The village defence parties (VDPs) can play a significant role in preventing anti-social activities and ensuring a safe and secure environment in the rural areas. The VDPs can come in handy in defending villages from thieves and robbers through night patrolling and intelligence gathering. They can also be effective in thwarting illicit activities like bootlegging, gambling, drug peddling etc., in the villages. Many villages lack proximity to police stations and outposts and the VDPs role as the first responders can go a long way in substituting the police to a desirable extent. For this, the VDP volunteers need to be trained up in the adequate manner. Their basic responsibility of defending villages from anti-social elements, VDP volunteers can be engaged in different activities. Keeping an eye on suspected foreign infiltrators and preventing land-grabbing bids can be one such job for the VDPs. Encroachment on government land and forestland has been a disturbing phenomenon in the State and the VDP members can do a good job of monitoring such illegal activities in and around villages and coordinate with the administration in follow-up legal action on the offenders. Easing the growing man-animal conflict could be another sphere where the VDP can be pressed into service. Indeed, we need trained volunteers to coordinate with forest personnel for warding off herds of wild elephants that fall upon cropland, destroying standing crops. In such emergency situations including those created by straying wild animals in human habitations need a quick first-response team of trained volunteers. We have seen umpteen times how straying animals such as leopards, lesser carnivores, buffaloes, bisons, etc., have been killed for the lack of a quick-response mechanism to rescue the animals in distress. Properly trained, VDP volunteers can be of immense help in easing such situations.
With the changing times and with rising populations, the incidence of crimes, illegal activities and disputes has witnessed a spurt in society. At the same time, the police often finds itself hamstrung due to constraints of manpower and logistics. The VDPs can play a key role in assisting the police in tackling crimes including follow-ups. Another fruitful engagement of VDP volunteers can be in the event of natural calamities like floods, earthquakes, storms, landslides, etc.
