IPS Tejaswani Gautam – The People’s Officer Who Is Winning Hearts With Her Policing

IPS Tejaswani Gautam has recently been on news for her novelty in her approach towards handling the current COVID-19 lockdown situation. Stationed currently as an SP of Churu district in Rajasthan, however, her dream always was to be an IAS officer. Despite her consequent couple of attempts at it, both the times she still qualified to become an IPS officer. “Destiny wanted me to serve in the police,” she chuckles while saying.

In an exclusive conversation with LifeBeyondNumbers, IPS Tejaswani Gautam candidly shared about her childhood dream to become an IAS officer and a lot more.

When she was in her 3^rd standard, her father, a pharmaceutical consultant by profession, shared with her a dream of becoming an IAS officer. “During the end of my graduation, I determined to prepare for UPSC to attain my life-goals. While preparing for UPSC, I simultaneously pursued law. Commitment and consistency were the keys to my success.”

For her, cracking UPSC was the only way to work closely on the grassroots with people due to the incomparable amount of public dealing required for the service. “As one of the essential service providers in the country, we have little room for error as we are dealing with matters related to people’s lives,” she adds.

Being a woman IPS officer

In an extremely male-dominated field of work, the work of the police is naturally considered to be men’s work.

“On our respective cadres, we are called ‘lady’ IPS officers. That tag is overbearing since as an officer the gender of the person should not matter. Everyone automatically expects the officer to be a male and in fact, a female officer is also expected to act ‘male-like’. A female officer has to do thrice the amount of work in comparison to her male counterpart, ” resents IPS Tejaswani Gautam.

“You choose to either be on the field or become a mother. It is a persistent battle of proving yourself,” she said as, for a female officer in this country, the expected years of her field service and the age of her biological reproduction collide. The average age of getting selected in UPSC is 28-29 and as an SP, one has almost 7 years of service time on the field. So, most female officers are made to choose field job over procreation.

“Even within the same rank of promotions, certain positions are more important and borne greater possibilities of doing something substantial. But it is less likely for a woman to head an important position. The notion that an important position is to be held by a man, is still largely there. Though there is no glass-ceiling for growing in the service as far as growing in ranks go but in terms of the projection of power and being posted in important positions, it is definitely there,” Tejaswani discussed the time-bound nature of the promotions when asked about the glass-ceiling in the service.

Tackling the Corona situation in Churu

Police had to show either coercion or compassion to restrict people’s movement during the lockdown. But Tejaswani chose an alternative to both these options. She took resort to the online platforms to engage them in various activities.

Her primary idea was to organize an online contest in association with Filmisthan in 17 categories like cooking and singing. To keep people at home in the evening, live entertaining awareness sessions were conducted with people coming from various fields of achievements like health, music, sports, films, and theatre, etc. to keep people engaged and motivated. These online live sessions reached up to 60 to 70k audience at a time.

The third innovative campaign took shape as ‘Mera Churu, Mera Farz’ (My Churu, My Responsibility) with two specific mottos- not to let anyone go out unnecessarily and to make people vigilant of their lanes themselves so that no one goes to bed hungry. Famous personalities like Pankaj Tripathi, Hemant Pandey, Anup Soni participated in the campaign to spread online messages among people for keeping Churu safe. As a result, at present there is no active Covid-19 case in the district and all infected people have duly recovered.

“It started as part of our core policing responsibilities. Due to the limited number of police personnel, we realized the impossibility of manning each person by the police forces. We can only have pickets on the main points of the district, though ideally, we should be catering to each lane of the district.” She quickly transformed her ongoing plans on workshops and live theatre for Churu people into conducting online live sessions while utilizing her theatre contacts and received generous responses. Logistically, all the departments had to do was to make sure that they had the speaker for the live session on board along with an internet connection and a facilitator of the platform. Her efforts received appreciation from across the country and outside.

Street Theatres: A mode to campaign

She considers street-theatre to be one of the most potent and effective mediums to reach out to the people as she says, “The fact that you are not on stage or behind the camera but are performing amidst the live audience is enough to establish an unparallel connect with the people. Street theatre is the best way to present social issues to the people in an entertaining manner.”

During the course of her probation in Ajmer, she also created and trained a group of 16 constables including men and women for two plays- Awaaz and Gumrah. Whereas the former caters to violence against women, the latter deals with the concerns of drug addiction among street children in Ajmer. In the clamped and congested dargah area of Ajmer, children, especially street dwellers, are used for drug peddling and other illegal activities. “Because of their short height they can move and slip in easily. These children are made addicted to thinners and other drugs in order to compel them for supplying drugs. We rescued 67 children within the 5 days since we started the campaign,” she said worryingly.

These two street-plays were taken to the different corners of the city. It helped the police department generating a process of two-way sensitization. First, the police turned out approachable for the people. Second, the patriarchal notions regarding the misuse of laws protecting women’s rights among the policemen were also broken.

A People’s Officer

“For the last 3-4 months, I have not slept for more than two consecutive hours because of the endless phone calls I have been receiving from the people of my district. Despite so, if my responding to people even in the middle of the night, makes them feel better and confident, I would like to continue being available and approachable.” IPS Tejaswani believes in being approachable and always at people’s service.

“I realized how difficult it is to sustain the lockdown by even giving up on the evening walks when my retired father who is staying in Delhi told me how depressing it is for him. In Churu, a suicide case was reported over the suspicion of the person being infected by COVID-19. I understood that the threat of depression and negativity, being inculcated due to the prolonged lockdown period, is real,” Tejaswani explained when asked about the motivation behind these initiatives. After the lockdown eases, there may not be everyday live sessions but she plans on continuing these activities intermittently and making occasional appearances in such sessions for being able to interact with the people of Churu.

“In the upcoming days, I hope to be able to translate my achievements into policy frameworks put together through some amount of research work. I also plan to write a book enunciating my experiences of being in the service,” she shared about the life ahead and Tejaswani is ready to go with whatever life throws at her. She wishes to take on the challenges and work for the betterment of the country. After being 7 years in the service, Tejaswani’s aim is to touch more lives through the course of the service.

The sedimented dominance of patriarchy may not be easy to overcome. In spite of that, through constant dedication, hard work, and conviction over capabilities, women should be able to work towards a better, brighter, and more equal society in the future. Examples of personalities like that of IPS Tejaswani Gautam’s are to inspire the generations to come towards that direction.