Every evening, by the auto stand near the government medical college in Berhampur, a police jeep stands discreetly in the shadows waiting to ambush violators of traffic laws. The helmet law goes unenforced, but riding-in-threes on motorbikes means being stopped by two lathi-wielding, uniformed men waiting near a turn on the Bramhanagar main road by the turn that leads to the residential area.

It is a fairly busy road by Berhampur standards. In the evenings, the road dotted with all kinds of shops buzzes with activity with the commotion any kind of shopping brings with it. The most interesting bit about this set-up is the two uniformed men. The epaulette stitched to their shirts says 'Special Police Officer' or SPO.

Unofficial from day one, this recruitment is a common practice in Maoist areas where local youth are given policing powers to check and inform on Maoist activity. In Chhattisgarh, Koya commandos and Salwa Judum, armed by the state police, wreaked as much violence on innocent villagers as the Maoists did. The supreme court, in a significant order, had banned the recruitment of young men as 'special police officers', later limiting the ban to just Chhattisgarh. The court had said the practice amounted to pitting people against each other and human rights organisations had claimed that it encouraged vigilantism.

A large swathe of Ganjam lies between two Maoist-affected districts of Odisha -- Gajapathi and Kandhamal and SPOs manning traffic could be harmless here. However, it might be indicative of a bigger problem. Does Odisha police have the optimum numbers?