Ensuring gender parity by a whisker?

It seems emoluments of UP’s Provincial Armed Constabulary (PAC) personnel are slated to go up by a whisker — by Rs 200 per month to be precise — to promote upper-lip foliage cultivation. At present, just Rs 50 per month is offered as incentive for them to brush up their bristly batons and, clearly, the forces’ bosses feel the policemen need more than that to keep mooches up and twirling. The bigwigs apparently believe moustaches — the more luxuriant the better — engender ‘respect’ from the aam janta, a factoid underlined by the lipholstery sported by actors portraying crusading cops. Given the glorious record of moustaches among the ranks of fighting men (leading some regiments in the Indian Army to traditionally insist on their soldiers sporting them), a similar stipulation for UP’s PAC personnel seems fair.

However, the clean-shaven and tonsured UP chief minister Yogi Adityanath announced last year that three battalions of women will soon be inducted into the PAC. Incidentally, several other states already have women in their provincial constabularies, none of them mustachioed. But for the sake of equality, women personnel cannot be denied that extra Rs 250, or be expected to do without the respect that supposedly comes from having moustaches. Maybe the women will be expected to use the money to buy stick-on versions, like bindis.