Revamping the police establishment. Review on Bombay Police

[This review is not on Bombay Police, but on the police establishment in general. Since there is no suitable category for that, the review is posted here. It was achougoo's review that prompted to prepare this, as I thought my comments cannot be accommodated in the still shorter[!] space available for Comments.]

Achougoo’s review had some good and kind words on the Bombay police. Of the four comments on his review three endorsed his views, and one wondered if the police could at all be honest.

As I have been interacting with the police from time to time and in more than one State, and have read at length about “police behaviour”, in my view it is not possible to have a single, sweeping opinion on the police establishment and to offer any mono-causal explanation to its malaise.

IPS

In my assessment most of those beginning their career after the IPS training have a lot of enthusiasm and take their career seriously, while some do so with an eye on easy money.

IPS is undoubtedly of the higher-echelon officers and the kind of training and privileges they get their subordinates do not get.

Though even among the IPS several are corrupt, prejudicial, politicised and an affront to the cadre they represent, it is not possible to treat all of them so. While I cannot cite many instances as they are few and far between, I know a case of an IPS officer, who later became the CBI Director and retired. I had met him only once, in a seminar at the India International Centre, Delhi, and we had some brief interaction as participants of the seminar. From what I know about him, he is worth his weight in gold.

To the best of my knowledge he is a person of high integrity, Spartan simplicity (when I was gulping beer at the IIC he was sipping lemon juice!), clean to the core, and also firm in his concerns and commitments. From the IPS he went to an American University and did his Ph D on Policing and other issues relating to the police establishment, and his thesis was published as a book some time ago.

I gather that when Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated at Sriperumbudur, of the police officials still remaining alive on the scene most of those who could move ran for life, whereas this person not only remained at the venue of the tragedy but also attended to all the work that the police were expected to do.

He retired some time ago after which he has been a columnist to a fortnightly English magazine, writing on matters relating to crime (including cyber), drug trafficking, policing, and related issues.

The sore thumbs

All the subordinate cadres of the police leave much to be desired. The general and repeated complaints against them are they are brutal, boorish, irresponsible and irrational. This raises larger issues if they are so on their own volition, more so when they have also been victims of political and public wrath; if they are victims of a vicious nexus and a vicious circle that make up and control the police establishment; and so on.

To these the answer is, if the bureaucracy requires overhauling its Augean Stables, the police require it even more. The boorishness of the police is not unique to any one State. It is pervasive.

Reasons for police as lesser humans

If the police are lesser humans (and more brutal), it is for reasons such as the persisting colonial image of the police as the establishment among both the police and the public; the proximity of the police and also the lack of it with the high and mighty, the powers that be and their hangers-on, causing both good and harm to the police personally and mostly harm to their policing performance socially; lack of interaction of the police with the public in general other than as ``police'', and ``complainant'' or ``accused'' at their mercy; the lathi-culture of ``roughing up'', which has to be shed at the earliest, preferably with the rough Khaki uniform; lack of democratic ethos and democratic culture which can be imparted only through regular well-organised training programmes, which alone will make the police realise that they are like any other public servant, paid to serve society and not to exploit, extort, and terrorise its victims and shield its criminals; and most important of all, lack of accountability mainly because of political interference.