TiNTED glasses of cars are going to be removed by Sunday. This is the latest plan of the home ministry to curb crime in the city. The argument in favour of not allowing cars to have tinted glasses might be strong. After all, police would like to see the passengers and what they are carrying. The criminals using cars with painted glasses will be at a disadvantage, or that is what we got to believe.

So the city roads will be cleared of the vehicles which carry passengers not visible from outside. it will certainly add the much--talked --about transparency to the 'suspect cars'. The ministry's decision will also force the 'hazy beings' travelling under the cover of tinted glasses to think up something new to avoid detection. The home ministry strongly felt that something had to be done to contain crime. Hence, the embargo on painted glass.

in the recent past, police made little impact on the crime situation. Let's see why. Criminals are apparently thinking and moving ahead of the men and a handful of women too, chasing them. Police bosses have admitted that the professional criminals are better equipped( if not better trained!) and have all modern sophisticated communication gadgets at their disposal. They outnumber, outmanoeuvre and outwit the poor fellows in charge of protecting citizens.

That is the oft-repeated story of crime and (no) punishment. Small wonder, criminologists, lawyers , jurists and of course the retired bureaucrats are closely examining the syndrome of ' unusual proliferation of crime'. Their findings get regular coverage in the press. Civil society members are also very vocal about the crime situation. There is an aura of the issue being addressed rightly.

But the criminals are unruffled as their only concern, the law enforcing mechanism , has failed to deliver.

The root causes behind the surge in criminality, like poverty, social unrest and ever-declining standards of ethics and morality in politics, have been identified by the experts. But few of them seem to know how the malady should be treated.

Now, the painted glass is the object of great suspicion. The criminals, we are told, are carrying arms and all kinds of contraband goods taking advantage of their poor visibility behind the dark glass of a car.

it sounds a bit like the ruse that the villains of vintage thrillers resorted to in the dim and distant past. Do we have to believe that removal of such glass will greatly affect the mobility of criminals? if that were true, why police are acting so late? After all , the unusual rise in crime in the city is nothing new, nor is it unknown that criminals don't love to be in full public glare. The tinted glass might have given them what they wanted. But what were police doing all these days? At best, they have discovered something not so special. At worst, people might begin to think how long they would have to bear with these routine discoveries which do not make them more secure.

Jamilur Rahman is an Assistant Editor of The Daily Star.