Performance over negativity

At first, she wanted the Foreign Service, but a last-minute decision, made Chandana Deepthi choose the police service! Once she became an IPS officer, she realised that this was the best job ever.

“An IPS officer must have the courage to act as per his or her conviction and have the ability to get the work done tactfully. They must have remarkable leadership qualities to motivate their force to deliver,” she elaborates.

In almost every field, women fight the battle of unfair stereotyping thrown at them. Is her field any different? “No. It’s the same here too,” says Deepthi. But then fighting these odds is simple. “My parents gave me an empowered upbringing to not let negativity affect my performance. Hence, it isn’t a big deal for me,” she points out.

Not one to rest on her laurels, Deepthi feels an urge to achieve a lot more. “I want to probe into more challenging cases and wish to specialise in certain areas. At the community level, I would like to contribute by ensuring a positive and a permanent change while in a field posting,” she says.

Life does get extremely busy at times for Deepthi, and that’s when the need to relax and unwind crops up. “I unwind by learning things — small hacks, to anything that’s new and can enhance my life’s experience, even a new recipe,” reveals the young, Warangal-born officer, who pursued her engineering in Computer Science at IIT Delhi.

Elaborating on the efforts to change the work culture and encourage more women to join IPS, she points out that they are slated to bring in 30 per cent women through the new recruitment batches.

People’s lack of trust in the police service is something that bothers her, but she is confident of making a difference. Capacity building, technology and feedback, besides garnering public partnership in policing through community policing, are but a few steps put forth by her, towards making the police force more professional. “It is going to be hard work and it certainly requires a lot of patience to rebuild the trust. But it is not an impossible task,” she asserts.