re­la­tions ex­er­cise that would have caused con­sid­er­able dis­tress to the na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty with­out re­al­is­ing last­ing re­wards in re­turn.

But we main­tain that "so far so good": some peo­ple be­lieved to have been in­volved in crime and their weapons have been tak­en out of cir­cu­la­tion and there is a halt, even if tem­porar­i­ly, to the mad­ness. We can­not how­ev­er not note the mea­sure of con­fu­sion and dou­ble­s­peak that has sur­round­ed the de­c­la­ra­tion and the car­ry­ing out of the or­ders. The Prime Min­is­ter first makes the an­nounce­ment even be­fore the Pres­i­dent ex­er­cis­es his au­thor­i­ty, and does so with­out de­tails of the or­ders; the high­ly paid Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice and his deputy are out of the coun­try; when the CoP re­turns he makes state­ments which are con­tra­dic­to­ry to the ac­tu­al op­er­a­tional­i­sa­tion of the or­der; a day or two be­fore the de­c­la­ra­tion is made, se­nior Min­is­ter Roodal Mooni­lal says there is no need for such a move, and se­nior at­tor­neys are find­ing con­flicts be­tween what the law is in­tend­ed to do and the ac­tu­al le­gal stip­u­la­tions.

While the cir­cum­stances may have been ex­treme­ly dif­fi­cult, it is clear that the many voic­es that have spo­ken on be­half of the Gov­ern­ment in this mat­ter have caused con­flict­ing mes­sages to be sent. Giv­en the cir­cum­stances of the de­ci­sion and im­ple­men­ta­tion of the state of emer­gency, such con­flict­ing mes­sages may be ex­cus­able for the first few days, but not for much longer. Of more im­por­tance than its com­mu­ni­ca­tion is the need for the Gov­ern­ment to de­vel­op an im­ple­mentable plan to cope with the ex­pect­ed re­sump­tion of crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty af­ter the ex­pi­ra­tion of the emer­gency mea­sures. Hav­ing a plan to fol­low-through on the pe­ri­od of emer­gency will al­so be count­ed in de­cid­ing whether it was worth it or not.