Good news for the ladies of Kolkata – CCTVs in buses will provide safety

Kolkata is setting a trend towards providing better safety to the women of Kolkata when they opt to travel by the JNNURM buses of the state-run Calcutta State Transport Corporation. It has installed CCTVs in 632 buses at the rate of three for every bus.
This has been reported in timesofindia.indiatimes.com dated 15 April 2015.

Two of the CCTVs will be installed inside the bus, one in the front, another at the center and the third will be located externally at the rear of the vehicle to record movement of vehicles on the road in the vicinity.
The storage capacity would be 100GB for each bus and in the initial stages, the footage captured by the CCTVs would be stored for three days. Later it would be overwritten automatically. Therefore, anyone having any complaint of theft, or pickpocketing, or bad behavior by the ticket-conductor or the bus driver or any other problem would have to register the same within three days.
Moreover, the CCTV footage would help in investigating accidents.
Officers of the Kolkata Police have carried out an inspection of the buses and have expressed satisfaction with the camera surveillance system.
On the face of it, this appears to be what the city needs but, installing this on only 632 buses may not be sufficient – these buses would probably operate on only a few select routes and, routes where instances of crimes are more may not be covered. As per information on CSTC website, it has a total of 840 buses – the remaining would also need to be brought under CCTV surveillance. And - care must be taken to ensure that no one steals the CCTV units - they can fetch a couple of hundred rupees per piece.

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