Policing The Police 2 Ed

POLICING THE
POLICE
ENLARGED SECOND EDITION
PRAVEEN KUMAR
Published Works of Praveen Kumar
Policing for the New Age

Policing the Police
Indian Police
Inside India
Policing the Police 2 Edn
Unknown Horizons
Portraits of Passion
Love & Pride
Simply Yours
Shobha Priya
Golden Wonder
Celestial Glow
Divya Belaku
Bhavana
Priya Chaitra Tapasvini
Ananya Priya Lavanya
Priya Geethegalu
Tapasvini
Lovingly Dedicated To
SHOBHA
FOREWORD
Police police the people. Who police the police? How? The answer lies in 'Policing
the Police'. As the author says in an article in thi work, "Policing the police involves selfpolicing".This work delves deeply on this core aspect of policing and lays bare the extant
Indian Police setup, sheath by sheath, with the precision of a master surgeon, only to
rebuild it from the scratches with the right essence of professionalism, commitment and
zeal. It is an abundantly readable magnum opus of the author and a valuable reference for
understanding the pathology and the epinosic dynamics with which the present Indian
Police suffer and identifies likely solutions for its redemption. I am sure that this scholarly
work serves as a ready-reckoner for both police professionals and common readers.
This book stands out for the highest regard it holds for policing as a profession and the
paracute critique it makes of its practices in India. The UPSC also comes under its critical
gaze for its dull witted performance.
This book has another dimension. It, in certain aspects, interprets police and policing
through the prism of a poet's sensibilities with idealistic interpretations.The author's close
association with events in police and his close observations in the police world for nearly
a quarter of a century brings authenticity to whatever he says or analyses. The sensibilities
of the author as a poet with nearly half a dozen books of poems from him in Kannada and
English render his observations and analyses of police and policing highly refreshing and
interesting.
Bangalore,
Pratheek Praveen Kumar
PREFACE
"Policing the Police" is a sequel to my earlier book Policing for the new age'. Most of the
articles of the present book were already published in various newspapers including The
Hindu, The Indian Express, TheTimes of India and Deccan Herald and various periodicals
and journals like Alive and The Indian Journal of Criminology and Criminalistics. All those
articles are reproduced in this book as in the original publications with the names of the
respective newspapers, periodicals and journals indicated. Some of the responses from the
readers to the original publications are also reproduced at the end of the respective articles. I
gratefully acknowledge the contribution of the editors of each of these newspapers,
periodicals and journals, especially The Hindu, The Indian Express and Alive, in producing
this work. And also those readers who responded to the articles through the columns of the
newspapers and periodicals.
Care is taken to emphasise certain core aspects of the discussion and analyses, by figuring
them in more than one article, depending on the importance, to convey across ideas with
right emphasis. It is hoped that this exercise adds to the value and usefulness of the book. I
would be failing in my duty if I fail to express my gratitude to Shree A.R.Sridharan, IPS,
former Director General of Police and former Hon'ble member of the Karnataka
Administrative Tribunal for his unstinted support and encouragement to my intellectual
exercises. He is a rare oasis of pristine values and dignified restraint in the desert of police
and bureaucracy, inhabited by immoral hawks.
For the gargantuam size of the police organisation in India and the key-role of policing in
governing thecountry, the number of books written on this subject is absolutely exiguous.
Most of the available books are commonplaces, hardly laying claim on originality, creativity,
imagination or insight the problems in the field. They are mostly repetitions of the obvious,
rendering reading a boredom. In this sense, "Policing The Police" marks a departure from the
lot and can be called as a rare work.
Very few people are privileged to have a keek to the complexities of the police as an
organisation and the policing as a process. Lack of transparency insulates police and policing
from the public. Left to its own fate, complacency is eating up the vitals of the police. Police
will die a slow death unless somebody comes out ab intra and identifies the cancerous growth
for surgery.
The core problem areas include defective selection and recruitment, unsound training
and unhealthy job culture. Other maladies like corruption, misplaced loyalties and lack
of professionalism flow out of these core problems. On the final analysis, the problem areas
boil down to one specific morbidity, that is, utterly incompetent selection and recruitment
process at higher levels by the UPSC. Other problems flow from this single mishandling.
Blaming the system or the values is an exercise in futility for the simple reason that
system and values are the creation of the people at the top. Equally hollow is the claim that
no right persons of unimpeachable character are available for selection to key slots in the
one billion population of the country after independence. Why this atrophy after
independence? What is the panpharmacon for the malady? The book addresses such
problems with clarity and vision.
Police police the people. Who police the police? How? The answer lies in Policing The
Police. Policing the police involves self policing. This work delves deeply on this core aspect
of policing and lays bare the extant Indian Police setup, sheath by sheath, with the precision
of a master surgeon, only to rebuild it from the scratches with the right essence
of
professionalism, commitment and zeal.
A valuable reference for understanding the pathology and the epinosic dynamics
with which the present Indian Police suffer, and identifies likely solutions for its redemption.
The book stands out for the highest regard it holds for policing as a profession, and the
paracute critique it makes of its practices in India. The UPSC also comes under its critical
gaze for its dull-writted peformance.
The author's close association with events in police and his close observations in the
police world for nearly three decades bring authenticity to whatever he says or analyses.
Bangalore
- PK
CONTENTS
1. Indian police at a crossroads: which way to take?,

2. Internal security challenges and approach,
3. Indian police: time to take tough decisions,
11
4. What ails professional policing in India,
15
5. Need to liberate law enforcers from unholy alliance,

6. Role of police in the reconstruction of India,
7. Where their loyalties lie..,
22
26
8. Caught in the vicious circle of corruption,
29
9. Police structure needs the management touch,
32
10. Police & human rights does end justify means?,

11. Restoring credibility to crime investigation,
12. What ails the Indian secret police,
13. Police unprofessional,
14. Law and justice,
41
45
49
51
15. Police morale eroded by poor administration,

16. Time to improve the quality of civil service,
17. Indian police needs healthy job culture,
61
18. Corruption Indian Police Scenario,
67
19. Policing under political patronage,
22. The gun still speaks,
53
57
73
20. Quota system can weaken civil service,

21. Empowering the CBI,
79
81
84
23. Crime, Politics and the Police,

24. Criminalisation of police,
18
87
96
25. The Indian police: maladies and remedies,

26. The crumbling steelframe of India,
104
99
37
27. Indian internal security buildup,
110
28. Investigation of dowry death cases,

29. Towards sane service,
30. Lacking vigour,
115
119
123
31. Professional pride of the police,

32. Need to revitalise the police,
127
130
33. How crime affects national life,
134
34. Need of attitudinal change in police,

35. Precepts of police administration,
36. Humanising the police,
137
142
150
37. Indian police and sixty years of independence,

38. Challenges of the police setup,
162
39. Challenges of coordination in Indian police,

40. Policing the police,
167
172
41. Man management in police,
177
42. Where Indian police is heading?,
182
43. Law and order policing in India,
186
44. Investigation of economic crimes,

45. Social justice,
156
192
198
46. Enforcement of social justice,
202
47. Role of police in the cause of social justice,

48. Status of women in emerging India,
49. Police and the underworld,
50. Kidnapping for ransom,
207
211
215
219
51. Indian police: what course to pursue in the 21st century,

52. Police in the administration of justice,
227
53. Where proactive judiciary leads India?,
233
54. In defence of judiciary,
236
55. The role of police in a democracy,
239
223
56. Police as social surgeons,
245
57. Political crimes and security,

58. Police and administration,
249
257
59. Rat-race at the top affects policing,
261
60. Need of competent brass in police,
265
61. Right orientation in government service,

62. Value system in Indian bureaucracy,
63. Requisites of good governance,
64. India and All India Services,
272
276
281
65. Need of lean and mean civil services,

66. Home guards training,
268
284
288
67. Core issue and the core of Indias nationhood,

68. Religion in politics,
294
69. Crisis of right leadership in India,

70. Reconstruction of India,
300
71. Democracy for whom?,
304
72. Infrastructure development,

73. In pursuit of excellence,
297
309
312
74. Recent trends in economic crimes,

75. Corruption in India,
290
315
321
76. Innovative techniques in policing,
325
77. Revamping the investigation machinery,
327
78. Coordinated approach to criminal justice system,

79. The core of police problems,
330
336
80. Training strategy to affect behavioral and attitudinal change in,
340
81. Evolution of norms for manpower and logistics requirements.,
348
82. Vision for Police 2010 and Police 2020,
355
POLICING THE POLICE 2 ED
INTRODUCTION
The Hong Kong-based Political & Economic Risk Consultancy (PERC) in a 12-page report
on a business survey of 12 economies of Asia released on June 3, 2009 where 1,274
expatriates working in these countries were interviewed showed Indian bureaucracy at the
bottom at the 12 position as the least efficient bureaucracy after Philippines and Indonesia in
10 and 11 positions respectively. The report says that working with the countrys civil
servants in India is a slow and painful process and it continues to report that They are a
power centre in their own right at both the national and state levels, and are extremely
resistant to reform that affects them or the way they go about their duties.
The cause of the malady in reference to Indian Police is analyzed and remedies are
recommended in the article, The Crumbling Steel Frame of India of this volume. The
deterioration is a post-independence phenomenon. The once steel frame of Indian
bureaucracy of the British vintage gradually crumbled to its extant putridity under the sad
auspice of its corrupt and incompetent UPSC (Union Public Service Commission) and the
deterioration trickled fast downwards in the last six decades to bring India to this sad state of
affairs.
This volume is a first hand account of the observations, impressions and experiences of
the author as an insider. Naturally, most illustrations in this volume are from Karnataka police
where the author served at senior levels for nearly three decades. However, this makes no
difference to the over all picture of India as situation is not much different elsewhere.
As far as Karnataka police is concerned, in spite of misdeeds of notorious scoundrels like
R.S.Chopra, A.R.Nizamuddin and degenerates of the similar ilk, situation is better there than
some of the more notorious state police organizations of India. The core weakness in
Karnataka police lies in sweepingly conforming to the putrid system and bad culture against
conscience to cover own tracks. It is mere cowardice of mediocrity and gross selfish interests
of ignobility and nothing more. Yet, no way can Karnataka police be called as an efficient,
healthy and responsible bureaucratic setup yet.
Faithful assessment must precede reconstruction. This volume is an effort in this
direction. Complacency leads to stagnation and is a dangerous indulgence in a rotten situation
like Indias. This volume is intended to breach the vicious indulgence involved and inspire
India to its rich potentialities on the way to much dreamed of world leadership.
India is a civilization of diversities and a culture of contradictions. Indias is an inclusive
way of life. Along its long history, it saw umpteen falls and rises without losing its innate
vitality and always rose from worst quagmires unscathed. This resilience of India underscores
its unique heritage spawned by its thoughts and philosophies that perhaps are nearest to the
true nature of the universe that the scientific world of today is engaged in to probe, discover
and formulate as the Grand Unification Theory (GUT). This is the secret of the eternal
strength of India.
1
PRAVEEN KUMAR
This resilience of India gives hope. The present fall is not forever. Time of revival shall
come. India shall see a better system replace the present corrupt and incompetent UPSC and a
healthy administrative system replace the extant inefficient and rogue bureaucracy.
The nature of the police accurately reflects the quality of democracy entertained by a
country. This is true of India and Indian police also. Further, the menace of the current world
namely terrorism is increasingly moving the police centre-stage in governance as the sine qua
non mechanism for founding peace and safety of the citizens. These factors together render
the police and policing the deciding parameter in determining the character of a national life.
That is why India must act to bring its police and bureaucracy on right track to fulfill its
dream of a regional power and act pronto.
INDIAN POLICE AT A CROSSROADS:

WHICH WAY TO TAKE?
Policing, being a specialised job, remains an enigma to outsiders, including administrators

and the general public. Its status, somewhere between the armed forces and the civil
administration, renders its structure, scope and style of functioning undefined in the monolith
of governance. This coupled with the prolate powers to cover all aspects of living, has made
the police an awful force to live with.
The situation is like one-way traffic wherein the police have a say on every aspect of the
life of the people while the latter hardly know anything about the department. This has given
the police the unique advantage of dictating what should be what, where and how in
policing and the police organisation. This could be a boon if the right man sits at the top.
But, sycophants climb the ladder and reach the top to hold the reins and guide the destiny of
the police. The result is the Indian police has got what it deserves-a spiritless culture created
by incompetent leaders.
It has been nearly five decades since independence. The standard expected and observed
in the police at the dawn of independence is no more. Belatedly though, it has been realised
that self-rule does not mean fraud and tyranny and that the cabals of compatriots are no less
pernicious than that of the aliens. Forty eight years is a long enough period to realise the
need to break away from the webs of corruption in independent India. India and the Indian
police thus stand at a crossroads.
Policemen are social doctors and policing is a surgical operation to systematically remove
cancerous growths from the body of society. What if the band of doctors itself is infested
with serious malignant growths? This is the position of the present day Indian police. The
police, as the enforcers of law and protectors of public interests, wield tremendous powers.
Such powers must be invested only in people of high probity and conscience. Otherwise, the
powers will ruin the social fabric of the country and usher in anarchy. Powers to search,
seize, remove, detain, direct, arrest, hit and even kill may prove pernicious, if trusted to
wrong hands.
How these powers are exercised depends on the work ethics of the organisation. It is
those in an organisation who build up its job- culture and vice versa. Even a degenerate
character turns honest and efficient in an honest and efficient environment. The workculture builds and moulds the vitality to meet the general atmosphere around. Also, an
honest and efficient person in a degenerate culture is bound to change sooner or later, unless
his individual strength conquers the vitiating work-culture of the organisation. Building up a
proper job-culture is, therefore, the bedrock of a proficient police organisation.
The problem of the Indian police lies in a lack of understanding of the scope and ground
rules of its work. This results in the absence of a proper set of standards to approach the call
of duty. Consequently, each call of duty is approached subjectively, depending upon the
mood and understanding of the police in charge of the situation. This, unfortunately, is
accepted by all strata of people. The Indian police never recognises the equality of all and
3
PRAVEEN KUMAR
the need to provide security to all citizens of India. Whether it is in matters of protection,
maintenance of order, crime control or investigation, the standards of policing applied to a
nameless poor farmer in a remote village and say, a former Prime Minister, both of whom
have equal rights before the law and the Constitution, do vary.
The point is not that the principle of equality should defy ground realities, but policing
must have a reasonable set of standards within which the more important and the less
important aspects must operate. It will not be so in India until people who place their
personal interests beyond everything, including law, justice, fairness, objectivity,
righteousness, career pride and professional interests, hold the reins at the highest levels of
the department.
There are two types of approach to policing:
a. The playful approach wherein the police, as players in a football game, play the game
within the scope of the ground rules to have the ball inside the goalpost without
committing a foul. Here, the game is played dispassionately and played because the
members are paid to do so.
b. The passionate approach wherein the police break all rules and laws that come in the
way to make their task a success. They may even commit crimes in the process.
The Indian police oscillate between these two disparate approaches, depending on for
whom they work and what would be their personal gain ultimately. Only a few people with
money and power to back policing of the passionate genre deserve the passionate approach.
Others must remain contented with the playful approach. A dignified police organisation
should shun both attitudes. The former is against the tenets of professionalism and
commitment to work. The latter, in spite of its commitment to its goals, is devoid of
objectivity, fairness and justice. For, policing by criminal methods cannot be called
professional policing.
The right approach to professional policing is a synthesis of both the approaches in which
the commitment to achieve goals respects the rules and laws of which the police are
guardians. Professional commitment implies achieving goals within the parameters of the
permitted methods. The professional end of the police is upholding the interests of law and
justice. Policing is not an end in itself. It is a tool to serve law and justice. Policing by
committing crimes against law and justice is committing crimes against policing. The Indian
police is yet to show maturity of professional commitment extending equal attention to all
the needy, irrespective of their stature, wealth and position in society.
The state of human relations in Indian police does not bring credit to the organisation.
The relations are brittle and mechanical without a human touch. The relation between
different ranks are soft or hard depending upon the nature of their jobs and mutual advantage.
It is rather a donor and recipient relationship while soft, and master and servant relationship
while hard. There is no genuine human concern and no sense fo recognition of the other man
as another human being. The others human qualities and talents are dismissed as
inconsequential trash. This is equally true among officers of the same rank and has led to an
atmosphere of mutual suspicion in spite of an outward show of belonging to the single
family that the police is.
The police chiefs must think hard to decide whether the current model of human relations
in the police is conducive to healthy policing or not. A sound police organisation thrives on
sound human relations between and within ranks, sustained by genuine concern, mutual
respect, recognition, sympathy and understanding. Such relations do not perforce go
against police discipline and the official command-obedience functions. Instead a sense of
belonging and unity of purpose are cultivated. The hierarchical order only defines the
relations created in the minds of the people. Good relations strengthen the hierarchical order
by making the order willingly acceptable to all and thus facilitating its working. A subtle
mental bond that links all men in an organisation is its greatest asset. A sense of recognition
from others coupled with the pride of belonging creates a happy atmosphere in the
organisation and improves efficiency and output.
Sadly this is just the reverse in the Indian police. Here, human relations are vitiated.
Mutual suspicion and antagonism are the rule. Men in higher ranks revel in hurting the pride
of the subordinates while the latter wait for the right time to settle scores. In this atmosphere
of hostility and under-cuttings, the organisation and its objects suffer, all its people suffer
and the country suffers. This is where India stands at present.
The success of a police organisation depends on its ability to create a sense of pride and
dignity in its members including the constabulary, so that they consider themselves as useful
and responsible members of the police outfit and endeavour to live up to the image. The goal
can be achieved by proper modulation of perks, rewards, praise, good treatment, respect,
censure or punishment has been earned by him. This is a far cry from what is actually
happening in India. Good work is seldom recognised. Every job is done as a personal favour.
Medals and citations are divested of their distinction by being linked to seniority and not
merit That is why medals carry no meaning within the organisation.
What the Indian police inspires in the public is fear and hatred, not trust, respect and love.
This is the greatest single failing of the Indian police. A police force feared and hated is
irrelevant in a democracy. The argument that fear is a necessary constituent in policing is
not based on the right understanding of human psychology. The police does stand on a
different footing from the general public but that status is based on trust, respect, love and a
healthy awe, not, fear and hatred. It is healthy awe that inspires in citizens genuine
cooperation and willing subjection to police authority.
Police is not synonymous with fear. A smiling and helpful police force is a salient feature
of democracy. The police is not the enemy of the people, especially in democracy. Policing
involves enforcement of order for the good of many which may sometimes mean
inconvenience to a few. The job, if performed right, must win the trust, love and respect of
the masses. The misuse of power and a supercilious approach will alienate the common man
and earn his hatred. The exercise of police powers with absolute humility is quite possible.
An approach of service to the general public renders the exercise a sensible and delicate task
and avoids harshness. It is up to the police to show its good intentions and convince the
public about its trustworthiness. Nothing the Indian police does now will help to create
this image. It is time serious efforts were made in this direction.
The situation can be salvaged by clearing the cobwebs. There is a bunch of selfmotivated officers in key positions in the police who have contributed to the downslide of the
Indian police in the post-democratic era. They have corrupted the police atmosphere, set
PRAVEEN KUMAR
wrong precedents, encouraged self-indulgence eroded its tough image and reduced it to its
present cadaverous existence. These elements should be sidelined to make way for men of
probity to refurbish and rebuild the setup.
The future of India depends upon the strengths and weaknesses of its police. Defence
forces are relevant to the existence of India in so much as defending its borders and protecting
its system of government. But the relevance of the police is more meaningful, for, here, the
very existence of India as a nation is at stake. The significance of the police is often forgotten
somewhere between the width of civil administration and the depth of the defence forces.
The police must be powerful. It must be a disciplined and committed force. It saves the
country from all disasters; it supports the administration in civil rule and works as its watch
dog. It works as a subsidiary force in support of the military during war. If need be, it can
run the administration when civil rule breaks down and can function as an armed force if the
military fails. The importance of this great tool of governance is yet to be recognised. It is
time Indian police is given a fresh lease of life of vitality and strength. Yes, something
should be done to save the police. The question is, who should begin the process, and where,
when and how? Who will bell the cat to bring it to its senses?
INTERNAL SECURITY CHALLENGES AND APPROACH

In an age of sabotage and terrorism, no man, no place and no structure is really safe; no
time of the day or night can be construed as safe. With the increasing complexity of human
society with increasing claims on the limited resources of the world, the kettle of human life
Is spilling over with organised hatred and violence. Terrorism has become an international
phenomenon. Accrescent unemployment makes terrorism popular by giving the unemployed
youth a raison detre for life and an ideology to pursue. The lopsided material growth of 20th
century life at the cost of contentment and inner peace have endeared to man the thrills and
adventures of the life that fills up his inner void. New scientific inventions give man such
sophisticated mechanisms and machinery that he can do anything he wants without being
personally present at a place. Each man has potentially become a power-centre and he can
build or destroy the world he lives in. The rise in hatred and violence, compounded with
mans dangerous power to wreak vengeance, has made internal security an unsure field. It
has become the primary challenge for the police force, replacing its hitherto main functions
of crime control and maintenance of law and order.
The threat to internal security is posed by highly trained and motivated volunteers
belonging to highly organised and resourceful terrorist outfits. The unenviable task of
providing protection to men, places and structures from these committed zealots with the
choice of time, place and target in their favour and any number of sophisticated methods and
techniques of strike to choose from, continually sap the manpower, machinery and other
resources of the police. Even in the advanced countries the police find it difficult to cope
with the problem. The police should have led in modernisation techniques with the antipode
marching to keep pace. Unfortunately, it is not so in the Indian situation.
The reaction of the police to terrorist threats is desperate mobbing and covering the target
at best and diffident immobilisation at the worst. Their inability to penetrate terrorist
organisations has put it at a costly disadvantage. Their failure to draw up detailed long-term
plans to meet terrorist challenges handicaps them in their operations. Internal security cannot
be guaranteed sans a sound knowledge of the terrorists way of functioning.
SPASMODIC APPROACH
An internal security machinery working in a void often gives rise to ludicrous security
reactions. Anonymous calls or letters in most unlikely situations are attended to with a
desperate mobilisation of men and machinery without scrutinising the call or the letter, and
everything ends up as a hoax. An anonymous Kannada letter claimed to have been written
by the LTTE was received in Mysore with the threat of blowing up the KRS dam on the
intervening right of August 14 and 15, in 1991 and was later followed with similar threats of
blowing up the Vidhana Soudha on the same night. Somebody well versed with the LTTE
objectives, expertise and method of operation would have dismissed the calls and the letters
as a non-event. But the Karnataka police had to be prepared for an emergency because it as
not equipped to handle internal security problems with courage and confidence. It is not
PRAVEEN KUMAR
wrong to be ready to meet threats but, the action should be subtle without fanfare and
unnecessary show of strength. Desperate reaction may prompt mischievous elements to shoot
similar missives almost daily. Can the police react to all those letters similarly? It is subtle
planning and low-key operation that make security possible. All
security arrangements
must be preceded by through research and detailed plans. This is completely forgotten in the
Indian situation.
Not many are involved in an expertly drawn-up operational plan of sabotage. It is quality
that counts and not quantity in both sabotage and security operations. Those who really
execute the sabotage are highly motivated trained and competent individuals. The larger the
number, the smaller the chances of success because of human nature, coordination problems
and higher chances of leakage. Also it involves the problem of providing security and escape
routes for more men in the post-operational period. No number of policemen can stop a
highly motivated and trained man from sneaking up to his target and destroying it. What is
required is not companies of policemen, but a handful of highly qualified and motivated men
of experience with an intelligent, thoroughly drawn up security plan, based on reliable
intelligence inputs about the objects and operational plans of the adversary. Everything
except these salient features is present in the responses of the Indian police to security
challenges.
Indian security plans ignore the cardinal principle of a good reticulation, namely
providing security without coming in the way of the normal life of the target except where
unavoidable. The essence of security buildup is protection with minimum inconvenience to
the concerned. But Indian security sleuths feel otherwise. They believe in taking charge of
the target, be it a place, an installation, or a person and dictating terms as though the security
is given in exchange for freedom of movement and action. And all this for inadequate
security. But even national leaders have traded their image and popularity for this supposed
safety.
It is argued that the Indian security system is effective in discouraging the less resourceful
terrorist outfits from attempting strikes and preventing half-hearted attacks. The argument is
not convincing for the simple reason all terrorist outfits worth the name are extremely
resourceful with objectives, plans and strategies and a complete commitment to carry out
their operational plans. No target is out of their reach. If a target is not struck for a long time,
the reasons can be only three, a) the outfit has not really intended to strike, b) the outfit is yet
to equip itself c) that security sleuths could be exclusively covering the target making a strike
impossible.
India should reach a stage where the third reason which is an exception now becomes the
rule. The failure to capture Sivarasan and Subha, suspects in the Rajiv Gandhi assassination
case, is a recent event. The chance intelligence, as early as in August, 1991, that both
extremists were holed up with others in a ramshackle house at Konanakunte in Karnataka
did not enable the Indian security forces to catch them alive with all the time, resources and
the element of surprise at their disposal.
This reflects on the serious loopholes in the field of security planning in India. Instead of
inventing an undercover strategy to draw the extremists out or entering their den as friends
8
with the help of undercover agents, the police failed to surprise the suspects and surrounded
them. What happened was not only the suicide of the extremists which was expected but the
operation to nab the culprits virtually ended there.
The reason for such bungling is that Indian security operation does not go much beyond
the multiple crack forces-Black Cats, National Security Guards, Special Protection Group
and so on. Indeed, these crack forces are important but they are only the ammunition and not
the weapon. An exhaustive internal security plan on which all security strategies and
operations are based must be the gospel of the internal security religion. Sadly, India is yet to
have such a macro-plan to guide its security sleuths.
PROBLEMS
The problems of security are manifold. First is intelligence collection. Often, true and
false information are so much entwined that it is impossible to distinguish one from the other.
Even if a piece of information is identified as true, it loses its value standing in the midst of
useless material. That isolated piece of information is removed from the adversarys action
plan and when pursued leads to wrong conclusions and dangerous situations. Continued
research is a must to utilise the information in action . This again depends upon the skill and
experience of the individual or group of individuals who handle the job. Often, both the
research and analysis are carried out under the pressure of time because of the proximity of
the threat. Both intelligence and its source must be kept a closely guarded secret. Any leak
may prompt an adversary to modify his plan which will annul the security operation. This
creates problems of mobilisation and deployment without rousing suspicion. The men to
handle the security operation should be handpicked for competence and probity. Their
antecedents and recent activities must be closely examined before they are cleared. It is the
failure of security agencies to effectively carry out such preparations that cost Indian Indira
Gandhi.
The briefing of security operations about their job itself poses a problem. The time of
briefing must be carefully chosen so that while the gap between the impending operation and
the briefing gives sufficient time to the operators for preparation, it must not be too long.
The timing of briefing and development must be decided at high levels to ensure perfect
secrecy. And, how much can be told? Security operation basically involves the creative
initiative of the operator. His success depends upon the ability to assess the situation and
pursue a better course of action without loss of time. Success also depends on how much
briefing must be made to operators at various ranks and levels and how much information
and background knowledge can be fed to them. Here again, liberal outlets for vital
information create security risks. The primary requirement of any security operation is a
thorough study and analysis of intelligence and other inputs, a comprehensive plan of
operation with flexibility to meet contingencies.
Timing is an essential ingredient of security planning and decides the success or failure
of an operation. It lends the element of surprise.
Not that everything traditional is irrelevant today. For instance, the strategy of quadruple
deployment-static guards, armed pickets, mobile patrols and striking forces for a static target.
9
PRAVEEN KUMAR
Standing guards, personal security officer, inner cordon, outer cordon and striking force are
deployed for a human target while for a mobile target a security officer, escort, piloting and
striking force will form the skeleton of the system. However, it should be borne in mind that
this strategy in no way replaces specific security strategies; it only complements them.
Security, its challenges and counter strategies are ever-growing phenomena. An
effective strategy must foresee challenges and arm itself in advance. The country faces
challenges from the Kashmiri separatist movement in the North, the Akali separatist
movement in the West, the ULFA in the East, the LTTE in the South and the naxalites in the
Centre. The number of new security outfits coming up is an indication of Indias concern
but then the accent is misplaced on quantity in the form of a new security outfit every time a
serious security breach shakes the country, rather than on improving the quality. Until the
country learns the basic lessons of modern security, tragic deaths and destruction are bound to
continue.
10
INDIAN POLICE :
TIME TO TAKE TOUGH DECISIONS
It is Indias good fortune that its fabric of law and order has withstood the effects of
growing complexity of the Indian society for so fragile is its policing. The fact that the
police systems in a few neighbouring countries of Asia and Africa are worse cannot be a
solace as the political, social and economical structures of those countries have different
backgrounds and value systems from ours. India is a crucible wherein the dynamics and
relevance of democracy in the third world are being experimented with. The Indian police
system must necessarily meet the aspirations of democracy in fulfilling its objective of
maintaining internal order and security. This dimension has added to the problems of
policing in India. The Indian polity confronts its police with ever greater challenges while
giving it an increasingly limited wherewithal to face them.
A minor shift in the style of policing in the country can make a life-and-death difference
to myriad people. A wrong turn and the police could inadvertently tear the fabric of the
national life to shreds and ruin the country. A right step and an era of perfect security, order
and peace may be created. Only an objective analysis of the needs of the time and
assessment of the situation would give the insight necessary to make the right choice for
police about the course to be pursued. Such an analysis must be carried out by highly
competent persons at the highest level who can see things dispassionately and take decisions.
They must be people who have an overall view of things and are capable of seeing them
against the wider background of national interest. It is a responsible job, requiring through
knowledge of the nuances of police and policing. The people who do it must be capable of
taking hard decisions which may often go against their own interests and may have farreaching consequences. The Indian police must give serious thought to what it wants to be in
the future and may have to take some tough decisions.
There is an impression that the Indian police is not what it was before Independence.
The pride, toughness and commitment to duty are no more visible. On the contrary, the
Indian police has become soft humble and easy going. Pressure from all directions has
deprived it of its vitality. The police has become a widely abused organisation by the virtue
of its submission on the wishes of its masters under false notions of discipline. It is the
popular scapegoat for anything and everything that goes wrong in the public life. In the
circumstances, a sense of insecurity has developed among the police men.
A natural outcome of this development is taking things easy, with the eyes and ears shut,
unless career interests warrant otherwise Commitment to policing is sacrificed in the process.
These developments have reduced the police to the level of a toy that moves only when the
spring inside unwinds. New entrants who begin eagerly soon after the training period, begin
to realise the realities.
A serious malady affecting the tough and nonsense image of the police is the interference
of people of some standing in society at all levels. An organisation, looking for a serious
image, cannot afford this intrusion. Policing must be insulated from public pressures except
at the top to which all policing affairs must be accountable. People handling policing should
be responsible only to law and their superiors in the department and to none else. The
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PRAVEEN KUMAR
regulation of policies in all details must be controlled and guided by the top. On the other
hand, the line authority of the organisation must be all powerful to guide and regulate
policing and police administration.
A police organisation, open to public pressures can do no policing worth the name. The
very idea of being receptive to pressures and interference indicates a lack of will for
objectivity and justice. It is criminal elements which cultivate sources that have put the
policing on the wrong rails. Pressure often forces of the police to commit crimes under the
veil of authority, either by protecting criminals or more dangerously, by replacing them with
innocent people as criminals. The possibility of the police being open to the influence of the
rich and powerful, deprives it of its credibility. A police force that works at the behest of the
rich and powerful can guard their interests only. Does democratic India need such a police
force that allows tyranny of the poor and the helpless by the rich and powerful? The country
has tolerated such a police in the last four decades. The people, however, must now act the
demand a police that lives up to the trust placed in it.
The lack of professional objectivity is the bane of the police in independent India. The
problem was simple in British India where the ruler and the ruled were distinctly identified
and the loyalty of the police was defined. Now, the police should do their duty by the
public and law. Misplaced loyalty with an individual, a family, a party or an ideology
amounts to violation of professional ethics. The police, in a democracy is the guardian of
public interests and public safety unlike in the raj where the police protected the interests of
the raj. This distinction is forgotten in independent India where mental fetters are yet to be
broken and legacies of the British rule continue inveterated.
How can a police that stays loyal to personal, familial or party interests ever discharge its
functions objectively to law and general public? What can its locus standi be when a different
person or party comes to power? A pliable police force is an asset to any individual or party
and no sensible individual or party distances it in the name of professional ethics. It is the
duty of the police not to breach the edifice of the organisation and its spirit.
A byproduct of this degenerate trend is the rise of opportunists and sycophants to key
posts and the fall of honest persons of great calibre. The trend creates a catena of reactions
that slowly eats up the vitality of the police organisation and reduces it to a foul bunch of
bloodhounds of the rich and powerful few. The shoddy creatures sitting court above men of
probity is a dangerous situations. This reverse order of merit is sure to bring frustration and
the collapse of the organisation someday.
The British were the forefathers of the unified Indian Police. It was a force that met the
needs of the time. In an age of rapid changes, the opening up of new vistas and dimensions to
life through inventions and discoveries in science and technology, nothing remains constant.
The scope, design and objects of the Indian police underwent a metamorphosis with the
transfer of government to native hands. The process spawned a phenomenon in which
undemanding aspects of both the worlds survived to create a new police culture. The
distinguishing traits of the Indian police of the British period such as objectivity, apoliticism,
commitment, discipline, quality and high standards were discarded. Traditional Indian values
such as a simplicity, charity, wisdom, mutual, respect, and human qualities were given up too.
The convenient factors of the old and new worlds were chosen to create a new police culture
while demands on policing were at the crucial stage in the recent years of independence.
12
The Indian police officers overnight rose to high positions made vacant by the
resignations of their senior British officers. The need for creating a new work relationship
with native political leaders was an opportunity to usher in a new police culture in free India.
Soon the police became a tool in the hands of the power-brokers of free India. How can the
police be objective, honest, apolitical, committed and disciplined in such circumstances and
how can it uphold the rule of law and justice in line with its professional ethics in such a
situation?
A job culture involves basic beliefs and principles of the organisation, professional ethics
and degree of commitment to the aspirations of the organisation. To what extent precedence
and practice mould the job culture decides the success or otherwise of the organisation. It is
important that only the right people reach the top. A headless organisation is better than one
headed by a degenerate weakling. This is why the policy of selection and promotion at high
levels plays a vital role in the growth of the organisation. In a democratic age of self-seeking
short-term political leadership, where sycophancy is the sole criterion for ascending the
career ladder, the policy of recruitment and promotion is far from direct. All those
committed to the cause of police and effective policing must break the trend and endeavour to
provide a fresh lease of life for effective policing.
A serious subculture of the Indian police in Indian hands is committing crimes to prevent
and detect crimes and breaking laws to catch law-breakers indeed in the name of showing
results. The misplaced stress on results without a concern for organisational and national
goals of law and justice only reflects a shallow intellectual commitment to duty on the part
of the top brass and the lack of desire to probe the root of the problem.
Now, on to third-degree methods in crime detection. Even senior officers tacitly
supporting the third-degree methods applied on suspects who may turn out to be innocent at
the end, is not uncommon.
Crimes are crimes whether they are committed by the police or by the public. What right
has the police to inflict suffering on others, merely on suspicion? After all, it is not the agency
to pass judgement on crimes. None placed the police beyond the scope of the Indian Penal
code. What justification can the police have to commit crimes to collect evidences of other
crimes? The sadistic and criminal tendencies of the police are not more justifiable than those
of the general public.
Discipline is inseparable from police. It governs all parameters of the foce and makes its
hierarchical order meaningful and purposeful, the command-obedience relationship, sharpedged and functional conduct, meticulous. But these days, it is used as a cover by the people
in higher ranks to indulge in wrongdoing and to silence the conscientious few in the lower
ranks. It is also a cover to promote the interests of juniors who support their evil deeds by
sycophancy and personal loyalty; and to suppress those juniors who are strong, proud,
independent and ask questions.
A subtle hatred for superior qualities of the subordinates in inherent in the Indian police
force of today. Another act carried out behind the faade of discipline is an officer forcing a
subordinate to achieve personal ends. Here, the police ranks display exceptional unity in
helping a colleague to suppress the subordinate who shows the tendency to go against his
seniors orders. Youngsters in the organisation who drop out weaken the organisation.
13
PRAVEEN KUMAR
There are any number of examples of fearless officers who have acted upon their conscience
at the cost of promotions and elevations.
The Indian police finds itself in a blind-spot today, at a crossroads from where it should
build bridges to the future. It must shed its mental fetters, rise to its feet and learn to be
natural. A slip at this stage would be a tragedy while a right move would be a major turning
point.
It is indeed a crucial juncture for the Indian police.
14
WHAT AILS PROFESSIONAL POLICING IN INDIA

Discipline, in the case of the police force, is both an advantage and a disadvantage. It is
an advantage because, if discreetly employed, it can prevent undue interaction of the police
with unwanted elements. It is a disadvantage because the police, with its trained response,
may find it difficult to isolate itself from the behests of its political masters.
The first and foremost job in this background is to free the police from the unhealthy
influence of politicians of all hues by making it accountable to an independent authority with
absolute power to take decisions. The authority should be a professional body with men of
proven calibre and quality who have reached a stage where they need not sacrifice their
convictions to appease those in power. It shall be directly responsible to the legislature and
function as an independent authority like the judiciary, the Comptroller and Auditor General
or the Election Commission.
The recruitment procedure should be overhauled to ensure that really the best from the
job-seekers are roped in. Any interference in matters of recruitment should be promptly and
decisively resisted. Only highly qualified officers of proven probity should be entrusted
with the task, the ugly head of bribery ruthlessly crushed and the unhealthy trend of making
recruitment a business checked. The infusion of good blood even at this late hour is certain
to repair the damage.
The jobs should be made attractive with good salaries and satisfactory working conditions
that will give the resolve to resist the bait thrown by the criminals. Social scientists say that
bribery is inversely proportional to the financial strength of a social group. Therefore, better
salaries and congenial working conditions will definitely make the police less sensitive to
these lures. It has to be ensured that the right man comes to the right job and that honesty is
rewarded. An unbiased assessment of the work and character of the personnel will take the
organisation in the right direction.
Those who are empowered to assess subordinates and their work must be made
answerable to prevent misuse of this responsibility. The creation of a high-power core
group of people adept at assessing men and character may help to create a feeling of
confidence and security and inspire the police personnel to discharge their duties fearlessly.
This group should be made ultimately responsible for all career decisions, for the
development of the police, work assessment, job analysis, recruitment and management of
human resources.
It is unfortunate that there is no relation between an officers efficiency and performance
and his standing in the organisation. The officers are so indifferent to the performance of
their subordinates that they are absolutely in the dark about the standard of work turned out
under their supervision. Another reason for this sad affair may be that they are not qualified
to assess. This situation leads to random assessment and, in the process, talents wither and
opportunities overtake high-calibre workers on the hierarchical ladder. This can be rectified
by arranging motivation courses for police officers who must be taught about the work they
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PRAVEEN KUMAR
are required to perform, its importance and how to discharge their duties. Policemen
generally distance themselves from all mental activities. Training must endeavour to break
this trait and coax candidates to open up their minds and reflect on all matters before making
decisions. In this context, it must be mentioned that often the habit of reading becomes a
casualty once a person enters the service.
This negative approach to reading and thinking has resulted in poor professional
knowledge, particularly at the higher ranks. Work knowledge is generally limited to what is
remembered from experience and bits of what has been learnt from books during training
decades earlier. The style of supervision in the police should be seen to be believed. All
order to subordinates emanate from a perfect void. The best that is done is to hold a meeting
of subordinates wherein the latter are allowed to arrive at a course of action to meet a
situation and the decision is returned to them as an order to perform. The style of ineffective
supervision must stop if the aim is to achieve quality. The system of overlapping supervision
because of multiple ranks, where none really discharges his role must be scrapped. A
thorough overhauling of training and the application of modern techniques would go a long
way in mending the situation.
The organisation has become top-heavy. In States where there were only two officers
of the rank of Inspector General for say 40,000 men and officers about ten years ago, there
are now nearly 20 officers of and above that rank for say, a force of 50,000. What are these
people at the top policing apart from being a drain on the state revenue and a nuisance to
officers down the ladder by issuing conflicting instructions?
Promotion to a higher rank serves no purpose unless it means a more challenging job and
a suitable man is, therefore, selected to meet the challenges. But this is not the case. Posts
are created to satisfy vested interests. Most of these jobs often serve as places to forget the
pressures of family life. However, the same luxury does not extend to the more unfortunate
ranks at the lower levels, including the constabulary. While vacancies at the topmost level
are filled up by promotions effected overnight, promotions at the intermediary levels take
weeks and even months, depending on the rank. It is years in the case of the constabulary.
There are cases where vacancies of head constables and assistant sub-inspectors or subinspectors are not filled up for several years. Many have retired without a promotion.
Policing is a job performed mostly at the lower levels with involvement stopping at the level
of the Superintendent. Beyond that, it is a supervisory task and in a police force with no
supervision to speak of, higher ranks are simply redundant. Any move to expand these ranks
cannot be called an honest effort to serve the public. But that is what is happening.
The process of recruitment is even worse. Selection has become a misnomer. It is
random at best and high business at its worst. This approach may leave governance and
public life in jeopardy. Policing is a highly sensitive profession and requires only specially
equipped people to handle it. It demands certain specific traits in officers which cannot be
learnt by any amount of training. The most evident symbol of authority and power people
trust is the policemen. In the circumstances, the wrong selection can be fatal for the nation.
India is deeply caught in a mire. There is a price fixed for each rank of the police. How can a
recruit who enters service by paying a bribe be expected not to reap returns? What can be his
16
picture of the service that the enters? It is absurd to expect professional policing from such a
recruit.
The common aim in recruitment now is to complete the job without inviting legal
hurdles. Sometimes even rules are overstepped to cut short procedures and do away with
cumbersome work. Posts at the lowest level but nevertheless sensitive, like drivers, are filled
up arbitrarily. Quality suffers as a result. This is equally so in transfers.
Honesty, integrity and hard work have yielded place to personal loyalty and usefulness
for personal work. Those who do not come up to the expectations of personal loyalty fall out
of favour and are eliminated from the line of command. This is one of the main factors for
the slow degeneration of the police.
The police is a sacred confluence of those who choose policing as their profession and
work together transcending their caste, creed, social standing and rank in order to control
crime and maintain law and order. But this objective cannot be achieved when there is no
common cause and everybody works for personal progress.
The general reluctance of the Indian police force to adopt new ideas and the ungainly
handling of modernisation projects have resulted in its losing the race with organised crime
and syndicates. Modern equipment are bought, but the personnel are not trained to use them.
Thus the gadgets gather dust and break down.
No government with weak police system can survive, whatever its other assets. The
police should be extricated from the clutches of criminals and politicians to make it a
professional outfit with objectivity and commitment to its task. There is no point in
beginning the cleansing operation from the side of the criminals or politicians. It has to
begin from the side of the police by insulating it from the vile influences of criminal wealth
and political power. Once this is done everything else will fall into place.
17
PRAVEEN KUMAR
NEED TO LIBERATE LAW ENFORCERS

FROM UNHOLY ALLIANCES
Crime, politics and the police are the three sides of the vicious triangle within which the
future of democratic Indian and its free people are trapped. Although wealthy industrial and
commercial houses form a fourth dimension, their techniques are as yet limited to
manipulative strategies to gain a strangle hold over political power by remote control. It is
their wealth that fills the coffers of the troika and helps reduce the normal life of free citizens
to a welter of uncertainties and endless misery.
Politicians protect criminals from the law while criminals reciprocate by acting as their
henchmen. Policemen go to politicians for job protection and strike an understanding with
the criminals to make money. Thus works this nexus of vile power-brokers, preying on
innocent people, bloating itself on the blood of the hapless masses. The trio of manipulators
is a dangerous force in the Indian democratic situation. Combined as a tight-knit powerblock, they have touched all the facets of public life with the sole intention of garnering all
the benefits. The tragedy here is that the vice is perpetrated by those whom the public trust as
their benefactors and protectors. The amoral side of this operation does not seem to have
affected either the police or the politicians in any way and the abuse against the Indian
public goes on unabated. It seems that all actors in this tragic drama think that Indian
democracy is a free-for-all field to grab to the maximum in a world where all look for
themselves and only those who grab the most survive. This approach is certain to undermine
not only the democratic setup of the nation, but its very social fabric.
When the maintenance of law and order is in the hands of unscrupulous police, queer
things may take place. Long ago, a dacoity was reported in the house of a person of dubious
reputation in a particular district . People who knew the background said the act was
committed by his illegitimate son after a serious quarrel. Court cases were pending against
the son. A case was registered with the local police. The complainant however thought it
was best to patch up with the suspect in order to protect his family honour. This was done
and the case was pursued with an ex-convict being picked up and shown as the accused.
Arrest, recovery and chargesheet followed a decade after the dacoity. Such developments
make criminal administration a mockery. What a serious breach of public trust it was and
what a serious crime was committed by the police who involved a person whom they knew
did not commit the offence!
In another incident that dates back to 1981, a police official in charge of a subdivision in
Karnataka picked up a poor goldsmith from a small town for interrogation about receiving
stolen properties. He subjected him to torture in a tourist bungalow of the same town for
two nights to make the innocent goldsmith confess to something he had not done.
The goldsmith died on the second night of torture. The official who has worked as
Circle Inspector in the town until a few months before, had indulged in this activity without
18
the knowledge of the senior police officers of the town. The news of the lockup death, as
such deaths are popularly known, was published in local and other newspapers.
The wife of the goldsmith filed a complaint before the local court. The District
Superintendent of Police and the Range Deputy Inspector General of Police, who had
benefited from the flexible ways of the official when he was the Circle Inspector, rose to the
occasion to save their protg. They visited the town and entrusted the investigation to a
Deputy Superintendent of Police of neighbouring subdivision with oral orders to certify the
case as not proved. The Deputy Superintendent complied and sent his repot to the court and
that was the end of the case. A police official who with the support of his community, got
posted as the police chief of a State in 1986, wanted to favour a fingerprint sub-Inspector,
who has been under suspension for long after being arrested in a criminal case of
community interests. He summoned the Superintendent of Police in charge of the case and
examined the file about the suspension. The Superintendent of Police failed to understand
that the action was an indication that he was to end the Sub-Inspectors punishment. Even
of he had understood, he could not have acted for, the Sub-Inspector had been suspended by
an officer of the rank of the Deputy Inspector General of Police, Moreover the case was
pending trial in a court. After a fortnight, the police chief secured the Sub-Inspectors
release, but nurtured a grudge against the young Superintendent. He manipulated the records
and made sure that the latter was not selected for the Indian Police Service. The career of a
bright officer suffered a severe setback. Such cases of avenging non-cooperation are common
these days. The trend is adversely affecting the organisation by weakening its cause for
fairness, law and justice.
How subordinates are brought around is another story. A young sub divisional police
officer in a small town known for its speculative business activities conducted a raid on a
library, run by a powerful local community. It was actually a gambling house patronised by
prominent people of the town. The officer rounded up more than 50 prominent people
including rich businessmen, senior government officials and local politicians, with huge
stake monies. Though the library had been a gambling den for years, none had dared to raid
it in spite of repeated public petitions.
As the law requires that the place must first be proved to be a common gambling house,
the officer recorded in the station house diary the names of all those who were gambling at
the place and let them of with a written warning that cases would be booked if they continued
to gamble there. The officer learnt too late that the gambling den was patronised by the
Superintendent of Police of the district and the Deputy Inspector General of the range and the
men were their friends. He was transferred to a remote place, with the annual confidential
report stating that the public might revolt against the officer if he continued . The library
continues to be a gambling den. The DIG at the place of the new posting of the officer wanted
him to marry a girl from his circle. His parents however, got him married to a girl of their
choice. This antagonised the DIG who, in his next annual confidential report, showed his
junior as a liability to the police department. Also he prevailed upon other officers who
wrote confidential reports to give adverse remarks. Most of them obliged and the appeals of
the junior officer were never allowed to reach the government.
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PRAVEEN KUMAR
It is to his credit that the officer did not break down and continues in service while his far
less competent colleagues have overtaken him on the career ladder. Denied selection to the
all-India service, he later appealed to the Chief Secretary not to consider him any more for the
service. He took this drastic step in utter contempt for the corrupt department heads who
sat above him and decided his career advances.
Is it by design or accident that independent India has raised a criminal outfit to catch
criminals? It is in the interest of the police to accept the reality so that remedy could be
thought of.
Unhealthy practices of myriad variety are found at the highest levels. A recent instance
is that of a police chief who, along with his wife, was taken to court on the eve of his
retirement to face trial for defrauding the public and a spastic society in whose name he
sold(charity) entertainment tickets. It is a different story that the officer managed to silence
the social worker who brought up the charges and made sure the case fell through for lack of
evidence. To what sad levels could men in high ranks stoop to make a few dirty bucks!
The Indian Police Service continues to be an intellectually poor unattractive realm with
only the mediocre opting for it. The constabulary which forms the bulk of the service is
largely constituted by people from the lower strata of society who are diffident and hence do
not exercise their powers against the more enlightened people. The tendency to foul-up
superior intellect and excellence is another factor that has adversely affected the police setup.
The general reluctance to adopt modern techniques of policing and management, the
dogmatic approach to man-to-man and public relations and the lack of understanding of
human nature are other factors responsible for the unfortunate state of affairs. These
problems can be overcome only by efficient police leadership at all levels and only if a
semblance of objectivity reasonableness and good judgement touches the core of the police
administration.
At present, growth is not much more than a spasmodic reaction to stimuli and lacks the
benefit of an integrated approach. A permanent cell of organisation experts under the direct
control of the police chief to redefine the police organisation is required to make it more
meaningful and need-based. This could help in streamlining the hierarchy by eliminating
redundant posts, rationalising workloads, preventing duplication and redefining duties and
procedures and thus the rights and responsibilities at each level. Result: police functioning
would be made more cost-effective and efficient.
The annual assessment of men and officers in the police has become a travesty of what it
used to be or meant to be. In no way, under the present circumstances, does an ACR reflect
an officers qualities or capabilities. It is believed that the department would be far better off
without this pernicious evaluation process that breeds corruption and bias. What characterises
the ACR today is a distinct lack of objectivity; it has become a means to personal ends, a
medium for the advancement of individual interests and even settlement of personal scores.
Servility is its inevitable consequence and it would not be immoderate to say that eliminating
the ACR altogether would be certainly a step forward. If policing is to be effective in the
years ahead, specialisation is crucial. I suggest three distinct police services with separate
recruitment and training: (1) Regulatory police or uniformed police in charge of law and
20
order and other regulatory duties; (2) Mainstay police in charge of crime investigation and
prevention and security and intelligence operation; (3) Social police in charge of prevention
and investigation of all social offences and implementation of social legislation. All three
wings should have their own individual organisations up to the district level with
independent Superintendents and staff as required, functioning in tandem in much the same
way as the Army, Navy and Air Force. At the apex could be a specially constituted body
called the State Police Authority with the chiefs of all three wings as members and the Chief
Secretary as chairman.
All the present maladies emanate from the politicians who are only concerned with
winning the next elections. Until the organisation is extricated from the grip of politicians,
it cannot hope to rise above the mediocre level, either in proficiency or in character. Such
mediocrity is wont to percolate downwards in a democratic setup.
An All India Police Authority accountable only to th President of India at the national
level with the regional Police Boards in States as independent bodies should be created. The
Authority must be headed by a Supreme Court judge with the Union Home Secretary and
the Cabinet Secretary as members and the senior most police officer of the country as the
member-secretary. The regional Police Boards must have a High Court Judge at the helm
with the Home secretary and the Chief Secretary as members and the State Police chief as
member-secretary. The arrangement will bring to an end interference of any kind in police
affairs, thus enabling the personnel to function in an independent atmosphere.
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PRAVEEN KUMAR
ROLE OF POLICE
IN THE RECONSTRUCTION OF INDIA
The police is the watchdog in a democracy. It forms the axle that keeps the vital engine
of the administration running. It is modelled on the British system except for a few changes
made in response to the situation regarding crime, security and law and order. That is not to
say that the Indian police is alien to the Indian situation. The utility of the Indian police to
India depends on the direction and degree to which they have taken to this process of
adaptation and also how successfully and efficiently.
The responsibility of the police as an organisation is three fold in enforcing the rule of
law; assisting the judiciary in the dispensation of justice and keeping an eye on the internal
security of the country. The three responsibilities do widely vary in their scope and
functional requirements. The police may sometimes be called upon to break laws, though
surreptitiously, in order to protect the security of the country. Or, while they function only as
a fact finding machine to help the judiciary enforce the rule of law, they may be asked to
enforce laws as enforcers of law and order.In spite of these variations, what gives the
police a holistic dimension is their importance as the spine of the rule of law. They are the
watchdog of the administration. The police are one of the most important levers required in
running the machinery of statecraft. That explains the impatient race among rulers to control
this vital lever.
ASPECTS FORGOTTON
The very nature of the functions of the police demands that it be insulated from the
vagaries of the short-time rules of a democratic setup. Their responsibilities as enforcers of
law warrant their allegiance exclusively to the rules and laws of the country; they are
beholden to the judiciary as the investigating authority while their part as watchdogs of the
countrys internal security raises them above political and leadership bickerings. Often, these
aspects of the police are happily forgotten in India.
The reasons lie in the rulers as well as in the police. In the rulers because it is natural for
anyone to take advantage of the tools that make themselves available for use and it is rather
nave to expect the rulers to ignore it while the police willingly offer themselves to be at their
disposal. The rulers of democratic India do use the police for their personal and party ends to
the extent that the nearly half a century after Independence has obfuscated the distinction
between national interests and personal interests of the rulers in the use of policemen.
RESPONSIBILITIES IGNORED
The reasons lie in police because the police of democratic India chose to brush aside their
professional and national responsibilities and instead preferred to be the handmaid of those
in power . Two factors helped the process. One was the wrong type of people at the helm of
the organisation as models. Another was the lack of understanding of the concepts of
22
obedience and discipline. The nonprofessional approach of the police leadership percolated
down and sadly was accepted as the general rule by the rank and file.
The entire force has forgotten that its primary obedience is to the laws of the country and
that the rulers and mere representatives of the laws. The police have forgotten the cardinal
principle that their profession dictates them to do their duty even if it may be against the
rulers if the law finds the latter doing wrong. Serious professional lapses have not only
weakened the Indian police, but damaged the political system, social values and the
credibility of the democratic process. Ignorance and indifference on the part of the public in
general, and the intellectual class in the police system, have ended up with the police
acquiring a free hand to function without restraint and guidance.
The country, indeed has a sturdy police framework in terms of organisational strength and
budgetary provisions. Only, the fabric is in poor shape. That money is liberally made
available to the police indicates political patronage. In other words, the rulers have
recognised the important role played by the police in running the administration. This leads
to a close link between politicians and the police. This is where crime enters the picture. The
link is too deeprooted to be easily severed.
The police have two weak areas- the nonprofessional approach and arbitrary management.
Both are interlined and contribute to each others existence. The nonprofessional approach
has eroded professional commitment and encouraged corruption. Professional pride has been
pushed into oblivion. Personal interests have gained precedence over organisational
interests. The breaches have helped opportunists to intervene and dictate terms to the police.
Matters beyond the realm of the police have gained in importance at the cost of the
organisations credibility.
The system has undergone a lopsided growth with random spurts of control and
workload, unfair selection and recruitment procedures, neglected training, inaccuracies in the
assessment of work and people, irregular promotions and transfers, unplanned modernisation
programmes and funny service rules. Efficient management has been relegated to the
background with the whole set up inclined towards a rigid hierarchical order. This trend has
told upon the professional qualities of the police causing decline in its organisational
efficiency.
BRITISH CHARACTERISTICS
India, on the threshold of independence, saw both the positive and negative sides of the
British administration. Among the positive attributes was the creation of a sound police
system. Other aspects were a sound professional approach, objectivity and toughness in
police work, a feeling of pride among the policemen, a sense of commitment and fair play
in discharging the work in hand, high morale and respect for a healthy value system.
The most glaring among the negative qualities are its disinclination to democratic values,
failure to identify with the Indian ethos and failure to appreciate the common mans
aspirations and predicament. An independent India has added to the negative aspects. One
23
PRAVEEN KUMAR
of them is corruption. Also, the passage of time has set in motion a process of continuous
reconstruction.
The police of the British rule has as its prime objective the interests and upkeep of the
British Raj in India. In democratic India, in the absence of capable leadership, the system has
failed to reset its priorities and formulate its objective. It seems to have failed to
comprehend where its loyalty should lie. The fall of the British Raj, may be, left a void and
they found refuge in the political leadership. On the one hand, the policemen were unable to
think clearly, and on the other, some officers in higher ranks wanted to be close to and in the
good books of key political figures to promote their interests. As a result, the system
gradually lost touch with its professional objective of being loyal to the Indian Constitution,
an objective of establishing the rule of the law in the country Power went into the hands of
dishonest and criminal elements.
EMERGENCY TREND
The police acted as the handmaid of the political leadership during the Emergency in
1976, save for a few dignified people. Both the Central Bureau of Investigation and the
Intelligence Bureau were extensively used for political ends. Then emerged the custom of
providing protection mostly to political leaders and other well-connected personages as the
expense of the public. The trend of the police being committed to political leadership has
continued.
It is an irony that the political leadership which is supposed to take the lead in the
reconstruction of India is colluding with the police, which is supposed to be the tool of the
reconstruction, and is striking at the foundation of the strength of the country. Every year
sees a new phase and a new trend in this nasty collusion among the important players of
national reconstruction taking the country nearer to the brink of lawlessness
During the bandh in Bangalore (1991) in connection with the Cauvery water dispute, the
police were mute spectators as the agitators indulged in vandalism and violence. In some
places, the officers were forced to open fire in self-defense and all hell broke loose. Dealt
with in a professional way, the situation could have been brought under control and the
death of several people and destruction of property could have been avoided, Indeed, a
commission of Inquiry under Justice N.D.Venkatesh indicted the Police Commissioner for
his lapses. However, the officers political masters rose to the occasion and soon he
superseded a more efficient and down-to-earth senior. It is a different story that the State
administration changed hands within a few months and the new Chief Minister restored
order by putting people in their places. But the fact remains that the findings of the Justice.
N.D.Venkatesh Commission of Inquiry never saw the light of day.
SERVING POLITICAL MASTERS
The political leaders are wary about the law and the judicial system; and they have to be
cautious on their dependence on illegal political funds. They need the help of the police and
it is not the other way round. There are many police officers who understand this dynamics
and play their cards shrewdly. A police officer in a southern State played it so well that in
24
spite of his publicly proclaimed moderate efficiency, he not an occupied the coveted
position of the Police Commissioner of an important city as Inspector General of Police (by
removing the holder of the position within six months of the latter coming there), but also
managed to be there for many years by getting the post upgraded as and when he was
promoted as Additional Director General of Police and later as Director General of Police at
the cost of all other aspirants. On his retirement from service, the political masters obliged
him by constituting a one-man committee for him, supposedly to examine and advice on the
reorganisation of the police setup fo the State, but actually to provide him creature comforts
at Governmetn expense.
A case of cheating, forgery, falsification of records and misappropriation of over Rs.35
lakhs by the officials of the Karnataka Home Guards department was unearthed in 1994 and
a criminal case was registered in the jurisdictional police station in December the same year.
As the amount involved was huge, a process was set in motion to refer the case to the
Corps of Detectives for investigation. The then State police chief came to know that one of
the accused was his confidant when he was the Commandant-General of the Home Guards
the previous year. Suddenly, all activities regarding the criminal case were frozen for the
next six months till the police chief retired. Only in July 1995, the case was taken up and
handed over to the Corps of Detectives.
In the absence of concern on the part of the political and executive wings of the
administration in straightening out things, the judiciary is doing exemplary work by taking
action to counter the criminal elements. The attitude of the Supreme Court to the Jain hawala
case is a case in point. The awarding of jail sentence to senior bureaucrats and police
officers of Haryna, Karnataka Andhra Pradesh and other states in 1995 for contempt of court
and creation of false evidences, and issue of nonbailable warrants and refusal of bail to a
couple of former Union Ministers this year for allegedly sheltering
mafia dons and
engineering anti-Sikh riots in New Delhi are other instances.
The scene is not as bleak as it seems to be. The wheel of change is slowly turning. The
interest taken by the Supreme Court in the nexus between the politicians, the bureaucrats and
the criminals and the Vohra Committee report on the criminalisation of politics are found to
have their effects.
25
PRAVEEN KUMAR
WHERE THEIR LOYALTIES LIE...

THE primary duty of the police is to maintain order which would include enforcing
the law and the prevention and detection ofcrime. The police ought to be concerned about
the interests ofthe general public, the standard of the law, the administration of justice and
the security parameters that ensure it. Loyalty is the foundation on which the police
organisation is built up. Loyalty, would mean steadfast adherence to what is legal and the
law as the word `loyalty' originates from the Latin lex and legalis.Policing, as a
profession in a democracy, denotes fidelity to the sovereignty of the people and
necessitates upholding the law of the country, keeping up the orderly life of the common
man and safeguarding peace and security.
This is where the police differ from private armies. Disaster strikes when the police
function as the private armies of the ruling political party or any influential member of
society. The police in India have fallen into this quagmire, its vitality and profesionalism
pushed to the background.
Loyalty is of two kinds. One is pure and simple fidelity to the master. The other owes
its allegiance to certain ideals and principles. This implies allegiance to one's duties,
responsibilities, objectives, profession and the chosen path of life. This commitment raises
their loyalty to the status of a mission. The loyalty needed in a profession like that of the
police is of elevated nature and it bestows the qualities of nobility and dignity on the
organisation. It lifts the police above factional interests and gives them a cosmopolitan
vitality. The strength and the trust born out of this superior form of loyalty stand the police
force in good stead in its hour of risk and crisis.
It is tragic that the Indian police prefer to trade this characteristic for trivial and
ephemeral benefits. The trend has spread like wildfire to ravage the institution. The genesis
lies in the promotion of career prospects and other perks dumb loyalty brings to individuals.
Personal loyalty to political masters takes some people to the top, tempting others to follow
suit.
The models created a pattern and the pattern became a part of the system in a setup
where individuality and orginality are not sacred. The real threat lies in the possibility of
this tendency coming to be accepted as the true character of the police. This may not take
long to happen if the present goings on are any indication.
The malady is not limited to a particular state or unit. There can be hope of remedy if
there is at least one example of the right model. But none seems to be available. Isolated
attempts to tread the right path are seen as deviations from the mainstream. This is the
beginning of the atrophy of the Indian police. How far the degeneration has spread is
evident from the way some important criminal cases of political significance have been
handled. A criminal case warrants professional loyalty in its investigation to bring the
culprits to book. The political status of the accused and the fall-out are irrelevant to the
process of investigation.
26
The misconceptions about loyalty with a slant in favour of the political masters and
other powerful influence-pedlars have clouded this vital aspect of policing. With the result,
the rule of law has suffered and the administration of justice is crippled. The damage
already done to the country's public life cannot be repaired until the police are brought back
on the rails of loyalty to their profession.
The police, whether it is the Special Protection Group, the Intelligence Bureau, the
Research and Analysis Wing or the Central Bureau of Investigation, survive the transient
political masters and their political groups in power. Their relevance to the country is more
abiding than that of the politicians in power. In the circumstances, the police ought not
to be subservient to the political masters whose future is unpredictable. The police
going loyal to transient political interests certainly will damage and debase the system
itself.
It is a common practice in some States to change key officers when a new
dispensation takes over the rule. A recent example is from Tamil Nadu. And this is not an
isolated case. It reflects the attitude of the political leadership towards the professional
loyalties of the police. Public opinion about the professional loyalty of the police is rather
low.
Politicians believe that all those in the police are commodities that can be bought and
``loyal'' policemen to make a substantial difference to their political fortunes. Hence the
mad rush to place favourite police officers in key positions. Thus politicians exploit
the weakness of the organisation. The culprit here is the perverted loyalties of the police.
What is termed as political interference is patently the making of the police by their
personal loyalties.
The intelligence unit is the most abused section and its chief is the most willing tool.
Intelligence officers have a responsibility to their organisational objectives and they
ought to work towards meeting their objectives. But misplaced loyalties restrict the scope of
the intelligence units which are seen as the lackeys of the ruling parties and their
leaders. The usefulness of the intelligence units as political tools is so pronounced in
India that they are brought under the direct control of the Chief Executive of the
Government from the traditional Home Department and the chiefs are the main advisers of
the Chief Executive, head and shoulders above even the Chief Secretaries in States and the
Cabinet Secretary at the Centre.
This importance is a reward for the lengths to which these officers would go
risking their personal and career safety and indulge in illegal acts to oblige the political
masters. Telephone tapping and shadowing political rivals of the ruling party leaders are
only minor prevarications these loyal police officers indulge in to keep themselves in the
good books of their political masters.
Assessing the political trends and suitability of candidates in different constituencies
during elections and reporting the activities of politicians within and outside the ruling
party are now wrongly seen as legitimate functions of the intelligence units.
27
PRAVEEN KUMAR
Mr. Chandra Sekhar, former Prime Minister, in response to a question on the Jain
hawala case during the 11th Lok Sabha election campaign, said the investigation of
corruption cases was the job of a Police Inspector and not that of a Minister. That answer
would be right in an ideal situation where the police function professionally, with their
loyalty fixed to their duties. It has no relevance in a situation where policemen are loyal
to individuals or groups in power. The police being the executive edge of the
administration, their loyalties make all the difference to the quality of administration.
Factional loyalties have the singular potentiallity of eroding fairness and impartiality.
They make professional loyalty seem meaningless. A mature and sober political leadership
can set right the fractured loyalties of the police organisation. In this context, judicial
activism, in a periodical review of the progress of investigation of some cases of national
importance, is a welcome step although in normal circumstances such a judicial review
would have amounted to interference in the independent functioning of the investigating
authority.
The duty of providing the right guidance and direction to the police lies with the
political leadership. Ironically, the police force has become an object of ridicule by being
asked to investigate certain affairs of the politicians with whom its absolute loyalty lies
and who twist policemen around their little fingers.
28
CAUGHT IN THE
VICIOUS CIRCLE OF CORRUPTION
The Tamil Nadu Chief Minister, Mr.M.Karunanidhi, in a scathing attack on the Tamil
Nadu police after he assumed charge of the State Government in 1996, said Three fourths
of the police force, which, to the State, is like liver to human body, has become rotten. The
remark coming from an experienced chief executive of a State distinguished for its efficient
police force until a few decades ago indicates the atrophy that has set in, in the Indian police.
The department cannot stay untouched while there is marked fall in the standards of diligence
and integrity in other walks of life. Indian police adopted and adapted itself to corrupt
surroundings.
The basic ingredients of corruption in India are money and power. As Government
service, even at the higher rungs, has lost its charm in terms of remuneration and status, it has
been attracting only the second best among youth who otherwise would be left in the lurch.
Professional dignity and integrity have been brushed aside leading to corruption. Priorities
in service have been shuffled, the sole objective being money and power. Organisational
objectives have been completely lost sight of. Shift in diligence helped to build moneypower while shift in loyalties facilitated proximity to power-brokers. The degeneration
spread rapidly with the passage of time as organisational commitments became outdated
demode and pragmatism taught that immediate personal interests are for leading a good life.
This was the beginning of corruption of Indian police.
A major contributing factor has been the gross fall in professional pride among the
personnel. Grass and insensitive handing of the policemen and police matters by political
leaders has eroded the morale and the sense of belonging to the police force. Attempts to
suppress and gain complete hold over the bureaucracy and the police in democratic India
have affected the police adversely causing a sense of inadequacy.
The lack of motivation to achieve organisational goals and show results is a clear
manifestation of the fall in professional pride. The police, which once was proud to enforce
law, to maintain order and to ensure peace and security, have lost all the enthusiasm as these
factors became political and lost their importance otherwise. Crimes, criminals and law and
order problems were all subject to political convenience. The development shattered the
professional pride of the police and struck a blow to their motivation towards organisational
ends. No organisation can exist without a driving force to sustain it. When there is a
vacuum of a drive to carry it onward, it is filled by corruption.
Policing is more a profession than a job. While job involves performing a task entrusted,
profession entails dedication and commitment to a cause; in the case of the police upholding
the rule of law and safeguarding the security of the country. How dedicated are the police to
this cause in India? Simple observation of criminal activities around and police responses to
them give clues to the situation.
29
PRAVEEN KUMAR
Let us take an obvious example- open sale of smuggled articles in exclusive markets
maintained for the purpose in major cities of India. The common justification of the police
for allowing such markets to do business is that no hard evidences to prove offence are
available. This is unbelievable. If the police, with the resources at its disposals cannot
collect evidence against the illegal activities conducted openly on such a large scale, it is
not worth being in existence. There is not even a single case anywhere in India of such
exclusive markets dealing with smuggled articles being shut down and the illegal activities
being brought to a halt by prosecuting the sharks of the smuggling world.
The same is true of stolen articles. The footpath vendors in specified market areas trade
in consumer goods, running to crores of rupees each day, without paying legal dues to the
Government in the form of sales and income taxes and in violation of various rules and laws.
The illegal business contributes to the growth of parallel economy of black money in the
country. These markets thrive before the eyes of the local police force.
Either the police do not have the professional resolve to bring the illegal activities to halt
or the offenders who indulge in them have the police backing in running the business. In
other words, the police are hand in glove with them.
The leeway involved in the exercise of power, coupled with the sensitivity of the job,
renders the force vulnerable to corruption. Letting gambling dens flourish, backing the
manufacture and sale of illicit liquor, overlooking prostitution, black-marketing and drug
trafficking, changing the course of investigation to save certain criminals or deciding
the
process of arrests and seizures to favour certain individuals or parties, make life different for
the people involved. On the one hand, illicit business carried out with police patronage or
tacit support make huge grists in which the police naturally have a huge share. On the other
hand, the culprits are prepared to pay any price in order to divert the attention of the police.
Huge sums of money change hands either to avoid arrest, search and seizure or to change the
very course of investigation. The police can be part of such dirty deals without leaving a
clue.
A fall-out of corruption is, the dishonest thrive at the cost of honest professional. Flexible
elements are useful assets to people in key positions to save their kith and kin as the when
they get involved in criminal proceedings. Such characters in police are always cultivated
and posted to key positions so that compromises can be easily mached Honest police
officers are sidelined.
The need for police is limited to the need to have an obedient force at the disposal of the
rulers for use wherever they feel like. The existence of such a force gives the common man a
feeling of security. The force also helps to absorb the blames heaped on the rulers while
things go wrong. While these cardinal goals are met by the mere existence of the police,
anything in addition, say professionalism, integrity and honesty become achronisms. The
general perception is that an upright police force is always an inconvenience to the people
and therefore is not always tolerated and encouraged.
Corrupt police is the product of a corrupt society and corrupt police in turn perpetuate
corruption in society. This forms a vicious circle. As corruption takes control and spreads to
30
all strata of the force, upright elements in the force become a minority and also forfeit the
coveted position in the organisation as inconvenient candidates. They are scorned, detested
and avoided as moles in the mainstream. Taking recourse to unfair and illegal means to crush
upright officers in also not uncommon. Though courts of law can theoretically protect
officers against such harassment, expenses, time and uncertainties involved and the history
of court judgements render the protection meaningless and force the upright officer to silently
bear all humiliations and losses or yield to the pressures. It is to the credit of Indian police
that it has great officers who have withstood all slights without yielding to pressure.
In the olden days, corruption was confined to the lower strata of officials. The situation
has changed now; it originates from the above and percolates downwards. An intelligence
chief may drive his unwilling subordinates to adopt all sorts of illegal methods including
telephone tapping, political espionage and other dirty tricks in his attempts to win over his
political masters and may even succeed at the cost of more senior aspirants. Now, what
about the subordinates once his business is done. His worry is how to use his new position to
further his prospects before he retires in a few months. As the date of retirement approaches,
his perception of right and wrong blurs in the lust to make the most of the position. This is
the crux of the problem of corruption.
Freeing the police from the grip of corruption is a priority for rebuilding India. A noncorrupt police is the beacon of a healthy society. The police can usher in a healthy social life
in the country only by first getting itself rid of the cobwebs of corruption and then infusing
professionalism in its work. It must elevate itself to the heights expected of it as the guardian
of the rule of law, justice and fairness in the social structure of the country.
31
PRAVEEN KUMAR
POLICE STRUCTURE NEEDS

THE MANAGEMETN TOUCH
A major handicap in police administration is the absence of a tool to assess performance.
The problem is, in fact, peculiar to the fields of crime control and security operations. The
object of the organisation is preventing crimes and success can be measured only in relation
to the extent the efforts pay. As the factors of such an effort are unknown after the crimes are
prevented, the effectiveness of policing can never be measured. The results that are tangible,
namely the successful protection of a sensitive target or the creation of a crime-free
atmosphere during a particular period, can be the outcome for two different reasons; either
no crime was attempted, in which case even the least effective police could have produced
the same results or an all-out major attempt to commit crime has been prevented, which could
not have been achieved by anything less than first class policing.
The measurement of the quality of crime investigation and maintenance of order are also
equally complex for different reasons. Policing in these fields largely depends upon
intangible factors such as luck, surroundings and the willing cooperation of the public. In
order to tackle these problems in gauging policing qualities, the organisation compares
developments in the same period in the preceding years. But this is an unscientific method
and gives unsatisfactory results for various reasons. The crime rate or other policing
problems do not remain static over a period of time. These depend upon population,
complexity of society, economic conditions, moral values, quality of leadership, political
conditions, prices and climate, none of which follow any formula.
SUBJECTIVE FANCIES
The police needs, as a control device, a tool to measure policing quality. Until such a
device is invented, the administrators have to rely upon their subjective fancies to measure
and control policing and assess the work of their subordinates. Until a scientific device is
formulated, the heartburns and frustrations caused by erratic measurement of work and
policing qualities, wherein a few mealy-mouthed smart guys always corner accolades at the
cost of efficient silent workers, will continue to prevail. A sufficiently active tool to measure
policing qualities is therefore the first priority in the task of creating a new shape for the
Indian police. The success achieved in this field will decide the degree to which the Indian
police can shed its shoddy image.
The police organisation is being run without requisite management principles. The major
lapse lies in the failure to define organisation objectives and formulate a specific set of
actions thereon. For example extraneous objectives such as creating employment
opportunities often inspire the creation of additional posts irrespective of the organisational
needs, which results in the corrosion of job contents and thereby erode the morale of the
force. Work, often, is not allocated on the basis of scientific assessment of character and
aptitude.
32
Sophisticated equipment purchased under modernisation schemes without creating the

infrastructure for their operation or analysing their relevance and their relative merits to the
organisation, have resulted in their being dumped a few days after commissioning while even
some of the basic needs are yet to be met.
MANAGEMENT PRINCIPLES
The police organisation of India would do well to formulate actions and operations in line
with the latest management principles and practices followed elsewhere. It may either
constitute an efficient cell of management experts to advice or hire a management
consultation firm for guidance. At any rate, the police organisation of the third millennium
should be a far smaller unit than now, manned by highly committed and capable officers who
are paid and looked after well by the Government.
The last three decades have seen a tremendous expansion in the Indian police. For the
lack of an organisational plan and the foresight to assess future demands, haphazard growth
has resulted. Organisational sensibilities such as workload, unit of control, accountability
functional conveniences, span of control and information flow are never given the attention
they need building an organisation. As a result, while a few posts in the police are
overburdened with work, there are many which have no work or accountability. The
lopsided growth of the organisation has spawned acute likes and dislikes for various
positions. Naturally, probity and objectivity are sacrificed in favour of survival and protection
of career interests. Corruption is rampant. This may not be the sole reason for the falling
standards of policing. Yet, it is a major cause.
Rationalisation of the police structure to bring about a balance among the various posts
in the same rank would certainly help to ameliorate the situation. It would also help to
eliminate the wastage of Government funds on unnecessary posts. The creation of such posts,
in order to accommodate unwanted elements, cannot be tolerated in a serious department like
the police. A systematic growth plan for balanced expansion is essential if the department is
to meet the tasks ahead.
INSTINCT
For the administrators, the knowledge of modern management principles makes policing
and related operations cheaper, effective and less demanding in terms of time, place,
manpower, equipment and other resources. The instinct to study and plan operations in terms
of layout charts, time flow, span of control, methods of programming of operations,
motivational aspects, human relationships, information flow, control methods, work analysis
and contingencies for emergencies must be inherent in police culture whether it pertains to
raids, maintenance of order, crime control, investigation, intelligence collection, security
exercises or simply administration.
Only the meticulous exercise of management techniques will make police administration
meaningful, purposeful and useful in giving the personnel direction and content.
33
PRAVEEN KUMAR
The present policing system in India has too much of paper work with hundreds of
registers maintained in each station or office with tens of forms filled up at each stage. A
detailed study of the need for paper work should be taken up to eliminate its need so that time
is saved. Computerisation is also a possibility not far away. Professional knowledge is vital
in the field of policing too. What is at issue is not only the knowledge of law and procedures
but a deeper insight into their applications, necessary in diverse circumstances. A mind, alert
to its surroundings with an inexhaustible curiosity to know what is afoot and triggers each
development and its likely impact on policing in general and the worker at hand in
particular, is essential for efficient policing. This entails special efforts to update professional
and general knowledge at all levels. There are training programmes, including inservice
training, but they lack in substance and quality. They fail to impart the right knowledge to
the trainees and induce attitudinal changes in them. The lack of commitment to work, either
in actual performance or in supervision, is the primary cause of this failing . A healthy police
setup, from the constabulary to the ranks of the Director-General must possess sound
professional and general knowledge at all levels.
The modernisation of the police force with the latest communication, transport, weapons
and office equipment system and the simultaneous creation of the necessary infrastructure for
their operation in advance alone will make the police force rise to the challenge of elite
criminals who are armed with sophisticated equipment. India of the third millennium will
require its police force to be equipped with helicopters as an aide in emergencies. A
genuine and effective effort to achieve modernisation would be indispensable in the future.
A face-lift to police stations and offices with the latest office equipment and general
facilities will go a long way in boosting the morale of the policemen.
INTELLECTUAL ANALYSIS
The passion for modernisation is not met with an intellectual analysis of the needs for
modernisation. The result is spasmodic efforts without the logistic support to sustain
modernistion. This has resulted in enormous wasteful expenditure towards the acquisition
of gadgets. Indian is yet to develop a system to assess the needs of modernisation in the
police and to devise techniques to speed up the process. India is yet to make full use of
advanced computer facilities for policing, computerisation of fingerprints is yet to reach a
satisfactory phase. The use of helicopters for policing remains a dream. Distant hearing and
night-watch devices are also unknown.
The response time of the Indian police to a crisis call is unduly long when compared to
international standards. Efforts to shorten it, in Delhi and few other places where terrorist
strikes made shocking impacts did bring about some improvements. These are only
exceptions. Otherwise, no serious though is given to the need for quick response. The
modernisation programmes which should pave the path for improving the response time,
seldom attend to this salient need.
The Bangalore city police spent liberally in 1991 on modern communication gadgets;
but this did not improve its speed of response. Instances of such wasteful expenditure on
modernisation are available in other parts of the country also.
34
Though efforts have been made to redeem the image of the Indian police nothing
substantial has been achieved thanks to amateurish handling of the affair. The managers have
their image development tools limited to issuing occasional press statements when actually
image development has become a highly advanced. Field of specialisation.
CONSTABULARY
The constabulary which forms the backbone and cutting-edge of Indian policing and
wields real authority over the populace, is a lowly-paid, modestly educated, non-elite mass of
workes in uniform. The authority they wield makes them fearsome while their low status in
society stands in the way of their getting empathy and respect. The fearsome authority sans
empathy, respect and legitimacy decidedly proves a deadly substructure for an organisation
and people certainly resent an organisation with this unhealthy attribute. This foible in the
extant setup makes policing more complex.
The Indian police of the 21st century will require sub-inspectors with their present scale of
education and status in society as the primary unit of policing at the cutting-edge level.
Constables up to the level of Assistant Sub-Inspectors of Police should be limited to the
duties of assistants without police powers and responsibilities. This will require a huge
army of subinspectors while the contabulary stands to be severely spruced in strength.
With the removal of the constabulary from the hierarchy, the sub-inspectors will occupy
the lowest rank in the setup. Each police station works under a police inspector assisted by a
host of sub-inspectors, performing all subordinate functions including beat patrolling and
investigation of minor cases.
Diligent efforts at the highest level in the organisation to create a force characterised by
integrity, commitment and intelligence may be the foremost need of a police organisation of
the future. The prevalence of police administration over general administration in the
survival of a nation as a democratic and disciplined country may necessitate changes in the
recruitment and service condition rules to attract the best talent.
WORK ASSESSMENT
The system of assessment of work for promotion has fallen into utter misuse. Subjective
assessments of corrupt influences must be replaced with periodical promotions in a time scale
of say, 25 years. So every police constable retires at least as an Assistant Sub-Inspector of
Police, a Sub-Inspector as a Deputy Superintendent of Police and an Indian Police Service
Officer as an Inspector General of Police. The officers of the Indian Police Service may be
posted, on first appointment, as Superintendents to make the career more attractive, though
not to districts directly. And dual recruitments as in vogue now, has to be stopped to make
selection meaningful.
Officers, in exceptional cases, may have avenues for special promotions in addition to the
two provided in a time scale of say 25 years, on the basis of a written examination and on an
overall assessment of their career of 25 years by high-power committees formed for the
purpose. The promotion of constabulary in exceptional cases to the ranks of PSIs and above
35
PRAVEEN KUMAR
should be screened by the All India Police Authority and the promotion of an IPS officer as
the Director General of Police and above should be approved by a Central Cabinet
Committee headed by the Prime Minister.
36
POLICE AND HUMAN RIGHTS

DOES END JUSTIFY MEANS?
A basic tool man devised to preserve his common rights is the police. It is an irony that
most incidents of human rights violations have their roots in the police. This is an example of
the fence grazing the crop.
The reasons are many. The most important lies in the police culture itself-its inability to
look beyond certain barriers it raises around itself; its failure to see a human being as he; its
incapacity to see its relevance to the common man outside the power structure; its inveterate
indulgence with powerplay; its deviant interpretations of its role in the rule of law and, above
all, its scant respect for means (in achieving the end) The result is the police siding with the
wrong-doers in the clashes between individual and national or other social interests, leading
to popular condemnation of the police.
Right thinking people are aware of the predicament and sufferings of their fellow-men.
Thanks to the revolution in the communication sphere, human rights violations have become
a highly sensitive issue, with the human rights commissions at the regional, national and
international levels on their toes to detect, investigate, report and protest. The factual reports
have embarrassed Governments and their police outfits. It is distressing to note that
developing countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America prominently figure in these reports;
and the record of the countries in the Indian sub-continent, including India, Pakistan and Sri
Lanka, is not inspiring either. India, in particular, must reread its recent human rights record.
The basic question is whether human rights violation is sine qua non with safeguarding
national and the larger social interests. The second is whether such violations are justified in
the cause of such interests. The third is what are the limits within which violations are
confined, and who imposes these limits and by what mechanism. What would be the
situation if the police who indulge in human rights violations to protect national, and social
interests are thoroughly corrupt, immoral and unworthy of any trust? Answers are desperately
needed.
Indias human rights record is particularly bad in Punjab and Kashmir. Its record has
never been satisfactory in the North East or with the naxalites.
Where does one draw the line between the larger interests of the country and the violation
of human rights? Blame is shifted from one level to another whenever the police is pulled up
for human rights violation during action. The top brass blames the field officers for excess
while the latter blame the bosses for exerting pressures to show results without any
guidelines to protect human rights.
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PRAVEEN KUMAR
The truth is that the police, at all levels, and its administrators are to be blamed, that none
among the police and their administrators really bother about human rights and their
violations, least of all during actions which expose them to tremendous risks. It is a do-or-die
situation. Once on a dangerous course of action, the sole aim of the police is to succeed in
the operation by whatever means. Moral questions such as human rights violations and the
public agitation likely to follow do not matter, considering the dangers they face in carrying
out the task. It is a crisis and the tendency is to somehow overcome the situation
irrespective of what the future might hold. The administrators know that excessive checks
and moral fears blunt the killer instinct in the policeman and affect the chance of his success
in the field. The authorities up the hierarchy also believe in succeeding somehow rather
than play by the rules. This is the crux of the matter regarding human rights.
Human rights take precedence over national and social interests and transcend religious
and moral issues. Human rights become a sensitive issue only when they clash inter se and
invite a decision on basic issues. The question is who is to judge such basic issues.
Certainly the decisions cannot be left to the whims and convenience of the police.
The human rights is the spine of policing must be made an integral part of the police
culture. This is absolutely necessary. Only such emphasis restrain the police from indulging
in violations.
NATURAL AND BASIC
Human rights are the natural rights of the human race as well as the laws that help make
social life possible. This gives a legal slant to the issue. The legislature, in a democracy,
decides how much of such rights could be surrendered in common interest. The legislature
by promulgating laws and the courts by interpreting them delineate what natural rights
constitute inviolable human rights violations are an issue between the legislature and the
judiciary on the one hand and the executive, which is the police, on the other. For the fearstruck citizens, it is an issue between the helpless them and the arm-twisting Government. In
simple terms, human rights violations involve violating the basic rights of life, liberty and
human dignity beyond the limits of the law. The violations may be committed in the acts of
execution, confinement or torture. It is basically the use of power beyond the scope of law
for certain ends and is not committed for any noble end. Such violations are common in
secret service operations; in emergent situations, say, when separatists or terrorists are
active or dangerous operations of foreign agents are suspected.
The police indulge in human rights violations on suspected elements to bring the situation
under control either by eliminating them or by forcing them to reveal their plans. Fake
encounters were first contrived and staged by the Indian Police. Crime investigations account
for a large share of human rights violations in the developing countries where third degree
methods are employed in the interrogation of the people detained. Death, rape and torture in
custody are common in many developing countries.
Are acts of human rights violation effective in crime investigation or in controlling a
troubled situation? The answer is no. A temporary lull may be created, but in the world of
organised crime, the illegalities of human rights violations have either no impact or have just
38
the opposite impact. The criminals are mentally and physically prepared to face any threat to
their basic rights. Devising alternative plans to counter police action is only a minor
diversion in their massive operations. In fact, they enjoy fighting the Government on equal
terms with no legal or moral inhibitions. Their resolve to fight the Government with all the
resource at their disposal is only strengthened. It becomes a no-hold barred fight then
onwards, the law-enforcers losing their initial advantages and the edge of civility and
decency.
Inhuman and outrageous acts perpetrated by established Government agencies have an
electrifying impact on the common man whose sympathies are in favour of the victims. The
legal and moral relevances become immaterial to the citizen. A well organised outfit
actually contrives to create a situation to earn the sympathy of the public.
HARDENED CRIMINALS
Another reason why acts of human rights violation will not put an end to crimes is the
criminals get hard and wish to take revenge and embarrass the establishment. This is how
resistance grows. This is what happened in Punjab, in Kashmir and in Vietnam in the Sixties
and the Seventies.
Another impact of the violation of human rights by the state is the loss of fear and respect
for the authority of the state. Once subjected to third-degree methods during interrogation,
a petty criminal comes out as a hardened criminal. A government devoid of moral authority
cannot rule at all.
Secret services indulge in dirty tricks involving human rights violation in national
interests, though law and morality demand that such violations in any form and for reason are
bad. Criminals have their own code of conduct. Secret service is a world apart and its
dramatis personae are inveterate in criminal games, with the official sanction to play them.
The danger lies in committing excesses that endanger the safety and the well-being of
innocent people not involved in the game in any way. It is left to each state to draw the line
depending on the sensitivity of each problem though it cannot openly declare that it is
promoting and guiding the secret acts even remotely. Yet it is a cardinal duty it must
perform.
Another dimension of human rights violations is its commission for personal ends in the
garb of fighting a social cause. In the atmosphere of violence, individuals from enforcement
agencies as well as terrorist outfits may take advantage of the situation and indulge in
killings, extortions and rape. India saw it happen in Punjab and Kashmir and even in the
North East where personal scores wee settled.
The tragedy about Indian law enforcers is that they are keen on the immediate show of
results to earn the appreciation of the higherups, in the process relegating to the oblivion the
need to find lasting solutions. That is why the violation of human rights is on the rise as
efficient and ingenious policing is less preferred. This is true about managing law and order
issues as well as investigation of crimes.
39
PRAVEEN KUMAR
Laws are formulated and promulgated by the government keeping in sight the needs of
the country and the responsibilities of its enforcing machinery. The need to go lawless in
order to enforce laws arises only when the law-enforcers perceive that the laws are inadequate
or their abilities are inadequate to meet the challenges in the field. The laws being what they
are, framed from time to time, to suit the needs of the field, the only conclusion one can draw
from rampant human rights violations is that the enforcers are utterly devoid of professional
skill and the instinct to do effective policing and hence resort to lawlessness as a short-cutmethod.
The heart of police responsibilities is protection of rights, be it individual, corporate ,
organisational or social, or the rights of the nation for survival. Protection, prevention and
investigation are the tools available for achieving these ends. Human rights make up the
essence of the privileges man enjoys in the social setup. The police, entrusted with the
responsibility of protecting rights, are doing a disservice to the profession and humanity in
violating human rights in the discharge of peripheral duties.
But this is not unique to Indian police. The police and the governments of almost all the
developing countries suffer from the syndrome, the problem being acute in non-democratic
countries.
The problem is laying the emphasis on results irrespective of the means. Committing an
injustice in the name of justice cannot be called a service in the cause of justice. In policing,
each means is an end by itself. Policing by its very nature, involves extreme measures such
as detention, arrest, search, seizure, impounding, forced entry, taking possession, controlling
movements and the use of weapons. These methods when not employed discreetly and
moderately, do great harm to individuals and society. Perhaps in no other organisation is
means as vital as in the police.
40
RESTORING CREDIBILITY TO
CRIME INVESTIGATION
The last decade of this century sees the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) becoming
the Indian version of the U.S. Federal Bureau of Intelligence(FBI) headed by J.Edgar Hoover
in the middle of the century With one difference.
The FBI became a key component and much feared public institution, thanks to the open
aggressive moves of its energetic Director, while the CBI gained notoriety as a pawn in the
political game of chess used to bring rivals down on their knees. The trend altered the
judiciary which became active.
The CBI, closely watched by the judiciary, had to discharge its professional
responsibilities and this saw many skeletons in the cupboard tumbling. The organisation, in
the process, shed its meekness against powerful politicians and proved it was a force to
reckon with.
Being the highest authority of the country in crime investigation, the CBI must contain
the best investigation brains vested with the power to execute the work.
Personal attributes such as probity and professionalism are essential. But does the CBI
meet all these needs?
The seventh Schedule of the Constitution has the police and public order, except for the
deployment and use of forces of the Union, under the State List, and criminal law, criminal
procedure, administration of justice and judicial proceedings under the Concurrent List.
The Central Bureau of Intelligence and Investigation figures in the Union List. The
arrangement provides for a separate bureau of investigation. The legal authority of the CBI is
defined by a short six-section Act of 1946 titled Delhi Special Police Establishment Act,
1946 which provides for the constitution of a special police force by the Central
Government for the investigation of notified offences in any Union Territory and in any area
in a State where the jurisdiction of the police force is extended by the order of the Central
Government on the consent of the State Government.
The last section of the Act states the special police force cannot exercise its powers in an
area without the consent of the Government of that State. The special police force enjoys
all the powers, duties privileges and the liabilities of the police officers of an area in the
investigation of the offences committed there.
The superintendence of the special police force lies with the Central Government and the
administration with an officer whose grade is on par with State police chief.
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PRAVEEN KUMAR
The preamble of the Act speaks about the need for the constitution of a special police
force in Delhi for the investigation of certain offences in the Union Territories and to make
provision for the superintendence and administration of the said force and for the extension to
other areas of the powers and jurisdiction of the members of the said force in regard to the
investigation of the said offences.
It is the national character of the CBI that makes it stand head and shoulders above the
myriad crime investigation department. Its prime position as the investigator of all
important and sensitive crimes has brought it to the centre-stage in the public life of India.
Otherwise, the CBI, as an investigating agency, is on par with any other crime
investigation department regarding the law, judicial proceedings, investigation methods and
the powers and privileges given to the investigators.
Does the CBI, in its present form, fully qualify to be a premier investigating authority?
The answer is no. The restraint on the CBI from exercising its powers and jurisdiction in any
area in a State without the consent of the government of that State is a great handicap.
India, in 50 years, has come across several States giving and withdrawing consent
depending on their political and parochial conveniences. This attitude renders the CBI part of
a political game plan tarnishing its image and degrading the merit of the investigations.
The CBI should be empowered to extend its tentacles to all areas of the country and
investigate all types of offences classified crime. The Act has to be amended to that effect.
The Act provides for the appointment of the head of the CBI by the Central Government,
which involves politicians. Now, why should the head of the premier investigating agency be
named according to the whims and fancies of the politicians in power? The power of
appointing the head of the CBI should be taken away from the Centre. The agency will then
have its credibility restored. Again, the Act has to be amended.
Once a case is referred to the CBI, the people assume that the law will take its course.
Only insiders know the turns and twists it undergoes depending upon who is what in the case
and in the Government
Right from taking up a case for investigation to the stage of filing a chargesheet and
later, anything may happen at any stage depending upon the political dictates. A case may be
investigated and chargesheet filed within a few weeks or months or just shelved for decades.
Arrests, decisions on bails, searches, seizures and chargesheets are all subject to political
convenience. The political head gains this leverage by becoming instrumental in the
appointment of a particular police officer who would never have dreamt of making it to the
top.
The grateful chief knows to whom he owes his coveted position, and his power and
conscience are at the convenience of his political boss. This is an arrangement of mutual
benefit.
42
When the new chief dares to challenge the will of his political patron, the sword of abrupt
removal from the post is held over his head. Now he has no option but to go against his
conscience and professional will unless he is prepared to sacrifice his job. By quitting, he
does service to nobody: after all, there are others waiting to distort professional decisions at
the command of the politicians. So he would rather join the race. This is how the agency
chief is brought down on his knees.
The malaise lies in the legal framework inherited from the Act the provided for
constituting the special police force. When a series of sensitive cases against prominent
political leaders was referred to the CIB in the Nineties, the agency stood exposed by its
meddling.
The case of the Bofors gun deal drags on; the handling of the St.Kitts forgery case, the
Jain hawala case, the urea scam, the JNN bribery case, the Lakhubhai pathak cheating case,
the Indian Bank scam, the telecommunications scandal, the anti-Sikh riots case of 1984 and
the case of harbouring terrorists and mafia associates has dealt a blow to the credibility of
the CBI. The public no more trusts the CBI.
What exactly has brought about the situation? Delay, sometimes running into years, in
taking up or completing investigation of politically inconvenient cases, prompt execution
when the political climate is congenial, decision to oppose or allow bails on political
considerations, building up cases around flimsy evidence such as entries in diaries and
inconsequential photographs sans corroboration have all eroded the status of the CBI.
Going to the press about chargesheeting key political personalities even before statutory
permission is obtained for the purpose (the Supreme Court observed, in this context: talking
too much outside and also carrying documents in the pockets) and leaks about politically
sensitive cases make the agency suspect.
The charge that the CBI is more interested in trying the cases in the media than in courts
cannot be answered squarely.
If the appointment of the CBI chief is one side of the coin, the enormous powers he and
his political masters enjoy is the other. Professional investigation by an upright officer can
always be scuttled and the officer abruptly removed if he is found too inconvenient.
Reverting officials to the base is always a possibility.
Mr.K.N.Singh, former Joint Director of the CBI, in his book, My CBI Days refers to
the harassment he underwent for pursuing investigation according to his conscience.
Mr.K.Madhavan, another Joint Director, preferred voluntary retirement.
The solution lies in liberating the CBI from the grip of the politicians and bringing its
top brass to their senses about professional responsibilities. Making the CBI autonomous is
not going to achieve anything.
There is no guarantee that the CBI chiefs who make merry in the company of their
political benefactors will behave better when left free. Chances are that they may run parallel
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PRAVEEN KUMAR
political manoeuvres to build a base for theselves.The Supreme Court pronounced on May 5,
1997, that it was not in favour of making the prime investigating agency totally autonomous,
but would like to evolve a method based on checks and balances so that it could function
independently in accordance with the law.
The crux of the matter is a method based on checks and balances. The key is the
appointment of the chief of the agency.
A statutory panel constituted of men from the judicial profession as advisor to the
agency may fulfil the need for checks and balances. The panel may be invested with the
power to appoint and remove CBI chiefs on the basis of their performances.
The panel may advise the agency on taking up cases, arrests, searches, seizures bail and
chargesheets. The advice has to be statutorily binding on the process of the investigation.
The panel has to be free to monitor the process and the pace of the investigation.
The panel may consist of a dozen senior most retired judges of the Supreme Court as
permanent members, one of them as chairman and the CBI chief as member-secretary. The
membership of the panel must be awarded to the senior retied judges including chief justices.
Only a full panel with a minimum of 80 percent quorum must be empowered to decide,
on a simple majority, about the appointment and removal of the CBI chiefs, promotions and
transfers of officers of an above the rank of Assistant Director.
The function, privileges, rights, liabilities and responsibilities of the panel have to be
clearly defined in order to avoid clashes with the CBI.
A suitable amendment to the Delhi Special Police Establishment Act 1946 is the first
step. The constitution of the panel as part of the body of the CBI shall be the second step.
And the third and most crucial step will be suitable administrative measures to ensure that
the panel discharges its responsibilities in a fair manner. Appreciation and an atmosphere
free of bureaucratic hassles and pulls and pressures will help the elder members of the
judiciary discharge their responsibilities in guiding the CBI in the right course.
44
WHAT AILS
THE INDIAN SECRET POLICE
It is significant that the history of the police of sovereign India begins soon after the
turbulent years of the second World War. The shift saw an expansion in the vista of policing
worldwide, the most important being clandestine operations for national security. Covert
operation blossomed as a full-fledged institution and was recognised as a tool of statecraft
only during and after the second World War (Germany, the Soviet Union and Britain before
and during the war and the U.S. and Israel after it perfected the techniques.
The establishment of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in the early Fifties from the
remnants of the office of Special Services( OSS), with an exclusive division to handle
clandestine operations abroad (sometimes domestic operations also) marked a milestone in
the history of intelligence.
Free India , in spite of its moral values and abiding faith in the Gandhian philosophy of
truth and honesty, found covert operations indispensable for survival. Though attempts
were scratchy in the beginning India made significant breakthroughs in penetrating,
moulding and controlling the affairs of neighbours after setting up the
Research and
Analysis Wing (RAW) to handle covert operations in foreign countries. Its operations and
performance in Bangladesh, Sri. Lanka and Pakistan and to a somewhat lesser extent in
Afghanistan, Nepal, Bhutan, Burma and some of the Gulf countries are equal to the best in
the world.
Its role in the creation of Bangladesh, containing the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam,
checkmating Pakistan in Kashmir and controlling the terrorist misadventures of international
Sikh communities against Indian targets have earned it worldwide accolades. This in spite of
the fact that the Indian secret police is a lightweight performer in the arena of international
clandestine wars and its overall performance is unimpressive for the size and resources of the
country. The reasons are many.
The first is the lack of commitment to the national cause and ideologies such as
integration, democracy, secularism, nonaligned movement and mixed economy. Another
reason is the moral atrophy experienced by the police after independence leading to a setback
in the professional approach. Postings to the RAW with opportunities for foreign
assignments have become an obsession depriving the job of all its substance and spirit.
The other reason is political interference in postings and transfers of the RAW officials.
It is in fact political connections rather than security screening and clearance and aptitude for
clandestine operations which decide the issue. Huge unbudgeted and unaccounted funds at
the RAWs disposal make the appointments highly lucrative. This is an extremely
dangerous trend in a security apparatus where commitment, trust and absolute secrecy are
vital and draw the line between life and death.
45
PRAVEEN KUMAR
LACK OF PERSPECTIVE
Clandestine operations require highly specialised skills, Ignoring this need means
compromising and betraying the organisations operational efficiency and exposing the
country to dangerous security threats. Another important reason for the retarded growth of
the Indian secret police is the general lack of security consciousness in the country and the
inability to see and place the imperatives of a national security policy in the right perspective.
These glitches end up in security breaches. Indias approach to national security is always
piecemeal, incoherent and casual.
It does not have a sound and well-conceived national policy. Security threats are always
treated with short-term face-saving responses which never contribute to the real long-term
security needs of the country. The people who fought a mighty power to liberate this
country from the yoke of foreign rule just half a century ago have not bothered to start a
public debate on the subject. Indian security now is left at the mercy of time and it is sheer
luck that democracy has escaped the hungry wolves waiting to prey on it.
Security policy is the essence and unifying factor behind all the policies of most
developed as well as developing countries. Whether in foreign, defence or economic policy,
industry, trade and commerce, science and technology or human resource development, the
policies are all oriented to national security. Most developed countries have exclusive super
agencies reporting directly to the head of government to advise it on, oversee and mastermind
national security policies and its operations.
The U.S. has the National Security Agency (NSA) doing yeoman service as the national
security advisor to the President and enjoys more powers than the CIA. Israel and Russia
have efficient outfits at the political level to formulate their national security interests. Most
developed countries have created their own systems to mastermind matters touching national
security with the power to override the decision of other departments. India is yet to learn
its lessons from these developments.
The excessive concern for national security has led to the creation of parallel
governments and power centres in some countries. There are instances of black acts being
committed against the legitimate policies of countries in the garb of national security.
Pakistan is an example of a constitutionally-elected government living in the shadow of fear
of its secret police. The Inter-Services Intelligence )ISI) has indeed taken upon itself the
responsibilities of national security.
LOYALTY, A POSITIVE ASPECT

In the context, a positive aspect of Indias poor concern for secret interests is its clean
slate regarding the existence of secret parallel governments and clandestine power centres. It
is creditworthy that the Indian secret police has remained subordinate and loyal to its
legitimate authorities.
46
The field of operation for the security agencies continues to be confined to traditional
methods which ignore the needs of a modern integrated approach in consonance with the
national policies and programmes. India cannot afford to treat its security concerns
according to the whims and fancies of the people who come to head the Ministries and their
political and personal ideologies.
India lacks a regimen of long range security programmes to make its security operations
meaningful and purposeful. It is lagging far behind the world standards in hi-tech ultra-secret
espionage operations. Its secret police are yet to make proficient use of the countrys
impressive strides in satellite launches and other space innovations. Except perhaps in the
case of Pakistan, India is yet to fully utilise the service of world-class mercenaries. In short,
security is not high on the priority list.
The state of affairs is even worse in the special branches or intelligence units of the
States and Union Territories. The former have become tools of the ruling parties which spy
over their political opponents and the field situations. Law and order is pushed to the
background.
As far as internal security is concerned, they are rather ill-equipped for the task in,
manpower resources, hi-tech equipment, expertise, organisational efficiency and motivation
factors, save some routine VIP security exercises which do not call for expertise. These
exercises are meant just to oblige and gratify political masters.
Their contacts with the news media, a vital link in intelligence operations, are few and are
mostly confined to local newspapers for the purpose of disinformation and to keep track of
news dissemination. Occasionally, these contacts are misused to promote favourite
subordinates. The role of these special branches in providing skilled recruits to security
agencies at the national level has remained a dream.
The institution of an apolitical agency with a permanent core group of experts whose
integrity is proven alone can change the situation. This nucleus will act as the guide,
advising the head of government in national security matters. Efforts made in this direction
are rather sketchy, ill- conceived and half-hearted. It is high time work was done in earnest
to form this comprehensive agency.
VIP PROTECTION
In India, national security, for all practical purposes, is synonymous with VIP security
and the police refuse to look beyond protecting individuals. This is because of the lopsided
loyalties and aberrations in understanding professional objectives and responsibilities and a
tendency to trade off professional responsibilities
and services for promotions. This
explains the existence of the Black Cats, National Security Guards, Special Protection Group
and so on. While the safety of national leaders is important, it is not the plank on which
national security stands.
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PRAVEEN KUMAR
The VIP security has become a public farce with all kinds of people demanding and
obtaining security classifications depending on the money and power they have. They get
the cover of highly trained police personnel as a mark of their prestige and social standing.
All matters concerned with national security are highly sensitive and should be treated
as such. It should not be degraded into a mean exercise for the benefit of a few persons,
however influential and important they may be.
Each VIP visit to a region ends up with the entire law and order wing of the police force
drawn out for protection duties, throwing normal work out of gear. With the VIPs busy
trotting around the country, it has become a serious threat to routine police work.
48
POLICE UNPROFESSIONAL
Policemen are executives of law and executors of the rule of law. As professionals, their
only interests are the laws of the country and its enforcement at all costs including personal
safety and self-interests. This, however, is only an ideal situation. The job culture and peer
pressure play a major role in setting the standards in an organisation. This situation is not
quite happy regarding the Indian police now. The reason is the general collapse of the
professional instinct, caused by the degeneration of values. Society gets the police it
deserves. A country of self-seekers naturally has a self-seeking police force and the
consequence is lawlessness. This is the malady India suffers from. The symptoms are
crime, disorder and insecurity that have kept the country and its people in a stranglehold.
An incident that took place 16 years ago in Chitradurga district of Karnataka will
illustrate the kind of professional commitment Indian police pursue. A gambling den was
raided by the police and the owner spoke lowly of the DIGP whom he said was taking
mamools from him every month. The matter was reported by a local newspaper. This
infuriated the DIG and the police turned its ire on the newspaper. The Deputy
Superintendent of Police of the sub-division in which the range headquarters was situated
joined the fight and a gang ransacked the office and the press of the news paper a week later.
Though a case was registered with the local police station and the owner of the newspaper
moved heaven and earth to bring the culprits to book, nothing came out of it and the case
went undetected. But the people knew who were behind it all.
Such episodes shatter the trust of the public who cannot look upon the police as the
guardian of their rights and interests. Basically, lapses lie more in the concepts than in
individuals. The police as a collective force operated to wreak vengeance on the newspaper
for factual reporting, though somewhat indiscreet. But going on a rampage, however highly
placed the officer in question could be, in nothing but, making a mockery of professional
objectives. The most disturbing aspect of the present Indian police is the slow and steady
process of replacement of the passion for law, justice and fairness by a single-pointed
indulgence of self-seeking tendencies as the drive of the police system. Much more
disquieting is the attitude of the public about the development and their complete
dependence on the police as the protector of their legal rights, provider of security ad
dispenser of justice. What is actually happening is a great betrayal. Indeed, the tool, namely
the police, is there to enforce law and provide security. But it has become the handmaid of
the rich and influential and serves the interests of the people in that stratum of the population.
Self-seeking tendencies express themselves at all levels of policing and management of
organisational matters. As far as policing is concerned, be it crime-prevention or
investigation, collection of intelligence or management of internal security or maintaining law
and order, self-interest has role to play. Its expression in crime management is too obvious a
matter.
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PRAVEEN KUMAR
While intelligence collection is becoming a politically oriented function, internal

security operations are no more than providing cover to political bigwigs and other influential
people at the cost of more pressing problems of national magnitude.
Law and order has become a tool in the hands of the politicians and the policemen make
themselves available for such games. In the process, honest policemen suffer and the morale
of the system receives a serious setback. The result is lawlessness spawned by the absence
of effective policing and wrong models as the protectors of law.
The parochial instinct of the police expresses itself in the management and organisational
matters. Under the cover of discipline and the need of tacit obedience, the game of
favouritism is wilfully played on the one hand and any resistance is ruthlessly crushed on
the other. Organisational processes such as promotions and transfers are widely used to
achieve personal ends. Posts with no job content are created in various ranks primarily to
accommodate officers who refuse to fall in line with the higherups for reasons of
conscience and professional integrity. It an upright officer takes a sinecure posting in his
stride and refuses to part with his principles, he is harassed through other means. Recently
the commandant of a training college pressed his higherups and the state Home Secretary for
the removal of a functionary of the college from his important postion. The latter was
accused of involvement in a fraudulent act involving several lakhs of rupees. The Home
Secretary and the chief of the unit ( in the rank of DGP) made sure that the commandant of
the college faced the consequences for recommending action on their favourite official. His
vehicle was withdrawn, telephones were disconnected, his personal staff was harassed and
his subordinates were encouraged to disobey. This continued until the officer who found
functioning impossible went on leave. He reported back to duty only after he was transferred
out. More surprising is that such incidents take place in the open without any attempt to
keep it secret or discreet.
Professional pride is the panacea for the malady of self-interest in professionals.
Greating an ambience of professional pride is a sure way of nurturing and promoting high
professional standards and efficiency. It is immaterial whether high professional pride
creates high standards. The fact is both are important to create a conducive environment of
professionalism.
India definitely needs such a professional environment in its police force to strengthen its
democratic traditions and the roots of the rule of law. An organised effort is on in the Indian
police to force its members to fall in line at the cost of individual brilliance and creative
abilities. The policemen are starved of innovative steps. The organisation follows the
principle of nipping talent in the bud insisting on unquestioning servitude. The talk of the
top brass on public platforms about the need to nurture excellence and the outstanding
qualities is a farce. Most leaders prefer status quo at the peril of the growth of the
organisation so that their interests remain undisturbed.
For administering the medication, first, topmost police leaders of the country need to be
convinced that the police of present India are really ailing with serious problems and the
system really needs treatment.
50
LAW AND JUSTICE

Justice begotten at a cost is justice lost. The fact is lost sight of by present administration
of justice. Justice necessitates an integral vision. It cannot be isolated from its environment,
past, present, future, diverse issues, people involved and related events. It means delving into
the heart of an issue and delivering justice taking into account all related issues and matters to
the rightful entitlement of all. This presupposes a passion for objectivity and justness and
above all, selflessness in the arbitrators of justice as well as in those who are in the service of
the administration of justice. The role of the police in the administration of justice comes
under scrutiny in the context of their part in the investigation of crimes and maintenance of
law and order.
The police play umpteen roles as executors at the grassroots level. They are basically
performers, actual doers in the field. Passion is the normal trait of action. Objectivity and
justness seldom give company to those who act to show results. Expecting selfless traits in
policemen is akin to waiting for rain drops to fall from bright white clouds. The policemen
perform their duties with normal flair and loyalty while put in service of justice. Only they
lean towards the rich and the powerful.
Loyalty to justice is a noble cause. It signifies a heightened mind bound to a heightened
cause. Loyalty to a value or a just cause is always a great virtue. The same cannot be said
about loyalty to individuals of whatever importance. Individual loyalty in the service of the
administration of justice is self-defeating. The achilles heel lies in loyalty, basically faith, a
blind faith, sans stirrings in the conscience. The only loyalty desirable for those in the service
of the administration of justice in addition to the loyalty to the cause of justice and other
virtues is loyalty to conscience, freedom of thought and independent judgement. A
policeman with his loyalty can do an exemplary job in the administration of justice.
The police, as the cutting-edge of governance, enjoys enormous powers. They can
prevent, check, prohibit, restrain, regulate, confine or arrest erring people. They can forcibly
break-open, enter, search and seize when the need arises. They may use weapons to hurt and
kill. These extraordinary powers are tools of the police in serving the interests of justice. The
police, as the means of justice, is exempted from the process of justice by the law itself. The
relevance of the police in the administration of justice is two-fold: one, fair exercise of their
powers to ensure that no harm is done to the process of justice. There is virtually no way to
force them to comply with the needs of objectivity and fairplay in work save their own
interpretations of laws and actions. Interference of the court often is to little, too late to be
meaningful. The lack of a sound mechanism of supervision and the poor position of the
policeman in society, mediocre education and a deviant job culture inhibit the police from
performing at levels commensurate with their responsibilities. They have no organisational
pride. Field orientations distract them from high human values. A weak economic position
and opportunities to make easy money render them prone to corrupt practices. There is
nothing tangible in their service to inspire a commitment to the noble cause.
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PRAVEEN KUMAR
Shallow policing is responsible for all the mishaps and turbulence of the first half century
of independent India. Another factor is the exercise of their special powers without going
against justice. The police is a fence which, with its extra-ordinary powers, however, can ruin
the crop it is asked to protect. The enormous powers confer special responsibilities on it to
protect innocent people from a rash exercise of powers.
Every person thinks he is right and every criminal is just in his own assessment. Every
act of a human being has its own logic, reasons and justifications. This is true of the police
too. Every encounter, every lockup death, every third-degree method, every wrongful
confinement, every illegal arrest and every excess committed by the police has its own
justification. It is irrelevant how the justifications appear to outsiders. You seldom find a
policeman confessing to a wrong or an excess committed. Commissioners have explained
away the gunning down of innocent citizens by subordinates in broad daylight as a case of
mistaken identity. We have any number of cases of senior police officers colluding with
subordinates in destroying evidence of lock-up death cases.
The cause of failure of the police lies more in the systems failure, the character of its
main players, deviant job culture and wrong leadership than in the concept of policing.
Police in an inappropriate milieu may turn into a monster.
These days the executive heads of government opt for their own men in the police force
to head premier investigation agencies; political rivals are investigated and charge-sheeted on
flimsy grounds while cases of national significance drag on. The police is reduced to the state
of a tool of political revenge in this power game. In the process, the police loses its
credibility as a nonpartisan player and an infallible tool of establishing justice.
Making justice a costly affair gives another dimension to the issue. Effectiveness of the
police lies in its ability to make justice an easily and cheaply dispensable commodity. The
police is the first line of defence. Courts come on the scene only in a far later stage. Most
cases of dispute never go beyond the police stations. Good police certainly symbolises
effective administration of justice more than courts and prosecution department together do.
52
POLICE MORALE
ERODED BY POOR ADMINISTRATION
The basic ingredients of good policing are professional pride and good image. A good
image boosts professional pride. Good image brings in its wake public cooperation and
enhances the social recognition of the police personnel.
True policing is impossible in the absence of the strength of pride, responsibilities to
society can be discharged only from a position of strength. A weak police cannot do a good
job. Pride is linked to morale. Police personnel humiliated in career can never face the
people from a position of strength and do good policing. The tragedy lies in police
administration. Its vanity belittles the police, breaches its pride and shatters its image.
The police administrators in this country refuse to realise the basic psychological
imperative of good policing; they crush professional pride whenever and wherever it is seen
raising its head. Sadly to meet personal ends. Perhaps staff in no other government
department suffer humiliations as in police. This is true at all levels including the highest
ranks.
Suspensions and disciplinary actions are common; when disciplinary action would
include such indecent measures as withdrawal of vehicles, telephone and other facilities,
denial of promotions, transfer to humiliating jobs created just for the purpose and keeping the
person waiting without a job. This attitude produces a weak and confused police force with a
low self-esteem.
The police force is a tactical tool that can be of immense help to check the interference of
the law. The police are aware of this aspect. They know that nothing works as fear does.
They now that the advantages of a policeman out-weigh the risks of breaking the spine by
whatever means and that policemen so reined-in can be made to perform any job even at risks
to his own life and honour. This is why the administrators spare no effort and lose no
opportunities to beat, terrify and bully policeman of whatever rank, status, and
enlightenment, even at the cost of professional pride.
SCAPE GOAT
An upright officer of the rank of Additional Director General of Police of a State and a
scholar in diverse fields was known to refuse to bend against his conscience and this fact
made him unpopular among his superiors. While he was the Chief of State prisons in 1995,
he addressed his government about the tragic security lapses in a major prison in the State
headquarters and sent proposals to improve the situation. No action was initiated on the report
by the government.
In the closing months of 1995, a mafia gangwar that ensued in the State capital led to the
murder of a gang leader by a prison inmate. The Government ordered an enquiry by the
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PRAVEEN KUMAR
Home Secretary. The latter who found the ADGP a thorn in his flesh found a golden
opportunity in the enquiry. The officer was removed from his position and was not given an
alternative posting for atleast three months. If anybody was to be held responsible for the
lapses in the prison, it was the government for not acting on the report of the ADGP.
In this case, not only did the ADGP become a scapegoat for the lapses of the
government, but also an easy target for police officers who found his integrity inconvenient.
Police administrators wield power over the state authorities. Power breeds arrogance.
The sweep of arrogance is so strong that it has not patience for rules, laws, codes of conduct,
moral values, natural courtesies and human diginity.
An illustration of how low the police administrators of independent India can stoop is
provided by this instance, the likes of which can be found anywhere in India.
A police chief of a State between 1986 and 1990, who had obtained several sites from the
government through false claims in the names of his wife and himself and a spacious house
in a posh area of the State capital refused to occupy the police house allotted to him and
continued to stay in his own bungalow for the first three years of his tenure till the end of
1989. He shifted to the police house and took up the renovation of his own bungalow just a
few months prior to his retirement.
Rules required that the full guard provided to his at his own bungalow be shifted to the
Police House.
SELECTION DENIED
The Deputy Commissioner of Police in charge of the armed police force committed the
serious error of shifting one head constable and four constables from the bungalow to the
Police House instead of assigning a new team to the Police House and keeping the old guard
in the chiefs house under renovation to keep vigil over the construction material. This
infuriated the police chief so much so that the Deputy Commissioner was not selected for
the vital All-India Service, not only that hear, but also in the next ten years while his juniors
superseded him. The indifference, incompetence and corruption within the Union Public
Service Commission (UPSC) helped the process.
The UPSC in its perverted competence has created a new breed of administrators in the
police and other administrative classes. This new breed is interested in nothing beyond
meretricious schemes for promoting its career interests. They only think of more perks,
creating new posts to improve avenues of promotion and fighting for parity with other
services. Thoughts about how the schemes would affect the police structure in the long run
never bother these people.
Newspapers carry report of how promptly and actively regional and central IPS
associations respond to all the decisions touching their career. We never hear these
associations taking up any cause in matters purely professional- law and order, security or
crime investigation. The matters are left to the care of those down the line.
54
Administration is a highly specialised field requiring extra-ordinary skills but the state of
affairs in the police field is archaic. Actually, there is no administration worth the name.
There are no long-term plans. No organisational initiatives. No growth and coordination
studies. The organisation takes care of itself depending upon the need factors. As far as
morale, motivation and mental well-being of the manpower are concerned, the contribution
of the Indian police administration is absolutely nil.
Threats and suppression form the essence of manpower management . Waste of human
resources and mandays is the general rule. Quality, efficiency and character are
inconsequential. Assessments are unheard of. Accommodating the desires of the higher-ups
in official and political circles and powerful people on a quid pro quo basis is the accepted
norm.
There is leadership crisis at the administrative level. Reasons for this deterioration are
many. The agency in charge of selection, namely the UPSC is now manned by people
unequal to the task. Restructuring the UPSC with professionals of competence and integrity
can tone up public administration.
Administration as a service in spirit and governance deals with men, money, materials
and machinery through laws, rules, decisions and directions. Administration, for the most
part, is human resources management.
The distinct culture and service conditions of the police, the stress and strain of policing
and the psychological factors throw up problems unique to the organisation. This renders
police administration a specialised field to be handled by experts having insight into the
working conditions and the psychological pressures of policemen.
The responsibilities of any administration are two fold providing the body and shape
required to fulfil the objectives of the organisation within the limits of the extant laws and
providing the right ambience to boost the morale, motivation and above all the mental wellbeing of the personnel.
The extra-ordinary nature of the police setup and its working conditions render the latter
responsibility a sensitive field warranting specialised study and application.
The complex psychological factors involving policing in diverse social conditions and
social imperatives of a policemans life require dexterous handling of affairs to promote
morale and right motivation in place of the rule-of-thumb approach adopted now.
Unfortunately, the present chiefs of the civil service are unequal to the task.
What is required is highly intricate organisational policy imbued with specialised skills
and insight of the highest order to inspire, motivate and get the most out of the manpower at
disposal. The involves balancing many contradictions inherent in the human psyche. On the
one hand, the police force has to preserve its professional pride; on the other, it has to be
taught to accommodate in its character the instinct to obey. It has to be tuned to be faithful
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PRAVEEN KUMAR
to authority while its ultimate loyalty must rest with its professional objectives and the rule
of law.
The police have to be tough and fearsome to criminals and law-breakers, and gentle and
friendly with the public. They have to be the model law-abiding citizens even while dealing
with hardened criminals.
While they are accustomed to the interplay of ranks and status in the rigid hierarchical
order of the force, they should learn to treat all as equals and exercise authority over people
at the top level in society. In short, the task of balancing these contradictions is the real
challenge for the police administration.
56
TIME TO IMPROVE
THE QUALITY OF CIVIL SERVICE
India wanted its All India Services of the post-independent era to break away from the
British legacy and as a first step altered the names of the services. It is an irony that the
process led to and marked a dilution of quality. The present Indian Administrative Services
is not even a poor shadow of the old Indian Civil Service; nor does the Indian Foreign
Service bears a resemblance to the Indian Political Service; and the present Indian police
service lacks the vigour of the good old Indian Police.
The old All India Services was built on the tripod of faultless selection and recruitment,
perfect training and exposures to the highest standards of professionalism and character to
sustain it throughout. But, new India just failed to give these factors the importance they
deserved.
Reasons for this deterioration are many. The first is inherent lack of passion for quality
and excellence. The agency incharge of selections, the Union Public Service Commission, is
manned by people unequal for the task either in their professionalism, efficiency, passion for
brilliance or basic character, How can the process be reversed?
Merciless pruning of the extant services to create a compact and highly responsible core
of administrative potentialities to handle a few sensitive key positions in the colossus of the
administration is needed now. Nothing short or brilliance and highest potentiality to handle
the affairs of the country should find a place in the wing that is responsible for constituting
the nerve-centre. The administration must be kept beyond the purview of extraneous
constraints such as reservation of any kind and even age restrictions by way of multiple point
entries for different age groups. The guiding principle here is drawing the best talents from
whatever sources without restraints of any kind for the best results. The services should not
be treated as an employment opportunity to the elite, but as the foundation and pillars of the
government.
HUMAN RESOURCE
The basic source of manpower for these services has to be boys and girls below the age of
16 years who have completed secondary education. The selection must be made part of the
final secondary examination. The UPSC must be made responsible for grooming those
recruited. The commission must handle their further academic studies at the governments
expense for the next seven years to meet the demand of the services.
Identifying the best talents of the country at higher age groups has to be the goal of the
Establishment Cell created within the UPSC on the lines of the Establishment Officer of the
Home Department of the British Raj. The cell must get busy scouting for best talents from
whatever source for direct absorption to the All India Services at the appropriate levels after
initial training. Outstanding professionals, technocrats and creative minds of proven calibre
can be the candidates.
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PRAVEEN KUMAR
Every recruit has to be put in independent charge of a subordinate job for two years under
the supervision of a competent senior officer. His performance in this sphere must from a
vital ingredient in the annual assessment. The trainee must be judged at every stage at
different levels to decide his or her suitability for various jobs.
Five years of regular service after the field training must pave the way for the first
promotion. This must function as a natural filtering process as those fit should be promoted
in the mainstream while others get elevated to higher ranks in the related subordinate
departments to man posts covered under the Central Services.
Mr.B.K.Nehru, in his memoirs Nice Guys Finish Second refers to an incident in
1950s wherein the then Finance Minister T.T.Krishnamachari, asked the chairman of the
Central Board of Revenue to show him a particular income-tax file. The latter refused point
blank on the ground that the law did not allow it. While he agreed that T.T.K. was his
superior, he contended that he himself could see the file as the chief of the Income-Tax
Department while TTK could not as he was not directly involved with the department. India
needs such spirit.
While the Ministers must lay down objectives and policies, their secretaries must
formulate programmes including drafting appropriate laws and rules to channel the
government objectives and policies. The onus of implementation of the programmes must be
left to the departments concerned.
India, in the pre-independent years needed brilliant people to handle its administration.
British India, with all its brilliant ideas and administrative wisdom, created the All India
Services. It recruited brilliant people for the services, imparted the best possible training to
them, exposed them to the highest standards of the profession and presented them the best of
trust, powers and opportunities to carry out their responsibilities. The Government took care
of all their personal needs, provided them with many opportunities for growth and bestowed
on them a halo of invincibility.
The training programmes for the services should be relevant to the time and highly
advanced in content. Subjects taught have to be updated every year by experts and made
challenging even to the brightest among the members of the services unlike present training
programmes which are intellectually impoverished, irrelevant to the time and do not help
tune attitudes to higher levels. Another need is making the promotional tests mandatory and
of a high standard. Overhauling the present mediocre Union Police Service Commission to
create an efficient and responsible set-up capable of handling the enormous responsibilities
under Article 320 that compels attention to arrest the degeneration set in, in the set-up that
led to blunders in identifying talents and managing the services.
CREDIBILITY OF THE UPSC
A recent case is from Karnataka where three promising officers from the state cadre were
denied selection by the UPSC to an All India Service for no obvious reason for ten years from
1990 while their juniors scored the elevation. The acute frustration and demoralisation
caused led to the break-up of family life of one of the promising trio and subsequent divorce,
58
repeated violent behaviour by him in public leading to public humiliation and ultimately
involvement in a murder case ending in his arrest and conviction.
The answer to unprofessional transgressions by the UPSC lies in transforming it to a
highly professional outfit managed by people of unimpeachable character, efficiency
responsibility. The objective can be achieved by suitable amendment to Articles 316 and 317
to ensure that only right and sensible people become members and chairman of the
organisation and remain in the saddle only till they retain their moral and professional calibre.
This can be made possible by the constitution of a committee comprising the Chief
Justice of the Supreme Court, Chief Commissioner of Central Vigilance Commission and
Speaker of Parliament as members and the Vice-President of India as the Chairman to clear
the names for appointments as members and chairmen of the UPSC for a fixed tenure and
initiate actions for their removal by an appropriate procedure in fit cases. Changes to this
effect in Articles 316 and 317 plug the loopholes in the existing provisions that provide too
much scope for political interferences in the selection of members and chairman of the UPSC.
All India Services as the nerve-centre of the administration has to be made responsible to
an apex body called All India Services apex board. The board should oversee, supervise,
study, control and manage every affair pertaining to the Services at its own collective
wisdom and discretion with powers of rewards, punishment and placements invested with
it. Sensitive posts in the governments and public undertakings have to be identified in
advance for the All India Services and once it is done, placements have to be left to the
wisdom and discretion of the apex board. The governments concerned and public
undertakings as employers must keep the apex body constantly and periodically informed
about the performances of each official placed under it and request changes wherever
necessary with reasons therefore. The final decision on such requests has to be left to the
judgement of the apex board based on its constant research, study, enquiry and assessment.
The best bet for professional resolve and high commitment in such an apex body is
having senior most officers of the All-India Service in fine fettle as members of the apex
board under the seniormost member as the chairman, appointed strictly on seniority. It is
these members with tow-thirds majority who must be empowered to bar a competent senior
officer from becoming a member or remove an existing member of chairman from the board
by recording sufficient reasons for the act.
Under the new scheme one should be committed to service for life unless one offers to
retire on health or personal grounds or forced out by the apex board for valid reasons. Except
in cases of retirement on request before the age of 60 years for nonmedical reasons or
removal by the apex board as a punishment, every officer should be entitled to all the benefits
as in service for life even after retirement. However, once confirmed in the service, one
should be prohibited from taking up any private or other government jobs while in service or
after retirement or even after resignation from the service. These safeguards should be
relaxed only by the apex board.
The country should take cognisance of all the legitimate needs of these officers and
provide them with the best possible living standards. Instead of salaries, these exceptionally
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PRAVEEN KUMAR
brilliant officers must be allowed to decide and draw emoluments against performances
every month on their own assessment which include liberal perks such as free education for
children in any kind of educational institution, free educational supports, free medial aid of
whatever kind, free club membership and other entertainments, free foreigh tours, free
housing and transportation of whatever kind, help to earn permanent assets, free supplies of
daily needs and other movable properties. Each officer must submit to the apex board a
periodical report of his performances. The board must study each report to judge the officer.
It may warn or take whatever action found necessary.
The Government is doing nothing to arrest the decline of the All India Services on all
fronts. India is preoccupied with myriad issues of economic and social developments and
perhaps the rapid deterioration of its All India Services does not seem important. But, the
Government should realise that a strong civil service is mandatory for the survival of India
and act fast.
60
INDIAN POLICE
NEEDS HEALTHY JOB CULTURE
Policemen are social doctors and policing is a surgical operation of the society to
systematically remove cancerous growths from its body. What if the band of doctors itself is
infested with serious cancerous growths? This is the position of the present- day Indian
police. The police, as the enforcers of law and protectors of the public interests, wield
tremendous powers for the public good. Such powers to interfere with the life of the citizens
must be invested only in people of high probity and conscience. Otherwise, the powers by
themselves ruin the social fabric of the country and bring anarchy. Powers to search, seize,
remove, detain, direct, arrest, hit and even kill may prove pernicious in the wrong hands.
Powers to decide who has done wrong and how to prosecute them, when invested in
dishonest hands, certainly ruin society and the country. How these powers are exercised
depends imprimis on the work-ethic of the organisation. Though it is the people of an
organisation au fond who build the job-culture of the organisation, it is this jobculture of the
organisation that creates a person in the organisation at a given point of time. Even a
degenerate caractere turns honest and efficient in an honest and efficient environment. The
work culture builds and moulds vitality to meet the general atmosphere around. Similarly, an
honest and efficient person in a degenerate culture is bound to atrophy sooner or later, unless
his individual strength superates the vitiating work-culture of the organisation, Ergo, building
up a proper job-culture is the bedrock of a perficient police organisation.
India, as one of the foremost and largest democracies of the world, have a great burden on
its flabby shoulders to prove to the world that democracy as a form of government can stand
up to any dissipating influence and hold disparate geographical, racial, ethnical, linguistic,
religious, cultural and economic factors syndetic in its pandemic prise of liberal benevolence
and serve the cause of the unity of the sovereign country at all odds. The gauntlet India faces
in this regard is made kenspeckle by the locus standi or the country in terms of its position
as a ranking leader of the developing countries. Human nature being as it is, the emerging
atmosphere of commercialisation and material comforts vis a vis accrescent concours for
limited resources of the Earth , makes man increasingly self-centered and more and more
adventurous and violent in his appropinquation to reach his self-appointed narrow goals. It is
true of all social divisions including religions, language groups, ethnic divides, cultural
interests and national aspirations. Communal hatred, linguistic barriers, ethnic clashes,
cultural bickerings and threats to the national security are orders of the day rather than
exceptions with the trends betraying the indicia of dangerous chorisis. Democracy,
unfortunately, is a fertile ground of such degenerate tendencies because of the trust
democracy lays wrongly on the basic nature and general abilities of common man. The trust
is wrongly laid for the reason that democracy fails to take into account the reality of the
limosis in man which creates all which creates all havocs and assesses man as just a needoriented simple animal. Liberalisation that forms part of democracy, in cahoots with material
interpretations of life, in spite of myriad benefit and comforts it brings with it, certainly
poison the atmosphere to the extent of comminating the very foundation of the democracy
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PRAVEEN KUMAR
and the unity of the country. This is where the police comes to the picture to control the
situation and save the democracy from its own vices.
The police in a democracy is the watchdog of the democracy. Democracy basically being
the rule of the hoi polloi, clash of interests therein is an expected feature. In an atmosphere of
self-rule by the self-centred people of the present commercial world, a machinery to show
people their limits and punish devious elements in sine qua non. The police forms the
master-axle that runs this vital engine of the administration. It being the ultimate executors of
the laws, rules and regulations that form the chemistry of a rule of law, whatever be the other
attributes of an administration, its efficiency, quality and success tout a fait depend upon the
merits of the police, the democracy evolves for itself. In the atmosphere of 20th and 21st
centuries unified world, like all other social and administrative apparatus, Indian police too
have most of its external patterns modelled after the police organisations in other countries
rather than evolved ab intra. This is true in pre-independent era as well as in postindependent age. In pre-independent era because, the then rulers namely the British modelled
Indian police on the patterns of their own police back in England. In postindependent age
because, independent Indias new rulers continue with the system left by the British except
for spasmodic retouches here and there in response to time to time compulsions of the
realities in the fields of crime, security and law and order of the country. Though the
retouches made their appearances from the field realities, the ideas and models are algate
modelled on parallel machinery in other countries. It is true about the gestalts and protocols
of Indias own Research and Analysis Wing or Intelligence Bureau or Central Bureau of
Investigation or Paramilitary forces or crack-forces or anti terrorist-squads or organisations to
fight narcotics and other economic offences or normal police station, district and state police
administration. It is not to say that Indian police is tout ensemble alien to Indian situation just
because of its tramontane jacket. Far from it. Indian police in its foreign jacket goes
perforce Indian in its soul with concomitant advantage and disadvantages of Indian spirit,
because Indian police works in Indian situation and ispo facto adapts to Indian needs and
spirit. The utility of Indian police to India depends upon the direction and degree to which
Indian police have taken to this process of adaptation and also how successfully and
efficiently. It is in this perspective, the role of the police in reconstruction of India,
expectations from it, actual chevisance and its import on national life are discussed.
Indias experiments in democracy are sui generis and stand apart from similar
experiments otherwhere by the non a such characteristics of the country, its people, their
aspirations and historical background. Though the process of adaptation to democracy was
not guided by any deliberate plan to be different, Indias very own situations dictated terms to
the shapes to be moulded specific to its values, needs and aspirations. The growth of Indias
police remained faithful to these shapes more suo.
It is a fact that an organised effort is on in Indian police to force its members to fall in
with its line of profile at the cost of individual brilliance and creative height. Indian police
are continuously starved of freshness and creative innovations as the result of shutting itself
to the creative sparks and other precious attributes of its human resources. Such a wastage of
available human resources can occur only in a government setup of a developing country like
India. What surprises is the extent to which the organisation goes to nip in bud excellences to
perpetuate the interests of its old, secure world of unquestioning servilitude down the line.
62
All loud talks of Indian police leaders on public platforms about the need of infusing
excellence and outstanding qualities to the police organisation are shenanigans meant for the
consumption of the ignorant public. Most leaders of the Indian police at heart desire
continuation of the status quo at the peril of the growth of the organisation so that they and
their interests remain undisturbed with unquestioning and dull-witted subordinates down the
ladder at their personal beck and call. Any indicia of threat to the perceived security? Any
brilliance of new concepts or interpretations about the functioning of the police? Lo, most
heads come together and join hands in scrupleless cabals to undermine the source of
brilliance. The reason is self-interests. Nothing attract and bind them together so fiercely as
the possibility of new thoughts surfacing in the organisation and somebody down the ladder
leaving a trail of blaze of brilliance that may cloud their organisational superiority.
What ensues is a fight jusqu au bout; it would be a fight sans moral or legal scruples, a
fight without a tinge of mercy or sympathy where all fall as one against the lonely prey till it
is neutralised.
Though courts of law can theoretically protect against such harassments, expenses, time
and uncertainties involved and the history of court judgements being dodged or rendered
ineffective by administrative sleight, render the protection meaningless and force the upright
officer to face all humiliations and losses in silence or yield to the pressures. It is to the credit
of Indian police that it has great officers who withstood all slights without yielding to
pressures.
A distinct case is of a senior police officer and poet of outstanding calibre and excellence
from a southern state of India whose uprightness cost him his career prospects. His
disinclination towards flexible ways made him unpopular among those higher in the
hierarchical ladder. He was though greatly feared and highly respected for his superior and
four-square qualities, most of those senior to him were uneasy at his presence. Repeated
attempts were made to discredit him and sully his reputation by any means. Most senior
police officers took him as a thorn in their flesh and joined hands to tarnish his image. His
creditable works as a poet and reputation as a no-nonsense intellectual sperred their
manoeuvrability to achieve this end. They did what they could. Unfounded abuses and lies
were heaped upon him and recorded in his annual confidential reports year after year. His
appeals against the reports were prevented from reaching government. He was year after year
denied decent postings. Mendacity was spread in words of mouth that he could not manage
responsible posts while actually he was never given a change and tested in holding such a
position. To top it all, he was consistently denied promotion from 1990 for the next ten years
and scores of his mediocre juniors were brought over him in the career ladder sinsyne. To
add salt to the injury, his colleague thus given promotion in 1990 was brought over him as his
senior in 1995 just to humiliate the upright officer. The officer withstood all these insults in
good stead because of his natural superior qualities, proven reputation and the strength of
personality. He refused the advice of sympathetic superiors to approach the court of law
against the repression as there was no guarantee of redressal from the courts even after a
time-consuming legal battle. On the other hand, the accurst police officer addressed the Chief
Secretary of the state government in 1995 and explained the situation with a request to
institute an enquiry against him which if found him culpable of committing any major or
minor wrong at any time in his career or life or if anywhere found inefficient in discharging
63
PRAVEEN KUMAR
his official duties, he could be removed from police service. Even this extreme step failed to
draw any response from the government. When his superiors in unholy alliance found that
none of their customary methods work with him, they almost declared a war of nerves on him
in 1996. He was refused all normal benefits entitled to his rank: his car was withdrawn,
telephones were disconnected, his personal staff was harassed subordinates were encouraged
to disobey and even access to office stationeries was denied. While even these measures
were not proved feracious in bringing the upright officer to heels and instead the honest
officer grew from strength to strength by his distinguished and impregnable strength of
personality, desperate as they were, the senior officers, against all legal and administrative
proprieties, divested him of all his official powers he naturally exercised virtuti officii in an
effort to isolate the upright officer tout ensemble. Such harassments are common when a few
officers with awakened conscience, honesty, professionalism and probity in public life disturb
the immoral indulgence of the corrupt lot in police and related departments. Most consciences
do breach, most professional competencies crack and most concerns for probity in public life
just disappear under unrelenting pressures from above. Surviving such repressions as above is
only a rarest of the rare exceptions.
It is a tragedy in Indian police that there is no relation between the efficiency and
performance of an official and his standing in the organisation. The police officials are so
indifferent to the performance of their subordinates and their work turnout that they are
absolutely in the dark about the standard of work turned out under their supervision. Another
reason for this sad affair may be that they are unqualified to assess. This situation leads to
random assessment when a senior is statutorily bound to assess and in the process, talent
withers and opportunists overtake high-calibre workers on the hierarchical ladder.
A yardstick to measure an orgnaistion is the degree of success of the organisation in
meeting its raison detre. The responsibilities of the police as an organisation basically is
three fold, in that enforcing the rule of law, assisting the judiciary in dispensation of justice
and functioning as the watchdog of the internal security of the country. The three
responsibilities do widely vary in their scope, functional requirements and appropinquation
that while the police function as law enforcers while discharging law and order
responsibilities, they may sometimes be called to break laws though surreptitiously as the
watchdogs of the internal security of the country. Or while they function only as a factfinding machine to the judiciary, in enforcing the rule of law in their capacity as the
investigating authority, they may be called to enforce laws as enforcers of law and order. In
spite of these wide variations in the nature of the works and responsibilities on their bold
shoulders, one thing that holds all works and responsibilities of the police together is its
importance as the spine of the rule of law. The police is the cutting edge of the
administration. It is the watchdog of the administration. This scope of the police often
renders it to appear like the odd-job boy of the statecraft. They, as ultima ratio, are the real
dispenser of the rule of law as well as the guardian angels of the country. This vital place in
the administration of the country, makes the police not only the arms, legs, eyes, ears and
noses of the administration, but the very tool of the countrys well being and survival. The
police is one of the most important levers required in running the machinery of the statecraft.
It is why the blind rush and impatient race among rulers to control this vital lever.
64
The reasons lie in the rulers as well as in the police. In the rulers because it is natural for
anyone to take advantage of the tools that make itself available for use and rather
preposterous to expect rulers to shut their eyes while the police willingly offers itself for their
personal behoofs. And rulers of democratic India douse the police for their personal and
party ends to the extent that the first half century after independence has obfuscated the
distinction between the national interests and the personal interests of the rulers as far as the
use of the police of democratic India elected to subordinate its professional and national
responsibilities to the gloria and being the handmaid of the politicians in power. Two factors
helped the process. One was the wrong type of people at the helm of the organisation as
models. Another was the lack of proper understanding of the concepts like obedience and
discipline. These two factors together and seperately brought about slowly but steadily the
degringolade of professionalism in the police of democratic India. The nonprofessional
approach of the self seeking police leadership at the helm to subserve the personal and party
interests of the rulers percolated downwards in the organisation as a model and sadly
accepted as the general rules of conduct by the maffled police down below at all ranks per
procurationem obedience and discipline. The wrong model led Indian police to forget that
their primary obedience is to the laws of the country and rulers surface to the front only as the
representatives of the laws of the land and ergo secondary to the sacred police
responsibilities. The police in new dispensation forgot the cardinal principle that they are
subordinate to the rulers faute de mieux and their profession dictates them to exercise policing
duties even against those rulers if the laws of the country find them doing wrong. These
serious professional lapses not only weakend Indian police, also damaged political system,
social values and the credibility of Indian democratic process. Ignorance and lack of interest
is part of the Indian public in general and intellectual class in particular in the police system
and its time to time devious shifts added to the malady in the form of giving free hand to the
police to evolve itself sans restraint and sound guidance.
Adaptations to political masters as a bargain to secure key posts prove fatal to the dignity
as well as professional values of the police setup. A police officer of a state in southern India
succeeded in cornering the coveted post of Police Commissioner of the State Headquarters a
few years back by the support of politician known in the then political parlance as the
Father, Mother of the Chief Minister of the state. A few days' afer, the politician in
inebriated state was arrested with his associates while fleeing in a car late night after
involving in a sex scandal involving a budding film star. The police official who affected the
arrest recognised the identity of the person he arrested only after the arrested persons were
brought to a nearby Police Station in the city. The police Commissioner was intimated about
the developments. The Police Commissioner promptly made his appearance in the Police
Station in the night and ensured immediate release of his political godfather. But, the
political heavy weight in temulent state was impacable. He caught the uniform collar of the
Police Commissioner in front of the shocked lowly officials of the Police Station and shouted
at the Police Commissioner in his inebriated voice whether he made him Police
Commissioner to arrest and bring him to the Police Station through his juniors. The Police
Commissioners was seen meekly begging the politician to pardon him. The incident made
headlines in newspapers. The Police Commissioner later rose to become the Police Chief of
the state and retired now. Such incidents abound in circumstances of Police Officers vying for
coveted posts a tout prix and as a consequence, the dignity of the posts lowers and the
professional qualities of the organisation suffer.
65
PRAVEEN KUMAR
Present India do have an adequately large and sturdy framework for the police apparatus
in terms of organisational strength and budgetary provisions to sustain it. Only the canvas
held by the framework is flabby and limicolous. This predicament per se speaks aplenty about
the very cause of it. For one, the fact that an adequately large and sturdy framework or
organisational strength and liberal budgetary provisions available for the police setup is clear
caract of the willing political patronage to the apparatus; it sine dubio proves that the rulers
recognised the import of the police in running the administration. However, the flabby and
limicolous canvas ab intra speaks of the nonprofessionalism under the sound political
patronage. This adds up to the close links between politics and the police for nonprofessional
purposes, possibly with criminal intent as nonprofessional police approach mostly suggests
criminal angle in view of the professional police concerns mostly being focussed on crime
control and crime prevention. Unfortunately, India has passed a long way in this undesirable
links to the lengths of being cannot easily retract its path to cleanse the augean stables of the
police organisation now.
66
CORRUPTION :
INDIAN POLICE SCENARIO
Mr.Justice B.P.Jeevan Reddy, the law Commission Chairman while talking on the
provision of forfeiture of property illegally acquired by public servants under the proposed
bill titled the " Corrupt Public Servants (Forfeiture of Property) Act, 1999" said, "Corruption
has been severely affecting the country's economy, security and administration. To weed out
this dreaded disease from public life, we need a bitter medicine". All previous measures to
rein- in corruption in public life failed because nothing mattered as far as the ill-gotten
property is safe a huis clos. Situation may change tout ensemble after the proposed
legislation becomes law and gallows the corrupt of wiping out the very corpus of the corrupt
deeds and striking at the very roots of corruption.
Corruption unfortunately has become an accepted phenomenon in extant Indian society.
No more it attracts societal disapproval or contempt. Wealth is seen as wealth whether it is
begotten by fair or illegitimate means. Nowadays, jobs having means of easy money are
sought and bought at all costs. It is why such jobs command high premium in the job market.
It is no secret why jobs in select departments in government service are in high demand. And
within these departments there are specific posts that command high premium on account of
their potentiality to generate enormous wealth by unfair and illegitimate means. Such jobs
command money in multiple suitcases in advance to the posting in addition to periodical
profferings for keeping the job terms because those payments are proved sagacious
investments. Politicians, journalists to the victims of the system while condemning the
vicious practice from the public platform accept it as the sine qua non reality of the life. The
sterling question is whether corruption in any form with the concomitant atrophy in
administration and public life should be tolerated to disgorge the vitals of the Indian
democratic fabric.
It is tragic that the police which is morally and professionally bound to protect the public
from the vice of corruption is among the avant coureur in the pernicious race. Sadly, the
addiction is uniform at all ranks from Police Constables to Police Commissioners save rare
exceptions. The corrupt practices take disparate forms in diverse circumstances, but all
leading to the same unfortunate end: derailing the rule of law and the loss of credibility of the
police.
A south Indian state saw in 1998 several wars of attrition between a Police
Commissioner and his political boss about posting of their own favourites to key positions,
leading to messy and dangerous situations like more than one police officer being posted to
the same key post of profit and all of them holding to it fast for months together. Often
fightings broke out among the contenders in the same post for the loaves of power and other
behoofs and such matters made headlines in newspapers. It is wrong to heap all blames tout
a fait on any one side as corrupt. Certainly no side is a paradigm of virtues in the extent ratrace for pelf and booty. Corruption in India has become just a rider of the availability of
opportunities to share the res gestae of the power.
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PRAVEEN KUMAR
Police is an institution in the service of law and order. Every case of corruption involving
the police represents a case of the rule of law and justice harrowed. Imaging the extent of the
distortion of the rule of law and justice and the betrayal of the hoi polloi by the police
machinery that apportions in some cases a crore of rupees a year to middle-ranking official
as the illgotten money. The mise en scene is complete with the swarms of police officials of
all ranks au reste warring inter se with wads of high denomination notes to corner posts
potential of generating unlimited illegitimate wealth. Added to this is those apparatchik at
the top making transfers and postings a thriving business. What can be expected from a law
and order machinery run with such a symbion, but gross abuse and distortion of the rule of
law? That is why police is often called the legalised mafia.
Karnataka had a Superintendent of Police in northern district in 1980 who openly
encouraged those down the line to take bribes and shared the booty. He used to insist that
they were free to allow illegal activities like gambling dens, prostitution, illicit distillation etc.
in their respective areas, provided the criminals remain under their control and run the
activities pro rata to what they proffer to the police. A maffled logic indeed. Naturally, he
was very popular among the corrupt , subordinates. He left the district in 1981 and thereafter
luckily went on central deputation, never to return to the state sinsyne.
Corruption has disparate facets. And each has its distorted justification. There is a case
of a Police Commissioner whose misuse of the police machinery in the marriage of his
daughter in 1998 became a stormy issue in the public eyes after press made it big. The press
claimed that the subordinate police officers were forced to man the doors of the marriage hall
and escort VIPs visiting the place. And police wireless and departmental transport facilities
were recklessly made use of in the marriage and its preparations. Soon the issue was hijacked
by the subordinate police officers of the city who gave press statements that police officials
were allotted duties in the marriage a la police duties in a security operation and expressed
fears that those who failed to budge would be victimised and likely to be removed from their
coveted posts in the city police. The Police Commissioner openly defended his action in the
interview to a private TV channel saying that every father puts his heart to celebrate his
daughter's marriage a grands frais as his parting gift and he was not an exception.
CONSCIENTIOUS POLICING
Conscientious policing is raised on the bedrock of committed and non-corruptible
policing. Serious and committed policing is conditio sine qua non for professional policing
and professional policing presupposes duties and responsibilities taking precedence over
personal comforts and safety. Being conscientious brings depth and width to the profession
and raises policing to nobler heights. Corruption in whatever form is the antithesis of this. It
pulls down the police from its elevated position as the national asset and insurance against the
atrophy of national values, security and well-eing of the hoi polloi.
A case of dowry death reported against a retired high court judge and his family in
February 1992 was referred to the state investigation agency for investigation. The
investigation made out a case for chargesheet against the retired judge and five other persons
including his wife, son, two daughters and another person The chief of the investigating
agency in the rank of IGP being egregiously corrupt and close to the retired judge, dragged
68
his feet from further proceedings in the case. The Superintendent of Police who was
supervising the investigation of the case wanted to take the investagation to its logical end.
But, arrests in the case were prevented and chargesheet was unduly delayed from above. The
insistence of the Superintendent of Police, to chargesheet the case as the logical step of the
investigation process cost him his post and he was transferred in July 1992 to the State Home
Guards as the head of its training wing. The case remained frozen sans chargesheet for more
than 1 years sinsyne till the IGP was transferred out of the organisation in 1993. The case
was later chargesheeted in March 1994 with the retired judge and his two daughters dropped
from the chargesheet on the basis of the evidences tampered at later stages. The dropped
names were later included in the chargesheet on the orders of the judge trying the case. The
IGP who tried to stall the wheel of the legal process subsequently succeeded in gaining entry
to a sensitive police organisation like the CBI and held the job till 1997.
PROFESSIONAL OBJECTIVITY
A police organisation open to public pressures can do no policing worth the name. They
very idea of being receptive to pressures and interferences is sysptomatic of lack of will for
objectivity and justice. Criminal elements take advantage of such opportunities to drive the
police and the policing on the wrong rails. Pressures often render the police to commit
crimes under the veil of authority either by protecting criminals or more dangerously, by
replacing them with innocent people as criminals. The possibility of being open to the
pressures of the rich and powerful deprives the police of its credibility. A police force that
works at the behest of the rich and powerful safeguards the interests of the rich and powerful
only. It would thus be factious and a villain to the hoi polloi. Does democratic India need
such a police force to perpetuate the tyranny of the poor and helpless by the rich and
powerful? Democratic India tolerated such a police in the last five decades. India and its
people must now abraid to the situation and spawn a police that behooves to the trust laid on
it.
The aberration of professional objectivity is the Achille's heel of the police of independent
India. The problem was simple in British India where ruler and ruled were distinctly
bifurcated and ipso facto the loyalty of the police was perspicaciously defined unlike that of
the Indian republic of the democratic genre where people rule themselves through elected
representatives. Here the loyalty of police to the public and public law is the professional
ethic: misplaced loyalty to an individual, a family, a party or an ideology at the cost of the
general public is an apostasy from the inviolable professionalism of the police. The police in
a democracy is the guardian of public interests and public safety unlike in the raj where the
police protected the interests of the raj. This distinction is forgotten in independent India
where mental fetters are yet to be broken and legacies of the British rule continue inveterated.
How can a police that stays loyal to personal, familial or party interests ever discharge its
functions objectively to law and general public? What can its locus standi be when a different
person or party comes to power? A sequacious police is an asset to any individual or party
and no sensible individual or party distances it in the name of the professional ethics. It is the
paravant duty of the police not to breach the edifice of the police organisation and its spirit by
misprising its professional standards. This infrangible obligation is thrown to the winds in
the maelstrom of career advancements by the self-seeking gendarmerie of the Indian republic.
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PRAVEEN KUMAR
In the perverted situation of India where the loyalty of the police to those in power rather
than to professional ideals is a reality, none can vouch that police responsibilities would be
carried out strictly on merit of each case. Factional loyalties have the singular potentiality of
blasting fairness and impartiality. It renders professional loyalty meaningless. A mature and
sober political leadership can make up for the Achilles' heel of the fractured loyalties of the
police organisation. Indian police needs a sober organisation above to bring it on rails of
carrying out its responsibilities. The neoteric judical activism, as far as periodical review of
the progress of investigation of some cases of national importance is concerned, is a welcome
step, though in normal circumstances, such a judicial review would have amounted to
gratuitous interference with the independent functioning of the investigating authority.
CHANGING VALUES
Corruption of Indian police quite possibly is consectaneous of the degringolade of values
in Indian life of the post-independent era. Indian police cannot stay sequestered from
developments around while there are marked falls in standards of diligence and integrity in
other walks of life. It adopted and adapted to the corrupt surroundings and the result is extant
corrupt police, India finds itself with.
The basic lures of corruption in Indian context are money and power. As government
service even at higher rungs lost charm in terms of monetary comforts and prestige and
power, it attracted only the second bests or the lesser from the crme de la crme of the
country's youth, who in turn were left in lurches in the service to mend themselves. This
started a mad rush to the res gestae of pelf and power at the cost of professional dignity and
integrity. The situation led to corruption and brought shifts in the concepts of diligence and
professional loyalty and rearranged the service objectives with priority to filling the coffers of
money and power. Organisational objectives were completely lost sight of. Shifts in
diligence helped to build money-power while shifts in loyalties moulded proximity to powerbrokers in efforts to maximise individual behoofs after throwing professional ideals to dogs.
The degeneration spread in leaps and buonds with the passage of time as the organisational
commitments became demode and pragmatism taught that immediate personal interests are
the center of leading a good life. This was the beginning of corruption of Indian police in a
big way.
A major factor responsible for the corruption of Indian police is the gross fall of its
professional pride since independence. Crass and insensitive handling of the police and
police matters by political leaders frustrated the high morale and sense of belonging of the
police force. Attempts to suppress and gain complete hold over the police in democratic
India affected the force adversely and injected a sense of inadequacy in the force. Once the
centripetal force that bound the force together was squandered, centrifugal forces took over
and dissipating attitudes behaviors and influences ruled the roost to bring the Indian police to
the present triste state.
Motivation to achieve organisational goals and show results being weakened is the
inevitable manifestation of the fall of professional pride. The police which once prided in
enforcing law, maintaining order and ensuring peace and security of the hoi polloi, lost all its
enthusiasm for these ends as they became factors of politicking and lost importance
70
independent of political relevance as crimes, criminals and law and order and their handling
by the police became accrescently tools of political convenience. The development shattered
the professional pride of the police and struck a blow to their motivation towards the
organisational ends. No organisation can exist sans a driving force to sustain it. The result is
a vacuum of a drive to carry the police onward. The vacuum is filled by corruption. Indian
police find in corruption a way to sustain itself in absence of any organisational objectives to
drive it onward.
Myopic and maffled approaches of the police often lead to untold miseries and blatant
violation of basic rights of simple individuals. A daughter of an influential man in 1986
eloped with a man against the wishes of her parents and was hiding in the neighbouring state
of Karnataka. The couple were in their twenties and decently employed. The chief of
intelligence of Karnataka was sought assistance to trace the couple and ensure that the
daughter rejoins her parents. The intelligence machinery started to work in festinated zeal
and the couple were traced in Bangalore and were separated. The man was held in illegal
confinement and exposed to umpteen threats while arrangements were made to call the
influential man to rejoin his daughter. The man in confinement was set free only after the
influential man reached back his home with his daughter. The action of the police in this case
perspicaciously is against the law of the land and violated the basic rights of a young couple.
STRUCTUAL CHANGES:
The first and foremost job to do to bring back the police on rails is to extricate the police
from the unhealthy influence of all hues by making it responsible to an independent
Authority with absolute powers to take decisions on matters of policing and police
organisation. The Authority should be a professional body of men and women of proven
probity and competence, who reached a stage from where they need not sacrifice their
convictions to appease those in power as members. A working arrangement is to be devised
by which the Authority becomes responsible directly to the legislature and functions
independently a la the judiciary, the Central Vigilance Commission, the Comptroller and
Auditor General or the Chief Election Commissioner.
Creation of a Core Group of people adept in assessing men and character within the
aforesaid Police Authority helps to create a feeling of confidence and job security in police
and prod to discharge duties fearlessly. This Group that oversees the work of police
personnel from a distance should be ultimately responsible for all career decisions in the
police force. The responsibility of senior officers in assessing the work of the subordinates
that forms the major embarrassment of the present Indian police dispensation must be limited
to giving opinion about the performance of their subordinates to the Core Group; the expert
Core Group must process the opinion by its own research, expertise and discretion and take
responsible decision on its own research, expertise and discretion and take responsible
decision on its own. The Group must be made responsible for all development plans of the
police, work assessment, job analyses, recruitment and management of human resources etc.
Institution of such a Core Group to oversee the career development of police personnel
without personal bias may bring revolutionary changes in police by committing it to its workethics and professional ends with single mindedness.
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PRAVEEN KUMAR
Police is not an odd -job boy of the government. It is not the hand-maid of politicians in
or out of power. Police is an organisaion of professionals committed to the safety, security
and well-being of the country. Justice and rule of law are the litmus tests available to
achieve the ends. Once police miss the bus of justice and the rule of law, their goals of
safety, security and well-being of the public remain a distant dream. They lose the credibility
and respect of the public, so essential for effective and proficient policing. The fear that the
police inspire can not take it far in the absence of credibility, respect and sympathy of the
public. Once the police lose their usefulness in political and power gameplans consequent to
losing public credibility, their political patrons will discard them like used condoms. The best
bet for the police is to be professional and committed to their responsibilities towards the
administration of justice. Police would forget this need only at their own peril. Doing
anything violative of its raison d'etre like sabotaging the course of justice and the rule of
law in the cauldron of corruption will prove fatal to the relevance of the police to the society.
72
POLICING
UNDER POLITICAL PATRONAGE
In a blinkered system like ours, where power and wealth are the ultimate virtues, where
power and wealth in themselves stimulate mutual growth to the exclusion of all other
dimensions of life, it is no wonder, the people of this poor country succumb to the trappings
of power and wealth at the cost of all virtues, values, pride, dignity and human decency. In
an increasingly competitive and complex world where every day more mouths are added to
share limited resources, where the principle of the survival of the fittest operates to its
immane logical end and where the basic needs of survival and decency can be assured only
with power and wealth, people naturally go all out to ramp the ladder of power and wealth by
whatever means and cost. In the process, justice and morality become casualties and
criminality raises its ugly head as an instrument to achieve otherwise impossible objects.
This is how politics and crime knit together in the fabric of Indian public life.
POLICE AND POLITICS
The story of the police is somewhat different. As the catchpole of the nations
administration, the police enjoy tremendous power over vast fields of human activities with
responsibilities to life and death of the hoi polloi as well as dignitaries. In this sense, the
police is the cutting edge of the state power and its ultimate bearer. No power can be its own
sans the police on its side as an executioner and loyal watch-dog. This is why politicians felt
the need for wooing police to their side in their activities. The police of independent India
has become an easy prey to the power-baits of smarter politicians by the reason of their
failing strength of character and talent. Their greed, unsound social background, lack of
commitment to good values and failure to partners in whatever politicians do or intend to do.
They refuse to look beyond their political masters with their dispensations of job favours;
and so law, justice, righteousness, professional ethics, morality, decency, human dignity,
common good of people, national interests and even conscience, otherwise common to any
human being, have become invalid nonsense to them. The police, sans sound character and
personal integrity, is no more than a country dog which is what the Indian police has
become in free India. The politicians, inebriated with new power, smartly brought these
weaklings to absolute submission and hold them on a tight leash to be their personal
watchdogs and personal gendarmes in requital for favourable job placements, undue
promotions and other largition from time to time. Nothing is valued higher than this largess
and its dispensers by the new police of India. It is how the police was involuted in the
conspiracy against decent public life of India.
POLICE AND CRIME
It was a hop and skip for the police from the plangent world of politics to the mysterious
world of crime and the underworld. The police became a weapon of politicians to bring about
the subjugation of the crime world to prise their resources for the political ends. They thus
made good use of the decreasing strength of character of the police in forging a nexus
73
PRAVEEN KUMAR
between the police and criminals in furtherance of their own telos. With a week spine to hold
itself and hapless in the face of odds, the police is only too pleased to follow the footsteps of
its political masters as the cardinal principle of policing. In changed circumstances, discipline
and subordination which form the basic connecting link of the police hierarchy, lost all their
shades of meaning and are interpreted as dunny and blind subservience to those who have
power, seeking personal interests. And politicians easily led the police to the despicable cul
de sac of the nexus with criminals, the very people whom both are supposed to control and
bring to book for antisocial activities. With politicians as the custodians of power en arrier to
the hilt to support, the police plunged lock, stock and barrel into the lucrative crime world;
the consectaneous wealth and comforts were in no way less sweet than the hard earned money
of lawabiding society. This is how the nexus between the police and crime world was
established.
CRIMINALISATION OF POLITICS
Whom should we blame for this hapless position? Certainly not the politicians or their
auxiliaries like criminals and police who are unfortunate by-products of the grind. They are
created by the situation arising from a system which is misfit to the people to whom it was
devised. The blame lies either on the Indian people who are impair to the democratic system
evolved for them, because of their unenlightened and venal consciences which is so dimwitted that virtues like honesty, service, patriotism, quality and excellence can make no dent
on is at all, or it lies with the political system devised for them which failed to take their
psychological makeup into account and ipso facto led to the problem of maladjustment in
national life. Otherwise, how can we explain criminals and goondas winning elections with
impunity even while rioting and murders were committed at their behest on the eve of
elections itself. The fact is that the chance of winning an election often is pro rata to the aura
of a tough image built around the candidate. It is these people whom the Indian electorate
prefer to invest with powers to safeguard their interests. Obviously, the Indian electorate
lacks of foresight and vision to understand the consequences of its irresponsible decision. It
is yet too immature to take decisions about the interests of the nation and see how national
interests are closely linked to its personal interests. It is yet to broaden its perspective to
include the life of the nation as an integral part of its own. Long term and rational decisions
are alien to its nature. Immediate selfish interests and a parochial outlook continue to be the
driving force of all its actions and decisions, whether it be on the matters of national
importance or personal concern. In most parts of India, it is money, arrack, sari, threat, fear
of landlords or the blazoning propaganda of a candidate that influence it to decide as to whom
to vote for. How can the avenir of this country be safe in the hands of such an electorate and
its elected leaders? How can an indifferent and irresponsible electorate provide honest and
efficient leadership to the nation? This weakness of the electorate has ultimately left Indian
politics in the heath of violence and manipulative extortions, with the instruments meant to
protect them mowing the field. Saner elements in politics, who found survival difficile, have
left the field, giving way to the elements which are more suited to what is required in the
field. It is how politics has become a pit of junk from a class of dedicated and virtuous
leaders. The credibility which is the pith of any political life is the biggest casualty political
institutions and the percentage of the electorate that takes the trouble of going to polling
booths to cast votes is steadily decreasing from election to election, It is an open secret that an
election is an opening for a candidate to invest money to reap wealth, comfort and power for
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the next five years. And how he reaps the wealth, comfort and power again is not a mystery
at all. It is corruption and misuse of public money. If he is ambitious and intends to promote
his career interests, there is no way out in the existing system but to resort to pulling strings
and pursuing other more deadly methods, often with the active collusion of the officious
criminals and police.
POLITICAL PATRONAGE
The unhealthy nexus often leads to and facilitates other forms of crime. Cases of rioting
assault, kidnap, rap and blackmail, involving the supporters or relatives of politicians,
criminals and police in furtherance of a political cabal are other usual forms of crime that
result from the vicious nexus. Often, criminals and police are employed to create
disturbances or inspire sensational crimes in furtherance of political goals. The losses of life
and property involved in the wily schemes seld touch the conscience of either the politicians,
the criminals or the police who are responsible for these dastardly acts. The political
patronage and the nexus with police desensitize criminals to the process of law and justice;
they are thus emboldened to commit more daring and ruthless crimes that endanger the life
and property of the plebeians. The police, in its links with politicians on one hand and with
criminals on the other, is in its new avatar as the protector of vested interests with no more
commitment and passion for law and justice. It has become a discredited force, a willing
instrument of power-brokers in a ruthless and violent cabal of power-games with no heart for
the common man and the common cause. This is the requital, the Indian electorate gets for
letting its political system putrefy by its nonchalance and irresponsibility.
CHANGED ROLE
With the increscent involution of the police with glidder politicians, the conception of the
police about its own role has undergone a large-scale change. No more does it look at crime
control and maintenance of order as its first duty. With this, the concern for crime control
received a setback and crime control and investigation have receded to the last priority
except when politicians are interested in them for a specific purpose. Only crimes that disturb
politicians foment police to galvanic and meaningful action. Other crimes receive no priority
. The very definition of the gravity of crime is adapted to suit the new concept. Those crimes
which are tolerated by politicians are no more crimes. The self-image of the police as a
fearless arbiter of crime is changed to a solicious servant in attendance at the pleasure of a
politician-master. This blunting of the crime card of the police has made it less awe-inspiring
and less deserving of respect from the criminals. The police has more and more realised that
criminals, particularly those from organised syndicates are personal friends of its political
masters and it is no match for the criminals in terms of wealth, influence and social standing.
The men of the police see those criminals on equal footing with their political masters and
learn to treat them with awe. They find it absurd to act with authority against the
immarcescible criminals who are too high for the small stature of the police. It is unfortunate
that the police of the present days has never realised its infinit stature as a law-enforcing
agent vis a vis all others including criminals and politicians whom it is empowered to search,
arrest and take to court if they deviate from their rightful path. Sadly, the trifling wealth and
the concomitant big-man image of others appear to the present police as more appealing
than its own awful police authority.
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PRAVEEN KUMAR
POLITICISATION OF POLICE
The extant system of selecting the police chief is erratic at best and motivatedly amoral
that meets the political ends of the rulers at worst.
A police chief in a state was taken to court with his wife after retirement in 1990
February for defrauding the public and a spastic society by sale of charity tickets in name of
the spastic society and pocketing huge amount of money. This is the standard of people who
are chosen by politicians to lead post independent Indian police.
A POLITICAL INSTRUMENT
In an atmosphere where placements and transfers are decided by the needs and wishes
of self-seeking politicians, no police can efficiently function nor can it be free from the vice
prise of the politicians. It is not surprising that power-esurient politicians more and more
grab powers that are legally and traditionally invested with the police department when the
top brass lack the strength of character and conviction. This leads to a position wherein the
police department becomes a chessboard on which politicians move their pieces to checkmate
their adversaries and win the political game in their favour. In other words, the police sans
effective leadership is becoming more a handmaid of politicians by moving away from its
sacred role as the guardian of law and justice and protector of the society and the common
man. The credit of bringing the police from its height of power to the present level of
absolute submission should go to the superior strength of personality of wily politicians who
bent the police on their own terms with selective use of stick and carrot. This police is not the
police and what it does is not policing in the proud sense of the term.
CRIMINAL TENDENCIES
A Deputy Inspector General of Police infamous for his epinosic and corrupt activities in
1982 while holding charge of Eastern Range in Davangere in Karnataka desired a young
Deputy Superintendent of Police, under him marry a girl from the family of a rich arrack
contractor of his range. The parents of the young officer fearing undue pressure got their son
married in desperation to a girl of their choice. This antagonised the Deputy Inspector
General. His next annual confidential report of young officer showed the junior as a liability
to the police department and misfit as a subdivisional police officer. He also prevailed year
after year upon other officers who wrote confidential reports of the young officer to incorpse
similar or more deadly remarks. Most of them obliged and this bright junior officer ended up
with a series of unsubstantiated adverse remarks repeated time and again in his annual
confidential reports. All his appeals were never allowed to reach the government. It is to the
credit of the young officer that he remained unbroken and continues in police service while
his far less competent colleagues have superated him on the career ladder and the young
officer was successively denied important postings though there was not a single thing in his
career to justify such a treatment. Undeterred by the unjust scorn heaped of him by refusing
promotion in preference to his less qualified and less competent juniors, he later addressed the
chief secretary of the state government not to consider him any more for the promotion. He
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took this unprecedented autophagous decision in utter contempt of the corrupt and immoral
departmental heads and government functionaries who crushed his career prospects.
There is a case of a Director General of Police in charge of Crimes and Special Units in
1987 in a Southern State in India who as head of the Food and Civil Supplies Enforcement
cell of the state under a Director was accustomed to getting free supply of quality rice, sugar,
pulses and other commodities from traders to his house through the latter organisation. The
new Director of the organisation in 1987 in the rank of Superintendent of Police failed the
Director General of Police by his principled stand in this regard. This enraged the latter to the
extent of hounding the young Superintendent of Police and seeking opportunity to publicly
humiliate him. He followed the young officer wherever the latter went for raid hoping that he
would get some opportunity to fix the latter. When all the efforts failed, the Director
General of Police decided as the dernier ressort to play a drama of searching the
Superintendent of Police in public before invited press and public in an induced case of
trapping on suspicion while the latter was returning from raids in northern parts of the state,
depending his calculations entirely on the humiliation engendered by the publicity of such
suspicions and searches by a very senior officer coram populo. However, the cabal of the
senior officer came to nought and the Superintendent of Police, was saved from the gratuitous
humiliation in public while inscience of the welcome set for him on the way by his senior.
The Superintendent of Police reached back state headquarters through another route that
night. It is of interest to note that the Director General of Police who stopped so law in his
police career was posted as an advisor to the Governor of North-East state during Presidents
rule after a few years, postliminary to his retirement from police service. This is the calibre
and integrity of extant Indian Police Service. This is the reason why Indian society prefer
tolerating social maladies to approaching police manned by such people, devoid of any
decency, objectivity and fairplay, both in private and public life.
As corruption takes control and spreads to all strata of the force, upright elements in the
force become a minority and also forfeit coveted positions in the organisation as inconvenient
candidates. They are scorned as removed from ground realities and detested and avoided as
moles in the mainstream. Their honest and professional approach becomes a disaster and
unpopular everywhere. Their courage in face of odds loses character amidst popular sound ad
fury of the misinformed. Vested interests inside and outside the police let loose false
propaganda and spread distorted versions of events against such officers and suborn
character assassination to keep own reputations on right sides. The Situation becomes really
distressing when superior officers partake in the game on the side of vested interested for
consideration and join hands in an unholy alliance to bend and silence the upright among
them. Taking recourse to unfair and illegal means to crush upright officers is also not
uncommon. Though courts of law can theoretically protect against such harassments,
expenses, time and uncertainties involved and the history of court judgements being dodged
or rendered ineffective by administrative sleight, render the protection meaningless and force
the upright officer to face all humiliations and losses in silence or yield to the pressures. It is
to the credit of Indian police that it has great officers who withstood all slights without
yielding to pressures.
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PRAVEEN KUMAR
It is an irony that the political leadership which supposed to take the lead of
reconstructing India is colluding for mutual selfish ends with the police which is supposed to
be the tool of the reconstruction and thereby strike at the foundation of the strength and
orderliness of the country. Every passing year sees a new phase and a new trend in this nasty
connection between the important players of the national reconstruction to take the country by
some miracle at the last moment. As the people become more and more attuned to the
nefarious nexus and resign to the assuefaction, the players become more and more bold with
the passing years and go with their nasty collusion at the cost of the nations interest with
impunity for mutual relief and benefits by subornation.
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QUOTA SYSTEM
CAN WEAKEN CIVIL SERVICE
It is a historical fact that India was never a single nation at any time till the 20th century.
Neither Asoka of the Maurya dynasty nor Samudra Gupta or Chandra Gupta of the Gupta
dynasty nor Akbar or Aurangzeb of the Mughul dynasth could boast of binding al the regions
stretching from Kanyakumari to the Karakoram pass, and from the Rann of Kutch to
Arunachal Pradesh under a single rule. If India is a single nation today the credit should go
to a large extent to its distinguished civil service of the early and middle 20th century which
was rightly called the steel frame of India unity. Should India continue as a single nation, it
has to be again mainly through the grit, strength and quality of its civil service.
The worst curse for India is the classification of people on the basis of birth with the
lower strata being denied equality of opportunity for growth and a decent life. Post
independent India, as a welfare state, took a number of measures, both constitutional and
legislative, to erase the sins perpetrated on the unfortunate sections of society, like removal of
untouchability, prevention of atrocities, reservations in jobs and providing educational
opportunities. Such measures are not only the compensation India must pay for having
deprived some of its children of their growth opportunities, they are also a kind of remorse
the country suffers for its past sins.
But the cardinal question is the direction such measures must take. Wrong policies in
such matters may not only fail to make the measures efficacious; but may also block the
existing opportunities. It may weaken the countrys social fabric and pose a real threat to
even the existence of India as a country. The policy of job reservation in civil service
carries the danger of undermining the quality of the steel frame and deprive India of its main
binding force.
The victims of the age-old stratified class system deserve many more special privileges.
They need easier access to educational opportunities to prepare them for higher slots in life.
Hence, the need for reservations in educational institutions. To remove their poverty for
which Indian society is historically responsible, they have to be provided with easy finance,
whether for higher studies or business ventures. Perhaps, an apex development bank with
branches in all districts exclusively for their financial needs of a non-consumptive nature has
to be set up to provide funds at a nominal rate of interest. Liberal scholarships, concession in
or exemption from application fees for jobs, a wider network of board and lodging facilities
for students, special vocational training for men and women, concessional hostel facilities for
working men and women, easy housing schemes, free advanced medical treatment, etc are
other schemes for the underprivileged that may help to bring them on par with the rest of
society, without in the process affecting the quality of its governance.
Basically, democracy signifies the rule of the common man. But this definition applies
principally to the political system and not to the civil service which is expected to be the
spine of democratic rule. A sound civil service draws the boundaries of governance within
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PRAVEEN KUMAR
which the democratic system must function and also inspires a sense of moderation,
discipline, fairness, legality and reasonableness in the political leadership. It absorbs the
shocks of political follies and helps the political leadership in taking sound and intelligent
decisions.
The well-being of the repressed classes of the India depends upon the survival of India as
a single nation and therefore on the quality and soundness of the civil service. Measures
like job reservation are bound to be counter-productive by weakening the civil service
structure. Quality and excellence are inseparable from pride. Any allowance to mediocrity
leads to flight of quality and excellence till mediocrity completely takes over. This is what is
feared about the present India civil service thanks to the reservation policy.
The apprehension that the steel frame of pre-independent India has crumbled into a
mediocre set-up because of wrong policies of selection and recruitment needs serious
attention. Several opinion polls point to the diminishing attraction of the civil service for the
Indian youth who prefer jobs in foreign and private industrial houses and banks. This trend
deserves to be noted by those who are interested in the survival of India as a nation and a
democracy, The interest of the country lies in marshalling the best talents of the country to
run its administrative services.
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EMPOWERING THE CBI

The last decade of the century sees the CBI becoming the Indian version of the FBI under
J.Edgar Hoover in the middle of the century-with one difference. The FBI became a key
component and feared public institution through Hoovers open aggression, while its Indian
version gained eminence by the open, meek submission of its spineless Director to his
political masters. This naturally alerted the otherwise somnolent judiciary and the result is
the proactive judiciary of today. The CBI, with cases against political leaders stacked on its
shelves, under the nose of the proactive judiciary, had no option but to steadfastly discharge
its responsibilities. So the CBI started working, and shed its vulnerability to the political
class.
The CBI is the premier investigative agency of India. Naturally, it must command the
best brains in the country and should have wide-ranging powers. It must have adequate
leadership, marked by exemplary personal attributes like probity and professionalism. But
are these needs met by the CBI at all?
The seventh schedule of the Constitution brings police and public order, except for
deployment and use of forces of the Union, under the State List, and criminal law, criminal
procedure, administration of justice and judicial proceedings under the Concurrent List.
However, it specifically lists the CBI under the Union List. The legal basis of the CBI is
provided by a short six-section Act of 1946 titled the Delhi Special police Establishment Act,
1946, which provides for the constitution of a special police force by the Centre for the
investigation of notified offences in any Union Territory and in any area in a state where
jurisdiction of the police force is extended by the order of the Centre, with the consent of the
state government.
The last section of the Act specifies that the force has no jurisdiction in any are in a state
without the consent of its government. The force enjoys all the powers, duties, privileges and
liabilities of the police officers of an area in connection with the investigation of offences
committed in that area.
A premier investigative authority invested with powers extended to all areas is a sine qua
non for maintaining the rule of law. Naturally, police and public order provisions under the
State List cannot meet the needs of a central agency. Hence the enactment of the Delhi
Special Police Establishment Act 1946, as a prelude to the constitution of the CBI and its
inclusion in the Union List.
But sadly, the CBI does not measure up. The dependence on state clearance is a great
handicap. We have seen umpteen number of states providing and withdrawing consent to the
CBI depending on political and parochial conveniences. This is a dangerous trend that
renders CBI functions and jurisdiction subject to political manoeuvring, and lowers its
images. The result is the growing criminalisation of politics. The remedy lies in spreading
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PRAVEEN KUMAR
the tentacles of the CBI, by law, to every area of the country, with blanket powers to
investigate all classes of offences.
The Act provides for the appointment of the head of the CBI by the Centre. Considering
the importance of the CBI, it is natural to wonder whether the choice ought to be dictated by
the politicians in power. The question is of immediate significance because of degraded
political and public morality, and fragile coalition governments. The appointment of the CBI
chief has to be a professional, not political decision. This power must be taken away from
the Central Government, to bring all on par, deprive the party in power of an unfair
advantage and give the CBI some credibility.
There is no alternative to trust, even in the current atmosphere of degraded values in
building an institution. Fides punica leads nowhere. So also in the appointment of the CBI
chief. The solution lies with the judiciary, whose members are assumed to be nonpartisan.
The CBI should be subjected to the supervision of a statutory panel constituted of men of
the law, acting as advisors to the agency. The panel has to be invested with powers to appoint
and remove CBI chiefs, on the basis of performance, at its collective discretion. It should
advise the CBI on whether a case merits investigation and decide on arrests, searches,
seizures, bail and chargesheets. Its advice has to be statutorily binding. The panel has to be
free to monitor the process and pace of investigation and must constitute a statutory part of
the CBI at the highest layer.
The panel may consist of a dozen senior retired judges of the Supreme Court as
permanent members, with one among them chosen as chairman on the basis of seniority, and
the CBI chief as member-secretary. The membership of the panel must come to the senior
most retired judges, including retired chief justices, as a matter of right, unless an eligible
candidate opts out in writing or is incapacitated by age or illness, ratified by a two-thirds
majority in the panel. By the same majority, the panel, may force out one of its extant
members in the interests of justice. The panel may monitor and take decisions on cases as a
full panel or constitute sub-panels with the CBI chief as member-secretary for each.
However, only a full panel with a minimum 80 per cent quorum can decide by simple
majority on the appointment and removal of CBI chiefs and decide on deputations,
promotions and transfers of officers of and above the rank of Assistant Director, and assess
their work.
The panels functions, privileges, rights, liabilities and responsibilities have to be clearly
defined to statute to avoid clashes with the main body of the CBI. An amendment is the first
step, followed by the constitution of the panel. And the third and most crucial step will be
administrative measures to ensure
that the panel discharges its responsibilities with
commitment. Due recognition and an atmosphere free of bureaucratic pressures will help
the members discharge their responsibilities properly. Life membership, barring
contingencies, will help them to be true to their conscience.
The CBI is the spine of the criminal justice system, and a shattered spine leads to umpteen
complications. The derailment of the CBI is reflected in public life, in political uncertainty.
It is an irony that the situation created by a weakling CBI led to circumstances wherein it is
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in a position to dictate terms up political parties. The CBI is metamorphosing into a

Frankensteins monster. This is not in the interests of the CBI, the country or its criminal
justice system. The sooner out leaders realise the gravity of the situation and infuse new life
in the CBI by amending the Act, the better.
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PRAVEEN KUMAR
THE GUN STILL SPEAKS

The complacency over peace in Punjab was shattered by the bomb blast that killed Punjab
chief minister Beant Singh in front of the Punjab and Haryana secretariat building at
Chandigarh on August 31, 1995. The assassination vindicated the axiom that superficial calm
in a situation of serious conflict can be deceptive.
Complacency on the part of the general public is understandable; complacency even on
part of ordinary government functionaries can be accepted. But how authorities responsible
for security functions ignored the prime tenets of internal security, and slackened their guard
in respect of Punjab terrorism is something difficult to answer.
Firstly, it is unreasonable to presume that the blaze of terrorism which raised its head with
the Akali-Nirankari clash of April 13, 1978, reached its crescendo in 1985 and continued
with undiminished vigour upto 1992, died down immediately after an elected government
came to power. A bomb blast near the Indian Youth Congress office in Delhi on September
11,1993 killed eight persons though Youth Congress president M.S.Bitta survived the
attempt and the son of Ram Niwas Mirdha was kidnapped by the Khalistan Liberation Force.
A minor blast in a car in proximity to chief minister Beant Singh near Dholewas Chowk
in Ludhiana, the hub of previous terrorist activities, preceded the more daring venture.
Thirdly it is rather foolish to believe that a movement which dug deep roots in countries like
Pakistan, the USA, the UK and Canada through committed cadres withered away just because
an elected government was restored, or militants were overpowered.
It was often claimed by political observers that terrorism in Punjab in general and the
activities of the Babbar Khalsa International in particular came to a virtual end with the death
of Babbar Khalsa leader, Sukhdev Singh Babbar, after being caught at patiala in August 1992
Such assessments are far from ground realities.
No militancy having deep roots depends for its survival on a few leaders, the fear of the
government or the resolution of minor issues. Such developments may only bring about an
ephemeral lull in their activities. It is simplistic to presume that transfer of Chandigarh to
Punjab and settlement of water and territorial disputes of Punjab with Haryana and Rajasthan
would have banished militancy. Terrorism has its own cycles of rise and fall, before it
finally withers away with a loss in emotional fervour.
A lull in militancy for a few months or years should not lead to conclusion that terrorism
is out. Ironically, Beant Singh as chief minister knew this better than anybody. He often
spoke about the continued threat of militants and called for a joint security zone to fight them.
The fact remains that there was no social base to militancy in Punjab even at the best of
times. The close family links of Sikhs and Hindus with often both religions coexisting in a
single home and family render the demand for Khalistan rather unrealistic and shallow.
Issues like Chandigarh and water and territorial disputes with neighbouring states scarcely
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arouse the passions of the hoi polloi among Sikhs. Lives, finance and peace having been
shattered by 15 years of insurgency and insecurity, they are keen to establish themselves in
an atmosphere of peace. The murders, extortions and rapes which the terrorists indulged in
rubbed off the sheen of martyrdom from their names.
There are reports of a working relationship of late among the militants and their
Pakistani masters. Sukhdev Sing Babbar confessed during interrogation in 1992 to the toal
disillusion of Sikh militants about Pakistani intentions. The Inter-Services intelligence of
Pakistanmet its cul de sac in recruiting Sikhs after antiinsurgency operations were
strengthened in 1992. Most of the top terrorist leaders fled Punjab in fear. Prominent
leaders like Pritam Singh Sekhon of the Khalistan Liberation Force, Wadhawa Singh of the
Babbar Khalsa International and Wassam Singh Zafarwal of the Khalistan Commando Force
are still hiding in Pakistan. Some other leaders operate from the USA, the UK or Canada.
Pakistans efforts to persuade Khalistani leaders hiding there to resucitate terrorism in
India failed badly. The ISI deputed Parmjit Singh Panjwar of the Khalistan Commando
Force to Punjab in 1994, to recruit youths from Ludhiana and surrounding areas. The KCF
leader made no headway in his efforts. In a desperate bid, the ISI mobilised about 1,500
Sikh immigrants from Europe and trained them, but the immigrants lacked the enthusiasm to
carry out tasks in India at the behest of the ISI.
This lull in terrorism cannot be presumed to be the end of terrorism, which is the
handiwork of a few activists who form a farthing part of the local population. It is wrong to
presume that these activities represent the aspirations and fervour of the common people
around them. This silent majority becomes a hostage under inevitable pressures. Once, the
people of Punjab found that they were not under terrorist pressures, they collected courage to
express their disinclination towards terrorism. It is a blunder to interpret this disinclination as
signs of terrorism being uprooted from Punjab.
To trained eyes, signs of terrorism lurking in shadows were already there. There were no
signs of Pakistan beating the retreat. Rather, there was every indication of Pakistan going
radical in rousing Sikh passions. Virulent attacks of Pakistans government controlled
electronic media on the Indian governments alleged repression of minorities and popular
movements, human rights violations and its efforts to rouse Sikh sensibilities by its
programmes on Sikh traditions and culture give evidence of Pakistans dishonest intentions.
The continued terrorism after restoration f popular government in 1992, though in
reduced frequency, should have lead
those in charge of anti-insurgency operations to
conclude that terrorism was alive and may come out of its shell.
Failures on the fronts of analysis, research and use of intelligence also contributed to the
complacency over Punjab. Indian security agencies did intercept Sikh militants crossing the
Indo-Pak border in 1994, and seized from them a document called Policy paper of Punjab
militants, wherein plans to resuscitate terrorism were laid down in detail.
Intelligence agencies had information about plants to use human bombs to eliminate those
involved in the 1984 anti-Sikh riots and leaders like Beant Singh and Bhajan Lal.
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PRAVEEN KUMAR
Sikh militants crossing over to India were arrested and subjected to interrogation.
Through this process, intelligence agencies should have possessed vital information about
the future of militancy. It is a dismal commentary on anti-insurgency operations that Indian
security forces could derive no benefit from it.
Beant singh being perceived as extremely valuable to terrorist strikes, was provided the
highest grade of security cover available-Z plus. His security arrangements were next only
to that of the Prime Minister.
It is a shocking commentary on the security system that chauffeurs of such heavily
protected personages as Beant Singh used to drive his official cars to their houses for lunch.
His security chief was transferred out sans measures in advance to expose the incumbent
chief to existing security compulsions.
The new chief took charge of the post just the previous evening of the assassination, after
the post being vacant for a period, as the officer originally transferred to the post was
reluctant to hold charge and went on leave.
These developments do not speak highly about administration in a security apparatus.
The very fact that the human bomb, a rank outsider in a police constables uniform, could
reach Beant Singh, speaks volumes about what really our A plus security cover is.
Once terrorists strike, the police do make appreciable head-way in investigating and
detecting the case. Indian police always do it; they did it in the Rajiv Gandhi assassination
case, the Indira Gandhi assassination case and the Mahatma Gandhi assassination case.
However, good investigations cannot compensate the provision of adequate protection.
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CRIME, POLITICS AND THE POLICE

In a blinkered system like ours, where power and wealth are the ultimate virtues and
where power and wealth in themselves stimulate mutual growth, to the exclusion of all other
dimensions of life it is no wonder that the people of this poor country succumb to the
trappings of power and wealth at the cost of all virtues, values, pride, dignity and human
decency.
In an increasingly competitive and complex world, where every day, more mouths are
added to share limited resources, where the principle of the survival-of-the fittest operates to
its logical end and where the basic needs of survival and decency can be assured only with
power and wealth, people naturally go all out to ramp the ladder of power and wealth by
whatever means and cost.
JUSTICE, A CASUALTY
In the process, justice and morality become casualties. Criminality too raises its ugly
head as an instrument to achieve otherwise impossible objectives. This is how politics and
crime knit together in the fabric of Indian public life.
The story of the police is somewhat different. As an important part of the nations
administration, the police enjoy tremendous power over vast fields of human activities with
responsibilities towards the life and death of the hoi polloi as well as dignitaries. In this
sense, the police are the cutting edge of the State power and its ultimate bearer.
No power can be its own law without the police on its side as an executioner and loyal
watch dog. This is why politicians in their activities feel the need for wooing the police to
their side.
The police of independent India have become, by reason of their failing strength of
character and talent, easy prey to the power baits of smart politicians.
Their greed, unsound social background, lack of commitment to good values and failure
to comprehend police virtues in the right perspective, make them willing partners in
whatever politicians do, or intend to do. They refuse to look beyond their political masters
and their dispensations of job favours.
So law, justice, righteousness, professional ethics, morality decency, human dignity, the
common good of people, national interests and even conscience-otherwise common to any
human being-have become invalid nonsense to them
The police, sans sound character and personal integrity, are no more than country dogs.
This is what the Indian police have become in free India. The politicians, inebriated with new
power, smartly brought these weaklings to absolute submission and held them on a tight-leash
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PRAVEEN KUMAR
to be their personal watch dogs and personal gendarmes-in-requital for favourable job
placements, undue promotions and other largesse from time to time.
Nothing is valued higher than this largesse and its dispensers by the new police of India.
It is how the police were involuted in the conspiracy against decent public life of India.
It was a hop and skip for the police from the ugly world of politics to the mysterious
world of crime and the underworld. The police have become a weapon of politicians to bring
about the subjugation of the crime world to use its resources for political ends.
FALL OF CHARACTER
Politicians, thus, made good use of the decreasing strength of character of the police in
forging a nexus between the police and criminals in the furtherance of their own ends.
With a weak spine and no principles in the face of odds, the police are only too pleased to
follow in the footsteps of their political masters.
In these changed circumstances, discipline and subordination, which form the basic
connecting link of the police hierarchy, have lost all meaning, and are interpreted as blind
subservience to those who have power to serve personal interests.
And politicians easily led the police to the despicable cul-de-sac of the nexus with
criminals-the very people who are supposed to be controlled and brought to book for
antisocial activities.
With politicians as the custodians of power en arriere to support, the police plunged
lock, stock and barrel into the lucrative crime world; the resulting wealth and comforts were
in no way less sweet than the hard earned money of law-abiding society.
This is how one nexus between the police and crime world was established.
Whom should we blame for this hapless position? Certainly not the politicians or their
auxiliaries like criminals and police who are the unfortunate by-products of the grind. They
are created by the situation arising from a system which misfits the people for whom it was
devised.
The blame lies either on the Indian people who are unresponsive to the democratic
system evolved for them. Because of their unenlightened and venal conscience, which is so
insensitive that virtues like honesty, service, patriotism, quality and excellence can make no
dent in it at all; or it lies with the political system devised for them. It failed to take their
psychological make-up into account, and ispo facto led to the problem of maladjustment in
national life.
Otherwise, how can we explain criminals and goondas winning elections with impunity,
even while rioting and murders were committed at their behest on the eve of elections itself?
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The fact is that the chance of winning an election often is pro rata to the aura of a tough
image built around the candidate.
IMMATURE ELECTORATE
It is these people who win elections and rule this country. It is these people whom the
Indian electorate prefers to vest with powers to safeguard their interests!
Obviously, the Indian electorate lacks the far sightedness and vision to understand the
consequences of its irresponsible decision.
It is yet too immature to take decisions about the interests of the nation and see how
national interests are closely linked to its personal interests. It is yet to broaden its
perspective to include the life of the nation as an integral part of its own.
Long term and rational decisions are alien to its nature. Immediate selfish interests and
parochial outlook continue to be the driving force of all its actions and decisions- on the
matters of national importance or personal concern.
In most parts of India, it is money, arrack, sari, threat, fear of landlords or the blazening
propaganda of a candidate that influence its decision as to whom to vote for.
How can the future of this country be safe in the hands of such an electorate and its
elected leaders?
How can an indifferent and irresponsible electorate provide honest and efficient
leadership to the nation?
This weakness of the electorate has ultimately left Indian politics in the hearth of violence
and manipulative extortions, with the instruments meant to protect them mowing the field.
Saner elements in politics, who found survival difficult, have left the field, giving way to
elements which are more suited to the field.
It is how politics, from a class of dedicated and virtuous leaders, has become a pit of
junk. The credibility, which is the pith of any political life, is the biggest casualty in Indian
politics.
People are more and more disillusioned with the extant political institutions. The
percentage of the electorate that takes the trouble of going to polling booths so cast votes is
steadily decreasing from election to election.
It is an open secret that an election is an opening for a candidate to invest money to reap
wealth, comfort and power for the next 5 years. And how he reaps the wealth, comfort and
power is again not a mystery at all. It is corruption and misuse of public money.
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PRAVEEN KUMAR
If he is ambitious and intends to promote his career interests, there is no way out in the
existing system but to resort to pulling strings and pursuing other more deadly methods.
Often with the active collusion of the officious criminals and police.
The unhealthy nexus often leads to and facilitates other forms of crime. Cases of rioting,
assault, kidnapping, rape and blackmail, involving the supporters or relatives of politicians,
criminals and police in futherance of a political cabal are other usual forms of crime
that
result from the vicious nexus.
Often, criminals and police are employed to create disturbance or inspire sensational
crimes in furtherance of political goals. The losses of life and property involved in the wily
schemes seldom touch the conscience of either the politicians, the criminals or the police
who are responsible for these dastardly acts.
The political patronage and the nexus with police desensitise criminals to the process of
law and justice. They are emboldened to commit more daring and ruthless crimes that
endanger the life and property of the plebeians.
The police, in their links with politicians on the one hand and with criminals on the other,
are in their new avatar-the protectors of vested interests with no more commitment and
passion for law and justice.
They have become a discredited force, a willing instrument of power brokers in the
ruthless and violent cabal of power-games with no heart for the common man and common
cause.
This is the requital the Indian electorate gets for letting by its nonchalance and
irresponsibility-the political system putrefy.
POLITICISATION OF CRIME
What we see today is just the tip of the iceberg. There are more things hidden in the latter
than are seen.
This is soon realised by the opportunist Indian politicians who seize the first available
instance to enlist the support of criminals and underground operators for their nefarious
designs.
This, in turn, is a godsent opportunity for criminals to restore their lost credibility and
social standing with the help of their association with the custodians of power, apart from
the security and protection from the police that ensure from the association.
They promptly grab the opportunity to their advantage and show how useful they can be
to politicians in their career-promotion designs and in the wreaking of personal vendettas.
The experience and professionalism of criminals come in handy to politicians to execute
their nasty operations without attracting the stigma attached to them.
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The vast army of criminals has become ready resource for them to use whenever need
arises. This has given a sense of confidence and security to politicians, who are otherwise
vulnerable in their highly uncertain, challenging and competitive environment.
Often, politicians have so much relied on criminals that the latter have become their most
trusted lieutenants, even getting elected to legislature with their help and blessings.
There have been instances in India, where prominent politicians have refused to disown
their notorious criminal friends in public even after reaching the vortex of their political
career. This shows the sway held by criminals over politicians in the Indian situation.
It is a fact that no syndicate of organised crime in small and big cities anywhere in the
world can survive even for a day without political patronage. Ergo, all syndicates of
organised crime and their menace are the direct outcome of the nexus between politicians and
criminals, with the police as bystanders.
No criminal can take lightly the need for political patronage in running his crime
syndicate. Be they smuggling syndicates, gambling houses, narcotics dealers or plain
hoodlums, the only way to survive is to have comfortable political protection at the right
levels.
MUTUAL ADVANTAGE
The crime syndicate, in return, pay a good percentage of their criminal gain to the
protectors. Thus, it is an arrangement to mutual advantage.
The crime world also provides hoodlums as volunteers to perform challenging tasks
during the election campaigns of their political patrons, apart from liberally financing these
campaigns.
How can a politician, after gaining power with the help of a criminal, ever let down the
criminal? This symbiosis of politicians and criminals which has emerged from the extant
Indian political system. Is the root cause of all the complications discussed until now.
The very fact that politicians are prepared to risk their reputation rather than distance
themselves from the crime world, shows how highly the world of crime is regarded by the
politicians in their scheme of things.
Politics and crime have become the 2 faces of the same coin in the present state of affairs
and a saying goes that there cannot be politics without crime and no crime without politics.
In the present Indian situation, it is true that the lotus of politics can blossom only in the
offal of crime.
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In an atmosphere where placements and transfers are decided by the needs and wishes of
self-seeking politicians, no police can efficiently function nor can they be free from the
interference of the politicians.
It is not surprising that hungry politicians grab more and more powers that are legally and
traditionally invested with the police department when the top brass lack strength of
character and conviction.
The leads to a position wherein the police department becomes a chessboard on which
politicians move their pieces to checkmate their adversaries and win the political game.
In other words, the police sans effective leadership is becoming more a handmaid of
politicians by moving away from its sacred role as the guardian of law and justice and the
protector of the common man.
The credit of bringing the police from their height of power to the present level of
absolute submission should go to the superior strength of personality of wily politicians who
have bent the police on their own terms with the selective use of stick and carrot.
The police is not the real police and what is does is not policing in the proud sense of the
term.
CHANGED ROLE
With the increasing involvement of the police with crass politicians, the conception of
the police about their own role has undergone a large-scale change. No more do the police
look at crime control and maintenance of order as their first duty.
With this, the concern for crime control has received a setback and crime control and
investigation have receded to the last priority-except when politicians are interested in them
for a specific purpose.
Only crimes that disturb politicians foment police to galvanic and meaningful action.
Other crimes receive no priority.
The very definition of the gravity of crime is adapted to suit the new conception. Those
crimes which are tolerated by politicians are no more crimes.
The self-image of the police as a fearless arbiter of crime is changed to a solicitous
servant in attendance at the pleasure of a politician-master.
This blunting of the crime card of the police has made it less awe-inspiring and less
deserving of respect from the criminals.
The police have more and more realised that criminals, particularly those from organised
syndicates, are personal friends of their political masters and they are no match for the
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criminals in terms of wealth, influence and social standing. The men of the police see those
criminals on equal footing with their political masters and learn to treat them with awe.
They find it absurd to act with authority against the high-profile criminals who are too
high for the small stature of the police.
It is unfortunate that the police of today have never realised their infinite stature as lawenforcing agents vis--vis all others including criminals and politicians whom they are
empowered to search, arrest and take to court if they deviate from rightful path.
Sadly, the trifling wealth and the concomitant big-man image of others appear to the
present police as more appealing than their own awful police authority.
On ultimate analysis, crime is a universal phenomenon. All living beings are criminals in
varying degrees. Criminal thought is a part of the natural function of a healthy mind as is the
moral restraint that prevents the criminal thought from being acted upon.
External restraints brought about by the fear of law, custom and adverse reaction,
reinforce the inner restraint to prevent the committing of crime.
However, as the force of external restraints weakens for diverse reasons, and the
proporation of gain to be made in committing a crime outweighs the risks involved in the
balance sheet of the operation, the lure of crime increases and the deed is accomplished.
SOCIAL ACCEPTANCE
It is the social situation which controls the external restraints to make committing a crime
an asset or a liability. It thereby decides the proliferation or suppression of crime, human
nature being what it is always.
Criminals are criminals because society gives them easy openings to thus meet their
needs. Politicians love to befriend criminals rather than bring them to book because the
society they live in makes their lives more comfortable with criminals as friends rather than
as adversaries. Policemen find the crime world sweeter because it is how things stand for
them.
The remedy for the proliferation and endearment of crime lies in changing the social
dynamics to make crime a liability to criminals and criminals a liability to politicians and the
police. In the existing nexus of politics, crime and police, crime is an asset to criminals and
criminals are an asset to politicians and police.
Criminals should not be construed as a separate block of citizenry. They are a crossselection of people from all fields of life who have moved beyond a commonly accepted
degree in their criminal tendencies.
Criminality may be prolific in certain civilised fields like commerce and industry in the
form of tax evasion, violation of foreign exchange regulations, hoarding etc.
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PRAVEEN KUMAR
Such crimes are generally not taken seriously in spite of the public awareness of the
crimes and the social standing of the criminals remains unaffected. Government servants too
come under this category of criminals because of rampant corruption in public life.
It is a fact that Indian public life is a vast field of criminal activities and politicians and
police, though the custodians and protectors of Indian public life, from part of the crime
world. However, knowledge of the involvement of politicians and police in this nasty world
stirs the public conscience for the reason that they are supposed to be the people on whom the
public relies to save them.
CRIME AND NATIONAL ECONOMY
A word about the effect of the nasty nexus between politics, crime and police on the
national economy.
Unity gives strength. It is true about this nasty nexus also.
The only telos of the nexus is gain by synergy, which brings confidence and courage to
the troika in its nefarious activities, thereby inducing it to more daring and innovative
criminal activities. This results in proliferation of crime is illegal gain and the incidence of
crime is directly related to increase in black money in the national economy, the proliferation
of crime invariably results in inflation and the weakening of the national economy.
More dangerously, it results in polarisation of the society into criminal rich and honest
poor, and destroys the countrys moral fabric.
The increasing incidence of easy money, material comforts and political power of the
criminal rich ultimately leads to internal strife and popular terrorism.
The indulgence of the rich and powerful in crime popularises criminal activities by
bringing an aura of status to them and negating all inhibitions in the popular mind.
Society easily accepts the example of the wealthy and powerful for making an easy
buck to lead comfortable lives in the world where life is becoming increasingly difficult
because of the spurt in black money, caused by proliferation of crime.
While decent life becomes impossible by honest methods, the need of survival forces
honest citizens to accept crime as a way of life as the last resort. This would be where
politicians, criminals and police lead the country.
Easy money and easy wealth have a tendency to inflate. Criminals tend to spend lavishly.
This ends up in a spurt in prices of land, buildings and essential commodities, while honest
men have to toil hard for an extra quarter.
Crime begets money, and money begets more money, and more money gets power,
comfort and everything. In the crush, the honest man is lost forever. The ocean of criminal
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wealth around him, which is beyond even his wildest dreams, frustrates him and ravages his
sense of morality and righteousness.
It turns him violently against all human values and decency, leading him to a world of
crime and violence. It is what we have seen in Punjab, Kashmir, Assam, in faraway Sri
Lanka or even in Naxalism, where it is disguised as political ideology.
It is an irony that politicians and the police, who create the demons, fall to the bullets of
the grievously hurt, self-righteous, once innocent people. It is said that even the dacoits in
Chambal are symptomatic of this social and economic malady.
It is true that crime cannot be eliminated from any society as the tendency to commit
crime is ingrained in human nature. However, crime can be suppressed by appropriate
restraints. What restraints and how they are to be applied are ironically decided by politicians
and the police.
If they come out of their indulgent interests to commit themselves to their professional
objectives, they can certainly save India from the present predicament.
Not that every politician and very policeman can come out to achieve this noble task, but
there certainly are noble elements yet surviving as exceptions among them, who should take
up cudgels in favour of the Indian polity and sacrifice their lives and careers, if necessary, to
make the renaissance of Indian police and Indian public life possible.
The question yet to be posed is: Will the inveterate vested interests let these sacrifices
bear fruit? Let us hope for the best.
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PRAVEEN KUMAR
CRIMINALISATION OF POLICE
Organised violence is so much a part of Indian politics that all politics parties
have created youth and volunteer wings to accommodate young hoodlums as a fighting and
street-smart force to be used when violence is needed.
Those who sand out in courage and toughness rise fast and reach the top and today a very
high percentage of Ministers in the Indian Government are these people.
It is ironical that politicians, whose help criminals sought to save themselves from the
police, brought the police and criminals closer to each other, building a bridge between them.
The understanding reached between criminals and the police is to a great degree responsible
for criminalising Indian public life and blunting the effectiveness of the police.
Though the nexus between criminals and the police is not a new phenomenon, what was
once an exception has now become the rule and what was the rule once has become the
exception. Today criminals on the one hand overawe a weak police force with their
connections with powerful politicians and lure the police with easy money and comfort on the
other, thus tilting the balance to their advantage.
POLITICAL MISHANDLING
Though criminals play their political cards with adroitness, their real aim is to lessen the
pressures of the police on themselves.
If some are born criminals, some choose the path of crime consciously and some others
are constrained to follow it. While faulty financial and social policies forged by short-sighted
politicians are responsible for forcing many helpless people to a life of crime, these same
policies often drive sensitive people to revolt and to embrace terrorism and violence.
Naxalisim, Sikh terrorism, the ULFA movement, Kashmir separatism, Hindu and
Muslim militancy and even the sympathy in India for the LTTE cause are direct results of
political mishandling of national issues.
India has seen isolated political attempts in the past to save people from the clutches of
crime and to rehabilitate them. The famous Chambal experiment initiated by the late Jaya
Prakash Narayan had some success in spite of the machinations of certain politicians in the
area.
Not that politics is all bad. It is, by definition, governance of the State by popular
leadership. The malaise of todays politics lies in its tilt to populism at the cost of leadership
and more dangerously, populism is being considered an investment to earn returns in multiple
proportions. Nothing, it appears, means as much to the Indian electorate as money to prod
them to cast their votes for a particular candidate.
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VICIOUS CIRCLE
The history of independent India makes it clear that honesty, patriotism, quality, service,
excellence and even charisma have become casualties vis a vis money and power on the
Indian election stage. In this situation, political poser is equated with electoral popularity,
which in turn is equated with money and power, which can be had only though political
patronage.
The vicious circle has helped to create a class of extortionists who manipulate the passive
public. Politics too has its honest and patriotic people who are committed to the welfare of
society. But, sadly, they are caught up in a system which does not let them come to
prominence unless they come terms with it and adopt the venal proposition of wining
elections to make money to win the next election.
Only those who correctly grasp the inner dynamics of this and adapt to its mechanics can
hop to make any headway. Others are bound to sink. When the system itself made the
election a venal mechanism, corrupt practices that rope in criminals and police are bound to
follow.
It can be categorically said that the business of crime cannot survive anywhere if
politicians and the police join hands to bring the crime world to heel. But alas, this is not to
be in a world of opportunist politicians and a corrupt, weak, police force both with an eye on
the spoils of the crime. The police force is the weak link in the troika of power-brokers
consisting of politicians, criminals and the police. It functions as an instrument politicians
use to bring criminals to them. The role of the police as a law-enforcing agency and its hold
over criminals makes it a handy instrument for politicians to use.
SAD COMMENTARY
The police is the executioner and odd-job boy of the Government. This image of the
police is effectively made use of by politicians for all conceivable personal and official
purposes. While low-ranking police are used as bodyguards, gunmen, messengers, watchmen
etc, high-ranking police officers are used for the same jobs at higher levels.
It is a sad commentary on todays police force that while low-ranking police do these
jobs as an unavoidable duty, high-ranking officers compete and fight among themselves to
attend to the odd jobs of their political masters. This they do, even when they are fully aware
of the criminal antecedents and police histories of some of their benefactors.
Jobs are judged for importance in the police force on their potentialities for illegal money
from crime. And jobs with potential for such gains are most sought after and are often paid
for in lakhs. This is considered an investment. which will earn many times more in a short
period of time.
Many other jobs, on the other hand are known as punishment postings and are largely
detested. These jobs have no potential for illegal earnings.
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PRAVEEN KUMAR
It goes without saying that judging jobs on the basis of the challenge or the opportunity
for service that they provide is a thing of the past. It is the crime world that decides the
importance or otherwise of different police jobs and in actual fact controls the type and
calibre of officers in each job.
In other words, it is criminals who invisibly control the police rather than the police
controlling the criminals. This reversal of function has a lot to do with the low morale of the
present Indian police.
Its members find themselves at the mercy of criminals whom they are supposed to bring
to book. The police is no longer confident that it is mentally and organisationally equipped to
do its job.
Increasingly powerful and modernised crime syndicates have made a farce of crime
control by the police. Many factors place the police at disadvantages. Its growth has not kept
pace with population growth. It is also at a disadvantage as far as communication,
transportation and weaponry are concerned as criminals have the best of all these.
INCOMPETENT LEADERSHIP
Consequently, police fatalities in encounters with criminals and terrorist groups are
increasing. As a result the police in India is no longer keen to intrfere with the activities of
the underworld. The understanding between criminals and the police is that both will confine
themselves to their respective fields a and avoid embarrassing each other.
The police is paid for its passiveness while stray troublemakers are silenced. The Indian
police is sane enough to quickly realise that its interests lie in silence while entangling with
the crime world may invite a host of complications.
The responsibility for the present state of the Indian police rests solely on its incompetent
leadership rather than on anything else. Unimaginative planning uninspiring guidance and
lack of leadership and conviction in the top police ranks has led to utter chaos. Dangerously
ineffective recruitment policies, poor training programmes, misuse of the facilities of
confidential assessment of subordinates and the degeneration of control and supervision
machinery have resulted.
The present Indian police force is utterly unmotivated and police jobs are considered only
as devices that provide rank, power, social status, sundry comforts and a pension. How can
the people of India depend upon this sort of police force for security, protection and law and
order?
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THE INDIAN POLICE:

MALADIES AND REMEDIES
Crime, politics and the police are the 3 sides of the vicious triangle within which
democratic India and its free people are inexorably caught today. Though wealthy industrial
and commercial houses form the 4th dimension of this unfortunate situation, their
manipulative strategies are as yet limited to trying to influence politicians in pursuit of their
interests.
It is their wealth that operates as a catalyst in reducing the normal life of free citizens to a
welter of uncertainties and unending hardships. However, their role is rather distant and
indirect, unlike that of criminals, politicians and the police.
Politicians protect criminals from the law while criminals reciprocate by acting as their
henchmen in handling underground activities. The police goes to the politicians for job
protection while at the same time it strikes an understanding with criminals. Thus works this
nexus of vile power brokers who prey on innocent people and suck the blood of the hapless
masses.
The trio of criminal, political and police manipulators is a dangerous force to reckon with,
in the Indian democratic situation. A tight-knit power-bloc, they have permeated into all
conceivable facets of Indian public life with the sole intention of garnering all the benefits of
an inefficient public administration. The tragedy here is that this evil is perpetrated by those
whom the public trust as their benefactors and protectors.
The amoral side of this operation does not seen to have affected either the police or the
politicians in any way and the vile cabal against, the Indian public works on indifferent to
everything except its own self-interest. It seems that all the actors in this tragic drama think
that the Indian democracy is a free-for-all, where they should try to grab all that they can in a
world where each person has to look after himself.
This approach is certain to undermine not only the democratic set-up of the nation, but
also its social fabric. The blame for this sad state of affairs should be squarely borne by the
ugly troika of politicians, criminals and the police.
All the maladies of the police today emanate from the politicians who are only concerned
with winning the next election. Until it extricates itself from their grip, it cannot hope to rise
above its present mediocre level.
An immediate need is to streamline the organisation. At present, the growth of the police
department is not really much more than a spasmodic reaction to various stimuli and as a
result it lacks the benefits of an integrated approach. Operational facilities, counter-balances
and counter-checks are inadequate.
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PRAVEEN KUMAR
The constitution of a permanent cell of organisational experts under the direct control of
the police chief to redefine the police organisation is required to make it more meaningful
and need-based.
This could help in streamlining the hierarchy by identifying and eliminating redundant
posts, by rationalising workloads and preventing their duplication and by redefining duties
and procedures and thus the rights and responsibilities at each level. As a consequence,
police functioning would be made more cost-effective and efficient.
UNATTRACTIVE SERVICE
The accusation that no talent breeds and grows in the wilderness of the police set-up
cannot be easily gainsaid. The Indian Police Service continues to be an intellectually poor
and unattractive service in the spectrum of the All India services with only misfits opting
for its.
The constabulary, which forms the bulk of the service, is largely constituted of people
from the lower stratum of society who are psychologically handicapped when it comes to
exercising their police powers against the more enlightened people in society.
A tendency to sideline superior intellect and excellence, a general reluctance to adopt
modern techniques of policing and management, a dogmatic approach to personnel and
public relations and a lack of insight into human nature are other factors responsible for the
unfortunate state of affairs in the force.
These problems can be overcome only by capable police leadership at all levels. The
organisation is bound to experience a glissade until objectivity, reasonableness and good
judgement become a part of the police administration.
was originally meant to be. In no way, under the present circumstances, does an ACR reflect
an officers qualities or capabilities or lack thereof. Many therefore believe that the
department would be better off without this pernicious evaluation process that encourages
corruption and favouritism in the force.
It must, however, be said that the evils of the ACR are not inherent in the process itself,
but stem rather from the calibre of those who write them at various levels. What
characterises the rite of the ACR today is a distinct lack of objectivity: it has become a means
to personal ends, a medium for the advancement of individual interests and even the
settlement of personal scores.
Servility is its inevitable consequence and it would not be wrong to say that eliminating
the ACR altogether would certainly be a step towards commune bonum in the police force.
A Deputy Inspector General of Police in a range wanted a young Deputy Superintendent
of Police to marry a girl close to him. The self-respecting DSP chose to marry a girl of his
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own choice. This antagonised the Deputy Inspector General. His next annual confidential
report showed the junior as a liability to the police department.
The senior officer also prevailed year after year upon other officers to incorporate
adverse remarks in the confidential reports of the junior. Most of them obliged and this
bright junior officer ended up with a series of unsubstantiated adverse remarks in his
confidential reports.
All his appeals were ignored by the Government. As a result, the young officer was
denied selection to the IPS for the next 9 years while his far less competent colleagues
superseded him on the career ladder, though there is nothing in his career to justify such
treatment.
Undeterred by the humiliation and career setbacks intentionally heaped on him he then
requested the Chief Secretary of the Government not to consider him any more for the IPS.
He took this measure to show his utter contempt of the corrupt departmental heads who sit
above him to decide his fate.
There are numerous instances of unhealthy practices at the highest levels in the Indian
police. Karnataka produced a police chief who, together with his wife, was taken to court on
the eve of his retirement, from service by a prominent social worker for allegedly defrauding
the public and a spastic society by siphoning off huge amounts of money, collected for the
spastics.
It is a different story that the officer concerned succeeded in silencing the social worker
through police pressure and ensured that the case fell through for lack of evidence. The
incident betrays the levels to which occupying high positions in the Indian police stoop to
make a few bucks.
In such an atmosphere with the maintenance of law and order in the hands of unprincipled
police personnel. Queer things take place. Long ago, a dacoity was reported in the house of a
person of doubtful character in Dharwad district in Karnataka.
The dacoity was actually committed by the illegitimate son of the concerned person
after a serious quarrel. The complainant later settled his feud with the illegitimate son and
decided to settle the case of dacoity to save his family name.
He successfully arranged for an ex-convict of Stuartpuram to be picked up and shown as
the accused. A mangalasutra recast from the gold recovered in some other case was shown
as property seized from the criminal !
Such developments make a mockery of criminal justice. What a serious breach of public
trust it is for the police to involve a person, albeit an ex-convict, in a crime which they knew
he did not commit. The incident reveals the levels of criminality to which the Indian police
has sunk.
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PRAVEEN KUMAR
INHUMAN TORTURE
In another instance in 1981, police officials in charge of Koppal sub-division in Karnataka
picked up a poor goldsmith from Gadag in a neighbouring district for interrogation about
receiving stolen property. They subjected him to inhuman torture in the Gadag tourist
bungalow for 2 nights to make the innocent goldsmith confess to crimes which he had not
committed.
The wife and children of the goldsmith, who found him in the tourist bungalow after
endless running from pillar to post, were chased away from the place though they could hear
his agonised shrieks. The goldsmith succumbed to the torture on the second night.
The news of the lock-up death, as such deaths are popularly called, was splashed in local
and other newspapers. The wife of the goldsmith filed a complaint before the local court
about the cold-blooded murder of her husband.
The district Superintendent of Police and the Range Deputy Inspector General of Police,
whose protg the sub-divisional police officer was, rose to the occasion to save him.
They visited Gadag and entrusted the investigation of the case to the compliant Deputy
Superintendent of Police of a neighbouring sub-division with oral directions to finalise the
case as not proved before the magistrate, who had received the wifes complaint and taken
cognisance of the plaint.
The Deputy Superintendent of Police complied with these directions and sent his
investigation report to the court for action u/s 210 of the Cr.PC. Thus ended the case of coldblooded torture and culpable homicide of an innocent goldsmith.
Such stories of cruelty and criminality make the police appear like demons. What right
has the police to investigate and prosecute criminals while it protects its own killers?
Though it is difficult to extricate the police machinery from the clutches of the
politicians, it is an important measure that has to be undertaken at al costs in the overall
interests of the country
If policing is to be effective in the years ahead, specialisation is crucial. Three distinct
police services with separate recruitment and training are needed. These are:
1. Regulatory police or uniformed police in charge of law and order
And other regulatory duties.
2. Mainstay police in charge of crime investigation, crime prevention,
Security and intelligence operation.
3. Social police in charge of prevention and investigation of all social
Offences and implementation of social legislation.
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All the 3 wings should have their own individual organisations up to the district level
with independent superintendents and staff as required. They should function in tandem in
much the same way as the army, navy and air force do.
At the apex could be a specially constituted body called the State police authority with
police chiefs of all the 3 wings as members and the Chief Secretary to the Government as its
Chairman.
A PANACEA
Creation of an all-India police authority at the Centre, responsible only to the President of
India, with regional police authorities in each State as subordinate bodies, may prove to be
a panacea to most of the extant maladies of the Indian police.
The all-India police authority may be headed by a Supreme Court judge with the Union
Home Secretary and Central Cabinet Secretary as members and the senior most police officer
of the country as the member-secretary.
The arrangement is likely to bring to an end the undue interference by politicians in
police affairs, thus enabling the police to function in an independent atmosphere. The Indian
police may hope to function well in the new age if these measures are implemented.
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PRAVEEN KUMAR
THE CRUMBLING STEELFRAME OF INDIA

The All India Service were once called the Steel Frame that held India, a country which
consisted of diverse political systems, comprising British Indian and many other big and
small princely States, together. If India is one today- though in truncated form-the efficiency
of its vintage. All India Services is as much responsible for this as the might of the British
Empire.
The credit for India having made impressive progress, both in the domestic and
international fields and having survived the uncertain, initial years of democracy, under
leaders who had no experience of ruling a country of Indias size and diversity, also goes to
the original All India Services- to its traditions and efficiency, that continued to survive for
some years even after Independence.
The sterling performances of Sardar Vallabh Bhai Patel in the unification of India and
the brilliant achievements of Jawaharalal Nehru in the international field are as much the
success stories of their civil servant secretaries and advisers as of the leaders themselves.
The fall in standards of the All India Services, in the values of their officers and in their
efficiency and performance, is symbolic of the fall India itself has experienced.
The All India Services experienced a setback after Independence. This deterioration was
in depth of ideas, quality of performance and honesty of convictions of their officers. With
this deterioration, to All India Service are no longer in a class of their own. Its members can
no longer claim a distinguished standing in society as the All India Services have been
reduced to merely good careers.
The Civil Services had inherited, as a result of their exclusive place in the higher levels of
administration, high pay packets and good perquisites, attractive service conditions and an
awe-inspiring tradition. But since this was not accompanied by superior performance, the
consequence is that the reins of democratic India are now in the hands of people who are in
no way superior in terms of intellectual worth, administrative skill or human qualities. This is
a tragedy for a democracy struggling to progress.
The British created to All India Services to handle the administration of the country.
They recruited talented people, imparted the best possible training to them and invested
them with the trust, powers and opportunities to carry out their responsibilities.
They took care of all their personal needs, provided them with many opportunities for
growth and surrounded them with a halo of exclusivity by endowing them with high social
status and providing them with generous creature comforts.
Independent India needed brilliant people to handle its complex administrative problems
and to implement its developmental schemes. It is tragic that India after independence not
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only failed to realise the importance of maintaining its Steel Frame and improving upon it,
but positively contributed to its collapse in a very short span of time.
Indian leaders wanted the All India Service of independent India to break away from the
British model they had originally been based on and they gave expression to this desire by
altering the name of the Services. It is ironical that the change in name also initiated a steep
fall in the quality of the Civil Services.
At present, the Indian Administrative Services is not even a pale shadow of the old Indian
Civil Services. The Indian Foreign Service stands nowhere near the brilliant Indian Political
Service and the present Indian Police Service lacks the backbone and professionalism of the
good old Indian Police.
A major cause for the disappearance of excellence from the All India Services of
independent India was the secret tendency of the new leaders to look at the All India Services
as their rivals in running the country, rather than as the backbone of the State. A subtle fear of
the All India Services inherited from British India days accompanied by a sense of awe that
the services inspired because of the halo worn by its predecessor, stirred the new leaders who
made every effort to cut the Civil Services to size and show them their proper place.
SORRY STATE OF AFFAIRS
This occurred together with a fall in the standards of management of the Civil Services
because of the failure to recognise the importance of the Civil Services in administering the
nation. This fall succeeded in bringing the All India Services of the post Independence era to
its present state.
This brought the Services closer to the people of India in a way, while stripping it of all
its brilliance, excellence and efficiency to give India a mediocre All India Services to handle
its administration. And the result of this is the present state of the country.
The poor state of the Civil Services attracted people of poor calibre. This led to all kinds
of evils including corruption, opportunism and lack of moral strength to stand by ones values
and convictions.
This situation led to loss of face and subordinated the All India Services to the ambitions
of the political leadership. Its has been a long journey from the bold and awe-inspiring All
India Services that existed at the dawn of Independence to the present meek and servile All
India Services without any backbone to stand erect and hold its head high.
The reasons for the fall and the mechanism that brought about the change, are not far to
seek. Everything that made the All India Services of the British days a powerful adminicle
for the administration was just swept away while its new avatar in independent India was
brought into existence.
The glory of the old All India Services was built on the 3 basic strengths of faultless
recruitment, perfect training and the maintenance of the highest standards of professionalism
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PRAVEEN KUMAR
and character t sustain it throughout. These strengths held the Steel Frame of India together
for nearly a century. But independent India just failed to give these factors the importance
they deserved while constituting its version of the All Indian Services.
The primacy British India gave to the process of selection of people of high calibre to the
All India Services is perhaps the single major factor that made the Civil Services among the
best in the world. Promising people with maturity and intellectual superiority were selected
young through a vigorous and efficient filtering process of a carefully devised elaborate
public civil examination process under the guidance, supervision and control of highly
qualified professionals in the field.
Rarely was anything other than exceptional merit considered in the process of selection
and human weakness like nepotism, corruption and parochial considerations rarely
interfered in the process, as Britain was not prepared to compromise and accept anyone less
than the best in the higher levels of administration. These people were, after all, to sit on
equal terms with them and help in administering the country! These high standards in the
process of selection and recruitment, made the All India Services of British days, a really
superior cadre.
REASONS FOR DETERIORATION
The grand structure of British rule was to be mercilessly demolished later by independent
India. Unimaginative and messy selection and recruitment procedures, which were poorly
conceived and unskilfully executed became the order of the day. Corruption, nepotism,
narrow considerations and caste and economic reservations corroded the foundations of the
newly-constituted All India Services as time passed.
The reasons for this deterioration in the Civil Services are many. The first is the general
lack of passion for quality and excellence in the Indian psyche. The agency in charge of the
process of such selections, namely, the Union Public Service Commission, unlike in the
British period, is unfortunately increasingly being manned by people unequal to the task
either in terms of their professionalism, efficiency and passion for brilliance or in their basic
character itself.
As the selection of members of the UPSC became politicised, mediocre people came to
fill the slots and in the process, selections to the All India Services suffered. Since members
owed their memberships or chairmanship to their political leaders, they could not avoid the
obligatory quid pro quo. This continues to be the state of affairs today.
The Indian Civil Service, which once produced giants like K.P.S. Menon, now produces
in its new avatar of the IAS and Allied Services only pigmies without voice or strength of
conviction. In this matter, they are like those in the crippled institution of the union Public
Service Commission who select them. The Steel Frame of the IAS has nor become a gilded
plastic frame with its steel conscience crumbling into a plastic conscience in the present
uncertain political atmosphere. A Steel Frame Civil Service would never have permitted
such a degeneration.
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The degeneration is manifeast at all ranks in all services, whether it is the administrative
service, the foreign service, the police service, the forest service, the central services or the
specialised services, whether at the sub-divisional or provincial level or at the highest levels
of Central Government. The degeneration is uniform everywhere.
Whether it be in creative genius, intellectual heights, strength of character, moral values,
width of human interests or noble qualities, the Civil Service of the post-Independence era
are third rate. It does not have its own voice or any originality. Its members either as Chief
Secretaries of State Governments or as Secretaries of various ministries of departments, are at
best paper-pushers and mindless approvers of reports incompetently prepared by subordinates
down the line.
Imagine people of such calibre presiding over the entire Civil Services. Thus develops a
vicious circle that promotes the degeneration of the Civil Services.
Sturdy and sterling All Indian Services are indispensable for the survival of democratic
and united India. Whether it is a cadre of generalists as the Indian Administrative Service is,
or cadres of specialists in the fields of judiciary, health care, engineering, economics, foreign
service, police etc the existence of All Indian Services functions as the basis of governance of
India and adds to the emotional bonds binding the country together.
Also, as a pool of the cream of the people, it is supposed to bring distinguished and
brilliant people to the job of administration of the country and thereby ensure good
government to the country.
THE REMEDY
Any dilution of the high standards of these services is certain to throw the country to the
wolves. British India knew this and perhaps, independent India also knows it. But it does
nothing to arrest the dangerous fall in the standards of its All India Services.
India is preoccupied with myriad issues relating to economic and social development and
perhaps the rapid deterioration of its All India Services does not appear to be important in
comparison with these burning issues. But such a feeling is wrong. All India Services are a
precondition for the survival of India. India must realise this fact and act fast.
This brings us to the quintessential question as to how the Civil Services can be brought
back to their original standards and glory. How can we get back the original ideas, quality
and performances and honesty of convictions that existed earlier?
The first and foremost task in this regard is pruning the Civil Services to a small brains
trust of brilliance and commitment which will steer the country in the right direction by
giving competent advice on statecraft and actually running the administration to political
leaders.
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PRAVEEN KUMAR
A TINY SELECT GROUP

Merciless pruning of the extant services to create this tiny, efficient and highly
responsible core is a priority task. Only brilliance and the highest potential should be the
criteria for membership in this nerve-centre.
This brains trust must be kept beyond the purview of extraneous constraints like
reservation of any kind and even age restrictions. The guiding principle here is bringing
together the best talents without restraints of any kind, for ensuring best results. The
services should not be treated as an employment opportunity for the elite, but as the
foundation of the Government.
INTELLECTUAL CALIBRE
The training programmes for the services have to be made relevant today. Matter taught
has to be updated every year by experts and made changing evento the brightest among the
new recruits, unlike present training programmes which are intellectually impoverished,
irrelevant to the times and which in no way help ensuring the right attitudes at the higher
levels.
Another need is to make the passing of a promotional test, of a very standard, held by
the UPSC or a similar Central agency, mandatory for promotion at every level. Only such
tough measures will keep the Civil Services fit and productive as is required for the sound
health of the administration of the country.
TONING UP THE UPSC
Overhauling the present mediocre Union Public Service Commission to create an
efficient and responsible set-up capable of handling the enormous responsibilities under
Article 320 of the Indian Constitution, is essential in order to arrest the degeneration that has
set in, in the set-up. This has led to blunders in identifying talent and in managing the Civil
Services.
CREDIBILITY OF THE UPSC
In a recent case, 3 promising officers from the State cadre of a southern State of India,
were denied selection by the UPSC to an All India Service for no obvious reason for 10 years
from 1990, while their juniors were elevated. The acute frustration and demoralisation
caused by this led to the break-up of the family of one of the promising trio.
Violent behaviour by him repeatedly in public led to very embarrassing public
humiliations, and ultimately involvement in a murder case led to his conviction. This is how
a reckless and irresponsible UPSC ruined a promising life for no reason at all.
However, another of the trio was an officer of enormous inner strength as well as a poet
and an intellectual of the highest calibre. He weathered the frustration of the 9 years to rise
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to a very high level in individual achievement and public esteem to the shame of the
irresponsible UPSC.
The incident created much resentment in the State against the recklessness of the UPSC
and considerably lowered its credibility. Such transgressions are common these days with the
present state of affairs in the UPSC and the overhauling of the organisation should be aimed
at preventing such irresponsible actions that can have such tragic consequences.
REORGANISATION OF THE UPSC
The way to prevent such unprofessionalism on the part of the UPSC lies in transforming
it to a highly efficient outfit managed by people of unimpeachable character and efficiency.
This objective can be achieved by suitable amendment to Articles 316 and 317 of the Indian
Constitution to ensure that only suitable people become Members and Chairman of the
organisation and remain in the saddle only as long as they retain their moral and
professional calibre.
This can be made possible by constituting a committee comprising the Chief Justice of
the Supreme Court, the Chief Commissioner of the Central Vigilance Commission and the
Speaker of Parliament as members. The Vice-President of India should be the Chairman and
clear the names for appointment as Members and as the Chairman of the UPSC for a fixed
tenure. These people should also be empowered to initiate actions for their removal by an
appropriate procedure in fit cases.
Appropriate changes to this effect in Articles 316 and 317 of the Indian Constitution are
likely to plug the existing loopholes that allow too much political interferences in the process
of the selection of Members and Chairman of the UPSC and thereby in its fair functioning.
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PRAVEEN KUMAR
INDIAN INTERNAL SECURITY BUILDUP

The police force in India was raised imprimis to tackle crime and law and order
problems. Its recruitment, training and on-the field experience programmes stress upon the
elements required to tackle those problems. The Indian police organisation, in its stiff
hierarchical order and discipline, is geared to meet these challenges. There is little scope in
the present police for the growth of an aptitude other than for these dj vu function. No
effort was made to overhaul the police even after security challenges have superated in their
primacy in police functions. It should be borne in mind that the demands on the police to
meet security challenges are tout a fait distinct from the demands to which the Indian
police has long been accustomed. The aptitude required to protect targets from determined
esoteric strikes by terrorists is antipodal with the aptitude required for the show of strength,
necessary to suppress a loosely knit mob of wankle law-breakers. In spite of these excessive
strains on the Indian police, its organisation and resources, due to the dangerous spurt in
security threats, it unfortunately has failed to abraid and overhaul its system to face the new
challenges. The glitches of the Indian police in internal security are obvious by the fact that
Indian soil has become a fertile ground to breed and feed terrorist organisations. Every
corner of India has its own terrorist outfit and each of these outfits has proved itself a
pernicious challenge to the Indian police. Never, even by chance has the Indian police shown
that it can control a terrorist outfit. The fact is that even all armies of the world together
cannot bring a terrorist outfit to heel, unless the soft belly of the terrorist outfit is subtly hit
embusque by intelligent operations. Sadly, the Indian police is yet to realise this fact.
Sabotage, terrorism and security risks are not phenomena, pro tempore. They are here to
stay and the police must know to meet the situations they engender. And threats to internal
security, by all means will assume demonic proportions as time advances. The survival of the
police in coming years depends upon its ability to meet the needs of internal security. It has
no alternative but to overhaul its passe system, organisation, operational methods, approach
to work, training and manpower resources to be able to do so. The faster it is done, the better.
For, the inability of the police in successfully handling security challenges is resulting in
fatalities almost every day.
The first parameter for preparing the police for the future challenges of the internal
security is selecting right people with right aptitude, right abilities and right background.
This requires thorough job analysis in the requirements to handle the pertinent
responsibilities. Choosing the right man from the motley to inclip him to the ergon forms
the foremost need of preparing the police for the impending challenges. It should be
realised that the need of such people to the police overweighs the need of the police for these
extra-ordinary species. As internal security is a condition of national survival, no law, no
fundamental right, no directive principle nor any social welfare ideologies should interfere
with the recruitment of the right people. Internal security being a highly sensitive and
secretive job, each less than right man inside is a positive risk to security operations.
Further , such people are a drain on the efficiency and effectiveness of the organisation.
Ergo, avoiding people less than right for the job is as important in recruitment as selecting
the right person.
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The people who fit-in to internal security responsibilities must have an innate trait to
give themselves to the job that they take up. They must be sensitive people with a high
commitment to their responsibilities with the mental and physical ability to fulfil the task.
Men of high intelligence quotient, patience, aplomb and perseverance have to be immanent in
their nature. A profound sense of patriotism is an added qualification. However, not many
people having these rare qualities are readily available. It must be a sacred duty of the
security operators to ingest such rara avis to the organisation wherever they are found and
with whatever sacrifice. It is possible only if recruitment to these places are made a postern
affair at the highest level without throwing recruitment open to competitions where all types
of people sneak in for various reasons. Internal security, more often than not, is an envious
profession wherein life is committed to its objectives.
In the circumstances, the indraught to the fold must be agraste with respect and behoofs
in form of liberal purses and perks apart from more than generous promotional and deathcum-retirement benefits that behove to the compulsive commitment sine qua non for the job.
This helps to widen the latitude of choice by promising a belle vue which is puerile to its
demands to the aspirants to this difficile career.
Having suitable manpower is one thing. Preparing them for the future challenges is quite
another. It is here that training comes into picture. Training high-calibre, sensitive people is
a much more responsible and arduous job. If the training is to prepare them for sensitive job
like internal security, the gravity of the task gets further compounded by the addition of
another dimension to the responsibility. The emphasis here is to raise the innate traits of the
trainees to desired levels. They should be moulded to be highly motivated, knowledgeable,
bright professionals with a flair for results. They must be taught to operate without plangent
attention and get maximum mileage from minimum basic action. Such a training needs a
carefully drawn-up training programme with creative inputs. In sensitive jobs like internal
security, grooming manpower including recruitment and training is more vital than the job
itself.
Indian security plans lay stress on covering targets with armed men and preventing people
from approaching the threatened target. In absence of adequate penetration into the source of
threat, none of these tactics can have any impact on the capabilities of a terrorist to strike his
target. A human wall around the target is an infructuous show of strength in an age where
there are powerful weapons and ammunitions that can penetrate several such layers in a
single stroke. Even the best of the snipers protecting a target would be at a disadvantage in
feeling a terrorist-to-strike who has all the advantages of time, place, surprise and the mental
and physical reflexes to superate both his target and armed protectors. A well-planned
terrorist attack fully prepares for all these odd contretemps.
Another important strategy of the Indian security machinery is screening people before
permitting proximity to the threatened target. A resourceful terrorist plan can facilely
circumvent this with money connections and influence. There are infinite ingenious ways
available to a resourceful and imaginative man, determined to reach his target in
circumstances where a police force remiss and ineffectual at best and corrupt at the worst is
in charge of screening as spotters, his job is facile and custom-made for his aptitude.
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PRAVEEN KUMAR
The Indian police system lays emphasis on dashing qualities rather than on mental
qualities and planning that form the elan vital of security policing. The age-old police traits
like a criant show of force and a strict adherence to hierarchical order have a mis-alliance
with the needs of security operations where patience, perseverance, calculating mind and
imagination was to foresee developments, speedy physical and mental reflexes, unbreachable
sang-froid in adverse situations, high commitment to the work in hand, initiative and above
all, courage to take responsibility for action decide the success or otherwise of the security
build-up. Indeed, these human qualities have to be reinforced with neoteric security
equipment including latest communication, transport, information, weaponry and other
security oriented systems. The organisation must have three full-fledged wings in charge of
(a) collection of intelligence; (b) process and assessment of security risks; and (c) field
operation.
Collection of vital intelligence forms the pith of perficient security operation. An effective
security build-up perforce stands on the foundation of strategic intelligence. The ferocity of
security basically depends on the quality of intelligence as an input. A security organisation
of neoteric age cannot survive without an effective intelligence wing as a backup unit. And
key intelligence does not come freely. It has to be extracted at great risks from closely
guarded sources by resourceful intelligence operators. Often, such an operation may require
years of patient preparation by an undercover to cultivate dependable insiders to the cause.
These operations are potential comminations to the mutual relation and ergo intelligence
operators are left to their own fate by employers when the operators are caught. Intelligence
is a venal commodity and its price can be fixed in monetary terms. Collection of intelligence
involves huge expenditure to maintain organisation and communication reticulation, support
the logistics of the operations and at times to affect outright purchases as well. It requires a
huge army of highly-paid and expensive operators and agents to cover places and groups that
are potentially security risks. The success of security back home tout a fait depends upon
the quality of the intelligence sent back. In an age of bitter concourse to win over or withhold
a piece of intelligence, double crosses or even triple crosses are au naturel. The situation
necessitates keeping an ey on these operators from a distance.
The raw inputs from intelligence sources have to be winnowed, classified and processed
if found to have security relevance. Intelligence collection sans processing is as good as, if
not worse than, not collecting them at all. Raw intelligence throws the national security to the
winds by raising a maelstrom, wherein facts and fancies are completed beyond recognition. It
blunts the sensitivities of the sleuths and excoriates targets to real danger. The possibility can
be avoided by creating a nerve-centre, a command post in the security organisation to process
and assess intelligence inputs anent ground realities, past history and known facts. This
organisation must be manned by people au fait and capable of reading between lines to
arrive at right conclusions as well as invenit strategies in the interests of the internal security.
This body must have a flair for research and analysis and knowledge of the internal situation
of the country, dynamics of various factors that have bearing on the internal security and
possess an insight into minor developments that may blow up into serious security risks at
some future date. It must be constituted of carefully chosen professionals with proven
records of eximious work and a deep sense of patriotism and commitment to their work and
should be directly responsible to the chief of the organisation and work as a high-power
advisory body in all matters pertaining to the security.
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Field operation is the cutting-edge of the security build-up. Other activities in the
organisation are just postern backups to the field operation that forms the mainstay of the
security organisation and inclips a vast portion of the organisations manpower, equipments,
machinery, money, time and other resources. If intelligence operators must have alert eyes
and ears, security analysts must have smart mental faculties and field-operators must have
smart reflexes inter alia. Only people with exceptional courage and perseverance and dare
devilry can behove to this job. Resourceful people with energy and willingness to work hard
in tramontane circumstances, rare single-mindedness of purpose and devotion can alone be
successful in the dangerous world of field operations. They have to be pollent-willed people
with the precinct to risk their lives for the sake of achieving goal. Screening people for these
traits is not a facile job. This arduous job has to be performed with great care and caution for
the quality of internal security of the land depends upon the work turned out by them. The
people who are chosen for the job must be able to provide security to men, places and
structures, known to be sensitive and comminuted by enemies, while themselves remain in
shades. Speed and surprise are their chief attributes. Resourcefulness to do jobs which
appear impossible is their mainstay. Indeed, the demands are too high and this necessitates
careful selection and recruitment, efficient
training, high motivation and liberal
compensation in the form of generous pay, perks and expenditure accounts. The people who
play with their lives to meet the objectives of the internal security have to be treated well for
the risks to which they willingly submit themselves in the interests of the country and its
internal security.
All internal security operations must be part of a raisonne security plan that is drawn out
in advance after through research and study of the best available intelligence on internal and
external affairs, the geographical position of the country, the internal and external economic
situation, likely shifts in foreign relations, objects and intentions of neighbouring countries,
the dynamics of ethnic, communal and linguistic interaction within the country and scientific
advances in weaponry and other gadgetry, having a bearing on the security matters. The
security plan must foresee likely sources of trouble inside and outside the country and
cultivate undercover operators at sensitive spots either by its own resources or through
agents, often years or decades in advance to keep an eye on developments, feed intelligence
and control situations by infiltration to strategic positions. Without this groundwork, no
security operation can make much headway.
Any security build-up must stand on two basic requirements; firstly, up-to-date
knowledge of the security risks and their starategies and secondly, a security machinery
devised to meet specific demands of the specific circumstances. A thorough knowledge of
the adversaries includes an in-depth knowledge of their long and short term objectives, their
time-to-time aberrations, strategies, expertise, modes of operation, friends, enemies, sources
of support, likely change of strategies and their analyses to assess the possibility of security
threats and likely targets. Yes, it is a stupendous task involving huge manpower and other
resources a grands frais. Yet, it is worth the cost and trouble in the interests of the national
security and a far more intelligent and meaningful use of human and material resources than
spending them to criminals after they accomplish their pernicious job. Investigation of
terrorism-oriented crimes serves practically no purpose and makes no impact on the plan and
strategies of a well-planned terrorist outfit.
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PRAVEEN KUMAR
A security build-up is infrangible only if it is specific for each circumstance depending

upon the needs as assessed by security experts from time to time. Security must essentially
be an esoteric operation with open eyes and ears and closed mouth; with open mind and
closed heart . It must be a shadowy operation rather than a gust of light blinding people
around. Intelligent terrorist operators prefer to strike in this gust of light which is what
security tends to be. A good and pollent security plan should not have an open set-plan
which by all likelihood would be used by intelligent terrorists to their advantage. The
pollicitation of a good security plan depends upon its secretiveness, perspicacity and ability
to take even a well-prepared and resourceful terrorist operator by surprise.
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INVESTIGATION OF DOWRY DEATH CASES

Nature created women different from men with a definite purpose. Balance is stillness
and stagnation; imbalance is motion and progress. Nature designed life and action by means
of the imbalance brought about in the traits of men and women. In the process, women find
themselves at the receiving end. They ended up as the weaker half of society by their very
nature and are naturally handicapped in a world of men, by men, for men. In a world where
strength commands charity and weakness receives cruelty, a woman is at a great
disadvantage. She has suffered all types of cruelty and humiliation all along centuries with
patience and in silence. This part of woman is symbolised in tradition by calling her as the
Mother Earth who bears all sufferings. The cardinal principle of the survival of the fittest
applies to the weak, natural attributes of woman which renders her less fit for survival than
man. She must live at his mercy and on his charity, silently bearing all his atrocities unless
and until society in an enlightened mood comes to her rescue.
The immane approach of the stronger world to its weaker counterparts has to be countered
with strong arm methods of the state power. In an enlightened age such as this people in
public life are sufficiently sensitized to this issue and more and more legislation come up to
stop stronger people from riding over the weak and meek. India too has several legislations
that have become Acts to protect its women folk.
Atrocities against women in India are mainly rape and unnatural offences, dowry deaths,
abduction and kidnapping for various purposes and outraging their modesty apart from minor
acts like various marriage offences, dowry and other harassments, insulting the modesty,
causing miscarriage without consent and prostitution. Most of these offences are punishable
under the Indian Penal Code : in sections from 375 to 377, for rape and unnatural, offences,
abduction and kidnapping girls for various purposes being punishable in sections from 364
to 369, offences related to marriage being subjected to penal provisions in sections from 493
to 498, outraging the modesty of a woman in section 354 and insulting the modesty
in
section 509 being offences. Section 314 makes causing miscarriage without womens
consent, a punishable act. The Criminal Law (Amendment) Act 1983 (No.43/83) provided
for in camera trial of rape cases and also enlarged the scope of rape cases by placing the
burden of proving innocence on the accused persons apart from making penal sections more
mordant, particularly in cases of custodial rapes by public servants. The Suppression of
Immoral Traffic in Women and girls Act 1956 with the Suppression on Immoral Traffic in
Women and Girls (Amendment) Act, 1986 and rules framed by states u/s 23 of the Act deal
with offences relating to immoral traffic in women and girls.
Dowry death cases have become sensational topical issues these days with the public
being highly sensitised to the menace of the offences with the unfortunate swelchie of cruel
practices and circumstances deliver an innocent girl at deaths door. All institutions of society
including the government, press, womens organisations, judiciary and police handle dowry
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death cases on a special footing. Each such case outrages the patience of thinking people
and rouses passion and outcry against the perpetrators of the offence. The police too give
special importance to the investigation of these cases and closely supervises the
investigation process. In the circumstances, an insight into the investigation of dowry death
cases and proper understanding of the spectrum of challenges posed and how they are met is
in the interests of both the public and investigating officers. It must be borne in mind that no
investigation can succeed without public cooperation. And the public, particularly people
aggrieved by such unfortunate incidents, can contribute to the progress of investigation of
they have knowledge of its due process. With this in view, salient features and parameters of
dowry death investigation are outlined in this work.
Investigation of dowry death cases has special links with the science of forensic medicine
because of the special nature of the investigation. Dowry deaths are figuratively called
bedroom deaths. In most cases, no outsider including the investigating officer can have any
knowledge about the circumstances and events that led to the death. Secondly, the offencers
being the custodians of the dead body and the scene for many hours after the death till they
volunteer to make its occurrence known, have all the time in the world to eliminate or tamper
with any clues. In the circumstances, the investigating officer is completely at the mercy of
medical experts to interpret the cause of death.
Often, the mode of death noticed, be it asphyxia, drowning, or burning, may prove to be
post-mortal; ipso facto suggesting homicide in place of suicide. Only forensic medicine can
provide decisive proof to the investigating officer.
The success of the investigating officer in investigating dowry death cases largely
depends upon forensic medicine experts. Sans proper briefing from the latter, the
investigating officer may not realise the importance of noting the profusion of bleeding or
marks of inflammation in deciding whether wound is antemortal or not. Again, in a
poisoning case, the investigating officer may overlook the importance of recording the time
when the deceased ate last, how many hours thereafter the first symptoms of poisoning
were noticed, what were those symptoms and how many hours thereafter death occurred.
Thus, the interaction between the investigating officer and forensic medicine experts is
crucial to give the investigation a direction.
Dowry death investigation has to address certain problems in the field in collecting
evidence and examining witnesses.
These offences take place within the family circle. Sometimes, though blood relatives of
the deceased volunteer evidence in the heat of trauma, a gradual reconciliation would be the
normal tendency. Therefore, sound evidence is rarely forthcoming and difficult to sustain.
Dowry death being an offshoot of the relationship of wife and husband and veiled in a
shroud of secrecy, even the parents of the deceased may be unaware of the hardships the
deceased underwent at the hands of her husband and his relatives in the process of the dowry
death.
If the investigating officer is lucky, he may succeed in collecting some, evidence of
cruelty. The next stage at which he would find himself would be the girls death. There
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would be an absolute void in-between with no clues or evidence of what happened or no

eyewitnesses to vouch for that , Clues on the dead body and surroundings are likely to be
tampered with by the offenders.
Investigations are witness-oriented. A dowry death case being primarily a family affair,
independent witnesses refuse to involve themselves. And partisan witnesses are too polarised
to be credible.
It is in these circumstances that investigating officers have to trace witnesses, conduct
purposive examinations and undertake directional recording of statements after proper
analysis of the offence and likely charges.
The dowry death cases are offences primarily under central Acts namely the Dowry
Prohibition Act, 1961 with its amendments of 1984 and 1986 and certain sections of the
Criminal Procedure code, 1973 as amended by Criminal Law ( 2nd Amendment) Act, 1983.
In spite of attempts during amendments to avoid ambiguities in some sections of the earlier
Acts, it is patent that there are still several louche terms that need interpretation by the court.
The term in connection with the marriage while defining dowry in section 2 of the Dowry
Prohibition Act is unspecific about the flexibility of the word connection and gives way for
its subjective interpretations as well as that of the term dowry. The same word connection
brings in a similar impression while defining dowry death in Section 304B of the Indian
Penal Code and Section 113B of the Indian Evidence Act while declaring in connection
with demand of dowry ipso facto rendering the incatenation between the offence of dowry
death and dowry demand uncertain and open for discussion. In the same sections, the
phrase soon before her death raises the question, how soon before? Similarly, the words
relative of her husband that figure in Section 498A of the Criminal Procedure Code, Section
304B of the Indian Penal Code and Section 113A of the Indian Evidence Act in no way
provide exactly what is intended to be defined; the scope of the words there is too vast and
includes even the blood relatives of the deceased as they are also relatives of the husband
after the marriage. Another important term that defies full comprehension is likely to
drive in Section 498A of the Indian Penal Code, where the word like by its very meaning is
indefinitive and open for subjective interpretation. The scope for divergent interpretations
of these terms in the comparatively new acts do create problems during investigation of the
cases until convention assigns them definite meanings.
Law by sections 113 (A) and 113(B) of the Indian Evidence Act relieves the investigation
of cases of death of girls within seven years of their marriage from the special nature of
difficulties by the reason of the crime being committed in the intimate circle of the offenders.
The law provides that the court trying the case may presume that the accused persons
committed the offence if it is proved that the victim was subjected to cruelty by the accused
persons inter alia. The
presumptions made easy the investigation of these otherwise
impossible cases.
While the presumptions under section 113(B) of the Indian Evidence Act is applicable to
prove dowry death cases u/s 304 (B) IPC, section 113 (A) is applicable to prove abetment to
commit suicide u/s 306 IPC within seven years of the marriage. The latter presumption
benefits investigation of cases while a girl commits suicide under harassment for reason other
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PRAVEEN KUMAR
than dowry also by her husband or in-laws within seven years of the marriage while the
benefit is available for cases of suicide under the same circumstances and homicide for
dowry reasons under the same circumstances. This renders investigation of cases of homicide
of girls by husband and in-laws within seven years of marriage which poses the same
difficulties as suicide cases under the same circumstances an impossible task and there are
any number of such homicide cases that were acquitted which would have been convicted by
the benefit of the presumptions u/s 113(A) of the Indian Evidence Act if they were suicide
cases. Amendment of concerned laws may be necessary to avoid this loophole in law.
If the investigating officer adequately employs his common sense and intelligence
during the preliminary stage of the investigation while examining the dead body and the
scene and collects all incriminating clues and evidences without restricting himself to the
apparent cause of the death, no criminal can fool him and deflect him from the right line of
investigation.
Marriage is often called the second birth in a girls life; it brings an entire metamorphosis
in the form and contents of her life and in the process exposes her to inopinate adaptation
problems. It is an irony of nature and social customs that it is the girl who is delicate in
nature rather than the man who is selected for this difficile gauntlet of transformation in the
process of familial socialising. Per case, the gentle and amenable character of the female
breed expose her to the natural selection for the purpose. In the process, death of the most
unfortunate of them by felo de se or homicide because of the grind of the circumstances has
become an unfortunate phenomenon. Dowry is only one though primus interpares among
various immane manifestations of adjustment problems to which the tender psyche of a
young girl is exposed after her marriage. An integrated approach to all these symptoms of
adjustment problems to which a girl is suddenly exposed while her persona is yet unprepared
to meet the gauntlets alone can bring deliverance to the fairer sex of the human genre. The
entire process of social legislations and their enforcement is only a distant link in the whole
catena of luctation warranted to achieve this end.
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TOWARDS SANE SERVICE

It is a historical fact that India which is characterised by its unity in diversity was never a
single nation at any time in its long course of history of several millenniums, till the feat was
achieved in the 20th century.
Neither Asoka Mourya or Samudra Gupta or Chandra Gupta nor Akbar or Aurangzeb of
Mughul dynasty in Indian history can boast of binding all the regions stretching between
Cape Camorin and Karakorampass, and Rann of Kutch and Arunachal Pradesh under a single
rule to give meaning to the concept of a single nation.
No military strength, no religion, no cultural similarities, no unity of civilisation, no
linguistic resemblances nor geographical proximities at any time before succeeded in forging
a single nation out of the vast land masses south of the Himalayas.
If India is a single nation today, though in its rather moth-eaten form, the credit should go
to its distinguished civil service of early and middle 20th century vintage which was rightly
called as the steel-frame of Indian unity.
Should India continue as a single nation, it has to be through the grit, strength and quality
of its civil service alone.
Any tampering with the quality of the civil service and doing anything that may mangle
the steel-frame grade of Indian civil service certainly go fatal to the very existence of India
as a single nation.
The worst curse on India and its people is the classification and stratification of humanity
on the basis of births and adoption of rigid codes of social conduct to rule the relationship
between those in different strata.
The lower strata being condemned to be treated less than street dogs and denied equality
and any opportunity of growth and decent life.
This curse for several millenniums permanently
groups from breaking away from primitive way of life.
handicapped certain accurst social
This cancer in Indian social life develops a major moral responsibility on India not only
to get rid of the nasty disease, but also to rehabilitate the victims of the age-old social bevue.
Post-independent India, as welfare state, took innumerable measures, both constitutional
and legislative, towards absterging the sins perpetrated by its past practices of ages on the
unfortunate sections of the society.
The removal of untouchability, prevention
educational opportunities to quote but a few.
of atrocities, reservations, in jobs and
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Sine dubio, such special treatments alone can somewhat remedy the inhuman treatment
and delour meted out to some without an iota of fellow-feeling and kindness for generations
after generations.
Such measures on special footing are not only compensations India must pay for having
deprived some of its children of their growth opportunities for so long, though belated and
inadequate as they are.
They are also a kind of remorse the country suffers for its past sins.
But the cardinal question is the direction such measures must take.
Wrong policies in such matters may not only fail to make the measures efficacious, but
may also block the existing opportunities too.
It may also further weaken the social fabric of the country and ipso facto pose real threat
to the very existence of India as a country.
The apollyon in question is the policy of job reservation in civil service which may eat up
the quality and steel-frame toughness of the setup to disintegrate and balkanise India sans its
only binding force namely a sound civil service to keep the country united in its diversities.
The victims of the age-old stratified class system actually deserve many more special
privileges than delivered to them at present.
The necessarily need easier access to educational opportunities to prepare them for higher
slots in life.
Hence, the need of reservations in educational institutions.
Perhaps, institution of an apex development bank with branches in all districts or taluks
of the country, exclusively for their financial needs of nonconsumptive nature at nominal rate
of interest a la rural or agricultural banks may prove a significant step in this direction.
Institution of liberal scholarships, concession in or exemption from, application fee for
jobs, wider network or board and lodging facilities for students, free higher studies, special
vocational training for men and women, concessional hostel facilities for working men and
women, easy housing schemes, free advanced medical treatment facilities, etc are other
welfare schemes for the unprivileged classes that may help to bring them on par with others.
This will wipe out the achilles heel from the face of Indian social structure to make
Indian society civilised without affecting the quality of its governance and parameters of
survival.
It was Winston Churchill who said democracy is the worst type of governance except for
all other types of governance. Basically, democracy signifies rule of common man and rule
of mediocrity and ergo, more dangerously the rule of hoi polloi or mob.
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This definition applies principally to the political system of the democratic governance
and not to the civil service system which is expected to be the subtle spine of the democratic
rule. A sound civil service as amicus curiae draws the metes and bounds of governance
within which the democratic system must function and also inspire a sense of moderation,
discipline, fairness, legality and reasonableness in the political leadership of the system.
It absorbs the jerks and shocks of the political follies and helps the political leadership in
taking sound and intelligent decisions at right times.
In this sense, a sound civil service structure is sine qua non for running a democracy and
the strength of the democracy depends entirely on its soundness and quality. A democracy
without sound civil service slumps like a mass of flesh without a spine to support it.
The well being of the repressed class of India depends solely upon the survival of India
as a single nation and therefore on the quality and soundness of the civil service.
If there is anything scanty in the present world, it is high quality and excellence. They
are such a rare commodity that even slight distractions in the swink to cultivate them end up
in their disappearing in thin air. Excellence has a distinct tendency of light from mediocrity
and regrouping otherwise at its own level. This tendency renders maintenance of the tempo
of high quality and excellence a difficult task. Any allowance to mediocrity leads to a
sustained flight of quality and excellence till mediocrity completely takes over. This is what
is feared about present Indian civil service thanks to reservation policy.
The fear that the steel-frame civil service of the pre-independent India vintage have
crumbled into a mediocre setup now by wrong policies of selection and recruitment in
independent India needs serious attention it deserves.
Several opinion polls point to the diminishing attraction of the civil service to crme de
la crme of the Indian youth in preference to foreign and private industrial houses and banks
as job opportunities.
This trend deserves deeper concern than at present in those who are interested in the
survival of India as a nation and democracy. The interest of the country lies in marshalling the
best talents of the country in service of maintaining the country as a nation and democracy
and that need must get the first priority over all other issues including developmental and
welfare vintage. Unfortunately, it is not happening in India now.
Civil Service is the trunk of the tree of democratic governance and breaking the trunk
itself is self-defeating for all national goals including justice for all. By the policy of job
reservation to civil service, India is venturing to the folly of cutting its own s trunk. Stracient
damage has already been done by this in the last five decades. No distraction like reservation
of any kind must deter the criterion of genuine merit and competence in civil service.
Real merit and competence emerge from exemplary unity of diverse human faculties like
sound character, strong intellect right attitude, commitment and devotion to work. Doing
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PRAVEEN KUMAR
anything to subvert these virtues in civil service in tantamount to wrecking the interests of
the country.
It is not that somebody wants to subvert the interests of the country by hoisting job
reservation policy on civil service. The intentions of reservation is beyond reproach . The
fault lies in its pursuance.
Reservation of any kind in civil service clearly proves to be wrong means to reach the
right end. How early India realises this fact, so fast is served Indias best interests.
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LACKING VIGOUR
Independence half a century back marks the greatest turning point in the history of Indian
police. It marks the end of the 88-year history of policing on modern lines under the Brithish
Raj which began with the enactment of the Madras District Police Act of 1859 and assumed
countrywide acceptance with the enactment of the Police Act of 1861. Independence marks
the beginning of the history of Indian police under Indian hands in a democratic milieu
unlike of yore though in form and contents they were its continuation.
The hitch lay in its spirit, in the contradictions of the intentions of a colonial police and
the traditions of a democratic police. It patently is against jus naturale to expect a colonial
police transform to a democratic set-up overnight with the awakening of the country at
midnight. Spirit is never known to be a quick-chameleonic, particularly while form and
contents maintain their stead. Change in spirit is the natural outcome of changes in
ambience leading to metamorphosis of value system and attitudes by rapid exposures to
changed trails and tribulations to ripen the spirit to its new avatar. The first fifty years of
independence of India marks this period in context of the spirit of Indian police maturing to
democratic traditions in the hands of Indian rulers.
Crime investigation is a task as important to police as national security is. While national
security gained currency in India after the country became independent, crime investigation
along with law and order duties was the mainstay of Indian police from periods long before it.
But, India never realised the importance of crime investigation in national affairs until very
recently. Nonetheless, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) of Mr.Edgar J Hoover in the
US showed to the world around the time of Indias independence, what a powerful instrument
an investigation agency can be in national affairs and how resourceful chiefs of investigation
agencies can hold even the heads of governments of their countries to ransom.
PLAYING SAFE
It is to the credit of Indian Police that the primier investigation agency of the country, the
Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) and the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) in
states and union territories never harboured such ambitions till now. It is a different matter
that in the recent years the CBI is forced by the judiciary to proceed against ranking political
leaders including former union cabinet ministers and prime ministers, in discharge of its
legitimate duties. Otherwise, Indian investigation agencies, both at the Centre and in
regions, kept themselves away from interfering with the affairs of political leaders and their
kith and kin for most parts of the period in the last fifty years, save dictated for limited
actions by the ruling parties for political purpose as in the Classic Computer case of 1993 in
Karnataka or cases against Ms. Indira Gandhi and her kin in 1977 for emergency excesses.
Otherwise, they believed in the sanctity of political leaders and their associates as beyond the
laws of the country.
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Criminal cases filed against those people invariably fell through for lack of purposeful
investigation and the trend led to the belief that powerful people are beyond the reach of law.
Recent judicial activism changed the myth and infused a new vigour to the judicial and
law-enforcing systems of the country. But, an investigation agency doing its legitimate duties
under the pressures of the judiciary cannot be an adequate compensation for doing the same
works with a missionary zeal of professional commitment. Indian investigation agencies at
both the national as well as regional levels are far from any professional zeal and
investigating skill seen in internationally acclaimed investigation agencies like the Scotland
Yard of England which provided the model for the CBI and other regional investigation
agencies of the country.
Sadly, Indian counterparts adopted only the form and not the spirit of the Scotland Yard
and thought it best in its indigenous wisdom not to stir the hornets nest by going active and
radical after the FBI of the US
LACKLUSTRE PERFORMANCE
Recent developments in the national crime scene of India like the CBI investigating
top political leaders of the country for involvement in various scandals of national importance
has not changed the situation of investigating agencies of India. Crime investigations
continue to be a factor of political decisions, in spite of periodical judicial reviews of the
investigation process
Investigation agencies enjoy tremendous leeway in carrying out investigations in
desired directions in spite of judicial scrutiny of the cases. Until investigation agencies
exhibit professional commitment and develop a passion to deracinate evils from the society,
exercises like judicial
reviews of the investigation process cannot really make substantial
differences, either to investigation agencies or to crime investigations.
Unlike spirited investigations of corrupt leaders in countries like Italy, Japan and
Korea in the recent past, Indian investigation agencies dither and drag their feet back to
handle cases of political corruption in spite of judicial compulsions on it. The professional
and social commitments seen in those countries are a far cry from Indian police of the
independent vintage. There seems to be no scope of Indian police catching up with the spirit
in near future if the first half century of the democratic rule in India is any indication. Indian
police leadership is too steeped in slef-promotion to be bothered by the spirits pro bono
publico.
For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. This is true in the field of
Indian politics as well. It is significant that after the Supreme Court of India took active
interest in the investigation of crimes involving top leaders of the country, a new trend has
surfaced with the post of the CBI chief being invested on somebody from the cadre of the
state from which the chief executive of the government hails, as if to counter the pressures of
the judiciary on the investigation agency. This was true in 1993 and again in 1996.
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The new trend only makes clear that everything is not well in the administration of
the investigation agencies of the country and pressures and counter-pressures have a great say
in the process of investigations of those investigation agencies.
JUDICIAL ACTIVISM
The recent judicial activism in the investigation of important crimes and scandals of India
is not confined to the Supreme Court of India; nor is it limited to the cases investigated by
the CBI. High courts and even session courts these days are taking lead from the Supreme
Court, as evident from the court proceedings in cases under trial in lower courts like
Lakhubhai Pathak cheating case involving an ex-prime minister, anti- Sikh rioting case of
1984 and recent cases of harbouring notorious mafia leaders involving prominent political
leaders wherein the courts have taken tough stands either in summoning top leaders for
examination or in refusing bails.
The judicial activism of the Supreme Court on the other hand is not restricted only to the
cases investigated by the CBI. In a recent case of investigation of medial seat scandal
involving prominent political leaders in a state, the Supreme Court directed that the chief of
the state CID investigating the case should not be transferred out form the CID without the
permission of the court. The Investigation was transferred to the CBI in 1996.
The basic issue is why judiciary should do the legitimate works of the heads of
investigation agencies in safeguarding the objectivity of the investigation process. The very
fact that there is the need of judicial interference in the legitimate works of investigation
agencies strongly suggests that the investigation agencies are seriously ill. While
investigation agencies honestly and professionally discharge their responsibilities towards
fair investigations, no judiciary can even afford to cross the sacred halls of their legitimate
duties in violation of the sensitivities of the investigation agencies and invite righteous
wrath of the public opinion. The investigation agencies and the public are aware of the
extant situation in investigation agencies and therefore the interferences of the judiciary in
investigations are not only tolerated, but also welcomed by all sections of the people.
SYMPTOMS OF ATROPHY
The serious maladies witnessed in secret police and investigation agencies of India are
actually common symptoms of atrophy observed in all wings of Indian police, including the
law and order police. Dishonesty, lack of professional commitment, extra-professional
loyalties and unchecked corruption are the albatross that commonly affect the Indian police at
all levels. It is not a rosy picture to have of a police force which is more than a century old
and is now reaching half a century mark of existence in a free country.
The deterioration of Indian police is steep after independence. Perhaps, democratic rule
in the country has not done any good to Indian police. The nexus of police with criminals and
politicians is smothering and squeezing the country and its public life out of its vitality to a
stage of paralysis. While this truth has been realised by people in states like Bihar and UP it
is eating up the vitals of the country
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in other states too. The talk of private armies doing recent elections in UP and Bihar is an
indication of the confidence Indian police inspire in public after fifty years of self-rule.
Indian police in 1990s appears like a century old giant tree rendered hollow by the termite
of corruption. Unless something is done fast to return the vitality of professional pride and
commitment, Indian police may irrevocably fail the country in leading it forth to the
century-mark of Indias independence.
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PROFESSIONAL PRIDE
OF THE POLICE
The basic needs of police and policing are professional pride and a good image. The
police force capable of doing its duties are carrying out its responsibilities with devotion and
self- sacrifice. But it needs its sacrifices and devotion to work to be appreciated. A good
image entails public cooperation and enhances the
social recognition of the police
personnel. Pride and a high morale are necessary in manpower oriented organisations like
the police, particularly those which have to deal with the public from a position of strength.
Police personnel shamed and humiliated in their career can never face the public and do good
policing.
The tragedy lies in police administration. Its vanity belittles the police, breaches its pride,
shatters its self-image and destroys its good public image by unscrupulous and selfish
interferences in police affairs. Suspensions and disciplinary action are a common
phenomenon in the Indian Police. When no grounds are available for disciplinary
proceedings, they resort to unfair and indecent measures like withdrawing vehicles,
telephones and other facilities, denying promotions, transfer to humiliating jobs created for
meeting such eventualities, keeping on prolonged compulsory waiting without a job etc.
These humiliations weaken their position before the public as well as subordinates whom
they are supposed to control and guide with the strength of their leadership qualities.
ARROGANCE OF POWER
A factor responsible for maladministration becoming the abracadabra of police
administration is arrogance of power. The police is the real power, the crux of the state
power. The police administrators weild power on the enforcers of the state power. Power
breeds arrogance, ultimate power, ultimate arrogance. The sweep of arrogance is so strong
that it has no patience for rules, laws, codes of conduct, moral values, natural courtesies and
human dignities. The only goal of the police administration in the ambience of arrogance is
proving its invincibility as tout prix.
A serious lapse of police administration in India is its presumed virtue of indifference to
others predicaments. The compulsions of being led deprive government officials the great
human gifts like freedom of thought, originality and creativity and drain off feelings and
sensibilities. The humble situation is spawned for government officials by themselves by
their zeal to conform.
This is the position in which the police administration finds itself. The need of making
virtue out of irresponsiveness leads to mendacity and dishonesty. Normal human courtesies
are unknown there. Evasion is the stock reply for queries. Vanity is the hallmark. Approach
to all except higher-ups is always brusque and stroppy. Normal man-to-man interaction is
impossible unless one is capable of gratifying. Public relations is an unknown concept,
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McGregors need hierarchy and such management, concepts are nonexistent in their
vocabulary and thoughts.
A CUSHY JOB
The police administration provides a good cover to meet long cherished desires and is
therefore considered a cushy job. A police administrator like the Home Secretary of a state
can avail for himself from the police organisation all benefits inherent to the police job like
the best available transport and communication facilities and orderly services at will. The
police network throughout the country would be at his personal service wherever and in
whatever way he desired it. This is an invaluable asset, for him and his kith and kin. In the
name of various studies concerning the police, he can visit foreign countries at his will and
convenience at government expenditure.
The prevarications of the police administration from the right path in most cases is not
even to achieve right professional ends. They mostly are pure and simple means to selfgrandiosity and personal gains. Show them elements of personal grists. Files move fast.
Discussions and meetings are held day and night. Decisions are taken overnight. Procedures
are cut-short to ease the process. Ordinary situation turns to an emergence. Administration
becomes a hub of incessant activity. Lots of energy and thought go to the process of
administration. The result is that work is done irrespective of the relevance and importance
of the work while more pressing and vital, but less remunerative works rot in files for years.
Selection and recruitment of men in the age of unemployment and purchase of heavy
vehicles in the ambience of commissions play a pivotal role in the administration of police
and related safety-oriented organisations like the fire force. Recruiting men in thousands and
purchase of scores of heavy vehicles at a single go in the name of expansion of an
organisation involves subterranean change of hands of crores of rupees in a short span of
time. It is a dizzy amount to be pocketed.
Decisions were taken by the administration for expansion of the organisation with fresh
recruitment of thousands of men and sub-officers and purchase of scores of heavy vehicles.
A police officer in a sensitive juncture of his career who could be compromised was put in
charge of the organisation and the selection and purchase processes. The setup worked out by
the Home Secretary worked to his satisfaction. The result was that the police officer in
charge was rewarded by quick and easy promotions. The organisation concerned saw rapid
expansion. Thousands of unemployed youths got jobs. Manufactures of heavy vehicles got
business. And the Home Secretary got what he wanted. Thus all are happy and contented.
This is how administration works in India.
Most ills of the present Indian police emerge from the malaise of the morbid handling of
the police administration at different levels. Be is in handling of the body and shape of the
organisation and its functions of managing the spirit and the soul of the force, the police
administration can play a major role either in building or marring the prospects of raising a
healthy police outfit for the country. As of today, police administration failed the country and
its police by indifference on the one hand and crass handling of the organisation and its
affairs on the other. The only solution to this serious malady lies in rebuilding the police
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administration with people of character, integrity, devotion, efficiency, ability and above all,
deep insight to human nature and its problems.
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NEED TO REVITALISE THE POLICE

In a disciplined organisation like the police where subordination and role play forma
crucial psychological necessity, rigid inheritance of the style of functioning has become sine
qua non in the vacuum of independent and creative thinking. This is the seed of the frigidity
of the Indian Police set up. More dangerously, blind faith in the inherited style of functioning
as the only way out to the exclusion of all other open alleys deprive the Indian police of the
richness of variety and growth opportunities while cementing ranks and bringing a sense of
unity and belongingness that create a sense of strength about the organisation in outsiders.
The stereotype style of functioning irrespective of merit, suitability to a given situation and
options available makes the police functioning largely mechanical and stripped of any
intellectual or creative contents in it. Any deviation from the beaten-path is considered with
contempt and suspicion and birds of the same flock come together to bring the prevaricator
to the required path. Until then, he is labeled and condemned as pout of the mainstream. That
is why an imaginative and creative soul newly entering the Indian Police feels absolutely
stifled and either follows the flock at the cost of his convictions or just withers away fighting
a loosing and humiliating battle outside the mediocre mainstream. Winning such a battle to
effect a couple of changes in the mental makeup of the giant organisation is an extremely
rare phenomenon and not worth to an individual to have that try.
These features bring distinct characteristics to the organisation. Indeed, the police have
people come from all walks of life with their distinct personal features and styles. But , once
they enter the police organisation, the grind of the system takes its toll and creates a common
profile in its members. Though such a grind is common in many other organisations also, it is
not as complete and clear as in the police. The process is not consciously man-made and ergo
incidental to the policing system. The standardisation so brought by the process has its own
advantages and disadvantages. In case of the police, it appears that disadvantages as the
standardised style of functioning cut through the growth process of the organisation in
efficiency and excellence. It also grievously destablises dignity of the service and stifles
professional values. There is inveterate servilitude in the style of functioning evolved in the
police by this prices. This often exposes the police to gratuitous risks in performance of
legitimate duties.
POLITICIAN- POLICE NEXUS
Adaptations to political masters as a bargain to secure key posts prove fatal to the
dignity as well as professional values of the police set up. A Police officer of a state in
southern India succeeded in cornering the coveted post of police commissioner at the State
capital a few years back with the support of a politician known in the then political parlance
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as the Father, Mother of the state Chief Minister. A few days later, the politician in an
inebriated state was arrested with his associates while fleeing in a
car late night after being involved in a sex scandal involving a budding film star. The police
official who affected the arrest recognised the identity of the person he had arrested only
after they were brought to the nearby police station in the city. The Police Commissioner was
intimated about the developments. The Police Commissioner promptly made his appearance
in the police station in the night and ensured the immediate release of his political godfather.
But, the political heavy weight in a temulent state was impeccable. He caught the collar of
the Police Commissioner in front of the shocked subordinate officials and shouted at the
Police Commissioner in his inebriated voice asking him whether he was made the Police
Commissioner to arrest and bring him to the Police station. The police Commissioner was
seen meekly begging the politician to pardon him. The incident made headlines in news
papers. The Police Commissioner later rose to become the Police Chief of the state and is
now retired. Such incidents abound in circumstances of Police officers vying for coveted
posts a tout prix and as a consequence, the dignity of the posts lowers and the professional
qualities of the organisation suffer.
An important reason at the derriere of this failing of the police lies in their general
inability at assessments. A rather queer characteristic of the police is its dithering as far as
assessments in any form are concerned. It is an organisational failing in the police and the
police have found an easy way out of this failing falling in line with the general trend and
precedence sans application of mind. An officer once wrongly rapped as difficult to work
with, would be seen so forever by all so much that he himself would begin to trust it as true.
Though this trend strengthens the sinew of collectivity and collective responsibilities for
whatever purposes in the organistion, it considerable weakens the intellectual credibilities of
the police and tears to pieces the fabric of objectivity and fairness in the organisation.
Once in service, independent thinking becomes a disaster and metabasis as a mechanical
part of the flock becomes a crude habit. While this tendency in the organisation brings the
elements of collective acceptance within the danger of a person or situation or event once
wrongly interpreted, never again to be seen in right perspective, destroys its strength and
credibility. This lessens the possibility of seeing things at anytime rightly thereafter. The
result often is perverted assessments. In the police, where assessments of men and events
form a crucial role, this failure proves fatal to the organisation as well as to the society. This
fomented with generally low intellectual qualities of the police, confines the police to
mediocrity and restrains it from rising to excellence in performances and promoting high
calibre in its personnel.
SENSE OF COLLECTIVITY
There is a sense of collectivity for good or bad in the police. None in the police
normally get a spark to see a thing from a new angle and give their own interpretations or
judgement ectogenesis to the view already held. The sense of rectitude becomes secondary
when the sense of collectivity is at stake. Though the police profession demands fairness,
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justice and rectitude as its primary concern, passion for the values in the police is
surprisingly feeble. The commitment to do things legally and rightly is superficial.
A fall-out of corruption in the police is build-up of a dynamics which promotes the
interests of corrupt in the system at the cost of those who retained the pristine value of
professionalism. The flexible elements who can be manoeuvred to required moulds through
the juste milieu of pelf and position are useful assets to people in key positions to save the
interests of their kith and kin as and when they get involved in criminal proceedings. Such
characters in the force are always cultivated and posted to key positions so that striking
compromises, when situation warrants, becomes easy. This strategy ends up in honest police
officers being sidelined and promotes corruption. The dynamics which helps influential
individuals to evade the long arm of law, harms the interests of the country, its police and
the rule of law. Police officers of plastic conscience are preferred to upright professionals to
key posts even in national level police agencies like the Central Bureau of Investigation and
the Intelligence Bureau. Police officers known for professional approach are spurned and
distanced as inconvenient elements. In the situation, competence plays no role in preferences
while honesty, integrity and professional commitment play negative roles. A history of
bending backward on professional considerations always becomes a qualification in obtaining
preferences to more sensitive jobs in important police organisations.
A case of dowry death reported against a retired judge and his family in February 1992 in
a state as referred to the state investigation agency. The investigation made out a case for
charge-sheet against the retired judge and five others including his wife, son, two daughters
and another person. The chief of the investigating agency in the rank of IGP being close to
the retired judge, dragged his feet from further proceedings in the case. The Superintendent
of Police who was supervising the investigation of the case wanted to take the investigation
to its logical end. But arrests in the case were prevented and the charge-sheet was unduly
delayed. The insistence of the Superintendent of Police to charge-sheet the case cost him his
post and he was transferred in July 1992 to the Home Guards department of the state as the
head of it training wing. The case remained frozen sans charge-sheet for more than one and
a half years, till the IGPs transfer in 1993. The case was later charge-sheeted in March 1994
with the retired judge and his two daughters being dropped from the charge-sheet on the basis
of evidences tampered at later stages. The police officer who tried to stall the wheel of the
legal process subsequently succeeded in gaining entry to a sensitive police organisation at the
national level and later in his own state.
An extension of this style of functioning is their complete absorption in their service to
the exclusion of other dimensions of life including family life. Nothing interests them
outside the police except specific popular entertainments to counterpoise the tension of the
quotidian police work. The result is the family life of most police officers being disoriented
and their children more then often betraying criminal tendencies because of the lack of
paternal care and attention. The lack of attention to personal habits manifests in very few
police officers leading a happy and normal retired life.
It is in the interests of the police to come out of this pernicious grind of the style of
functioning, to breach the accretion and break out to the fraicheur of the invigorating open
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world of endless possibilities. But the adnate growth over the police system is so thick that
no trickles of fresh air survive through it. Anything ab intra cannot ruffle the complacency of
the constricting system. This is general experience and concomitant conviction, that
something cataclysmic from outside should shake the system and bring it to its senses to
show it how and why it is wrong and what retards the growth of the police to its full bloom
to efficiency and excellence and how returning the style of functioning can flush new life to
the Indian police. We can only hope that such a development comes soon and saves the
Indian police from further degradation.
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HOW CRIME AFFECTS NATIONAL LIFE
No criminal can take lightly the need for political patronage in running his crime
syndicate. Be they smuggling syndicates, gambling houses, narcotics dealers or plain
hoodlums, the only way to survive is to have comfortable political protection at the right
levels. The crime syndicates en revanche, pay a good percentage of their criminal gain to the
protectors. Thus, it is an arrangement to mutual advantage. The crime world also provides
hoodlums as volunteers to perform challenging tasks during the election campaigns of their
political patrons, apart from liberally financing these campaigns. How can a politician, after
he gains power with the help of a criminal, ever let down the criminal? This symbiosis of
politicians and criminals which has emerged from the extant Indian political system is the
root cause of all the complications.
The very fact that politicians are prepared to risk their reputations rather than distance
themselves from the crime world, shows how highly the world of crime is regarded by the
politicians in their scheme of things. Politics and crime have become the tow faces of the
same coin in the present state of affairs and a saying goes that there cannot be politics without
crime and no crime without politics. In the present Indian situation, it is true that the lotus of
politics can blossom only in the offal of crime.
UNIVERSALITY OF CRIME
On ultimate analysis, crime is a universal phenomenon. All living being are criminals in
varying degrees. Criminal thought is a part of the natural function of a healthy mind as is the
moral restraint that prevents the criminal thought from being acted upon. External restraints
brought about by the fear of law, custom and adverse reaction reinforce the inner restraint to
prevent the committing of crime. However, as the force of external restraints weakens for
diverse reasons and the proportion of gain to be made in committing a crime overweighs the
risks involved in the balance sheet of the operation, the lure of crime increases and the deed is
done. It is social situation which controls the external restraints to make committing a crime
an asset or a liability and thereby decides the proliferation or suppression of crime with
human nature being what it is always. Criminals are criminals because society gives them
easy openings to thus meet their needs. Politicians love to befriend criminals rather than
bring them to book because the society they live in makes their lives comfortable with
criminals as friends rather than as adversaries. Policemen find the crime world sweeter
because it is how things stand for them. The remedy for the proliferation and endearment of
crime lies in changing the social dynamics to make crime a liability to criminals and
criminals a liability to politicians and the police. In the existing nexus of politics, crime and
police, crime is an asset to criminals and criminals are an asset to politicians and police.
Criminals should not be construed as a separate block of citizenry. They are a cross-section
of people from all fields of life who have moved beyond a commonly accepted degree in their
criminal tendencies. Criminality may be prolific in certain civilised fields like commerce and
industry in the form of tax evasion, violation of foreign exchange regulations, hoarding etc;
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such crimes are generally not taken seriously in spite of the public awareness of the crimes,
with the social standing of the criminals remaining unaffected. Government servants too
come under this category of criminals because of the unconfined corruption in public life. It
is a fact that Indian public life is a vast field of criminal activities and politicians and police,
though the custodians and protectors of the Indian public life. Form part of the crime world.
However, knowledge of the involvement of politicians and police in this nasty world stirs the
public conscience, for the reason that they are supposed to be the people on whom the public
relies to save them. But, it cannot be because they are also part of the society which makes
public life a nasty affair and nourishes it.
CRIME AND NATIONAL ECONOMY

A word about the effect of the nasty nexus between politics, crime and police on the
national economy. Unity gives strength. It is true about the nasty nexus also. The only telos
of the nexus is gain by synergy, the synergy which brings confidence and courage to the
troika in its nefarious activities, thereby inducing it to more daring and innovative criminal
activities. This results in proliferation of crime, a part from affecting the quality of crime by
opening up new avenues for operation. As the ultimate end of all crimes in illegal gain and
the incidence of crime is directly related to increase in black money in the national economy,
the proliferation of crime invariable results in inflation and the weakening of the national
economy.
More dangerously, it results in a polarisation of the society into criminal rich and honest
poor and destroys the countrys moral fabric. This increscent incidence of easy money,
material comforts and political power of the criminal rich ultimately leads to internal strife,
emeute and popular terrorism.
POLITICISATION OF CRIME
The overworld is just the tip of the real, raw world. There are more things hidden in this
world than that are seen. This is soon realised by opportunist Indian politicians who seize
the first available instance to enlist the support of criminals and underground operators for
their nefarious designs. This is turn is a god-sent benison for criminals to restore their lost
credibility and social standing with the help of their association with the custodians of
power, apart from the security and protection from the police that ensues from the
association. They promptly grab the opportunity to their advantage and show how useful
they can be to politicians in their career-promotion designs and wreaking of personal
vendettas. The experience and professionalism of criminals is handy to politicians to execute
their hasty operations without attracting the stigma attached to them.
The vast army of criminals has become a ready resource to them for use whenever need
arises. This has given a sense of confidence and security to politicians, who are otherwise
vulnerable in their highly uncertain, challenging and competitive environment. Often
politicians have so much relied on criminals that the latter have become their most trusted
lieutenants even getting elected to legislature with their help and blessings. There have been
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instances in India, where prominent politicians have refused to disown their notorious
criminal friends in public even after reaching the vertex of their political career. This shows
the sway held by criminals over politicians in the Indian situation. It is a fact that no
syndicate of organised crime in small and big cities anywhere in the world can survive even
for a day without political patronage. Ergo, all syndicates of organised crime and their
menace are the direct outcome of the internchant nexus between politicians and criminals,
indeed with the police as bystanders.
SOCIAL POLARISATION
The indulgence of the rich and powerful in crime popularises criminal activities by
bringing an aura of status to them and negating all inhibitions in the popular mind. Society
easily accepts the example of the wealthy and powerful for making an easy buck to lead
comfortable lives in the world where life is becoming increasingly difficult because of the
spurt in black money, caused by the proliferation of crime. While decent life becomes
impossible by honest methods, the need of survival forces honest citizenry to accept crime as
a way of life as the last resort. This would be where politicians, criminals and police lead the
country.
Easy money and easy wealth have a tendency to inflate. Criminals tend to spend lavishly.
This ends up in a spurt in prices of land, building and essential commodities while honest
men have to toil hard for an extra quarter. Crime begets money and money begets more
money and more money gets power, comfort and everything. In the crush, honest man is lost
forever. The ocean of criminal wealth around him which is beyond even his wildest dreams
frustrates him and ravages his sense of morality and righteousness. It turns him violently
against all human values and decency, leading him to a world of crime and violence. It is
what we saw in Punjab, Kashmir, Assam, in far away Srilanka or even in Naxalism where it
is hidden in the guise of political ideology. It is an irony that politicians and the police, who
create the demons, eat their own pies by falling to the bullets of the grievously hurt, selfrighteous, once innocent people. It is said that even the dacoits in Chambal are symptomatic
of this social and economic malady.
It is true that crime cannot be eliminated from any society as the tendency to commit
crime is ingenerate in human nature. However, crime can be suppressed by appropriate
straints. What straints and how they are to be applied are ironically decided by politicians
and the police. If they come out of their indulgent interests to commit themselves to their
professional objectives, they can certainly save India from the present predicament. Not that
every politician and every policeman can come out to achieve this noble task, but there
certainly are noble elements yet surviving as exceptions among them, who should take up
cudgels in favour of the Indian polity and sacrifice their lives and careers, if necessary, to
make the renaissance of Indian police and Indian public life possible. The question yet to be
posed is whether the inveterate vested interests will let these sacrifices bear fruit. Let us hope
for the best.
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NEED OF ATTITUDINAL CHANGE IN POLICE
The major problem that confronts extant police is its attitude to work, responsibilities,
profession, organisation, government and the public. It is confounded about its goals,
objectives, loyalties, professional ethos, job culture, procedures and practices that carry it
forward in the field in attending professional duties. In the wilderness of undefined roads,
Indian police grope for perspicacious directions to reach professional ends. Popular phrases
like maintenance of order, enforcement of law, prevention of crime, investigation of offences,
protection of security interests etc are too generic terms to carry any meaning and
significance during the process of actual policing. Perficient policing is possible only in the
ambience of well-rounded and clearly defined specific guidelines for action that help
moulding professional attitude in the organisation. Police develop wrong attitudes in its
absence by erroneous interpretation of the situation around. This is what happens to Indian
police now: wrong attitudes and concomitant confusion about performing legitimate duties.
A profession like police naturally has its own goals, objectives and ideals to pursue. They
get clouded in the smog of practical turn-arounds in the field and ultimately lose their edge in
the spin of attitudinal aberrations. The consequence is clashes of loyalties, adoption of
immodest vectors in policing, the issue of excesses and inactions, tendency to bend rules and
laws to achieve perceived ends in the hour of need of upholding the rule of law, urge to cashin on the ignorance and weaknesses of the ignorant people around and indulgences in
unprofessional works in the name of discharging legitimate police duties. Performance of
any profession depends upon three factors: professional ideals, job culture and actual
practices and procedures. Job culture is spawned of constant interaction of professional
ideals and actual practices and procedures in the field. Though basically is a product of the
past, it considerably affects the future performance of an orgnisation. Practices and
procedures being the primary vehicle of attitude, they help moulding job culture a la
immanent attitude in the job. The result is a pollent hold of attitude in deciding the direction
of an organisation. A profession loses its raison detre while attitude in the job prevaricates
from professional ideals.
Professional ideals of police are rooted in the terra firma of the rule of law, justice, order
and the security of the country and its citizens. Police organisation is basically responsible to
the constitution of the country and the government constituted and the laws enacted in
accordance with the constitution. Police lose its relevance to the country when its
professional attitude goes against the cardinal ideals of the profession. The challenge of a
police organisation lies in moulding professional attitude as required by the ideals of the
profession. Wrong attitudes inveterate in extant practices and procedures of policing are
shaped by self-interests, misconceptions, ignorance and tendency to pursue easy and shortcut
methods: they are hard to be broken and survive under most odds. Only efficient, honest and
highly motivated leadership alone can crack the etui encompassing it. Once it is done,
building a new set of right professional attitudes is relatively a simpler job to a committed
leadership. Basic to these efforts is a realisation among the top-brass about what constitute
right and wrong attitudes. The crux of the problem of Indian police lies here. It is distressing
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PRAVEEN KUMAR
to note that the top leadership of post-independent Indian police is responsible for the
prevarication of the organisation from its professional attitude of absolute commitment to
public order and safety, justice and rule of law to easy and shortcut avenues of selfish
interests. The change percolated downwards. In the rush of Indians replacing the British to
sensitive government positions on the eve of independence, men of inadequate calibre and
merit occupied key government posts. This happended in police as in other government
departments. The result was happened in police as in other government departments. The
result was corrosion in leadership qualities, traits of excellence and high personal merits, so
essential to run public and national affairs at the top. It was during this period that Indian
police lost its track in professional policing and exposed itself to the luxury of dancing to the
easy and soft tunes of convenience by yielding to pressures of political and other vested
interests. Policing powers served as a tool of maximising self-interests and personal comforts
at the cost of professional policing. In the process, the country suffered and police lost its
face.
A major handicap of the extant Indian police is its dependence syndrome. No more,
Indian police realise itself as a master sui juris. For every piece of work under its sphere of
decision, it looks for advice, guidance and direction from the political leadership, bureaucracy
or the judiciary. It is more a symptom of immanent servilitude and lack of spine than
anything else. Present Indian police lack of hardihood of professionalism and the selfconfidence ensues from it. Policing is not a job dependant on outsiders like politicians and
bureaucrats. For one, the latter are not professionals and their advice, guidance and directions
in re policing are unlikely to be sound. Secondly, subjecting policing to their advice,
guidance and direction while they themselves are subjects to policing discipline is unlikely to
be in the best interest of the professional policing. Not that police officers do not know these
facts. They lack the professional resolve to uphold the purity of the principles of policing au
reste being unsure of themselves. Tendency is to avoid risky responsibilities of policing
while hawks outside are avizefull to make the maximum out of the weakness of the police
and pledge policing responsibilities to those who sit above them in exchange for secure career
prospects. That is shy meekness and servilitude of police officers in India is pro rata to the
importance of the posts they hold. Somebody cornered or placed in an insignificant slot has
nothing to lose by standing up to his superior and no need to go servile to anybody unlike
somebody in a coveted spot and therefore not required to protect his position coute que coute.
It is impossible for an upright officer to land in key jobs like chiefs of police forces in
states or the centre save in disturbed provinces like Punjab and Kashmir. The result is
downward slide in professionalism and perpetuation of servilitude and dependence. Policing
worth the name is possumus only while the glissade in professional resolve is arrested. But,
the vice in which Indian police is caught is too pollent to be breached. The dependence
syndrome has to be replaced by professional resolve. This requires change of attitude. The
change is not easy to come in present vicious circumstances. Without it coming soon, Indian
police has no deliverance.
A serious handicap of present Indian police is its noncommittal and causal reliance on
mechanical procedures sans passion for professional objectives. Tendency is to show the
amount of labour put to a job rather than showing results. There is no true passion to reach
goals and achieve professional objectives of safety, security, justice and the rule of law.
Every attempt is to do minimum required so that the chances of being caught committing
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mistakes are minimal. Procedures and practices form the staple and there is no spark for
creative policing. Policing has become a mechanical process sans substance. It is the
minimum common denominator that counts in present policing environment. The passion
natural for those in police for public security and order, rule of law and justice is seldom felt
in Indian police of the present vintage. Risk-taking which is a common trait of good policing
has become a rarity and a scarce commodity. The problem lies in wrong attitude. The
atrophy set in, in the field of committed policing has become the mainstay of the Indian
police. Reversing the trend is the first priority to bring Indian police on the right rails.
A manifestation of this wrong attitude is evident in investigation of crimes. The reason for
the problem lies in the environment in which investigators function. They are prosecutors of
another kind in real terms in Indian police environment and work to collect evidence of
whatever merit to prove that the persons accused of crime had committed the crime rather
than unearthing truth. Persons under investigation are treated as criminals and harassed.
When sound evidences are not available, anything that goes for evidence is trumped up. The
infamous Jain Hawala case is a case in point. The case was cold-stored for years. The
dependence syndrome of the premier investigation agency of the country prevented it from
investigating the case sans clearance from political masters. Once polictical bigwigs
calculated that investigation of the case was in their interests, CBI proceeded full-steam to
prove the case. When direct evidence was not available, CBI probed for circumstantial
evidences. When circumstantial evidence failed to prove anything, CBI went for anything
available to feed its fanciful interpretations. Need of corroboration was thrown to the wind.
Political leaders were tried on the basis of initials and numbers entered in a diary. Court of
law exonerated the politicians for lack of evidence. In the process, many heads rolled on the
block of the political gameplan. Professional attitude to investigation with a passion for
fairplay, objectivity, truth and justice would have saved the country from the quite
unnecessary hardships. Politically sensitive cases are taken up for investigation only when
people in power decide in favour, and investigated with a particular end in sight and
chargesheeted on the basis of whatever little could be gathered in the name of evidence.
Professional investigation is not meant to proceed in this fashion where possibility of a prima
facie case and quality of evidences precede every thing else and decide the course and pace
of the investigation process and chargesheet. Sensitisation to fairplay, objectivity, truth and
justice is the foundation of the professional policing. Professional police display
extraordinary scruple in exercise of policing powers like arrests, bails, searches, seizures,
interrogations etc so that law bites only the hors la loi and innocent citizens go absolutely
unharmed. It is not the case in Indian police now. Investigation has become a one-way track
of somehow raising evidences and chargesheeting, truth and justice become tragedies in the
process. This basically is a problem of wrong attitude.
People caught in the web of criminal laws deserve sympathy and kindness until they are
proved guilty beyond doubts. They need to be treated with gentleness and courtesy that
behoves to interpresonal relationship in a civilised society while the process of investigation
continues with all efficiency and ruthless exactitude. Police as investigator is not invested
with powers to punish for the crimes committed. Fair chance to persons under investigation
to prove their innocence goes a long way in unearthing truth and solving crimes justly. This
has to be the attitude of the police during crime investigation. Truth and justice have to be
their goal. Indian police lack the maturity and poise.
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A serious Achilles heel of Indian police is its perverted attitude towards rules and laws.
Bending rules and laws to suit self interests is one dimension of the spiel. Another
dimension is its blind application sans sense of proportion and discreetness while self-interest
is not an issue. It is seen in enforcing laws and maintaining order. Police forget that rules
and laws are just tools in the larger cause of peace and order of the society and sadly handle
laws for laws sake. Rules and laws are invested on police like weapons as the dernier
ressort while all other avenues are shut. Discreetness in their constraint. Objectives are
primary Rules and laws must follow them only as tools to that end. The realisation is rarely
found in the present police. It operates laws for laws sake by relegating organisational
objectives to oblivion. Professional objectives suffer and police become an object of
detestation consequential to this perverted attitude. Mechanical enforcement of gratuitous
rules and laws constrict the freedom of people for no specific purpose and weaves an
unnecessary web of constraints around them for nobodys good. The attitude is fatal to fair
and professional policing practices and needs to be corrected on priority to make application
of rules and laws need-based in reaching professional targets.
Another field where police need to change its attitude is its contempt for human values.
Policing is just an instrument to the cause of protecting human values. Police oblivious to
this fact, subject human values to immane policing methods in the name of policing. Third
degree methods are the point. Malfeasances do not behove to the cause of human values.
Means are as important as ends in policing. Pursuing unjust means for the cause of justice is
the spiel of the frankenstein, the story of an off-spring eating its creator. Inviolable
commitment to human values and rights is the foundation of good policing. Human touch is
sine qua non for professional policing. Human concern is the raison detre of good policing.
The shift in attitude needs to be from blind and blanket-policing for the policings sake to
discreet and enlightened policing to reach professional objectives. The shift has to be from the
use of policing powers to maximise professional goals. The shift must see police taking risks
in the interests of the profession and doing intelligent policing rather than indulging in
manoeuvres of personal security. The process warrants massive exercise in attitudinal
change.
What constitutes perficient exercises of attitudinal change in a massive organisation like
the police? Police organisation is a tough and hard-to-crack candidate for any manipulations.
It is a no nonsense outfit. The only way to bring it to senses is intensive and extensive appeal
to its reason and emotion to convince about the need of change. Police rely on past practices
and procedures. It looks for the job culture to aemule. Forcing police away from vicious
practices and procedures and undesirable job culture through the attitudinal change is an
arduous and time consuming exercise even for experts in the field. The exercise has to be a
multi-pronged attack on inveterate misconceptions and wrong notions in extant policing by
extensive exposures to talks, discussions, seminars, briefings, studies, researches and inservice training involving analyses of policing, its ideals, objectives, methods, means and
ends, social relevances, pressures, policing environment, psychological aspects of policing
etc. The exercise have to be intended to provoke police personnel to think about their
profession without dogma and arrive at desirable conclusions about professional policing and
impress them on the ingredients of good policing by constant exposure. A few ideal cases as
models have tremendous impact on the cause of creating eight attitudes, Studies and
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researches on policing and policing methods provide a sound foundation to these exercises.
A police organisation interested in improving its quality and performance cannot go without
sound study centres and research projects on the issues of policing. These attempts provide
both inputs and insight to the behavioural pattern of the police in field under different
situations and stress patterns as differentiated from what are desired. They bring both gestalts
to contrast in terms of their perficiency, professional needs and relevance to the environment
of policing to affect attitudinal change in right direction by way of conviction. The
immediate need is inducing doubts about the soundness of existing attitudes to encourage
discussion on the topic. Deliberate guiding through structured mental exercises to desirable
end forms the latter part of the task. Indeed, the whole exercise has to be planned and
executed in detail by highly efficient leadership in the police. The conundrum is who
behoves to handle the highly responsible job while the leadership of the police itself is mired
in wrong attitudes to the job of policing.
Problem of attitude basically is a problem felt at higher wrungs in top-brass of the force.
The stiff hierarchical order and command-obedience pattern of functioning make the lower
wrungs irrelevant in matters of job attitude. Those down the ladder are loyal followers and
obedient operators in the path and policy laid above them. Their attitudes change shape from
case to case to meet the demands trickle from above. When the demand is to let out a rich
and powerful criminal with royal honours, those down the level do just that with vengeance;
when the demand from above is to frame an innocent man and obtain his confession by
subjecting to torture, they just do that with dedication for the sake of a well-earned pat of
their omniscient superiors. It is again a question of ill-conceived job culture and attitude
which need to be corrected as it is tangible to the standards of policing as all organisational
matters are. The primary target of attitudinal change is the higher wrungs and the top-brass.
Others follow and fall to place. The key lies in the realisation that something is wrong in the
present mode of policing. Demolition is the beginning of the construction. Once the
realisation of wrong dawns upon, reconstruction becomes possible. Police being an extrovert
and action-oriented outfit, self-analyses and inward-looking tendencies do not come easily.
While things to wrong, introversion becomes sine qua non for healthy growth. This is what is
required in Indian police now.
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PRECEPTS OF POLICE ADMINISTRATION
The word administration originates from the Latin administrare and administratum
which would mean to serve or to be an aid to. Administration in its pristine form denotes
service or aidance though in modern parlance it stands for management or governance of
affairs. Non obstante the metachrosis of the word, administration even in its modern avatar
is service and aidance in essence though from managerial level. Administration even now is
serving and aiding an objective or commitment through suitable planning, organisation,
supervision and control mechanisms. It normally is a distinct field of activity while being a
part of the organisation en attendant and stands above the latter by holding overall charge of
the affairs. Administration manifests at diverse levels with its lower strata rooted in higher
levels of the organisation. In government organisations, higher functions of administration
are invested in government at stratified levels while lower functions are burdened on higher
levels of the organisations. The heads of the organisations join hands with the secretaries of
the departments and higher authorities in the government to run the organisations. It is also
in the police. While the police organisation en semble is responsible for policing, the levers
of police administration at lower levels are handled by the police chief and his staff while the
home secretary in charge of police in tandem with higher echelons of the government handles
it at higher levels.
POLICE ADMINISTRATION
Administration, be it service or management, is immanent in organisational operations of
all levels. In police, elements of administration are inherent at all supervisory levels
beginning from head constables upwards. Police stations as grassroot policing units go away
with a large slice of the police administration. So are district police offices in districts and
police commissionerate in big cities with the unit headquarters as the apex body of police
administration within the organisation. The interim levels bridge the gaps in between. The
springboard of police administration within the organisation is the state police headquarters in
a state with all important decisions of policing and police administration emanating from
there under the control, supervision and guidance of the government in the form of home
department and higher levels. The police chief ab intra and home secretary and chief
secretary in states ab extra form vital links of police administration. The ethos and character
of a police force are shaped by these key figures of the police administration. Though
political leadership is there as policy makers and executive heads of both the organisation
and the government, it is these three configurations as innards of the setup, control and guide
the police by administrative controls, head and shoulder above political heads.
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A SPECIALISED FIELD
Administration as a service in spirit and governance in manifestation deals with men,
money, materials and machinery through the means of laws, rules, decisions and directions.
Of these, men form the most vital ingredient of management and governance. This is
especially so in organisations entirely dependent on human resources to meet objectives and
goals. Administration for most part is human resources management in a manpower oriented
force like the police. The special problems of the police setup, its distinct culture and service
conditions, the stress and strain of policing and the non a such psychological factors unique
for the organisation crop up issues unseen otherwhere. This renders police administration a
specialised field to be handled by experts having insight to and realisation of the special
nature of policing conditions and the psychological pressures on policemen on the off duty in
the organisation.
ISSUES IN POLICE ADMINISTRATION

The problems of police and policing are inveterate in the contradictions immanent to the
organisation, its status in society and the nature of job it performs. The organisation is primly
stratified with a serve hierarchical order and stern discipline to the boot, preposterous to a free
human nature. Police, perform the unpleasant task of disciplining and using force against
fellow citizens. The unpopular job does not bode well to the psychological well-being and
for leading common life in a society that exoterically fear and esoterically hate them. The
police live in society in the ambience of sempiternal fear, suspicion and hatred against them.
There is no love lost between the two and no real mutual respect. Such a living is not
conducive to healthy mental fettle of human beings what policemen are. Sine dubio, the
status enjoyed by the police as enforcers of the rule of law and the fear they inspire among the
hoi polloi are some compensations and solace for the malaise. The tragedy is that these
apparent benedictions themselves create problems of complex social adaptations to make up
for the imbalance caused by their real social status nowhere coming near the importance they
enjoy in society as law-enforcers vi et armis. The embarrassment is common to all ranks of
the police. As constables of limited education, social position and enlightenment, they are
required in streets and police stations to handle people of far higher social status and standing
from a position of strength. As senior-most police officers of premier investigation agency
of the country, they are required to investigate, arrest and chargesheet men of the standing of
the Prime Minister of the country and similarly placed high dignitaries. The position is not as
easy and joyous as it appears ab extra. The strains of such responsibilities preposterous to
human nature and natural human tendencies of respect to social stations cause can only be
imagined to be believed. Added to it, the feeling of insecurity bred by the potentiality of
wrath and revanche of highly placed people pregnant in upright police actions further
flummoxes the matter for the mental peace of the police. It is easily said that policemen
ought to perform their duties en regle on merit. Images of policeman as a father shooting to
kill his fleeing criminal son, as a son arresting his erring father or as a brother in pursuit of his
criminal brother etc are mere fairy tales invented for films. The fact is that a policeman
cannot be a creature abstracted from his surroundings and shut to natural human passions,
emotions, feelings and familial attachments. If did, he cannot be a human being, but a mere
robot, a lifeless machine performing police job. A policeman is a human being imprimis and
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PRAVEEN KUMAR
the human nature makes him a good policeman. He sans human nature and its sweet failings
cannot be a real police stuff. He is not a mere robot to unwind in the blinkers of professional
duties and responsibilities. The police in field perforce perform as robots against their natural
human sensibilities and sensitivities on orders from above to show results. This ingredient of
policing has great impact on the psychological makeup of the police. Added to this, the
unending oppression and fear of disciplinary actions from higher-ups for a wink of an eye
common in police makes the police life suffocating. It is said that policemen at all levels live
with a sword of danger algate dangling over their heads. Ruthlessness is a fact of man
management in police administration. Human relations here are slender and easily snap
under the weight of job-related surquedry. The biggest tragedy of police life is the absence of
human concerns around it. Endless interaction with ruffians inside and outside the
organisation deprives policemen their natural sweetness and gentleness. There is no scope for
inteneration of their mental makeup. Police administration needs to take these special
features of police life and psyche into consideration in running the organisation. The need
renders police administration a specialised field.
A BALANCING ACT
Responsibilities of any administration are two fold-providing the body and shapes
required to fulfil the objectives of the organisation within the limits of the extant laws and
providing right ambience to boost the morale, motivation and above all, the mental wellbeing of the manpower of the organisation. The extra-ordinary nature of the organisation of
the police and its working conditions render the latter responsibility a sensitive field
warranting specialised study and application. The complex psychological factors involving
policing in diverse social conditions and social imperatives of a policemans life perforce
require dextrous handling of affairs to promote high morale and right motivation in the place
of present crass rule- of thumb approach common to Indian police. What is required is a
highly intricate organisational policy imbued with specialised skills and insight of the highest
order to human nature to inspire, motivate and get most out of the manpower at disposal.
This involves balancing in police many contradictions inherent to human psyche. In one
hand, the police force has to be steeped in professional pride, while on the other hand, taught
to accommodate in its character, the need of perfect obedience to the verge of servilitude in a
stiff hierarchical order. It has to be tuned to be loyal to authority while its ultimate loyalty
must go to its professional objectives and the rule of law. The police have to be tough and
fearsome to criminals and law-breakers while it has to be gentle and friendly to the plebeian.
They have to be led to be law-abiding model citizens while day and night deal with hardened
criminals requires to break the latter to submission. While they are attuned to the interplay of
ranks and status in the stiff hierarchical order of the force, they have to be compelled to treat
all as equals and exercise authority even on the people at highest levels in society while
performing duties. The list goes on endlessly. The cardinal task of balancing these
contradictions in police is the real challenge of the police administration.
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FIELD SITUATION
While police administration is a highly specialised field requiring extra-ordinary skills the
present police administration in India is archaic at best and maladministration at worst.
Actually there is no administration worth the name save some mechanical motions and
unintelligent convulsions to provide body and shape to the organisation as time to time
responses to day to day challenges. No long term plans. No organisational initiatives. No
growth and coordination studies. The organisation takes care of itself depending upon need
factors. The maximum, police administration in India does is controlling initiatives and
works o of the police by throwing hurdles to prove existence. As far as morale, motivation
and mental well-being of the manpower are concerned, the contribution of Indian police
administration is absolutely nil. Police administrators believe that they have no role to play
in the morale and motivation of the police organisation. Threats and suppression are the
staple of manpower management in police. Wastage of human resources and man-days is
the general rule. Quality, efficiency and character are inconsequential. Assessments are
misnomers. Personal behoofs are the centres of all decisions. Accommodating the desires of
higherups in official and political circles and the powerful people in consideration for quid
pro quo is the accepted norm of Indian police administration.
A CUSHY JOB
Police administration provides good covers to meet long cherished desires and therefore
considered as a cushy job. A police administrator can avail for himself from the police
organisation all behoofs inherent to police job like best available transport and
communication facilities and orderly services at will. The police network throughout the
country would be at his personal service wherever and in whatever way he desires it. This is
an invaluable asset for him and his kith and kin. In the name of various studies concerning
police, he can visit foreign countries at his will and convenience at government expenditure.
Recently, a regional edition of a leading national English newspaper raised a hue and cry on
its front page for several days followed by a flood of letters to the editor against a visit of the
home secretary of the state with a huge contingent of inconsequential police officials to a few
western countries, supposedly to study crime and traffic problems. The newspaper called the
intentions of the study apocryphal, the study gratuitous and the foreign tour during the
holiday season of those countries without first obtaining the assurance of cooperation of the
host countries in the study venture as outrageous and cried for stopping what is called a
pleasure trip. Its hullabaloo proved infructuous and the contingent completed the tour malgre
tout. When the home secretary visited foreign countries again after six weeks for the same
purpose, the national newspaper did not dare to make an issue encore.
WRECKER OF PRIDE AND GOOD IMAGE

The basic needs of police and policing are professional pride and a good image. These are
the breath of policing and oxygen for the lungs of the police organisation. They refresh the
organisation, its system and personnel after back-breaking and dangerous policing above the
oppressive life-style in the police ambience. They infuse entrain to the organisation, its
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system and the men to take on gauntlets in wait and attend to with commitment and
efficiency. Pride is the fuel of policing. Good image is the air that sustains the fire or the
zeal of the policing. Who are not aggraced by appreciation? Police force is capable of doing
its duties and carrying out its responsibilities with devotion and self-sacrifice; It only wants
sacrifices and devotion to work natural to it are appreciated. A good image boosts its
professional pride and adds to its sense of belonging. What else the society can pay to the
police for its self-sacrificing devotion to the well-being of the society? The professional pride
and the sense of belonging to an organisation widely respected and appreciated by the public
spur the police to do better and better every time. The pride adds to its high morale which is
sine qua non for good policing and healthy discipline in any police organisation. Good image
entails public cooperation and enhances the social recognition of the police personnel. True
policing is nonpossumus in the absence of the strength of pride about work while discharging
responsibilities to the society from a position of strength. A weakened police organistion and
its personnel put to aidos can do no good policing . Pride is the root of morale. Commercial
enterprises know the fact and use the knowledge best to derive maximum out of their human
resources. Pride and high morale play decisive role in deciding the quality and efficiency of
work and discipline in the organisation. Its importance naturally is very high in manpower
oriented organisations like the police, particularly those which have to deal with the public
from a position of strength. Police personnel shamed and humiliated in their career can never
face the public from strength and do good policing. The tragedy lies in police administration.
Its vanity belittles the police, breaches its pride, shatters its self-image and destroys its good
public image by scrupleless and selfish interferences in police affairs. Indian police
administrators are too unenlightened to realise this basic psychological imperative of good
policing. The irony lies in that, that they crassly indulge in exactly the opposite, that is
crushing the professional pride wherever it is traced raising its majestic head in the police.
Sadly to meet personal ends. Perhaps men in no other government departments suffer
humiliations for humiliationss sake as in police. This is true of all levels including the
higher ranks in police. Suspensions and disciplinary actions are a common phenomenon in
Indian police. When no grounds selon les regles are available for disciplinary proceedings,
resorting to unfair and indecent measures like withdrawing vehicles, telephones and other
facilities, denying promotions, transfer to humiliating jobs created for meeting such
eventualities, keeping on prolonged compulsory waiting without a job etc are the common
scenario to face even by very senior level officers in Indian police. These humiliations
weaken their position before the public as well as subordinates whom they are supposed to
control and guide with the strength of their leadership qualities. What leadership one can have
while he himself is wronged and humiliated from above for no apparent reason? This is the
atmosphere in which Indian police, police the crime world. The consequence is a weak and
confused police force with low self-image, low morale, low motivation and servile complexes
sans confidence and public approbation.
ARROGANCE OF POWER
A factor responsible for maladministration becoming the abracadabra of police
administration is arrogance of power. The police is the real power; the crux of the state
power; the enforcer vi et armis on the field, not on papers as most other government agencies
are. Police administrators wield power on the enforcers of the state power. Ergo, police
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administrators enjoy the temulence of holding the ultimate power. Power breeds arrogance;
ultimate power, ultimate arrogance. This is the source of the unamated arrogance of the police
administration. The sweep of a arrogance is so strong that it has no patience to rules, laws,
codes of conduct, moral values, natural courtesies and human dignities. The only goal of the
police administration in the ambience of arrogance is proving its invincibility a tout prix.
Neither the well-being of the police administration nor the upkeep of laws of the country have
any say in choosing the means to achieve this end. Police administrators going hors la loi
for this vain goal is the rule in the country. A recent example is a senior police officer in a
state who insisted for suspension or transfer of a subordinate after a criminal case of forgery,
cheating, falsification of records, breach of trust etc involving misappropriation of about
Rs.36 lakhs during discharge of official duties was registered against the subordinate in the
police station by his department. The latters good connections in the higher rungs of
administration prevented any further disciplinary actions imperative in such circumstances.
The insistence of the senior officer in writing for departmental procedures against the
subordinate inconvenienced the administration. The insistence of the senior officer in writing
for departmental procedures against the subordinate inconvenienced the administration. The
thinking of the administration was that, that how a police officer at whatever rank can insist
disciplinary action when it has decided against it for whatever reasons. It decided that the
recalcitrant senior police officer had to be brought around and taught to conform with its
decisions, by legal or illegal means. The machinery of administration ground is so hard that
the senior police officer found continuing in his position practically unbearable and
impossible. He went on indefinite leave, rather forced to do so. His harassment was so acute
that at one juncture, he addressed the head of the government, doubting the mental well-being
of the perpetrators of the harassment and requested to save the department from the prise of
psychopathic tendencies of the concerned. The Chief Secretary of the government after
hearing him in August 1996, issued instructions for providing the senior officer an alternative
posting forthwith. The police administration in a show of rare defiance, resisted the
instructions of the Chief Secretary till the latters retirement later. It was only after the
principal secretary of the chief minister took interest in the case that files moved against the
wishes of the home secretary and the four month vanavasa of the senior police officer came
to an end. En attendant, the subordinate with criminal charges continued bien chausse in his
cushy job. The new Chief Secretary in the beginning dove-tailed to the depraved home
secretary against the sound judgement of his predecessor on the ground that he never had an
opportunity to know the senior police officer. This is how police administration is run in
India.
HUMAN RESOURCES STIFLED

A serious lapse of police administration in India is its presumed virtue of indifference to
others predicaments and idee fixe to distance from noble human values. The compulsions of
being led and the sequacious tendencies cap-a-pie gratuitously deprive government officials
the great human gifts like freedom of thought, originality and creativity and drain off feelings
and sensibilities. It is why common human sense treats odd to find intellectuals poets, artists
or genius among government officials. The humble situation is spawned for government
officials by themselves by their overzeal to conform. An outcome of the ambience is
administration going heartless and mindless, dry and irresponsive to the core to its
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surroundings. While arrogance of power adds to this, the situation becomes worse. This is
the position in which police administration finds itself. The need of making virtue of the
irresponsiveness leads to mendacity, dishonesty and immunity. Finding honest and
dependable people there , finding people of character and integrity, finding a genius or
creative soul at any level in police administration is like finding a pepal tree in a desert.
Normal human courtesies are unknown there. Evasion is the stock reply for queries. Vanity
is the hallmark. Ironically , these negative qualities are accrescently pro rata to the heights in
the ladder of the police administration. Approach to all except higherups is always brusque
and stroppy. Normal man to man interaction is impossible unless one is capable of
gratifying. Public relations is an unknown concept McGregors need hierarchy and such
man-management concepts are nonexistent in their vocabulary and thoughts. Efficient
management of human resources is a fools paradise to them. They find the greatest virtue of
administration in ruthlessness. In the process, human resources wither and gargantuan
wastage of manpower becomes a common phenomenon of the police.
BREAKING THE SPINE
Police force is a vital instrument that if brought on knees can be of immense help to stave
off the interferences of the rule of law and its enforcers and help to lead a good and
comfortable life sans the fear of law and lawenforcers. Breaking and bringing on knees
individual policemen is a clavis to this end. Police administrators know this secret as none
else. They know that nothing works on police as fear at whatever ranks. They know that the
advantages of a policeman broken of spine and reined-in easily outweighs the risks of
breaking his spine by whatever means and that the policeman goes to any extent even at
risks to his life and honour to gratify and pander to the needs of his master, because of his
sequacious job culture. This is the reason why police administrators spare no efforts and lose
no opportunities to beat, terrify and cow down a policeman of whatever rank, status and
enlightenment though they know well that they are sacrificing the interests of the professional
pride of the police, its commitment to the profession, efficiency, organisational interests, the
interests of the rule of law and national interests at the altar of their personal grists in doing
that. Service rules and jus naturale are arriere concerns to them in exercise of their
governmental powers to chevir this goal. No normal human concerns nor common courtesies
for fellow beings deter them from pursuing their evil designs. The recent example is an
upright officer of the rank of Additional Director General of Police in a state. A scholar in
diverse fields, he is known not to easily bend against his conscience. This rendered him
unpopular to the police administration. While he was holding the post of state prisons chief in
1995, he addressed government about tragic security lapses in a major prison of the state and
sent proposals to government for improving the situation. No actions were taken on them by
the government. In the closing months of 1995, a mafia gangwar ensued in the state capital
led to murder of a gang leader lodged in the prison. Government ordered an enquiry into the
matter by the home secretary of the state. The latter who algate found the ADGP of his same
age, rank and status an inconvenient candidate for his esoteric urge of bringing police to
submission. He found a golden opportunity in the enquiry. The ADGP was immediately
removed from his position and refused any posting for the next 3-4 months though as the state
prisons chief, he cannot be held responsible for the security breach in the prison, particularly
while his report on the matter was ignored by the government . If anybody was to be acted
on a highest levels for lapses in the prison, it was the home secretary for not acting on the
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report of the ADGP. If it is the position of officers at highest ranks in the police in the hands
of police administration, how precarious is that down the ladder, can only be imagined.
ROLE OF PERSONAL GAINS

The apostasy and prevarications of the police administration from the right path in most
cases is not even a malfeasance to achieve right professional ends. They mostly are pure and
simple means to self grandiosity and personal grists. The fact is that police administration
seld goes to any length of initiatives and risks for purely administrative reasons unless some
elements of personal gains are involved. As far as purely administrative reasons are
concerned, the communi consensu among police administrators is for letting the police
carcass boil in its own broth uninterfered. After all, who wants the risks of awakening the
sleeping monster? Somehow the police function, and let it do so as long as possible. Who
knows how the monster may react while they loosen or tighten a screw or a nut here and
there. Who wants gratuitous risks? It is the reigning thought of Indian police administration
in normal times. Show them elements of personal grists. Lo, colour of everything changes
and risks become sine qua non of the administration. Files move fast. Discussions and
meetings are held day and night Decisions are taken overnight. Procedures and cut-short to
ease the process. Ordinary situation turns to an emergency. Administration becomes a hub
of incessant activity. Lots of energy and thought go to the process of administration. The
result is that work is done irrespective of the relevance and importance of the work while
more pressing and vital, but less remunerative works rot in files for years. Selection and
recruitment of men in the age of prolate unemployment and purchase of heavy vehicles in
the ambience of commissions play a pivotal role in the administration of police and related
safety oriented organisations. Recruiting men in thousands and purchase of scores of heavy
vehicles in a single go in the name of expansion of an organisation involves subterranean
change of hands of crores of rupees at a short span of time. It is a dizzy amount to be
pocketed with little risk. Decisions were taken by the administration for expansion of the
organisation with fresh recruitment of thousands of men and sub-officers and purchase of
scores of heavy vehicles. A police officer in a sensitive juncture of his career who could be
compromised was put in charge of the organisation and the selection and purchase processes.
The setup worked out by the home secretary worked to his satisfaction. The result was that
the police officer in charge was rewarded in oodles. The concerned organisation saw rapid
expansion. Thousands of unemployed youths got job. Manufacturers of heavy vehicles got
business. And the home secretary got what he wanted. Thus all are happy and contented.
This is how administration works in India.
Most ills of present Indian police emerge from the malaise of the morbid handling of the
police administration at different levels. Be it in handling of the body and shape of the
organisation and its functions or managing the spirit and the soul of the force, police
administration can play a major role either in building or marring the prospects of raising a
healthy police outfit for the country. As on today, police administration failed the country
and its police by indifference on one hand and crass handling of the organisation and its
affairs on the other. The only solution on this serious malady lies in rebuilding police
administration with people of character, integrity devotion, efficiency, ability and above all,
deep insight to human nature and its problems.
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HUMANIZING THE POLICE
Though policing is a human service au fond, its methods often are strikingly inhuman
due to poor leadership and failure of police leaders to tread pari passu with the requisites of
man management and other rightful policing techniques. The tragedy of the Indian police is
that its means and ends do not amate. The querimony that the feral methods of the Indian
police are more dreadful and antisocial than the criminal acts they are supposed to control
cannot be dismissed glibly as inaccurate in prevailing circumstances. Out police system has
grown to be a monster deprived of any strains of humanism because of its perennial exposure
to inhuman methods of both the criminals and the extant policing system. It is true that
association moulds character. The tenor of immunity obfuscates the strains of humanism in
police. The issue can be dealt on two fronts; adopting suitable measures in police
techniques to make it a more civilized operation and shaping the police environment to make
it sensitized to inhuman exposures. As the police leaders themselves are victims of this
infaust mould of mind, tremendous organisational efforts are necessary to reinstate humanism
in the police. Should the police conform to the standards of humane comportment and
methods a la its desinent goals, policing would become a meaningful and relevant service to
the society.
The test of the police as a humanised organisation is its acceptance by the societyas a
couthie associate so that no child is scared of hearing the name of a policeman and no
illiterates take to their heels at the mere sight of one. It is a wonder how people manage to
accept the police whom they perceive as an embodiment of bestiality, incivility and inanity as
guardians of their life, honour and property. Indian police has cohabited long enough with
its disrepute. A decision to furbish its image as a humanised setup though late, is not
intempestive as policing is yet intact with its relevance to society though its inhuman methods
are fast eating up its credibility. Its leaders cannot afford any more the exuberance of
complacency if the police must stand up to its expectations as the peace-keeper of society
and assert to resile to its deeper human strains. The process of showing the police its roots
which are obfuscated by the lounderings of time and its own working methods must begin
anon. The wherewithal of affecting the transformation is varied and covers such disparate
avenues as recruitment, training, exposures, in-service role-play, environment, man
management, policing methods, criminals laws organisational pattern, living and working
conditions of the personnel, work pressures, self-image, public relation techniques etc. A
police leader should cover all these aspects in his plan should he wish to see his police
verily humanised.
Human aspect is the fulcrum of policing. Policing is primarily latitant human interaction
in the perennial luctation to safeguard the security and rights of the common man and the
human quality in the force determines the effectiveness and vitality of the performance.
Human resources policy as a device of selecting human stuff needs careful handling at the
highest level to attract right people to the fold. The present Indian environment of ruthless
concours impleached with a degringolade of values has made human resources management
a farce in India.
The wherewithal of human resources management like recruitment,
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promotions, transfers, rewards, punishments etc are no more employed for maximum benefit
of the organistion. Self-interests have undermined quality and character and organisation
interests are subordinated to personal behoofs. Though this proclivity is prevalent in all fields
of present India, its adverse effects are kenspeckle in police as the line-system of the
organisation makes the ingenuity of the human resources management a factor having direct
and immediate bearing on the efforts of humanising the police.
ORGANISATIONAL MEASURES
An earnest effort from the highest level to infuse the crme de la crme characterised by
genuine human stuff, probity and commitment is the foremost need of the police. The
prevalence of police administration over general administration in the survival of a nation as a
democratic and orderly country necessitates changes in recruitment policy. This is to
ensure that only those with a deep natural humane disposition step into the police so that the
arrogance and savagery bred by the environment do little harm to the public and the tenue of
humanism continues alongside policing work.
The chief cause of the police seldom being humane in Indian is its ineffective training
facilities. In spite of adequate infrastructures available for police training in India, these
centres largely fail to offer quality training to humanise a recruit adequately to stand up-to
the challenges of the temulence of the arrogant and feral environment that policing breeds.
An overhaul of the extant training facilities in terms of quality, content and character in
favour of humanised policing practices in inevitable to keep the police excubant against the
depravity of the modern society. There has to be a psychology faculty in the centres to build
character and strengthen human fibres. The training centres should lay emphasis on
attitudinal change in recruits and develop the skill of humanised policing. The training
centres should give the impression to the public of being temples dedicated to humanising the
police apart from actually being so.
EXPOSURE TO LIFE OUTSIDE THE POLICE

The strenuous nature of policing hardens the police in spirit and mind . A measure of
creative activities like literary interactions, exposure to poetry and fine arts, musical
performances etc besprent in the precious spare-time between policing hours intenerate the
man behind the police faade and resiles him to his natural human tendencies. Artistic
activities counterpoise the damage done to the man by the role-pay of policing and open him
up to the halcyon clime of the ideal and imaginary world, far removed from the hard and
brusque realities of the police life and make his life richer. Exposure of the police to social
service activities acts as the celestial surgeon to enrace mellowness and dignity to the police
. Interaction with people from the plane of oblation sinks the policeman from his inflated self
to the roots of his genuine feelings and concerns and conditions him to respond to the
vicissitudes of the environment. It opens up a new vista of feelings and experiences that
make life richer and meaningful au reste sensitisation of the self. The social service
activities as a form of servilitude to mankind and a voluntary involvement with the people
abserge the temulence of power and abraid latitant human tendencies in the policeman to
bring to the surface his pristine self . It is left to the police leaders to include social service
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schemes in their human resources development programmes in an endeavour to humanise the

police.
IMPORTANCE OF SELF-IMAGE
Rogers in On Becoming A Person, says, The more fully the individual is understood
and accepted, the more he tends to drop the false fronts with which he has been meeting life,
and the more he tends to move in a direction which is forward. The conviction of fair
treatment and concern for human dignity in the policeman deeply affects his comport
beneath. An atmosphere of respect, dignity and fairness resiles his self to its pristine charm
of innocence and couthie disposition. On the other hand, the strains of humiliation,
contempt and scorn drive him to catharize his frustrations and indignities on both those lower
in the hierarchy and the members of the public who come to his doors au desespoir for
redressal. The spite and the feral indiginities he inflicts on those at his mercy would be
pro rata to those he is subjected to by his leaders. A policeman shabbily instated in his
organisation develops a poor self-image. Solley and Murphy analyse this when they say He
perceives, responds, acts and communicates in terms of his complex self-image leads to
adjustment mechanisms. A policeman, proud of his self and work is created by respect to his
individual dignity that develops a confidence about humane strains subjacent in his persona
and dares him to betray the human responses that are so natural to his entrails and makes the
police environment in the country besprent with the milk of human attributes like kindness,
tenderness, elegance and civility.
FACTORS OF ATTITUDINAL CHANGES

Motivation and deterrence are opposite facets of the same coin that pay for attitudinal,
change. Deterrence, although an extra force to the system, is an effective wherewithal in
materialising mobility in an intended direction as an addendum to disparate motivation
factors. Efforts to humanise the police call for the apposite employment of deterrence to
inhumane acts by way of exemplary punishments. The prevalence of means over the ends
should be made the cardinal principle of policing. The ends, however eximious they be,
should not find recognition by the police if the means adopted are mean and deplorable. All
inhuman acts by the police should be met with heavy punishments and an atmosphere of
social ostracisation of such elements should be created in the force. The realisation that the
police are ordinary people and no criminal acts committed in discharge of official duties
would extricate them from the ensuing, liability should be made crystal clear. An ingenerate
sense of regard to people, oblivious of their locus standi in the social ladder, can be
generated in the police by instilling a mortal fear of inhuman acts through exemplary
punishments. The fact that policing is a human service au fond does not justify adoption of
feral methods in policing. Adoption of violence and savagery by the police gives legitimacy
to such methods in the public eyes and thus weakens the orderly fabric of the society.
Violent methods like employment of third degree in interrogation to obtain quick results in
preference to the tedium of swinkt investigation weaken the image of the police already
weighed under by pressures of work.
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ADOPTION OF SCIENTIFIC TECHNIQUES

Adoption of scientific techniques in policing helps in humanising the police. It saves the
police from the antilogy of committing criminal acts to meet the ends of justice. All efforts to
humanise the police prove infructuous until the police continues to be at the mercy of violent
methods for results. A genuine effort at humanising the police should begin with methods to
instil sophistication and accuracy in policing. Old habits die hard. Vigorous efforts to
mundify old nasty habits should find priority as a substruction on which the edifice of the
efforts of humanising the police should be built.
CONTRIBUTION OF CRIMINAL LAWS

A few glaring anomalies and erroneous provisions of the extant criminal laws in India
contributed to the easy fredaine of criminals from the clutches of the law in many cases and
the harassment of innocent persons by the police in some other cases. The loopholes in the
criminal laws have to be plugged if crime administration is to be humanised and command a
semblance of public respect and confidence. Intelligent adaptations in the extant criminal
laws to interdict inhuman policing methods and provide wherewithals for facile crime
administration are the needs of the hour. The policeman or the judicial officer under whose
custody a person is kept under detention must be made responsible by name for the timely
release of the detenue with the provision that if detention exceeds the period provided by
law, the concerned officer is liable for proceedings for the unlawful detention sans the
privilege of exemptions for acts performed in official colour. Also, all cases of violence and
physical outrage committed in police custody should be made punishable with exemplary
penalties by special legislations. Such outre measures may bring an end to shocking
inhumane acts committed in the similitude of policing in some quarters and save the Indian
police from acute public resentment. All discretions with police and judiciary regarding bail
should be taken away with only a select few offences of enormous gravity made nonbailable.
This will restrict both the police and the judiciary from showing favours to some criminals
en revanche to favours and bring mechanical accuracy to bail provisions. This measure may
be found a path-breaker in preventing the misuse of criminal laws and the inhuman play of
favours to some and disfavours to others among the criminals.
IMPACT OF SOCIAL LEGISLATIONS

The propensity of weighing the police with the responsibility of enforcemetn of all types
of legislations has become a major hazard to effective policing. It is emphatically so with
social legislations which pass out of our legislative homes sans cohibition. These
progressive measures are inherently controversial in nature and their enforcement by the
police weakens its credibility as an agency of serious business and peremptory order. It is
plauditory to conceive of the police as a vehicle of progressive measures. In the process,
however, the police, is certain to put both its credibility and professionalism in jeopardy as
these social legislations lack the depth and gravity required to enforce them and brings an
aura of commitment to certain sections of the society or people against the universal image
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enjoyed by the police as a profession. Assiduous enforcement may be perceived as inhuman

acts of high-handedness and harassment of certain section of the society. It is not in the
interests of the process of humanising the police to expose it to civil contecks. The exclusion
of social legislations from the ambit of normal police work will save the police organisation
from the embarrassment of handling issues for which it is not equipped either mentally or
professionally or organisationally. This measure will exeme the police organisation from
unwarranted pressures that add to the dehumanisation process also enhances its legitimacy as
the guardian of the order and security of the human interests.
IMPORTANCE OF PUBLIC RELATIONS
Though efforts are en train to ameliorate the image of the Indian police, nothing
substantial could be achieved due to amateurish handling. The present Indian police
managers have their image development wherewithal limited to issuing occasional press
statement while image development has become a highly advanced field of specialisation
with perennial scope for further advancements. In view of the considerable significance of
the image for successful police operations, the wherewithal of image building in the police
is required to be updated with the latest techniques applied by professionals in the field. It
does not suffice if the police is humanised; the police also should appear humanised. While
public relations professionals can handle the job from the organisational level, an insight to
the police about the rudiments of public relations is sine qua non if it is to appear humanised
to the public eyes. This necessitates the exposure of the police to the latest public relations
techniques at regular intervals to imbibe the skill of civility in interacting with the public.
IN-SERVICE IMAGE AND ROLEPLAY

The proclivity for role play is a major driving force in the process of motivation. People
who enter a new setup, look to their new environment for the role they should assume and the
setup tenders them homo coloris in conformity to its own image. People joining a humanised
organisation play the role of humaneness to fulfil their esurient urge to identify with the
setup. The in-service image of an organisation is a powerful springboard that sets it to
actuate that image. An in-service image as a humane setup is de rigueur if humanising the
police is to grow as a tradition. The very reputation of the police as a humane setup limits
the options of the insiders against acting antilogous to its reputation and thus exert an invied
pressure to rise to the expectations of the organisation that owns them. The process of
building a humanised image ab intra requires the assistance of skeely image-building
technicians and adroit operations by police leaders. This forms the desinent and vital stage in
humanising the police.
Humanistic propensions in a hierarchical setup like the police should permeate from
above should the organisation be humanised and its power-strata identify it with their
organisational self. The police leaders should set standards of human comportmetn for
others in the organisation to make it the substruction of organisational behaviour. Policing is
an exercise revolving around the fulcrum of humanism while humanism is the foundation on
which the edifice of policing should stand. Policing is a crime sans human concerns to
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support it. The infaust polarisation of dulcet human propensities from nefandous policing
activities in the present police setup is a serious organisational malady that renders the very
policing system of India counter-productive and as a perpetuator of the licensed crimes.
Policing powers are a trust invested in the police for exercise in the general interests of the
people. The police loses all its claims to power, the moment it sinks its concerns for people
and its policing activities become a depravity, pure and clear.
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INDIAN POLICE
AND SIXTY YEARS OF INDEPENDENCE
Independence circa half a century back marks the greatest turning point in the history of
Indian police. It marks the end of 88-year history of policing on modern lines under the
British Raj which began with the enactment of the Madras District Police Act of 1859 and
assumed countrywide acceptance with the enactment of the Police Act of 1861.
Independence marks the beginning of the history of Indian police under Indian hands in a
democratic milieu unlike of yore though in form and contents they were its continuation. The
hitch lay in its sprit, in the contradictions of the intentions of a colonial police and the
traditions of a democratic police. It patently is against jus naturale to expect a colonial
police transform to a democratic setup overnight with the awakening of the country at
midnight. Spirit is never known to be a quick-chameleonic, particularly while form and
contents maintain their stead. Change in spirit is the natural outcome of changes in
ambience leading to metamorphosis of value system and attitudes by rapid exposures to
changed experiences. The process perforce requires a very long period of trails and
tribulations to ripen the spirit to its new avatar. The first fifty years of independence of India
marks this period in context of the spirit of Indian police maturing to democratic traditions in
the hands of Indian rulers.
RISE OF CLANDESTINE OPERATIONS
It is significant that the history of police of sovereign India begins immediately posterior
to the turbulent years of the second world war which opened up or saw expansion of a new
vista of duties for the police worldwide. The most kenspeckle of them is clandestine
operations in international scale for national security. Though the history of intelligence
collection and covert operations go as far back as human history itself and stand next only to
prostitution as the oldest profession practised by man, it flowered, expanded and received
worldwide plaudite as an established tool of statecraft only during and after the maelstrom of
the second world war with Germany, the Soviet Union and Britain before and during the war
and the United States and Israel after, perfecting the techniques. The raising of the Central
Intelligence Agency(CIA) in the United States in the early years of 1950s from the crumbs
of the old American secret service of the second world war vintage, the Office of Special
Services (OSS), with an elaborate Plans division to handle gray clandestine operations
abroad (sometimes domestic operations also) marked a long step in the history of
international twilight operations. Following words spelled out by the Hoover Commission
during those momentous days form the agenda of secret police service all over the world.
The commission, in justfication of postern operations, said, There are no rules in such a
game. Hitherto acceptable norms of human conduct do not apply. If the US is to survive,
longstanding American concepts of fair play must be reconsidered. We must develop
effective espionage and counter-espionage services. We must learn to subvert, sabotage and
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destroy our enemies by more clever, more sophisticated and more effective methods than
those used against us. It may become necessary that the American people be acquainted with,
understand and support this fundamentally repugnant philosophy.
COVERT OPERTIONS OF INDIAN POLICE

Free India, in spite of its moral values and abiding impact of Gandhian Philosophy of
truth and honesty, found covert operations sine qua non for survival. Though attempts were
scratchy in inchoate stages, India made significant breakthroughs in penetrating, moulding
and controlling the affairs of the neighbouring countries after raising the Research and
Analysis Wing (RAW) to handle covert operations in foreign countries. Its operations and
performances in Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Pakistan and to somewhat lesser extent in
Afghanistan, Nepal, Bhutan, Burma and some of the Gulf countries are on par with the best in
the world. Its chevisance in international events like the creation of Bangladesh, containment
of Eelam ambitions of Sri Lankan Tamils in India, eheckmating the Kashmir card of Pakistan
and controlling the terrorist misadventures of international Sikh communities against Indian
targets earned it worldwide accolades. This is in spite of the fact that Indian secret police is a
feather-weight performer in the arena of international clandestine wars and its overall
performance in world events is very unimpressive for the size and resources of the country.
Reasons are many. Foremost of them is lack of commitment to the national cause and
national ideologies like national integration, democracy, secularism, nonaligned movement
and mixed economy. Another reason is the moral atrophy experienced by Indian police after
independence leading to decline in professional commitments. Postings to RAW with
opportunities of foreign assignments has become a status symbol and lost all substance of
challenges and performances from it. The other reason is political interferences in postings
to and transfers of the RAW officials. It is political connections rather than security
screening and clearances and aptitude for clandestine operations decide the postings in the
RAW. Huge unbudgeted and unaccounted funds at disposal makes the RAW postings highly
lucrative and attracts easy going siblings of the powerful to its fold. This is an extremely
dangerous trend in a security apparatus where commitment, trust and absolute secrecy form
the basics of survival and an unguarded moment may make life and death difference for
many. More important, clandestine operations unlike other police responsibilities require
highly specialised skills, ignoring this need in manning the organisation is a sure way of
compromising the organisation, betraying its operational efficiency and exposing the
country to dangerous security threats. Another important reason for the retarded growth of
Indian secret police is the general lack of security consciousness in the country and inability
to see and place the imperatives of a national security policy in right perspective. These
glitches end-up in security breaches of the dimension of ISRO spy case Purulia arms drop
case. Rattan Sehgal episode etc. India lacks larger horama of the country and its survival
needs and goes algate weighed down with ephemeral considerations. Its approaches to
national security are always piecemeal, incoherent, causal and disturbingly unsound. It does
not have a sound and well-conceived national security policy. Its approach to security threats
are always short-term face-saving responses which never contribute for the real long term
security needs of the country. If it is the situation at government level, people who fought a
mighty power to the situation at government level, people who fought a mighty power to
liberate their country from the yoke of foreign rule just half a century back care nevermore
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about even saving what they gained then from the internal and external inimical forces by as
much as raising a public debate on the subject of the imperatives of national security. Indian
security now is left to the mercy of time and it is sheer luck that Indian democracy survived
for long decades from the hungry wolves waiting to fall and prey on it.
NATIONAL SECURITY POLICY
National security policy is the craze of super powers of the world today. It is the essence
and unifying factor behind all national policies of most developed as well as developing
countries. Whether it is foreign policy, defence police, economic policy, industrial policy,
trade and commerce policy, science and technology policy or human resources development
policy, they are all oriented with an eye on national security and implemented to boost the
national security goals. Most developed countries have exclusive super agencies reporting
directly to the head of the government to advise on, oversee and mastermind national security
policies and its operations. The US has the National Security Agency (NSA) doing yeoman
service to the country as the national security advisor to the president of the country and
enjoys powers superior even to the CIA in national affairs. Israel and Russia have their
efficient equivalents at political levels to formulate their national security interests. Most
developed countries have created their own gestalts to mastermind matters touching national
security interests with powers invested to override decisions of other departments when
national security interests are at stake. India is yet to learn lessons from these developments.
PARALLEL POWER CENTRE

The excessive concern for national security in some countries often led to the creation of
parallel governments and power centres ectogenous of the democratically instituted
governments. There are instances of black acts committed against legitimate policies of the
countries in the garb of national security as in the US, and civilian governments toppled and
constituted at will eo nomine as in Pakistan. Pakistan is an example of constitutionally
elected government living under the shadow of fear of its secret police, the ISI, which
assumed on itself the apocryphal responsibilities of Pakistans national security. The blackest
days of twilight operations in the name of national security were seen by the US when a
pollent section of the Plans Division of its own CIA with the cooperation of crime
syndicates and Cuban hors la loi, assassinated its young and popular president John.
F.Kennedy in 1963 en revanche of the latters opposition to the CIA-inspired Bay of Pigs
invasion of Cuba and pro-peace overtures to the them Soviet Union. A positive aspect of
India'spoor concern to security interests is its clean slate as far as existence of secret parallel
governments and clandestine power- centres are concerned. It is to the credit of Indian police
that its secret police remained subordinate and loyal to their legitimate authorities in the last
half century since independence. It per se is a remarkable accomplishment.
INDIAN SECURITY CONCERNS

This does not mean that everything is all right with Indian security agencies. Their filed
for operation continues to be confined to traditional isolative methods ignoring the present
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needs of integrated approach in national policies and programmes. This is a dangerous trend
in the present competitive world where even a minor edge over the opponent makes the
difference of elimination and survival for a country. While even developed countries made
all aspects of their national policies subordinate to their security interests, India cannot afford
to subordinate its security concerns to the freaks of people who come to head various
ministries in government and their political and personal ideologies. India lacks in a cadre of
long range security programmes to make its security operations meaningful and purposeful.
It is lagging in hi-tech ultra-secret espionage operations far behind world standards and
nowhere comes near even to the old U-2 spy plane of the US of 1950s . Its secret police is
yet to make perficient use of the countrys impressive progresses in fields like satellite
launches to the outer space and other space programmes. Except for isolated cases as in
Pakistan, India is yet to fully utilise the services of world-class mercenaries in its clandestine
operations as in vogue in almost all major gray operations worldwide. Security services in
India unlike other countries world over, do not weigh high in the national priorities of the
country.
SPECIAL BRANCHES
This affairs are worse in Special Branches or intelligence units of states and union
territories. Special Branches have become pure and simple tools of political intelligence of
ruling parties with surveillance over political opponents and assessment of field situations for
the benefit of political masters becoming the piece de resistance at the cost of law and order
concerns accrescently losing importance in the portfolio of their responsibilities. As far as
internal security is concerned, they are rather passe and ill equipped for the task in
manpower
resources, hi-tech equipments, expertise, organisational
efficiency and
motivation factors, save some routine VIP security exercises sans any expertise in it. That is
also meant just to oblige and gratify political masters and provide grandeur to their
presences. Their assets in news media which is sine qua non for a sound Special Branch is
rather impoverished and mostly confined to local newspapers for the purpose of
disinformation and keeps track of news dissemination. Occasionally, these contacts are
misused to promote favourite subordinates as authors or experts in a discipline. The
ambition of these Special Branches providing skilled recruits to security agencies at the
national level remains a far-fetched dream in the situation of gross unconcern for national
security commitments.
PERMANENT CORE GROUP FOR NATIONAL SECURITY

Institution of an all-powerful apolitical agency for national security with a permanent core
group of security experts of proven commitments to the cause of the country as the nucleus at
the highest level as the guide and advisor in national security matters to the head of the
government a la the NSA of the US with over-riding powers can alone change the situation
for free India and lead it safely to the centennial of its independence. Efforts made to this end
till now are rather sketchy, ill-conceived and half-hearted. It is high time now that spadeworks are initiated to institute a comprehensive agency in India for handling national
security concerns.
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PRAVEEN KUMAR
EMPHASIS ON VIP SECURITY

National security for all practical purposes in India is synonymous with VIP security
and Indian police vocabulary refuses to read for it any meaning much beyond protecting
leaders. This is because of the lopsided loyalties and aberrations in Indian police in
understanding professional objectives and responsibilities of the police at best and a
tendency to trade off professional responsibilities and services for the benefits of career
promotions of a few at worst. That is why units for the security of different kinds of VIPs
like Black Cats, National Security Guards and Special Protection Group are raised from time
to time. While security of national leaders is an important role of a national security policy,
it is not the only plank on which the national security concerns stand. There are many more
important and vital roles a national security policy is called to assume and sidelining those
aspects for the sake of a single role of political clout is suicidal tot he countrys security
interests. It is public knowledge in India how VIP security has become a public farce with
all kinds of people with some lobbying
muscle striving and obtaining a security
classification depending on the type of money and power they have so that they get the cover
of highly trained police personnel as a caract of their prestige and social standing. It has to be
understood that all matters concerned with national security are highly sensitive and
considerably grave entities and need to be treated as such. They should not be allowed to
stoop to epideictic exercises for the benefit of a few powerful as witnessed in democratic
India. Such abuses lower the gravity of national security commitments. National security has
to be treated and respected as a matter of highest priority and insulated from the trifle fancies
of superficial leaders. The strength and relevance of national security to the country lie in its
esoteric and purposeful operations; not in pandering to the superficial needs of a powerful
few.
VIP SECURITY AS A SHOW BUSINESS

VIP Security has become such a craze in Indian police that it incorporates all wings of
the national police force in its body, it be central police, state police or district police, it be
security police, Special Branch, striking forces, investigating agency or law and order
police. In the process, other police functions rapidly lose importance as the pressures of VIP
security mount up with the number of dignitaries and their spheres of activities expand with
the accommodation of more and more influential people and their kith and kin under
pressures as VIPs. All said and done, these VIP securities are nothing but shams meant
only as epideictic ensemble without any substance as far as real protection is concerned in
the present age of hi-tech terror.
The period saw no substantial progress in expansion and reorganisation of the district
police. There are much to be done in the field, both in strengthening the organistion and
cleansing it. Policing at this level comes in daily contact with the hoi polloi, and for them
police means the district police. The police at this level really form the image of the police
for the common man. Unfortunately, corruption is rampant in district police, because of the
powers invested in it to control the daily affairs of the people. The power breeds corruption;
and the corruption breeds mad rush to man key positions in district police. In magnitude also,
the district police form the biggest slice of the police force in the country.
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The serious maladies witnessed in secret police and investigation agencies of India are
actually common symptoms of the atrophy observed in all wings of Indian police including
the law and order police. Dishonesty, lack of professional commitment, extra-professional
loyalties and unchecked corruption are the albatross that commonly suffer Indian police at all
levels. It is not a rosy picture to have to a police force more than a century old and now
reaching half a century mark of existence in a free country. The deterioration of Indian
police is steep after independence. Perhaps, democratic rule in the country sinsyne has not
done any good to Indian police. The nexus of police with criminals and politicians is
smothering and squeezing the country and its public life out of its vitality to a stage of
paralysis. While the virus is coram populo in states like Bihar and UP, it is eating up the
vitals of the country in other states ab intra. No part of the country is free from this slow
process of sphacelus. The talk of private armies during elections in UP and Bihar is indicia
to the confidence Indian police inspire in public after fifty years of self-rule. Indian police in
1990s appear like a century-old giant tree rendered hollow ab intra by the temite of
corruption. Unless something is done fast to return the vitality of the professional pride and
commitment, Indian police may irrevocably fail the country in leading it forth to the centurymark of Indias independence.
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PRAVEEN KUMAR
CHALLENGES OF THE POLICE SETUP
The hazard of the Indian police lies in immobility of its organisational structure. The
existing police system is utterly devoid of any adjustment mechanism that keeps it relevant to
the zeitgeist. A time-to-time review and concomitant updating of the police organisation
becomes sine qua non in the circumstances, particularly while the nascent democracy lounder
the policing system of India remis velisque, quite obvious of the futuristic kiaugh. A
systematic study of the policing in India with an adequate pernoctation to screen the latest
researches and findings in relevant fields of social and politicial systems and science and
technology in reorienting the public organisation and administration is an essential parameter
in the vital exercise.
A police setup worth its salt should meet the specific needs of the policing. The police
setup must necessarily be raucle in its frame to be capable of absorbing the shocks to which
it would often be exposed. Secondly, motive factors should be substructed in the body of the
organisation as sound motivation alone can make policing a purposeful activity. This should
be reinforced with external motive factors that can be infused to the organisation e ra nata.
Thirdly, the system should be organised so as to generate optimism and confidence ex
propriis to excudit the magical entrainement. Another important aspect that should weigh
lourd in evolving an effective police organisation is evolving a mechanism whereby every
police officer or unit is put in charge of a specific job matching his or its competence and
aptitude. An element of entrain should be brought to policing so that the work in hand can be
attended to with genuine involvement by each police officer. Another strategic principle of
healthy police organisation is having absolute faith and giving full responsibilities to
subordinates with a concomitant, reward and punishment system that follows at the heels.
Any attempt to disturb the balance of faith, full responsibility and reward and punishment
system is certain to fell the organisation into desuetude. The extant concept of collective
responsibility through a chain of command has gone passe by its propensity to demotivate
the real workers due to the corrupt ambitions of those at higher levels in the chain of
command. Policing has grown of late to be such an independent field of specialisiation that it
is impossible for a mortal being to be proficient in even a single aspect of policing. It is rather
a folly to ween a police officer as being able to handle all aspects of policing though at
different times. Hence, the need of specialisation-oriented policing. The present managerial
world is increasingly realising the importance of human resources as organisational inputs.
Unless all-out efforts are made to inhaust to police the crme de la crme of the country with
exceptional attributes of probity, intelligence and commitment and impart eximious and
purposeful training to bring out the best of each, no efforts at updating the organisation can
bring about a sempiternal transformation in the setup. The fact that policing can be successful
only with popular co-operation, focuses the attention of the police organisation on the needs
of building up its image. Although efforts are already afoot towards building up the image
of the police, the depths of the possibilities are yet to be fully explored and exploited. A
scientific approach in this score will make policing tanato uberior. Also, the scope for
scholarly and intellectual activities in policing will make policing multi-dimensional and add
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to its effectiveness. The fremit reception given to intellectual activities in some quarters of
policing may not go down too well with the future police planners. The future police
organisation and administration should cater to the need of intellectual activities.
The present police organisation and administrative system have to be overhauled in the
near future as the ineffectivensess of the extant system becomes increasingly obvious with the
flaws in the edifice starting to gape wider. The areas wherein restructuring may be desirable
and the thrusts sine qua non to stuff the hiatus valde deflendus to have a featous police setup,
quite capable of facing the challenges of the future, are discussed below.
The proclivity of weighing the police with reinforcement of all types of legislations has
become a major hazard to effective policing. While the proliferation of legislations in
independent India made it impossible even to keep track of their numbers, it is senseless to
ween the police as being able to enforce them all. The stupendous task of enforcing these
legilsations adversely affects the effectiveness of the police and corrodes its credibility. This
is emphatically so with social legislations which pass out of our legislative houses sans
cohibition. These progressive measures are inherently controversial in nature and their
enforcement by the police weakens its credibility as an agency of serious business and
peremptory order. It is plauditory to conceive of the police as a vehicle of progressive
measures, but in the process, is certain to put both its credibility and professionalism into
jeopardy as the social legilsatioons lack depth and gravity to enforce them and assiduous
enforcement may ricochet as an out-cry of harassment and high-handedness. It is not in the
interest of the country to expose its police to such civil contecks and suffer it thereby.
India can have an independent social policing system under the social welfare ministry to
which police officers with a flair for progressive measures may be deputed. The social
policing system as a professional enforcement agency of the social policing system as a
professional enforcement agency of the social welfare ministry can do an effective job in
enforcing progressive social legilsations with all their nuances, by fully devolving on it while
saving the police organisation from the embarrassment of handling issues to which it is not
equipped either mentally, proffessionally or organisationally. This measure will exeme the
police organisation from unwarranted pressures and enhance its legitimacy in handling
serious security and law and order issues.
The growth of police functions as adnated to present life-style of increasing complexity is
enormous of late with policing slinking to the vitals of all streaks of social and nonsocial
living. Policing slinking to the vitals of all streaks of social and nonsocial living. Policing
has become a hi-tech affair these days with scopes for further advancements. Each major
activity of policing like maintenance of order, investigation of crimes, collection of
intelligence and security operations have assumed such an independent status of non a such
expertise and professionalism that these fields being inhered is neither desirable nor feasible.
Nor in the circumstances, does shifting a functionary from one field of expertise to the other
help his overall performance. Anfractuosity in any one of these fields of specialisation for
life is becoming a requisite as time goes by.
The futuristic policing of India must have its subordinate police as professionals in a
given field of specialisation, say maintenance of order crime investigation, intelligence
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collection or security operation with synergy manifesting only at higher levels. So India may
have independent law and order police, detective police, special police and security police
each separately recruited and trained for professionalism and expertise in their respective
fields. Officers from all these specialised fields should be eligible to rise to general policing
at higher levels on the basis of a pro rata quota system for promotions.
The increased preoccupation of the police with law and order and security issues in view
of the growing cataclysmic activities in the country has adversely affected effective crime
administration of late. Police stations have become registering stations as far as crime
administration is concerned. The time of the local police is fordone with immediate issues of
law and order and VIP security, and in the process, crime investigation has become a
casualty. The process may further deteriorate as security and law and order problems
increase in coming years. Neither the crime staff at subordinate levels nor the supervisory
staff at district and higher levels, in the melee, have the will or the resources to divert to crime
investigation while the crime rate in the country is assuming dangerous proportions.
Crime investigation should not be allowed to suffer because of disorder and insecurity in
the country, as otherwise, a vicious circle may develop wherein disorder and insecurity lead
to fall in investigation and flabby investigation in turn, to patulous disorder and insecurity.
This triste development may be effectively dealt with by an independent crime setup, parallel
to the law and order outfit.
An independent crime outfit in district and state may exquisitely behove to a futuristic
police setup by giving crime investigation a boost and insuring it against the peracute pangs
of organisational maladies of the future.
The compulsions of urban policing are strikingly different from those of rural policing.
Response time is the hallmark of urban policing where a delay of a few minutes can make a
difference between death and life as criminals and terrorists with the most sophisticated
communication, and weapon system and hair-raising organisational accuracy overawe the
police, pitted against them in the course of their criminal operations. The present police
station-oriented policing is incomeptent to meet the challenges of the urban criminals either in
resources or in organisational ingine. Further complacency in re own procinct may stifle the
very policing system of India.
Unity, resoursefulness and speed form the spine of urban policing. The control roomcentered policing in urban centres where men and transportation and latest communication
facilities that work round the clock in shifts enables galvanic operations to tackle law and
order problems.
This outfit with unlimited resources at its disposal for launching any type of
operation within a few minutes of communication may suffice to meet the challenges of
maintaining law and order in urban areas in the new age.
The chief cause of policing never being a profession in India the ineffectiveness of its
training facilities. In spite of adequate infrastructures available for training police officials of
various ranks these centres largely fail to meet the quality required to make a recruit a
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thorough professional. An overhaul of the extant training facilities in terms of its quality,
content and character is inevitable to keep the Indian police excubant to future challenges.
The training facilities should be made centres of scholarship and research on police subjects
with professionals of national reputation in each subject handling their respective subjects.
The psychology faculty of the centre should endeavour to build character and infuse right
orientation among the recruits. The faculty members of the training centers should be
exceptionally well paid so as to inveigle the best in the field to join. Army officers must
handle outdoor classes. This model helps in instilling the highest standards and expectations
in trainees till they become full-fledged officers and orient them to become professional
police officers, apart from distancing them from the moderate influences which are herded to
handle police training centres in the present setup. The trainees must be exposed to police
officers as guest speakers, by inviting very senior police officers of the highest integrity and
job standards to deliver talks on specific topics. Separate professional training courses should
be available in the training centres for law and order police, crime police, intelligence police
and security police with scope for advanced learning with an eye to the latest developments in
each respective field. Latest training methods should be adopted with management,
computers and advanced psychology inter alia as the common subjects of study for all the
courses. The training centres should give the impression of being temples of advanced
studies apart from being so.
Policing requires commitment and dedication on the part of its operators. The principles
of faith and responsibility must run invisus through the vitals of the policing, should it be
purposeful and successful. The extant bureaucratic malady that infested the Indian police
setup cohibits healthy policing practices. The police organisation should be reoriented to
develop a professional approach to its operations with full faith and responsibility as the
hallmark of the delegation of power. The present emphasis on procedures should be shifted
to commitment and result-orientation within the ambit of the rules.
An analytical study of policing, its trends and modern techniques helps to bring
professionalism in policing. Due encouragement for the study of theoretical aspects of
policing and its application in the field through in-service training will be a welcome step in
this direction. If police managers succeed in inspiring in police officers an interest, in
theoretical aspects of the policing and its latest techniques, it would be a kenspeckle leap in
abraiding Indian police to the challenges of the future.
Policing as a phenomenon of maintaining order and security in society cannot afford to be
oblivious of the flux in the modern lifestyles. As an integral part of civil living, policing must
prepare itself to amate the increasing complexities of modern life by modifying its
organisational and administrative setups to the demands, these vicissitudes create. The
changes warranted in policing may either be deciduous or peremptory depending on the
nature of the transition in society. It is left to police planners to analyse the nature of the flux
in the society and locate the areas where decession from the past practices has become sine
qua non for policing. This should be an ongoing process if policing is to retain its relevance
as the guardian of social discipline. The futuristic challenges of policing would be pro rata to
the twists of the future living. The prospects of Indian population reaching the mark of a
billion and the concomitant luctation of two billion needy hands to grab a share in the
countrys limited resources of food, shelter, water, clothing, electricity schooling,
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employment etc., naturally make life a cut-throat concours and a ruthless adventure devoid of
scruple, human values and concern for fellow men. It would be a fight for survival with less
competent and skeigh gentlemen going belive hors de combat. The kenspeckle pejoration
had already set in from the early sixties. Though the Indian policing system managed
somehow to deal with the vicissitudes till now, the geometric acceleration of the flux of the
coming years may prove to be too much to the extant police setup. Therefore, it si high time
now that we prepare out police organisation and administration for the future challenges.
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CHALLENGES OF
COORDINATION IN INDIAN POLICE
Multitude brings confusion. Multitude breeds rifts. Multitude is the source of contraplex
drives, necessitating efforts to forge divergent thrusts into a single mosaic. This is true of
police also. India has a multitude of police organisations. Crime and law and order being a
state subject, each state and union territory has its independent police force. A host of central
police agencies like CBI, IB, SIBs, RAW, CRPF, BSF, CISF, ITBP, SPG, BPRD, NPA,
NICFS operate under the direct control of the central government. The fabric of Indian police
is woven with nearly two scores of police organisations, held together by same laws,
procedure and the goal of national interests.
Various state and UT police organisations reflect the diversity of India while central
police agencies, the unitary nature. State and UT police organisations extending from Kerala
to Jammu and Kashmir, from Gujarath to Arunachala Pradesh enjoy divergent ethos,
environment and professional attitude in spite and uniform police structure and goals. They
are manned at lower and middle levels of the hierarchy by the people of the concerned
regions though officers drawn from the length and breadth of the country head them at the
top. These organisations jealously retain their identity and character and seldom venture out
to interact with others though much is made on paper and public platforms about the needs of
border meetings, combined operations and sharing of professional expertise and intelligence.
Though a deep feeling of fraternity is a reality in police all over the world, it seldom
manifests in cooperation and coordination in working for professional goals. Police
organisations see each other with suspicion. Competition rather than cooperation forms the
plane of their mutual relationship. The ingrained thirst for recognition and desire to
monopolise accolades and policing is the basic thrust of avoiding anything to do with
outsiders. Differences of job culture and environment make cooperation and coordination
further difficile. Differences of identity and character add to the problem. As a result, police
organisations build barriers around them and work in isolation on common issues of crime,
security and law and order, leading to duplication of work and wasted efforts en face
criminals and hors la loi with their tentacles spread all over the country, taking best advantage
of the splintered mosaic.
The spiel of central police agencies is quite different. They represent unity in diversity
with an amalgamation of men, identities, environment and character, drawn from diverse
sources and tested in a single crucible. Their stretch is broad covering the length and breadth
of the country with opportunities for interaction inter se and outside. These agencies do
depend on state and UT police forces for manpower. They do operate all over the country.
Yet, these agencies have their own identity, character and job environment, which do not
encourage give and take with state police forces and inter se in any meaningful sense. Again,
it is one-upmanship and immanent passion to corner all recognition. Precedence of narrow
interests over performance and results in central police agencies is not a wholesome affair.
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Synergy for better policing is briller par son absence in the mosaic of Indian police. An
institutional mechanism for cooperation and coordination between various police
organisations is the need of the hour in India. Old habits die hard. There are instances of
such an institutional mechanism being prove ineffective. An apex intelligence coordination
committee to bring all intelligence agencies under a single umbrella has not met with much
success in independent India. Save routine inconsequential papers and reports, intelligence
agencies and elite security and protection groups of the country work in isolation from each
other with no coordination to speak of. It is so also with police training and research
agencies, working in their own ivory towers abstracted from field requirements, as there is
neither the institutional mechanism nor the will to come together, interact and cooperate.
Reasons are many for these barriers. Police forces work under different governments and
ministries headed by politicians of their own political and ideological agenda. State and UT
police forces follow the agenda of their respective governments. Among the central police
agencies, CBI reports to the ministry of personnel, intelligence agencies to cabinet secretariat
and most of the other agencies to the home ministry. Egos of the heads of these governments
and ministries come to play in the style of functioning of the police forces. Added to this is
the bloated egos of the heads and chiefs down below the line of these organisations.
Together, they prove a deadly combination against creating a mosaic of police environment in
the country. Each piece works on its own in artificial isolation from the other. This is the
tragedy of Indian police.
Good fences make good neighbours. But, this is not true of organisations forming the
splinters of gestalt dedicated to common goal like policing. Cooperation, coordination and
synergy for concerned efforts are the needs here. Symbiosis, not fences makes sense here.
Organisational goal is the raison detre and has to be reached by all means and resources.
Every failed opportunity lost to do better signifies a failure. Every failed opportunity to
interact with a potential source is an opportunity lost to do better. Every wasted mutual
relationship signifies a failed opportunity to interact. Every missed beneficial contact is a
wasted mutual relationship. Such beneficial contacts being infinite among police
organisations, moving towards the same goal of security and rule of law, the dimension of
the lost opportunities to do better can only be imagined. This is what is happening in Indian
police: police forces failing to pool together their immense potentialities by each going its
separate way. And each looking shilpit and weak sans mutual support in the process.
Lack of coordination is not just an inter-organisational challenge. It is an intraorganisational problem too. In the mosaic of state police force under a single police chief,
myraid subordnate units pull apart from different sides and defy the compulsions of
cooperation and coordination inter se, required in the interests of the organisational goal.
District police units and functional units like the crime branch special branch, armed forces,
training units, police research and administration units, each function independently and in
complete isolation from the other in violation of the call for synergy from above. The
tendency of going alone is inveterate in Indian institutional psyche. Ultimately, it is
individual performances that is recognised and appreciated. Institutional performances have
few takers in Indian environment. Cooperation and coordination though spawns better
performance, the prospects of shared recognition and appreciation are deeply resented.
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Recognition and appreciation get precedence over organisational objectives in the present
environment of Indian police. The remedy lies in restoring organisational objectives to their
rightful place in the ambience of police. The immanent prevarication of the police from the
professional path and the ingrained slant to self-agrandisement make it easier said than done.
Border meetings are rare. More than that, often they are meaningless exercises conducted
for the purpose of record. Joint operations by neighbouring police units are rare to the extent
of being unheard of. Resentment to take advantage of the specialised units like crime
branch, special branch, training units etc is also evident. The only exception is the services
of the armed police in states and the paramilitary forces at the centre. The reason is that the
utility of these forces in controlling unruly mobs overshadows the problems of ego-clashes
and recognition.
Mutual indifference is just one side of the problem and simpler in that. The other, more
complicated face of the problem is inter-organisational rivalry and attempts to sabotage the
works of each other. This manifests in two forms: One, as a self-surviving, instrument and
the other, as a result of jealously and one-upmanship. Police in a region collude with lawbreakers of the region wherein the law-breakers restrain from creating problems in the region
in exchange for trouble-free life from the local police. The criminals are allowed free to
operate anywhere outside the jurisdiction of the local police. The arrangements can other
passive or active. In a passive collaboration, police, do not actively assit the law-breakers in
their nefarious activities outside. Just that the police knowingly shut eyes to the existence of
the criminals in exchange for the latter refraining from stirring water at their ponds.
Criminals in exchange for the latter refraining from stirring water at their ponds. Criminals
use the places for retreat and rest. They serve as hiding places for the criminals. Criminals
need such places of retreat and rest to fall back after their activities outside. Bangalore serves
as such a retreat for most terrorist groups including Naxalites, LTTE,ULFA,Kashmir
separatist and radical Akali cadres. The terrorists avoid striking anywhere in Karnataka and
unnecessarily stirring the police there. In return, Karnataka in general and Bangalore in
particular is used by them as a retreat for hiding, rest, medical care and strategic meetings.
Sivarasan, Subha and their associates hid in and around Bangalore after assassinating Rajiv
Gandhi. Naxalites are often noticed taking medical treatment at various private clinics in
Bangalore. So also other terrorist groups. Local police avoid acting against them unless
compulsions dictate otherwise, so that dogs in slumber are allowed to continue to sleep.
In an active collaboration, both the police and the criminals or one of the parties actively
assist the other. The police may assure and actually provide protection from potential
troubles. They may leak intelligence about outside police organisations operating against.
The hors la loi on their part may use their criminal skills to the advantages of the police in
sabotaging the interests of the rival police organisations apart from sharing the res gestae of
their operations with the police. The police may use the criminals to raise crime rate at
particular areas in the neighbourhood or create law and order problems there for strategic
benefits.
Even in case of cooperation and coordination as a state policy, coordination may become
a casualty in the absence of purposefulness and commitment. The combined operations of
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Karnataka and Tamilnad police often with the help of BSF in the forests of M.M. Hills region
along the Karnataka-Tamilnad border against forest brigand Veerappan is a point. Nine
years of combined operations yielded no results. Lack of coordination among Karnataka and
Tamilnad police is often stated as a source of the glitch. Approach of the police of the two
states to catch the brigand is presumed to be at variance. Tamilnad is considered to be
relatively soft to the brigand while Karnataka, that lost many of its officers and men to the
guns of the brigand, is after his blood. Au reste, absence of bureaucratic and operational
coordination between the police of the two neighbouring states and survives in his exploits
sans souci. As a strategy, he strikes inside the borders of a state and escapes to the forests of
the former state after striking inside the borders of the other state. A perfect coordination
between the police of the two states should have made the operation easier and more
feracious. But, it is not to be the case. The game is going on and the police of both the states
are frustrated on end. The case of Veerappan clearly shows that border areas where
coordination between different police units are called for for effective policing, are havens of
criminal operations. Absence of coordination in police makes it so.
Sabotage of mutual interest is not a problem confined to Indian police only. It is a
universal problem and manifested in the police of even enlightened countries like the United
States. There are instances available of the CIA and the DIA, the intelligence brethren of the
United States government, trying to steal sensitive assests and useful agents from each others
furrow and undermining them when failed to win over. Such instances in the police of other
countries, however, do not make them en regle in Indian police.
Lack of professionalism and single minded commitment to organisational goals is the root
cause of the problem. Absence of an institutional machinery for affecting coordination and
efforts to define the scope of such a coordination adds to the problem. The so called border
meeting and occasional seminars and conventions are informal and far-between measures on
individual inspirations of a few, at best. In the ambience of absence of the spirit of
cooperation and coordination, such isolated inspirations seldom make abiding impact, Mutual
suspicion builds barriers. The problem can be overcome by two methods; One devising an
institutional machinery for such cooperation and coordination between different police
organisations with a rider of making their use binding in all relevant case. A compulsion
brought about by law for cooperation and coordination will go a long way in improving the
situation. Second, encouraging and cultivating the spirit of cooperation and coordination in
the police culture. Coordination at higher levels in key operations and exposure of the lower
levels to their success stories will bring necessary changes in the psyche of the Indian police.
Careful overhaul of the selection process to absorb right people and a training programme
devised to strengthen the characteristics of coopertion and coordination will go a long way in
building an environment of cooperation and coordination in Indian police. Work curlture in
police force must encourage it. Leadership qualities that realise cooperative and coordinated
efforts into reality and pave the the path for it, have to be made the bedrock of policing and
police character.
Indian police now is more a collection of splinter groups than a mosaic. There is no
rhyme or reason in their mutual relationships. Different police forces do not match with each
other. There is discord and cacophony; no concinnous music. Each Police organisation in
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the tapestry of Indian police works for its own end at its own wavelength, spawning a picture
of disorderly melange. How such a motley crowd can perform the job of national interest
together? The disharmony cost India a Prime Minister and an ex-Prime Minister in the hands
of assassins and terribly suffered the country in the hands of the extremists of Punjab,
Kashmir and North-East. Dacoities are rampant. Threat to peaceful and orderly life is prolate.
Security is shaky. Crimes and steadily accrescent. Commitment to professional policing is
fractured. Public fund invested on the police goes down the drains. The resurrection of
Indian police must be built on the foundation of cooperation and coordination between
diverse police forces to make concerted policing possible. A semblance of unity in diversity
in the mosaic of Indian police is the need of the hour. A sense of belonging and oneness
among all police forces is sine qua non for effective policing. Unless this foundation is laid,
the edifice of Indian police is bound to crumble and collapse one day. No attempts to
resurrect Indian Police will ever succeed unless this basic need is fulfilled. A fractured police
setup as in India now is a dangerous drain on the public exchequer with unimaginably huge
money, time, energy and work wasted by seepage through weak joints. Once this problem of
cooperation and coordination is fully attended to, the money, time, energy and work saved are
enough to take the police to the heights unimagined before and infuse new life and vitality to
it. Unfortunately, no serious thought was given to this matter of utmost importance in the last
five decades of independence. It is high time now that Indian leaders realise the bevue and
make up for the lost time by giving their full attention to this nonfeasance. Only that can save
India and Indian police from the present maelstrom.
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POLICING THE POLICE
The work police or policing is derived from the Greek roots polis means city and
politeia, Latin politia and French police means polity; its English root is policy means
statecraft, plan or course of action especially in statecraft or administering the laws. The
spectrum of the meanings of the word police and policing swings from city in one
extremity to statecraft and administering the laws in the other. Police and policing imply
administering the laws of the country in the process of the statecraft. Police deal with laws as
part of the administration in shape of its enforcement and detection and investigation of its
violations. Policing the police is administering laws to police and bringing violators to book
selon les regles. It is a measure of fencing the fences to prevent them from themselves
looting the crop. The vectors of policing the police rely on the moral convictions of the police
force and pro rata decide the effectiveness of policing outside. A law-abiding police is a
boon to the country, its administration and policing system as well.
The very concept of policing the police is pregnant with the suggestion that police do not
necessarily limit themselves to the bounds of the laws, therefore require policing. A
protector, guardian and enforcer in one has two facets: he is a master as well as a servant at
the same time. This is what is expected of police in regard to laws. The issue is whether
police serve the laws in the capacities. They do act as masters in enforcing them. But their
role as servants of laws needs deeper probe about how far they are subject to and guided by
the laws in force.
Policing the police involves self-policing. Internal vigil against lawlessness within in the
form of prevention, investigation, enforcement and protection motivated by a sense of
commitment to law and justice is its pith. Such commitment presupposes professional pride,
conditioned by high morale spawned by clean professional culture of high values, sound
reputation and standing of the profession in society and the sense of achievement and
recognition, the profession induces. The elements of policing the police are embedded in the
organisational culture and the managerial dynamics of the police setup. Its value system,
objectives, means pursued to achieve them, attainments, strengths and weaknesses, the
reticulation of human relationship, public image, efficiency of managerial vectors, sense of
fairness in assessing performance and granting recognition determine the orientation of a
police organisation to rein in itself to the consuetudes within the bounds of law, justice and
popular acceptability. Their sensitivity to their image and reputation helps to strain every
fibre to keep up to public expectations and avoid unfair practices. This is au reste the
individual pride in the force about being a worthy member of a worthy institution. The
individual and organisational prides interact to create an ambience of high morale and great
professional pride to serve as the greatest tool of policing the police from within.
Creation of a distinct arm within the police setup to police the organisation a la military
police in army is another techinique. This is gratuitous in police for the simple reason that
police organisation is capable of handling police responsibilities within as effectively as
outside. The only block to the process is natural fellow-feeling and sympathies to erring
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colleagues. The issue can be handled through appropriate administrative measures au reste
adequate sensitisation to the threats of unlawful and criminal activities ab intra.
Criminal and other unlawful activities of the law-enforcers destabilise the democratic
foundation as well as the judicial system of the country. Police hors la loi while act as
harbourers and pillars of support to outside criminals and create havoc in the lawenforcing
system, no meaningful policing is possible. They boost the confidence of criminals and help
the spread of criminal activities. A true effort to arrest lawlessness in the country must begin
with pernoctation against outlaws within the police and drastic measures to snap their
connections with outside criminals. This brings the need of policing the police to the
forefront.
Efforts at policing the police must begin with right recruitment policy to ensure that only
right people enter the job. Next important stage is right training. Third stage is creation of
right ambience of job culture within the service. Fourth factor is institution of a right system
of rewards and punishments on the basis of actual performance. Fifth is sensitising the top
brass of the force about the need of policing the police too make policing meaningful and
purposeful. An extension of this sensitisation is willingness of the police administrators to
track down unlawful and criminal elements within the force and efforts to deracinate hem
from the system as fast as possible. It is easier said than done in actual practice.
Obstacles to policing the police are numerous, ranging from clever use of loopholes in the
system and laws to circumvent the arm of legal authority to use of external pressures to
extricate from impending disciplinary proceedings. Police is a part of the world outside and
cannot exist in complete isolation from it. Their close interdependance and symbiosis make
them sine qua non for each. In the circumstances, they mutually influence and the
lawlessness and criminal tendencies of the society outside seep into the police system to allay
its resolve for self-policing, and corrode the process. This allay reflects in recruitment,
training, job culture, system of rewards and punishments and resolve to cleanse the system.
Concomitantly police lose moral right to policing anywhere.
Vigilance organisation does keep tab on all government organisations including the
police. The arrangement is simply inadequate to meet the needs of policing the police for the
simple reason that the scope of a vigilance organisation is more or less limited to activities
related to corruption and that its jurisdiction is so widely spread on all government
organisations that it can hardly do any meaningful work to cleanse the police even on the
single agenda of rooting out corruption. The pith of such a vigilance organisation being
constituted of police personnel, chances of sympathies for criminal colleagues are more than
incidental. That is why, vigilance organisation can hardly be an answer for the problem of
policing the police.
Service and conduct rules that guide the conduct and activities of government servants are
too weak an instrument to meet the needs of policing the police. Rules therein couched in
procedural hurdles and usual governmental loopholes can scarcely be effective in providing
the vigorous drive needed for the efforts of policing the police. It is a fact that these rules
achieve no more than keeping the government business going. They are not meant either to
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inculcate true fear or induce motivation towards any end. Police cannot look to them for
sustenance of its need of policing the police.
An outside agency that can substitute for the lack of self-regulation in police is judiciary.
Both are closely-knit in the cause of the administration of law and justice. Police
organisation is functionally subject and subordinate to the directions of the judiciary in the
dispensation of justice and the rule of law. The ethos of judiciary prevents it from close and
day to day scrutiny of the police functions unless it resorts itself to pro-active mode in select
cases when warranted by the atrophy set in as in extant India. Judiciary is a disinterested and
uninvolved observer of the field trends unless it is forced to interfere in the overall interests of
justice. Its ethos prevent it from being an effective tool of policing the police save in rare and
far-between circumstances like the recent ones wherein handling of investigations of
politically sensitive cases came to public scrutiny and popular condemnation. Further,
judiciary lacks the infra-structure required to perficiently police the police. Judiciary is best
suited to give jolts once in a way on selective basis. This is just about to remind police about
what is right and what is expected of them rather than effectively policing the police.
Bihar is a distinct example of how police, putrid at the core, add to the atrophy of the
public life rather than bringing a sense of discipline there. Police organisation is not only
ineffective there; it foots the bill of being a setup of criminals in uniform. The claim of
justice Mulla of the Allahabad High Court in 1968 that if there was an organised force of
criminals in India, it went by the name of police, perfectly suits the police setup of some
major states of North India like Bihar and U.P. Though Punjab police did commendable job
in containing terrorism in Punjab the police in the job there at the time were almost sans selfpolicing. The point is that the same goal could be achieved with better self-policing in part of
the Punjab police. Nexus of criminals and police in Bihar is too striking to be ignored. The
police of U.P do not lag behind much. The misease is a common phenomenon in India.
Politicians hold criminals and police together from above for obvious reasons. In the
circumstances, policing the police from below becomes meaningless and purposeless even in
the unlikely even of efforts of self-policing within the police. The true clavis of policing the
police lies in breaking the noxious nexus.
Policing must begin from within and spread outward. Self-policing is the primus of the
responsibilities of any effective policing setup. It needs higher commitment and resolve as a
foundation to meaningful policing otherwhere. Self-policing must constitute the core of
activities of a police organisation worth the name. As only a flame within can shed light
outside and only a conviction within can spread confidence outside, a clean environment
inside only gives strength to cleanse the world around. The conundrum is how to bring it
about. Power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely. Police as the arm of the state
power structure, enjoy enormous powers. Incidence of corruption is natural in the
circumstances. Corruption of police badly affects the hoi polloi and their trust in police,
judicial system and honesty of the government. A corrupt and lawless police makes lives of
plebeian a hell. Policing by a lawless and corrupt police is just a mockery played on hapless
people.
A cardinal measure in policing the police is making the unlimited power of police
accountable. The present provision of protection given for acts done under the colour of
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office is largely misused. No proper mechanism is evolved to demarcate what to what degree
constitute acts done under the colour of office. Anything done in performance of official
duties including unlawful acts and often those done outside the ambit of official duties too
are carried piggyback under the clause of official protection unless the acts draw the public
scrutiny and become too hot to be defended by the birds of the same flock in uniform and
their godfathers above in government. Police being a closely knit organisation, its members
rarely let down each other as any of them may find himself in a similar situation at any time
in the prevailing prolate disregard for law in police . Also, the usefulness of police render
them protected for their misdeeds by the bureaucracy and the politicians. The outcome is a
police force with unlimited powers and protection against its misuse without any purposeful
accountability. No organisation with such powers, protection and lack of accountability can
develop any respect for law. The foremost need is forcing police out of this protection to
bring it en plein jour to accountability for every evil committed by it. Protection have to be
an exception rather than a rule for actions done in honest discharge of official duties. A
suitable machinery manned by disinterested persons of high standing can be instituted to
oversee the benefit of official protection is justifiable. Leaving the matter to official
superiors from the same flock may only serve the travesty of justice.
An important safeguard to strengthen the process of policing the police is insulation of
disciplinary and rewards system from outside influences. A sense of exactitude and
promptitude has to be injected to the system and objectively is made the abracadabra of the
process. A sense of certitude about penal action for a given failure has to develop in the
organisation. Punishment has to be pro rata to the gravity of the mens rea and adequate to
deflect others in the organisation from pursuing the path in future . More important, nothing
from outiside should deter the process, so that the feeling of security that one can save
himself from whatever irresponsible and unlawful act by bringing pressure from outside
remains no more available to schemers and worng-doers.
There are informal measures too, like transfers and selections of police personnel for
medals and other rewards. Presently these measures are careened towards money and
political clout one enjoys which is earned always by corrupt, immoral and illegal means.
Once weightage is given to right people in the organisation in posting to rewarding jobs and
selection for medals and other rewards instead of those with illgotten money and political
clout, the measure itself works as an enormous boost to the morale of the police force and
brings its members on right and lawful tracks. The first step here is bringing an end to the
present policy in favour of money and political powers. This step itself helps police force
enormously in weakening the prise of money and political clout on the police force. The
positive step of encouraging right personnel by proper transfer and rewards policy adds to the
benefit. These subtle measures can do wonders to the efforts of policing the police.
Intelligent employment of conventional stick and carrot method can certainly cleanse the
police setup and make policing purposive, meaningful and effective. What is required is
willingness to police the police to make the organisation condign of policing responsibilities.
The power of police does not lie in its numerical strength or the arms it weilds. The real
power of police is its moral strength and the image it presents to the outside world. A clean,
honest and professional police have galvanic effect on the public as well as law-breakers.
They are feared, loved, respected and patronised by everybody. This is an environment, most
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conducive for perficient policing. Clean and professional police help the cause. A clean and
professional police is possible only with an effective tool of policing the police. The major
task in reforming and building a new police force to India is restructuring it with an inbuilt
mechanism of effective self-policing. How fast it is done, so much easier for the country to
build a healthier nation by the time India will celebrate the centenary of its independence.
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MAN MANAGEMENT IN POLICE
Man management is the point d appui around which all organisations revolve. Among
man, material, machine and money, it is man with his skill and creative ingine, with his
wisdom and capacity for ceaseless labour, with his thinking faculty and intelligence,
manifests in excelsis in any organisation structure as its real spine. The strength, vitality,
quality and real test of any organisation depend upon its human stuff and the process of its
man management. For, man in an organisation stands for totality of his motivation to the
organisational objectives and totality of motivation a toute force depends upon the grade of
man management in the organisation. Ergo, man management is the fulcrum of any
organisations process of survival. This is more so in a police organisation where policing a
fond is a human resources orientated profession with boundless need of motivation for
successful operation and therefore substructured tout a fait on the merits of man management.
A police organisation sans right man management policy is bound to crumble in a welter of
discontentment and demotivation. Salient parameters of a sound man management policy in
police organisation though vary e re nata, more prominent of them can be discussed to lay the
matter in right perspective.
HIGH MORALE
The present Indian environment of ruthless competitions impleached with the
degringolade of values made human resources management a farce in India. The
Wherewithal of human resources management like recruitment, promotions, transfers,
rewards, punishment etc, is no more employed for the maximum benefit of the organisation.
Self- interests have undermined quality and character and organisational interests are
subordinated to personal behoofs. Though this proclivity is prevalent in all fields in India of
late, its adverse effects are kenspeckle in police organisation as the line-system of the
organisation makes the ingenuity of human resources management, a factor having direct
bearing on the quality of the policing. While is becoming a dynamic part of the governance
in urban areas, with the rise of urban pockets, the damage done by egregious management of
human resources in the police cannot be exaggerated. The declension may go patulous with
the passage of time if frack measures to arrest the depravation in human resources
management are ignored.
Diligent efforts at the highest level in the organisation to create a force characterised by
integrity, commitment and intelligence may be the foremost need of a police organisation of
the coming age. The prevalency of police administration over the general administration in
the survival of a nation as a democratic and orderly country may necessitate future changes in
recruitment and service condition rules to attract the very best talents of the country to the
police organisation with extraordinary care to ensure that anything less than the best with
clean antecedents does not step into the organisation.
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WARMING-UP PROCESS
The period of initiation is the most important and impressionable period in the career-life of
fresh recruits to the police department. The process of warming-up is based on the
psychological needs of human nature. New entrants must be handled with utmost care to give
them confidence and a feeling of belonging at the incipient stage itself. A sense of
confidence and belonging to the organisation and an ingenerate love and respect for the
higher ups are the substruction on which discipline grows. Efforts to inculcate disicipline in
a void a like waiting for rain from the autumn sky. Indian police impresarios failed to
understand such finer nuances of administration when they copied the system of the British
Indian police. And so we now have a police system where discipline is insisted on
subordinates sans the conditions requisite for the discipline. The recruits who enter the fold
with open sensibilities and high expectations, wither after braving for a while the brusque and
insensitive conduct of their higher ranks. These recruits continue thereafter to be constant
enemies of the higher ranks and the department for which they must continue to work for the
next three to four decades. A police department constituted of such members, thanks to the
shabby approach of the insensitive higher ranks in this most impressioanble period of the
formers carrier-life, cannot turn out eximious work. It is a tragedy that India neither spawned
a police force of its ain superior values nor copied the police force of the British vintage in its
entirety with its finer points, but cultivated instead a burlesque of the rough and mediocre
aspects of both.
WORK PRESSURE
All creations in their fraicheur and the natures bounty are kind and tender and elegant.
The strains of the environment cause inquietude in natures balance and leads to the
obfuscation of a few precious sheens from its innards. It manifests in loss of human factors in
man and his mental space turns intenible of human qualities by environmental strains such as
work-pressures.
The Indian police is weighed down with an impossible quantum of responsibilities and
tasks. This work-pressure adversely affects the mental balance apart from depriving those
tasks from the due attention. It is impossible to expect a man bogged down with
responsibilities and tasks to spare his time for the niceties of human qualities.
An important measure in humanising the police is to scale down the work-pressure on it
to a bearable level. An element of lightness in work makes the work environment dulcet and
provides an adequate mental space to devolve on the exuberances of human comportations.
HUMAN ASPECTS
The human aspects is the fulcrum of policing. Human comportment teethed with authority
to compesce the human mass forms the essence of police activities. Policing essentially is
human interaction, latitant in unending luctation to smite criminal and anti-social elements. It
is the human quality in the force that determines its effectiveness and vitality. Therefore,
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human resource policy in a police organisation needs careful and gritty handling at the
highest possible level. People can afford the luxury of humaneness when they are insulated
from the quotidian diversions of their occupational hazards. A delectable service atmosphere
mellows their responses to those around them. They begin to see the world in a better light,
in conformity with the atmosphere around them and try to share these pleasant feelings with
those they come in contact with. The levity of the environment and the absence of strains
from the service-front facilitate their opening-up to give vent to their latitant human contents.
An effort to humanise the police cannot ignore the need to improve service conditions to
make the police proud to be enraced in the vocation. The sense of contentment generated by
the service atmosphere devolves to the public that interacts with the police. In addition, the
public learns to hold the police in esteem in conformity with its improved service conditions
and sophistication. The interaction between the police and the public can be a sound
substruction for humane policing.
GOOD LIVING CONDITION

A resonably good standard of living helps the police to rise above the physical and
security need-levels to social and higher need-levels in the need-hierachy outlined by
McGregor and have the mental space for wider intersts like human concerns of kindness,
tenderness, elegance and civility. A low living standard retards the police image and esteem
in society.
The police organisation functions effectively only when a reasonably good living standard
is made affordable to all ranks, so that they can deal with anti-social elements from a level of
strength and confidence sans the lure of easy booty, thrown en revanche to a let-off. A low
living standard retards the police image and esteem in society, that are the essentials of
successful policing. It is more so in future while more and more of the so-called elite jump
into the fray of criminal activities in an increasingly complicated society. It is necessary to
make the police financially bein by adequately compensating for the risks and hazard factors
of their jobs to attract the best men to its fold apart from securing them against financial
distractions. A feeling of condign compensation and contentment is certain to raise the police
above physical and security need levels to give free expression to natural human tendencies.
It may be necessary to make police officers financially bein in comparision to their
counterparts in other services with risk allowance and hazard allowance to compensate job
factors. This helps to attract the best to the fold of the police organisation, apart from
protecting them from financial distractions. A feeling of condign compensation is certain to
boost the commitment and efficiency of the police.
HOUSING
Policing is a risky profession that draws antagonism and hatred by its very nature. It
involves round the clock duties, often at odd hours, at odd places in odd circumstances.
Retaliation by criminals is a constant risk under which policemen live. Their work constantly
exposes them to danger. The very nature of their duties necessitates their being treated on a
different footing to others in the government. The security of housing and other facilities
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being genersously available to them is de rigueur. Indeed the spirit of the ancien regime
remains undisturbed in matters of housing facilities for the police. However, a much more
liberal attitude in providing housing and other facilities to the police is necessary to
strengthen the Indian police and make policing more effective.
WELFARE ACTIVITIES
Police forces administer welfare funds for the benefit of their members. The current
approach of disbursing money from these funds to needy applicants needs to arouse a sense
of pride and dignity even in receiving help from the establishment. Much thought has to go
into this aspect to make the welfare funds useful to them without giving the impression of
charity. If the funds go to them as their rightful share, they would be put to better use than as
a charitable contribution. A newly structured police for the new age certainly requires a fresh
approach to the utilisation of police welfare funds.
TOUGHNESS
The Indian police is not paying sufficient attention to the need for physical prowess,
sturdiness and skill in martial art. The need for attention to these factors during recruitment,
basic training and in service challenges is tout a fait ignored. A healthy and sturdy police
requires healthy and sturdy men and officers, capable of taking up gauntlets and defending
themselves when exposed to comminations. The need can be sidelined only at the risk of
weakening the organisation. The police is often required to defend itself in circumstances
when unarmed and undefended. Policing involves performance of tough and physically
trying jobs that can only be performed when policemen and police officers are physically and
mentally fit. The police, aspiring to a bright future, must attend to this need for its own good
health with genuine seriousness.
UNIFORM
A change in the existing police uniform is an issue to be deeply probed into the improve
the police image. The present khaki uniform of police inspires resentment as it is
psychologically associated with repression and violence. A change of police uniform to
white or pleasant colours may prove to be a measure for the better in removing the negative
image of the police. The overall strategy in selecting a new police uniform should be to
infuse a sense of oneness and quality among the ranks of police and inspiring a psychological
disposition of friendliness, confidence, dignity, respect and healthy fear in the public with a
compulsion to see the police as their own people, but invested with the responsibility of a
noble task.
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HUMAN RESOURCES FROM THE PUBLIC

The performance of the Indian police in utilising the services of the public is far from
desirable. Most parts of the country are yet to avail of the services of the people as special
police officers, as is provided by police regulations to assist in policing. Wherever the
services are availed, the potential is not made use of to the full. The system of village police
officers also is yet to fledge to take off. The use of people as traffic wardens to assist traffic
police is limited to major cities of India. No police can be tout a fait self-contained.
Involving the public and obtaining its cooperation in policing is a necessary art which needs
to be carefully cultivated for making policing a success story in India. There is no shortage
of people among the public who would volunteer their services. Only, the police must open
its doors to such services and organise a system to make such services really effective and
useful.
WEAK LEADERSHIP
A factor that seriously affects the morale of a disciplined force like the police is weak
leadership, often affected by disorders of inferiority complex, in posts from where it can
affect the career of subordinates. This is a very serious situation wherein weak and insecure
leadership holds reins of the career of thousands of subordinates with many at very senior
levels. The feeling of insecurity in them colour their interpretation of normal conduct of
subordinates from their pusillanimous standpoint to interpret foursquare qualities of
subordinates as surquedry; normal reporting or explanation appears like an intrigue and
tough posture appears like insubordination. A desire to teach a lesson to the forthright
subordinates who make the leadership feel inferior is a natural outcome of this. This makes
retaliation an ever pensile threat to the career of the subordinates. And the threat, sine prole is
true in the police. This makes people of sound mind, a must in responsible positions in the
police. For an organisation like the police, the need of sound mind is more basic than any
other faculty. Should the prodigies of virtues like sufferance, intrepidity and four-square
qualities in face of odds constitute the bedrock of the police organisation, the force make
meaningful impact on the society.
The basic tenets of man management in police organisation discussed above are that a
person happy, contented and proud of himself makes his work situation happy, contentful and
something to be proud of, and ipso facto enriches his work and himself; that man au fond is
good natured, trustworthy and tends to take responsibility and if he is treated as such, he
certainly turns out his best work that if he is convinced that fairness is the rule of the game,
he is the easiest social animal to be handled. It is left to the police leaders to infuse these
tenets in their man management policy to get most out of the human stuff under their charges.
But the conundrum is that the police leaders need to be motivated towards the end, and who is
to motivate these police leaders to the task by own man management programmes?
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WHERE INDIAN POLICE IS HEADING?

History of Indian police on modern lines dates back to the dawn of the 19th century. East
India Company controlled police activities in areas under its charge through Village Police
Regulations. Post-sepoy mutiny saw enactment of laws to streamline police organisations at
provincial levels. Enactment of the Police Act, 1861 as Central Act V in 1861 is a major step
in streamlining police organisations and their activities at the central level. The Act which
calls itself as An Act for the regulation of police preconises at its Preamble thatit is
expendient to reorganise the police and to make it a more efficient instrument for the
prevention and detection of crime. The Act seeks to establish one police force under a State
Government and its Preamble declares prevention and detection of crime as the objective of
the force.
POLICE UNDER BRITISH CROWN
Periods sinsyne saw ascensive use of the police force for suppressing freedom struggle
and maintaining law and order au reste prevention and detection of crime. Indian police
metamorphosed to a law and order outfit in the next nine decades au contraire to the
proclamations of the Preamble of the Police Act, 1861. British Raj ruled India on the strength
of police force during the turbulent periods of the independent struggle. In the process, law
and order functions came to centrestage in the charter of priorities of the police duties at the
cost of the objectives of prevention and detection of crimes.
A MAJOR TURNING POINT
Indian independence marks a major turning point in the history of its police. The event
marks the transition of India police from a colonial heritage to a democratic character. The
change has momentous impact on the spirit, character and objectives of the organisation. The
basic interests of a colonial police is the perpetuation of the colonial rule wherein matters
ectogeneous to the interests are treated secondary. In a democratic police, the foremost
objective is upholding the interests of the country, its people, its democratic heritage and the
sanctity of the constitution. This is a formidable responsibility. Maintenance of order, rule
of law, security of the people, safety of the national properties and interests, prevention of
offences and investigation of crimes sit squarely on the sturdy shoulders of a democratic
police. Its allegiance shifts from the rulers in a colonial rule to the people, the interests of the
country and its constitution in a democracy. The shift is basic to the character, job culture,
functional values and the organisational gestalt of the police force.
WORLD-WIDE TRENDS
The cardinal question is how far Indian police in the democratic ambience worked out its
adaptations to the new situation and zeit geist. Half-a-century should suffice for a fair and
complete assessment. The developments Indian police underwent in this period can either be
due to the world-wide developments in the field of policing and police system as a
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continuing process or due to the adaptation of Indian police from the colonial heritage to the
democratic vintage. The evolution in world-wide policing practices and police system in the
latter half of the 20th century itself is portentous. National security activities gained primacy
neck and shoulder above the crime and law and order functions. With it came the grey areas
of clandestine operations across the countries. Police shed their uniforms and threw laws and
morals to the wind in pursuit of national security policy. They became international players,
hopping from country to country in disguise, committing murders, overthrowing
governments, forging passports, shipping weapons, training rebels, spreading, disaffections,
organising violent protests etc in the interests of their own countries.
SECURITY CONSCIOUSNESS
Indian police could not lag behind. Moving pari passu with the world trend is basic for
survival. The consequence was the rising prominence of security activities at the cost of both
the prevention and detection of crimes and the law and order functions. A craze for VIP and
VVIP securityis the Indian manifestation of the new security consciousness. World-wide rise
in terrorism gave way for specalisation in anti-terrorist operations all over the world. Crackforces became the spine of the security police. Anti-hijack squads were organised as an elite
force of the police. Advances in science and technology made national security a high-tech
field. Satellites, modern communication systems, high resolution photographics, laser beams
, night vision systems, computer technology etc made national security highly advanced and
comlex operations. The international developments only marginally touched Indian police
for lack of will to be a major player in international clandestine warfares. The only real
concern of Indian police more suo in the last half century was VIP and VIPs security. Here
too, performance did not match the concern as many of its important leaders including those
occupied top positions of Prime Minister and Chief Minister fell prey to assassins.
Indulgence of Indian police in form in lieu of substance, in number in place of efficiency and
in display where subtle moves were en regle led to the grave failures. The popular axiom of
Indian police to this day is that larger the number, better the security. Motto is countering
security threats with counter threats; or better, meeting security gauntlets with the show of
muscle power. The approach is the antithesis of modern perceptions and theories of security
policing. In Indian ambience, VIP security has become a fanfaronade; a procession of sound,
light and motions; a festive assemblage. Tragically, it is happening at the cost of law and
order functions and more so, at the cost of prevention and detection of crimes.
MUSICAL CHAIR
The situation is tardier in law and order functions. Obvious powers and tremendous
avenues for illgotten money make law and order jobs hotly sought after posts. Politicians
and people in power are the bestowers of these jobs on favourite few. Result is the desperate
concours of police officials of all ranks to aggrace politicians and people in power to corner
right spots in the musical chair. The ragmatical situation leads to law and order functions
losing the edge of fairness and objectivity in efforts to keep right people in right side. This is
how law and order police become law for themsleves or for their political masters against the
raison detre of a law and order machinery. The situation breeds corruption and encourages
partisan policing. Law and order duties being closely interlinked with the everyday life of
the people, police on the duties come in contact with them everyday and present the image
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of the entire police force. The hors la loi image, corruption, inefficiency, meekness before
the mighty, insensitivity, arrogance and immanity to the hoi polloi, these are the cornerstones
of the epinosic image, the law and order police spawned for the benefit of the Indian police.
LOSS OF CREDIBILITY
Fences itself grazing the field in law and order policing led to the debasement of moral
values in public life. Money power became the effective counterpeise against the arms of the
law and the state power. Making money by any means became the secret of success. Frauds
and corruption became lucrative business. Governance was commercialised and State power
became a venal commodity. Administration process became a scelerate and police lost
credibility. People were forced to pursue illegal and unwholesome means in their dealings
with the State and the police for survival. Laws as means of the state power became
loathsome objects for the commonman. This spread unrest and protests and violent
agitations became the order of the day. The people and the police found themselves pitted
against each to break the other. Violent protests led to violent suppressions by the police.
Hatred spawned hatred and violence begot violence. This is where India stands today.
Violence by dalits, attacks by Naxalites, terrorism in Punjab and Kashmir, gangawars in
Bombay and Bangalore, lawlessness in Bihar and UP or enlevements by ULF activists speak
of the symptoms of the same malady namely lawlessness in the law and order police that
divellicate from its raison detre.
CHARTER OF PRIORITIES
The pressure of law and order functions and importance of VIP security sidelined
prevention and detection of crimes to a minor responsibility in the charter of priorities of the
Indian police. Preventive techniques saw no updating from the mechanical motions of the
pre-independent vintage. Prevention is forgotten in the pressure of other works. Indian
police come to picture only after a crime is committed for detection. Here again,
investigations are hijacked by political and money muscles.
CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM
Too many cases under investigation with investigators is a serious misease of Indian
crime investigation field. Work-pressure leads to cursory investigation. Third degree
methods are adopted for easy results. The malfeasance itself is a black-mark on Indian
criminal justice system. Corruption and political pressures lead to miscarriage of justice.
Cases are taken up for investigation, investigated and chargesheeted according to political
conveniences. Bails, arrests, searches, pace of investigation and timings of the chargesheet or
final report are subject to the equation between the head of the investigating team and the
head of the government. This is the situation at all levels including the premier investigating
agency of the country. Case diaries were tampered at highest levels before sent to courts.
Intentions of chargesheeting political heavyweights were declared to media before legal
compulsions of such a sensitive act was met. Cases of political significance were
chargesheeted on filmsy grounds and later equitted by the court. Inaction in some cases in
part of the apex investigating agency of the country led courts to monitor investigation of the
cases and warn of contempt proceedings for noncompliances. The apex court of the country
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observed about the conduct of the heads of the premier investigating agency of the country
that there appears to be too many officers bitten by the publicity bugInefficiency appears
writ larger than performance. When the head of the agency was removed from his position
for misdemeanour, the media of the country fished in the troubled water to sensationalise the
issue; the apex court was constrained in the matter to observe that his removal should have
come earlier. This is the egarement to which Indian police condemned its criminal justice
system.
INDIFFERENT POLICE ADMINISTRATION
There should be a single root for the general fall of standards in Indian police. It is
insensitive and indifferent police administration, lacking in all branches of administration, be
it planning, organisation, cooridnation, direction, execution, control or research and
development mechanism. The cause of atrophy lies more in negative schemings than in lack
of a positive face. Haphazard organisational growth as responses to the time to time
pressures sans elements of foresight and detailed planning, corruption in selection and
recruitment procedures, sham training practices, non-existent inter-branch coordination,
apocryphal infrastructure, directionless directions, self-serving decisions, deviant control
mechanisms, perverted assessments and farcical research and modernisation programmes
have all added to the poor standards of Indian police today. Huge budget allocations made
for police are want-only frittered away without accountability. Precious human resources are
wasted away with frivolous and mischievous games in career planning programmes sans
thought or seriousness. The culprits of these shoddy affairs vary from the top-brass of the
police to the fonctionnaire in the government to the so called professional outfit, the
egregious Union Public Service Commission. Incompetence is writ large in their approach to
police administration. Their failures and mischiefs in managing human resources seriously
affect the interests of an organisation based on human resources like the police.
GLIMMER OF HOPE
Not that all is bad. Occasional good works are there. The role of Indian secret police in
liberation of Bangladesh is the tour de force of Indian clandestine operations. So to lesser
extents are the successes in containing activities of LTTE cadres and Sikh and Kashmiri
militants. India showed considerable presence of mind in Afghanistan front also. The fear
of law and a semblance f order, the law and order machinery could infuse in a country of
Indias size itself is a matter of credit and pride to Indian police. The unshaken trust of the
plebeian on the criminal justice system of the country nonobstante the extant maelstrom in
the field per se is its apogee and speaks volumes about the utility of police investigation in
controlling crime.
What is distressing is that what is done is far short of what is expected from Indian police.
No country can afford to have an apollyon in its midst in the shape of a corrupt, inefficient
and disorganised police force. Right leadership at the top can be the lever de rideau to bring
the system to its professional senses. Such a leadership in police should rise ab intra from the
very womb of the degenerate system by rupturing the womb. The walls of the womb are hard
and thick in police. That is why the apotropaic process takes a long time. Till then, Indian
police must boil in the broth of its own ignominy.
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LAW AND ORDER POLICING IN INDIA
Amidst the diverse functions the police perform, the plebeian identifies the police with
maintenance of law and order. He sees the police in uniform intervening the incidents of his
everyday life beginning from a simple street quarrel to mob violence. He sees them
conducting raids on vice dens and restricting his actions and movements in the name of
public interest. He sees their presence in well-nigh all state and public gatherings,
controlling crowd and maintaining order; in beats and villages, checking history-sheeters.
As a part of the law and order staff, traffic police in white uniform are visible controlling and
regulating traffic during rush hours. The hoi polloi have learnt to see the law and order
police as their saviours in hours of need malgre restrictions involved in the latters methods.
As far as public deals are concerned, help and support of the law and order police have
become sine qua non in the ambience of prolate fruad and unruly tendencies in public life.
Non obstante unvcivil methods and mouvais ton, ordinary citizens consider the law and order
police as a necessary evil and the pith of the public order. It enjoys a special place in the
psyche of the people as a hated saviour and a constant compagnon in public life. The image
of law and order police decides to them the image of the police in general. The law and
order police steeped in corruption makes them believe that the police force en semble smell
rammish and its good performances earn their unqualified plaudit to the entire force. The
strategic position of the law and order police in crime scene is patent from the fact that it
comes to picture right in time of a crime to prevent its commission as the true strain of law
and order policing while other wings are involved either too early as in the case of security
police or too late as in the case of crime police. The strategic timing brings them to the
centre-stage of crime management in the eyes of common people and wins them their trust
and confidence. Furthermore, the law and order police provide a rare praxis of symbion with
the law with each limiting and protecting the other unlike security police ectogenic and
crime police subservient to it. There cannot be laws sans the law and order police and no law
and order police sans the laws. This is the secret of the matchless relevance of the law and
order police to the orderly life of the country.
ABSENCE OF COMMON POLICY
Police stations are pillars of the law and order police reticulation with district police
offices in districts and police commissionerates in major cities at regional levels and state
police headquarters at provincial levels beholden to the responsibility. Intermediary levels
like circles, subdivisions and ranges coordinate the work interterritorial. Armed forces are
maintained as reserves at regional and state levels in addition at the centre to assist the law
and order police in highly disturbing situations. These are striking forces, specially trained
to handle serious lacunae of Indian law and order police is that no special training facility
is available for its staff for actually dealing with the quotidian law and order issues. It is
rather crude to expect the police to depend on past experiences and untrained personal
faculties to meet professional law and order challenges. The lapse leads to arbitrary handling
of law and order situations sans sound and uniform policy save peripheral measures to be
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adopted before and during use of weapons and opening fire. The only help available to an
official on the field is the general guidelines of his seniors who are equally illequipped to
handle those situations. This complicates situations during actual actions by depriving the
elements of mutual understanding among the police and the subjects as a natural and essential
factor of successful policing, and ipso factor creates chaos. The situation can hardly be
called as professional policing of law and order. The uncertainties of each law and order
issue added to it, make handling of law and order in India, a pure maelstrom.
PULLS AND PRESSURES
Pulls and pressures are sine qua non in a democracy. Pressures of influential and
powerful blocs is an accepted phenomenon of the working of a democratic government.
This is patent in the working of Indian police. Police as an agency that limits the liberty of
the people pro bono publico and discipline those who prevaricate, occupy a strategic position
in the interpersonal and public life of the citizens and makes success and failure or life and
death differences to them and their ventures. The strategic position of the police is more
pronounced in law and order policing. Sadly law and order policing in India imprimis is
management of pulls and pressures in the wilderness of rules and laws. Law and order
policing has become a contrivement of bending and interpreting rules and laws to the
convenience of rich and powerful who can pull strings at right places. This is an irony of
democracy. These prevarications go conspicuous in acts of political avatars and subject the
police to serve public censure. Otherwise, it is a mute affair as the police algate are on the
vocal side of the rich and influential against dumb and helpless plebeian with none to fight
the latters cause against the risk of the wrath of the police save isolated cases of courage and
commitment. The situation is to the benefit of the police as the shocks of possible
disturbances by the prevarications are always absorbed by the powerful on whose favour the
police acted and the interests of the police are safeguarded avec acharnement by them. This
is a tacit arrangement between the police and the powerful wherein the police are really
lower partners in the high-stake game played for the benefits of the powerful bloc. The
police with their little statute and easy contentment, trade off their high powers to the mighty
people for the limited gains of the easy process of policing, career promotions, peaceful life
and and lucre. In the process, the police sacrifice the sacred objectives of its profession.
UNDUE STRESS ON PLAYING SAFE
The current abracadabra of Indian police in managing law and order issues is letting
sleeping wolves sleep and avoid further troubles. Who meet the requirement are hailed as the
best law and order hands. Sine dubio, management of law and order issues anywhere
requires handling situations without inviting gratuitous problems. But, the matter seems
overstretched in Indian ambience. Not ruffling feathers unnecessarily is indubitably a
priority. But, this should not be in shape of a compromise, at the cost of law and justice, at
the cost of professional objectivity like in extant Indian law and order machinery which
believes in calm at all costs; those who are adequately insensate to go to that length by
placating powerful trouble-makers only win races for coveted law and order posts in Indian
ambience. The consequence of the apostasy is that the law and order policing in India has
become progressively a nest of playing favouritism with utter contempt for professional
character. Those with a sense of objectivity and professional probity self foot the bill as their
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professional uprightness falls foul with powerful lobbies who in tune with the thoughts and
fears of the higher echelons of the law and order police, create troubles to those who dared
not to favour them. The sleight leads to a vicious circle that perpetuates the wily interests of
the powerful at the cost of weak and dumb in the hands of the law and order police by
hoisting corrupt and lither elements in key law and order jobs. The conundrum is whether
being a part of such a vice system is as inevitable to the law and order police as it appears.
The answer definitely is in negative. An understanding of the trickery en train in the system
and a little toughness and resolve to stand up to the challenges of the powerful certainly help
to solve the riddles. The real question is whether the law and order police really want a
solution to the riddles or is it contented with what is there as its own making. All available
data point to the fact that the law and order police of India enjoy what is there as its own
making that provides them security and patronage.
INTOXICATING POWERS
Important responsibilities of the law and order police include prevention of crimes,
enforcement of laws, maintenance of public order, controlling rowdy activities, checking the
spread of vide dens, regulating meetings, processions, and other activities in public places in
the interests of the maintenance or order, controlling crowds, quelling mob violence etc. The
police are invested with a spectrum of powers which include powers to arrest, detain, search
seize impound, prosecute, levy collective fines, enter and take possession of private places
and buildings, use weapons to hurt and even kill to force compliance etc. Most of these
powers save in specified emergent circumstances are circumscribed by the need of obtaining
appropriate magisterial orders for exercise. The maintenance of law and order in large cities
is facilitated by investing the magisterial powers with police commissioners, often delegated
upto the level of DCPs in charge of law and order. The powers enjoyed by the law and order
police amate to their enormous responsibilities and perhaps rank first in range and the width
vis a vis other wings of the police setup. Unfortunately, the importance and the width of
powers of the law and order police per se are its real bane. The dependence of the common
man on this wing of the police and the fear, the police inspire prompt him to gratiate the
police by all his means. The incessant rush of people on the doors of the law and order
police for patronage creates farthing power-centres at lower levels, giving an image of feudal
lords to the chiefs of police stations who dare to preside over and pass judgements on small
local disputes irrespective of their relevances to maintenance of order and other police duties.
Marriages made in Police Stations are not uncommon in states like Karnataka and Tamilnad.
Favouritism abounds and rules and laws are sidelined at will in these arbitrary arbitrations.
This in itself creates angry frustrations among wronged people and leads to group rivalries
and clashes. Thus the police are integrated as an inseparable component of a deteriorating law
and order situation.
TOOLS OF PATRONAGE
Powers enjoyed by the police to control and contain vice dens and rowdy activities
provide a new dimension to the importance and manoeuvrability of the law and order police.
Powers are two-sided weapons employed for punishment as well as patronage. Human
nature being what it is, the police use its wide powers more as tools of patronage than as tools
to check rowdyism and vice dens in absence of professional commitment and motivating
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factors to guide them on right lines. Organised crime syndicates vie inter se for the favour
and patronage of the police that ensure the smooth sail of their anti-social activities and
protection to the gang. The gang that gains upper hand in the race rules the roast till the key
figures in the police responsible for the patronage remain in power with the tacit
understanding that the gang operatates within certain limits to save the police from undue
embarrassments plus a subterranean arrangement to share the res gestae. The importance of
the police being what it is for the survival of these organised crime syndicates, the importance
of having right police officials in key positions for these gangs cannot be overemphasised ;
this leads to huge amounts changing hands to ensure that particular police officials are posted
to particular law and order jobs. The endresult is happy and secure crime syndicates in
highly lucrative vice business under police patronage at the cost of unassuming citizens and a
contented and richer law and order police running the show without a fluster of major law
and order scene. The hoi polloi too are contented because there are no major disturbances
and crimes with the underworld crime lords on the right side of the police. Only they do not
know how they are looted ab intra and their unsuspecting character is taken advantage of
and ravaged by the conspiracy of criminals and criminal-baiters namely the law and order
police.
LACK OF CONCERTED DRIVE
Any shakeup in key positions of the law and order police leads to the problems of
maladjustment among the crime syndicates for superiority and between the police and the
crime world with gang-wars and ascensive criminal activities creating real problems to the
police. Once the police come to terms with the crime gangs again, situation returns to
normalcy. Refusal by a four square official in a key law and order slot to cooperate with
crime syndicates invariably leads to further disturbances till the official is either brought to
heels or transferred out to placate the disturbed powerful gang-lords. It is a rather triste
affaire of Indian police that the resolve or the killing instinct to go tough with the crime
syndicates that play the police by their little fingers is just not present there. More distressing
is how upright officials who choose to fight powerful crime syndicates without yielding to
the temptations of easy and comfortable life feel isolated when seriously let down and
compromised by their own organisation by denying support at the behests of the powerful
crime lords on the mendacious plea of maintaining peace. In a case more than a decade old,
a young Deputy Commissioner of Police in the port city of Calcutta in West Bengal fell foul
with a powerful crime syndicate operating from the port area and patronised by a powerful
politician in power in the state. He was lured by the gang to pursue a criminal into the
strongholds of the gang in the port area; caught, horrendously tortured in captivity and later
lynched. Though criminal cases were registered later, nothing came out of the case. This
way a living lesson to upright police officers who dare to take on powerful crime syndicates.
SIDING WITH THE PRIVILEGED
A major cause of law and order disturbances is the absence of objectivity, fairness and
sense of justice in the police in handling important issues. The police tend to favour the rich
and privileged few in interpretation and exercise of powers to the disadvantage and outrage of
the weak and dumb majority. This in the long run, leads to resentment and breeds resistance
against the establishment and the system which conspires to perpetuate the weak and
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unprivileged position by denying just and legal dues. The lex non scripta of the police that
whatever the rich and powerful do is right convince the poor and disadvantaged that the
extant system is not for them. The situation prompts wronged people to meet the system by
its own coin by going rich and powerful by means outside the system to force the system and
its police crawl before their riches and power for their pro-rich slant, en revanche. That is
why the ranks of rowdy gangs and organised crime syndicates surface almost everyday in
India to go rich and powerful at the earliest. They soon learn that riches and powers have no
laws and morality and the police bought with it have no weaker legal and moral authority;
that the police patronage is pro rata to the riches they earn and share. The notorious Chambal
dacoits are the makings of the social evils and the police patronage to its privileged
perpetrators. The fact that Indian electorate send ex-dacoits and criminals as their
representatives so state assemblies and parliament show the sympathies the criminals enjoy
with the people who are in touch with field situations and know how weak and helpless
people perforce run away from the society and go hors la loi by the outrageous acts of rich
and powerful with the police licking boots at their feet and letting loose brutality on whoever
dare to oppose the feudal lords. This by no means is justification of lawless life and meant
only to show how police by their greed and irresponsible handling of situations add to the
growth of crime and lawlessness in the society. Phoolan Devi and her associates from the
Chambal valley and UP and Bihar maifa gangs proved that criminality pays in India; it pays
wealth and fame as well as political power and love and respect of the people. If there is a
reason for this highly deplorable moral degringolade in the country, it is the highly
irresponsible and most detestable handling of the law and order situation by its corrupt
police, which the hoi polloi find worse than the Chambal dacoits and Bihar and UP mafia
gangs.
POORLY ORGANISED
All said and analysed, the impact of Indian police on the management of law and order
scenario cannot be called satisfactory. The Indian scenario is based on a few age-worn
cliches devoid of professional expertise, academic input and creative genius; the methods
employed are rude at best and arrogantly provocative at the worst. The whole range of law
and order management techniques of Indian police can be formulated in a few crude catchwords like mediations or warnings followed by use of force. Indian police have no in-build
advantages of researches to various types of law and order situations, psychological variables
of divergent law and order issues their social and political potentialities and group dynamics,
law-breaking tendencies and identification of and communication with potential law
breakers, stratified use of police powers at differential situations, application of latest
psychological techniques to field situations or rehabilitation vectors. Nor their performances
are up to the expectation in traditional contrivances like effective use of weapons, strategies
and tactics of operations and techniques of mediation or warning. The riot control weapons
used by Indian law and order police are yet age-old lathi and tear-gas shells; such common
weapons like water jets and plastic bullets are beyond the reach of police in most parts of
India. Nor is there a perficient machinery to gather information and intelligence pertaining
to law and order issues. The district and police station level machinery devised for the
purpose are illequipped for the enormous job because of their limited size, resources,
expertise and professional training. The law and order police often depend on the state
intelligence unit which with a scope different from the local law and order needs, may fail
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the law and order police. The intelligence failures of the law and order police contributed for
eruption and spread of law and order disturbances in many instances. A striking recent
example of such a failure of intelligence is the Veerappan case wherein the combined forces
of Karnataka and Tamilnad police failed to humble and bring to book the notorious forest
brigand Veerappan who operates from the forests bordering the two states. Though the
operations by no means are easy, the failure of the efforts for ten long years speak volumes
about the strengths and weaknesses of Indian law and order police.
The most precious aes triplex of a law and order police is its professional honesty and
commitment to the objectives of the profession. The selflessness, impartiality and the sense
of justness and fairness bred from such a professional commitment endear the police to all
including its friends and foes. The trust and respect ensue from this, take the police along
way to success in its professional endeavour and protect it from enormous professional
hazards and risks common to the job. Once this trust and respect are breached by immoral
and illegal slants in discharge of responsibilities lucri causa and other selfish causes, the
police are exposed to the wraths of the public and the assaults of its foes and those crowds
wronged by it. By prevarications, the police are protecting neither their job interests nor the
interest of the country and its people; nor their personal interests are protected as no gains
made at risk to the life is worth the trouble. Indian police seld book so long and open eyes to
look around. Once they stop to shed their professional arrogance and see the mine-fields
underfoot, they realise the bevue they commit and may pursue a path befitting the diginity of
their great profession.
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INVESTIGATION OF ECONOMIC CRIMES
With liberalisation, the aboideau of scams and financial irregularities is thrown open and
Indian financial market is flooded with all conceivable kinds of frauds, shady transactions and
corrupt practices. As long shadows of mixed economy receded from the four decade old sky
of the Indian Republic, the Indian economy is sweltering under the heat of economic crimes.
Not that economic crimes are new to human generation or India; small fraudulent dealings
were born with man and bound to continue as part of his nature till the imbalance of supply
and consumption haunts his existence. What manifested is organised frauds to loot the public
its money by clever use of the financial environment and the innocence of the hoi polloi; illconceived financial rules and laws and slack financial practices and procedures evidently
failed to carry the weight of the liberalised economy. The people who were inured to
protected economy and state control cannot easily adapt to liberalised economy where all
sorts of worms and creatures creep, waiting to make best use of the laissez-faire. Rules and
laws being not tightened to meet the challenges of the liberal atmosphere, unscrupulous
elements have a field day in playing with the public money either to intentionally defraud or
experiment in risky projects. The plans are always mega-schemes running for hundreds or
thousands of crores of rupees of the gullible public. Corruption in government and public
life ease the process. Bribes play key roles in keeping rules, laws and regulatory authorities
shut. The sounding of finance minister, Mr.P.Chaidambaram in June, 1977 after CRB scam
came to light that law enforcers must ruthlessly deal with economic offenders is too small
coming too late to have any meaning or impact on the atrophy already set-in, in Indian
economic labyrinth. The problem lies in the liberalisation process having taken-off without
adequate infrastructure of checks and counterbalances to sustain it. Educating the public
about the nuances of a liberal economy and preparing them for the risks immanent in the
system as well as strengthening the reticulation of rules, laws and law enforcing system to
handle and control economic crimes go a long way in keeping away the extant maelstrom
and making liberalisation a more relevant and meaningful direction to Indian economy to
pursue.
On closer scrutiny, it is obvious that Indian democracy and administration are overweighed with myraid rules, regulations, laws and controls. The problem of India is their
enforcement. What India needs is efficient enforcement, and not more and more rules and
laws. This is true of Indian economy also. The need is desperately felt in the atmosphere of
liberalisation.
Enforcement has two faces: preventive and investigative. As far as
preventive measures are concerned, the present rules and laws are adequate to bring any
financial operation to a standstill. Slack, inefficient and casual enforcement process laced
with corruption makes economic activities possible in India. In the atmosphere of
liberalisation where economy is less regulated and controlled with fewer rules and laws to tie
the hands and legs of the market forces, illegal activities find avenues to surface to the
detriment of the open market. Stringent enforcement of relevant rules and laws to prevent
illegal activities is the need of the hour. When preventive machinery fails in its activities is
the need of the hour. When preventive machinery fails in its task, the investigation agency
comes to the force. When preventive measures collapse, the demands on the investigating
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machinery increases to bring the hors la loi to book. Demands per se do not meet the needs
of efficient investigation. Commitment to the job is one side of the need. The other side is the
skill of investigating economic offences.
Investigation of economic offences is a specialised job requiring special skills far
removed from the needs of investigating bodily crimes. An investigator of economic
offences has to be well versed in the intricacies of financial transactions, the dynamics of the
market forces, rules and laws regulating and controlling the financial market and the finer
aspects of auditing and accounting apart from a sound analytical disposition to interpret the
data and evidences during the process of investigation. He should command indefatigable
patience to scrutinise and interpret stacks of bills, vouchers, minutes, contracts, balance
sheets, audit reports, correspondences, records, registers and other documents. It is a time
consuming drudgery far removed from the glamour attached to it.
A point central to both economic crimes and their investigation is the willing cooperation
and participation of several related agencies and individuals in the operation. They call for
group-work involving meeting of mind and synergy towards the main goal. Symbiosis is the
sacred hymn of the operations. Indeed, there is a main player to whose initiative and plan, all
others contribute as and when required. Other constituents in the play necessarily include key
government agencies responsible for regulating financial activities in the country and its key
officials. Large scale economic crimes need their cooperation in shutting eyes to willful
violation of inconvenient norms and regulations of financial discipline and active connivance
in issuing official favours against rules to ease the passage of defrauding the public. Such
constituents may include commercial banks, the SEBI, The RBI, the Ministry of Finance, any
of the three credit rating agencies of the country, the auditors who audit the company or all of
them in synergy as in the CRB scam. Other ministries and agencies involved in activities
related to financial matters may also form part of such fraudulent operations. As CRB scam
made explicit, non-banking finance companies form the spine of such frauds on the gullible
public.
Investigation of an economic crime must cover the role of these agencies, the key officials
involved and the mens rea, the quid pro quo involved etc and support each fact with sound
evidences. The work necessarily requires willing cooperation of the agencies concerned to
provide related documents as evidence, interpret the meaning and significance of these
documents, explain the related practices, procedures, rules and laws and provide inside
information pertaining to the commission of the fraud au reste volunteering to be witnesses to
the crime. The investigators require guidance from these experts about evidences and the
course of further investigation to build up the case. This is a formidable job that cannot be
handled by one investigator and a handful of his assistants. An essential feature for the
successful investigation of an economic crime of large dimension is constitution of a team of
experts drawn from all related agencies to assist the investigator.
Investigation of any economic crime cannot be fair and square unless the investigation
covers all aspects of the crime. Localised investigation leads to unfair and partial justice.
The aspect is popularly forgotten in the investigation of scams and scandals in Indian
environment. Localised investigation limited to the main front-man of the fraud is a simple
job that can be completed in a short duration to everybodys satisfaction including the clever
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criminals and the guillible public with only a paid front-man sacrificed in requital to the gain
of hundreds or thousands of crores of rupees. Such unfair investigation suffers justice and
financial discipline and encourage financial institutions to connive in such frauds. The crux
of the investigation of economic crimes in tracing the end-users of the fraud and reaching the
persons responsible for planning and organising them. Rarely these investigations in Indian
environment reach the depth, nor touch the government agencies and its key officers who
willingly contributed to the fraud for gain by commissions and omissions. It is a grave
Achilles heel of the investigation of economic crimes in India.
In an intelligently planned, organised and executed megafraud, the big fish always
remains inconnu. It is only the little or sometimes middle-sized fishes who act as the front for
the main-players are caught. It is so arranged in such frauds that all books and records point
only to the front-players; public contacts and media exposures are designed to play up the
roles of the front-players. The real players remain at the background harmless even while the
fraud comes to open. It is only a few daring players who venture into risky financial
operation with honest intensions, do so in their own names and get caught while their venture
with the public money dooms. An investigator should be familiar with these nuances of the
crime. Another aspect is the possibility of the grists made from the fraud being tucked away
or invested in some far away foreign countries. Swiss banks are only a tip of the ice-berg.
An investigation into economic crimes is incomplete without a probe to this possibility. A
corollary of this aspect is violation of Foreign Exchange Regulations; thus FERA comes to
picture, Offences under Income-tax provisions is another side of the crime. A megaeconomic crime spreads it tentacles over myraid financial enactments to involve independent
investigations to the same crime by different agencies au reste the investigation by the police.
This leads to gratuitous waste of time, manpower and energy by duplication of works apart
from creating problems of inter-agency coordination and inter-agency rivarly. The fear of
impinging on the limits of other agencies prevents free and concerted investigation. The
result is shallow and peicemeal investigations by several agencies leading nowhere. Solution
to this problem lies in integrated single investigation with the cooperation and active
participation of the concerned financial institutions as expert advisors in the investigation
team. Only such a holistic investigation can delve deep into the roots of the crime and unearth
the truth in its entirety as a means of deterring recurrence of mega-frauds. No investigation
into economic offences is complete without the impresario of the fraud, however deep be his
cover, is brought to book and his gains, wherever it be stacked, is unearthed. This is seld done
in extant Indian investigation situation.
Investigation of mega-economic crimes cannot be handled by all and sundry investigators.
Apart from investigation skill, they required special attributes to lead that investigation to a
successful end. For one, they must have basic knowledge and familiarity of the goings on in
the financial world to help them understand the interpretations and the explanations of the
experts in the team about the complexities and intricacies of the financial transactions of the
crime. In the absence of this basic familiarity, the investigators may appear like fishes out of
water in the maze of financial transactions leading to the crime. These datas being often
encoded and computerised for safety by clever criminals, a splatter of knowledge of
computer and software are helpful to manage control over the process of the investigation.
An essential feature for a investigator of economic crimes is leadership qualities, an ability to
delegate and decentralise work, ability to trust right people, inspire confidence, draw
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cooperation and ability to coordinate the works of myraid agencies involved in the
investigation to guide to the desired end. Commitment to lead the investigation to successful
end and ability to work hard are other characteristics sine qua non for the investigator.
A serious handicap of the investigation of economic offences is its slow process. The
reason is mental fatigue. Examination of loads of documents, records and papers per se is a
tiresome and time-consuming labor. To crown it, the mental processes involved in sifting
right and relevant documents from the heap of papers, interpreting them, placing in right
perspective to the commission of the crime, assessing its value in the overall process of the
commission of the crime etc., are extremely exhausting and tiresome job. It naturally retards
the pace of the investigation and the process taking years for completion is a common
spectacle. On the other side, time is central to the investigation of economic crimes. Money
rapidly multiplies with time in form of profits of investments or interests on deposits.
Delay of investigation is in the interests of the criminals with this illgotten money. Delay
in investigation process helps criminals to multiply their res gestae several times with the
passage of time, ipso facto rendering them huge gainers in terms of monetary benefits that
easily off-set the pains of trial and conviction in court, if any. Early completion of
investigation is vital for the cause of justice. Constitution of a team of investigators including
experts from various financial institutions should be able to overcome the natural handicap of
inordinate delays in the investigation of economic offences.
A need of common sense in investigation of economic crimes is the initiative of the
investigator to make up the losses of the victims of the fraud to possible extent by luring the
criminals to a deal. Here comes to picture the discreetness of the investigator in striking a
deal with the criminals selon les regles without jeopardising the process of the investigation
in any way. Investigation per se does not bring any relief to the victims of the fraud as its
value lies only as an instrument of deterrence. Safeguarding the interests of the hapless
victims is the cardinal need in the circumstances au reste bringing criminals to the book.
Huge money running to hundreds and thousands of crores of rupees is at the centre of the
investigation of scams and criminals are those who are clever, influential and stacked with
easy money. In the circumstances, attempts to lure the invesigator from the rightful path of
investigation are a natural phenomenon. For the investigation to be successful, the
investigator should have immense inner strength to resist the lures and stick to his
professional path. It is said that every person has a price ; and meeting whatever price is no
problem in the efforts to distract investigators of mega-economic crimes from their
commitment. In the circumstances, selection of right people as investigators becomes a key
decision in the success or otherwise of the investigation.
The tendency of soft-pedalling the role of financial institutions in the commission of
economic crimes for whatever reason is a serious Achilles heel in the investigation of such
crimes for the simple reason that lapses by these agencies create a framework for the crimes.
No large scale frauds against the general public is possible without these agencies responsible
for the financial discipline of the country willingly ignore violations of financial norms and
regulations and offer favours against rules and laws of the financial discipline to the
criminals engaged in the frauds. The role of theses institutions in the commission of the
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crimes is as grave as that of the main players and the impresarios of the fraud. The fact is
forgotten in the investigation of economic crimes in India. The result is lopsided and unfair
investigation which satisfies none let alone acting as a deterrent against recurrence of such
frauds. CRB scam is an example. Unless many agencies responsible for financial discipline
helped the the commission of the fraud by the CRB capital markets by blatantly ignoring
violations of norms and regulations by the latter and unlawful favours, the swindling of the
public to that extent would not have been an easy feat. The SEBI tolerated CRB managing
scores of shady share issues and permitted to start a mutual fund and a share custodial service.
The SBI opened its banking services to the company to encash interest warrants and refund
orders of the company from the public without adequate security. Credit Rating Agency and
IDBIs subsidiary CARE gifted the companys fixed deposit programme, CRB caps a A+
rating in spite of the full knowledge of the liquidity problems and deteriorating assest quality
of the company after ICRA and CRISIL failed to oblige the company. The auditors of the
company ignored irregularities in the companys operations in the audit report. To top it all,
the RBI turned blind eye to massive irregularities noticed during inspection and issued an in
principle banking licence as favour and even tolerated the company raising money for its
bank after the licence was withdrawn. In absence of the synergy by various financial
institutions of the country. CRB Capital Markets just could not befool and defraud
thousands of investors to the extent it did, and struck gold. The key figures in these financial
institutions who helped CRB scam are as much responsible for the scam as was
Mr.C.R.Bhansail, the head of CRB capital Markets. Their involvement gives an added
dimension of conspiracy to the case. Law which provides for the investigation of the case,
treats all these players of the conspiracy on equal footing. The exclusive attention of the
investigation agency on the CRB chief and his close associates to the exclusion of other
conspirators cannot be called en regle and bound to shake the confidence of the public in the
investigation.
This is not an isolated case of financial institutions prevaricating from their raison d etre.
Another top credit rating agency of the country CRISIL failed to warn investors in advance
about the poor showing of ITC Classic Finance on the eve of the issue of NCD and fixed
deposit schemes of the company. For CRISIL, this was the second instance within the short
duration of a year after similar failure regarding Mideast Shoes. The role of commercial
banks infamous security scam is too well known to be repeated here. Indian Bank scam is
waiting on the side-wings to blow up to a major scam. Ignoring the part of financial
institutions and other government agencies in mega-economic crimes is a sure way of ringing
the death-knell of the financial discipline of the country. An investigation true to its
profession must give primus to fix these institutions for their irresponsible roles and
connivance in the scam. The responsibility of the main-player of a scam reduces to
insignificance before the filures, lapses and impacts of the connivance of the players of these
institutions on the financial market and public life of the country. No honest investigation
can afford to leave the key figures of these institutions out of the field of investigation.
Distractions like strikes and protests by the colleagues of the offenders in the institutions as in
the case of suspension of the officials of the Bombay Branch of the State Bank of India for
complicity in CRB scam should not deter a professional investigator from his commitment.
Corrupt colleagues flocking together to go on agitation to protect one of them while caught is
becoming a popular strategy of scaring away the hands of law reaching them. A few years
back, central customs and excise staff of Delhi international airport resorted to agitation to
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protect a few corrupt colleagues from the CBI net, Recently, air traffic control staff went on
agitation while some inefficient of them were suspended from service for grave dereliction of
duty. Very recently, arrest of public servants in Bihar fodder scam was deferred by the CBI
for the fear of creating law and order problems. A turly professional investigator should not
be deterred by such extraneous developments in his resolve to unearth the truth. This is ore
so in case of the investigation of economic crimes for the simple reason that the money
involved in such crimes in capable of buying anything under the sun and creating any
situation to the advantage of the criminals.
Crimes are committed either out of passion or for gain, if not by accident or negligence.
Economic crimes constitute a major and important block of the crimes for gain. Economic
crimes against the gullible public and the financial system of the country assume dangerous
dimensions because of the magnitude of the crimes, their impact on the financial discipline of
the country, the losses and grief come with it to the gullible public and the sense of the loss of
credibility it brings to the financial market. Professional and in depth investigation to these
scams is sine qua non for the growth and stability of the economy of the country.
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SOCIAL JUSTICE
Professor B.Kuppuswamy in his book Social Change in India apropos of Paradox of

the Indian Situation Today writes, On the one hand there is a conscious, deliberate effort to
change the social structure as a result of the assimilation of new social values. Because of
the struggle for political freedom and the desire for economic reconstruction, new social
justice and equality of opportunity. On the other hand, there is the fear that the old social
values are being repudiated and destroyed by the values of social justice and equality, which
pose a challenge to the past privileges based on caste, aristocracy, age, sex etc. The farm
labourer, the factory worker, the student, and women are repudiating the authority which
denied them social justice and equity. This perennial conflict between privileged and nonprivileged, of reactionaries and revolutionaries is the mark of a zoetic society. The clash of
interests and values steeped in an instinct for survival is the hall-mark of social change. It is
here the state comes into the picture as the arbiter elegantium, as a beacon to guide both the
pace and path of social change through public education and legislation. The social
awakening which is possible through public education is sine qua non for social change
which can only be formalised through legislation as a statutorily accepted social value to
make its violation a criminal act. A good piece of legislation backed by effective
enforcement works as catalytic agent in the process of social change.
SOCIAL CONFLICTS
Peter Worsley in The Third World writes In those countries which fail to achieve the
take-off and relapse into the hungry frustrations of stagnation or regression, all kinds of
conflict from anarchic protest to regional schism or even communist revolution could
flourish. A revolutionary leadership could easily replace those nationalist parties which have
lost their social reforming zeal. The state can be impervious to the ascensive zeal for social
reform only at its own peril. Social inequality and social injustice as starting points of a
vicious circle wherein they are perpetuated cannot be the situation a welfare state seeks to
protect from the dynamics of positive change which as a natural force of unending
frustration expresses by peaceful means in principo and by violence as dernier ressort if the
state errs by protecting the vested interests of inequality and injustice and fails to discharge
its responsibilities towards positive social change.
SOCIAL AWAKENING IN INDIA
The veteran journalist Shri.D.R.Mankelkar in his book titled A Revolution of Rising
Frustrations beautifully analyses the situation of ascensive social awakening in India. The
fact is that the worm is at last turning, falsifying the prophets who have averred that the
Indian masses are too underfed, too lethargic, and too fatalistic to rebel against their fate and
violently wrest from the rulers their elementary human right-the right not only to survive but
to improve their lot. The new awakening roused the esurient expectations of the longrepressed and infested segments of the gens de peu and fomented their neoteric hopes of
being extricated from age- old repression. The government of democratic India responded
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favourable to the aspirations of the infaust segments of its populace, non obstante the not-soinopinate resistance from the privileged lobbies, by enacting legislations with the potential for
far-reaching changes towards establishing social isonomy and justice. However , the zest in
enacting the legislations is not amated by the political will to enforce them, though some
isolated attempts were made here and there. Experience in the field dictates that some
thought should go to the modalities of the social legislation and their enforcement to make
the whole process genuinely effective as a vehicle for faster growth towards social equality
and social justice.
CHALLENGES OF SOCIAL EQUALITY
As French thinker Auguste Compte noted, a nouveau regime can emerge only if man
assumes responsibility for his actions and makes his own society. The changes in social
institutions do not occur by themselves, but by a positive moral desire and commitment in
that direction. This active aspect of social change manifests in intellectual assertions for
deliberate social legislations and their effective enforcement. The theory of Challenge and
response as expounded by the great British historian Arold Toynbee, points out that a
society can grow if it can constructively respond to challenges. The challenges are often
social and internal and every civilisation as a facet of the society can learn from the failings of
quondam civilisations. Active responses to the extant gauntlets of social equality and social
justice against the background of nonfeasance should be the foundation on which social
legislation and its enforcement mechanism should be broadly based.
SOCIAL JUSTICE VS LEGAL JUSTICE
Social justice is imprimis an informal social process rather than a formal legal procedure.
It is the moral standard of a society to which its laws and actions conform. The injustices
and legal disabilities against certain sections of the society enshrined in many rules of Indian
society in bygone days are now a matter of the past. It is only now that the need of liberty,
equality, security, freedom from want, fear and frustration as parameters of social justice are
realised. Social justice ex consequenti demands preferential treatment for the socially
backward and repressed classes who are at a disadvantage in respect to others.
SOCIAL LAWS AS CLEANSING FORCES
Johan Galtung defines Structural violence as The dominance of one group over the
other with subsequent exploitative practices in Peace Thinking. The pirlicue of this
statement implies that preferential treatment by the state to certain segments of the society to
superate its dominance by the others becomes at the outset an act of injustice and structural
violence by the state. However as Jerome Skolnick preconsied, violence is a louche muticous
term whose meaning is established through political process, ipso facto acts of institutional
violence are comme il faut if perpetrated by the state in the larger interests of the society as
they fall beyond the ambit of the concept of violence. Frantz Fanon, an African Psychologist
in The Wretched of the Earth calls violence intended to restore self-esteem and do away
tyranny as Cleansing Force, Jean-Paul Sartre confirms the idea when in Preface to Fanon
he says, Violence, like Achilles lance, can heal the wounds that it has inflicted, indeed
while it is institutional violence in societys interests.
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PRAVEEN KUMAR
SOCIAL JUSTICE IN INDIAN CONSTITUTION

The Indian Constitution in its preamble preconises social justice and quality of status
and opportunity to all the article 14 constates fundamental rights while it declares that the
state shall not deny to any person equality before law, or equal protection of the law. The
Article 15 interdicts any kind of discrimination on grounds of caste, creed, sex, birth etc.
However, the Constitution recognised the inadequacy of legal eqality in meeting the
exigencies of social justice when it recognised the necessity of special measures to uplift
socially deprived segments and constates in sub-section (4) of Article 15 that the
constitutional provisions do not prevent the states from making any special provision for the
advancement of any socially and educationally backward classes of citizens or the scheduled
castes and scheduled tribes. This exception in the constitution to legal isonomy is the
cornucopia of most social legislations intended to misprise the crude ancien regime and
usher in a dream world of social equality and social justice.
SOCIAL LAWS
Law is an instrument of both the continuity of social behaviour and of social change.
Manu had said, Immemorial custom is transcendent law Social consuetudes metamorphose
into social laws in rerum natura and perpetuate social customs. Professor B.Kuppuswamy
in his book Social Change in India writes about two functions of the law according to
this view is social control and the major problem of law is to design the legal sanctions to
minimise deviances and to maintain social stability. According to the other view, law could
be more dynamic. It has not only the function of social control but it has also to bring about
social change by influencing behavior, beliefs and values. The social laws of India are
devised to bear the kiaugh of the dynamic function of bringing about social change by
influencing behavious, beliefs and value in addition to social control. In Indian society where
social inequalities more suo, form the bedrock of living for historical reasons and embedded
in the Indian psyche as consuetudes and basic social rules more majorum, the awakening and
metabasis to new values of social equality and social justice from the deep slumber of a
millennium are not easy to come by. Though isolated calls for certain changes are heard
mostly from the self-made spokesmen of the oppressed classes because of the influences of
liberal western thoughts, the albatross of orchestrating these thoughts to the mosaic of the
laws of the land falls on the government. Social laws function as catalysts of social change in
the Indian situation.
SOCIAL CHANGES THROUGH LAWS IN INDIA
Most of the important social laws were enacted in India in the face of plangent opposition
from reactionaries inveterated in the terra firma of the past practices. The queasy practice of
polygamy was made hors la loi and divorce was legalised by the Hindu Marriage Act of
1955. The barbarous praxis of untouchability was made punishable by enactment of the
Untouchability (Offences) Act in the same year in conformity with Article 17 of the Indian
constitution. The Hindu Succession Act of 1956 is a meith in bringing daughters on pariel
with sons in a respect of property inheritance. The Hindu adoption and Maintenance Act of
1956 straightened the position of women in regard to the right to adopt. The Dowry
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Prohibition Act of 1961 tried to deliver nubile colleens from the menace of dowry. The
Factory Act of 1948 raised the minimum age of workers to 14 years and provided for annual
medical examination of minor workers. The Employment Exchange Act of 1959 provided
for state help to unemployed citizens to get jobs. The children Act of 1960 provided for
special care of children. All these incipient legislations of independent India on social matters
were enacted as vindicated by the directive principles of state policy in line with the
fundamental rights enunciated in the Indian Constitution. Article 24 of the Constitution sui
juris interdicted employment of children below 14 years of age in factories.
British India too saw much of the momentous legilsations conducive to change and
social justice. The Sati prohibition Act 1829, the Hindu Widow Remarriage Act of 1856, the
Female Infanticide Prevention Act of 1870 , the Special Marriage Act of 1872 providing for
civil marriages and inter-caste marriages as amended in 1923, the Child Marriage Restraint
Act of 1929 the Payment of Wages Act of 1939 providing for regular payment of wages, the
Industrial Dispute Act of 1929 providing for settlement of disputes, the Trade Union Act of
1926 which legalised trade unions the Workmens Compensation Act of 1923 providing for
compensation to workers for accidents, disablements and death on duty, the Act of 1922
defining a child and preventing a child below 12 years for employment, the Act of 1931 and
its 1946 amendment reducing hours to work a week are major keeks to social change via
social laws.
The trend to usher social change through new legislations or amendments to old ones is
en train even in this neoteric age. The Debt Relief Act of 1976, the Bonded Labour Abolition
Act, the Protection of Civil Right Enforcement Act of 1976 and amendments thereon, the
1983 amendments to the Dowry Prohibition Act are important instances of such a nisus.
SOCIAL NORMS AND SOCIAL LAWS
Whenever the enactment of law is consectaneous to a change in social norms, the law as
a device of legal sanction against deviations there-from, succeeds in legalising these
neonate social norms. However, the law proves ill-equipped and falls into desuetude while it
seeks to introduce intempestive social norms as a means of social justice for forced
compliance as Festinger called it in An Analysis of Compliant Behaviour. The paradigm is
the law regarding dowry and child marriage being not as effective as that pertaining to
monogamy for lack of social force behind it.
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PRAVEEN KUMAR
ENFORCEMENT OF SOCIAL JUSTICE
Social laws can be social laws only if they are of the society, from the society and for the
society. They have relevance in a society only if they are unrevocably concinnous with
everyday lives of its members- in terms of their ken of the laws and its general acceptance.
Social laws that are abstruse and unacceptable to the plebeian are destined to atrophy because
they lack en arriere the inherent mechanism of compelling society to comply with their writ.
It is in this sense, that social laws which are lex non scripta are indited with the stamp of
approbation of the state by popular demand, though the process from the antipode can be
inchoated if their assimilation by the society is assured through active propagation. The
effectiveness of social laws depends entirely on their assimilation by society and the strength
of propagation and publicity that follows the enactment of the laws. This need of the social
laws being balked is the quiddity of the serious setbacks faced in making certain social laws
like the Dowry Prohibition Act or the Child Marriage Act effective. The enactment of social
laws that are intended to accord primacy to social norms must be preceded by intensive
fieldwork to introduce the newell and make them acceptable to the society and enactment
should be resorted to only when the idea becomes ripe enough to be assimilated by the
society because the symbiosis of social norms and social laws is inseparable. Haste brings
definite waste in respect of the enactment of social laws.
A kenspeckle feature noted in most social laws is the lack of perspicacity in definition of
the concepts involved. It is an understandable glitch when commonsense concepts like
dowry, labour, discrimination, practice of untouchability, compensation or even marriage
makes the quandary of the commission or noncommission of an offence wafer-thin and
often a matter of opinion based on interpretation of the concepts involved. Though
postliminary amendments to the law based on field experience and interpretations of the
concepts by courts attempt to impale the concepts to a prim form, the inchoate ambiguity
continues to confound the issues in the popular mind, weakening the credibility of the law
itself. The louche spectrum of the impair interpretations of a concept can turn an offence to
innocence and more perniciously, an innocent person into a criminal according to the
predilection of the investigating officer. The subjectivity involved in understanding the law
society. It is for this reason, concepts in social laws must be formulated with utmost caution.
Another major hurdle in calling social change through law is the failure by the authors of
the laws to clearly comprehend and indite in them the causes and mechanisms of the immane
social evils they intended to contain through the laws themselves. The abhorred social
practices that manifest as social evils are only the external symptoms of serious malady
inveterate in the psyche of the society. Attempts to strike at these skin-deep symptoms prove
infructuous in reaching the malady embedded in the vitals of the system. Often, the persons
comminated by the shallow social laws are simple innocent plebeians who are caught
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unawares by the laws while they tread the path laid by their ancestors by wont or perform acts
they consider essential in the existing social circumstances. The external symptoms, sine
dubio, should be fittingly treated if the malady is to be deracinated with all traces of its
existence. However, such approaches are secondary to the concerted attack on the ingrained
malady which forms the cornucopia of those symptoms. This exigency is generally balked in
most social laws. Only a springe mind with full grasp of the social problems in the
circumstances of the existing situation can indagate and handle levers sine prole to set in
motion the laws that can strike at the core of the social malady. This requires advanced study
of these immane practices and their social backgrounds involving psychological and
anthropological analysis apart from adequate public discussion within the society.
Unfortunately, no enactments of social laws are preceded by such vigorous exercises and the
impotency of the laws to excoriate the social evils are inevitably consectaneous. The laws
should provide the pollicitation of punishing the prime perpetrators of the social injustices
rather than catching secondary or tertiary commis to the commission of the offences.
The glisk of undesirable social practices leading to painful hurtling of laws often are the
consequences of the existing social situations. A poor father of four girls and a boy in the
circumstances of prevalent admissibility of dowry in the social psyche, non obstante the
criminality of the act, cannot but accept dowry for his son to assure a reasonability contented
married life for his daughters even at the risk of being immanacled as his conscience is clean
about accepting the dowry. A person living in a closed society in a village has no
alternative but to practice untouchability against
his conscience to save himself from
ostracism unless he is a zealous social reformer prepared to sacrifice his own interests for the
cause. In a competitive business world involving child labour or meager wages, an attempt
by an individual to stand out in compliance to laws against child labour and low wages is a
sure way to close down his enterprise. The state, in such circumstances, should tackle au
fond the social situations that breed such immane symptoms and the law to be kind and
understanding in saving in innocent people caught in the social clamancy. The scope for
corrective and remedial action and rehabilitation must form an integral part of social laws to
avoid the impression about the social laws as indulging in supererogations to catch trivial
slips of everyday life and ergo popularly abhorred. Effectively orchestrated public education
and concomitant vigorous social service programmes aimed at changing specific social
situations that boost socially unjust practices must form an integral part of every social law.
All social laws must have some postern features incorpsed to make them effective as
vehicles of positive social change in view of the delicate ground the laws cover in their
operation wherein people in their interpersonal relationships are often involved in the hide
and seek game of everyday life. The social offences are both trivial and serious-trivial in the
nature of the acts and serious in the nature of its consequences. It is almost impossible to
demarcate when an act in a given social situation is trivial and when it attains serious
proportions. Also, differences in norms and values and varying sensitivity and moods further
complicate the issue. It is not possible to arrive at a uniform definition of concepts like
harassment, practice of untouchability or compensation as acceptable to all situations. The
laws warrant special accoutrements to counter the nonasuch quailings e re nata as discussed
in the ensuing paragraphs.
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PRAVEEN KUMAR
Social injustices are perforce committed by the pollent on weak and hapless people. In
the present argument-oriented judicial system where mother justice takes sides on the basis
of the kind of the lawyer being engaged on the strengths of money and power, no social law
can do justice to the weak and feckless gens de peu who are misdight and nonpareil to their
adversaries for the juste rencontre except in rare obvious cases non obstante the state
sponsored legal aid programmes. The cabal of the versute gens de condition resorting to
social evils necessitates some sui generis safeguards to be inherent in social laws to make up
for the nether social position of the wronged person and checkmate the malengine and pravity
of the powerful. Appropriate amendments to the Indian Evidence Act to incorpse provisions
of sweeping presumptions in social laws against the accused persons on whom a prime-facie
case is made out, with provisions to prove innocence laying with them, is likely to lessen the
ineluctable disabilities of the oppressed people. Though such presumptions are extant to
varying degrees now in some special laws, the presumptions must be made a toute force in
all social laws. Such presumptions save the wronged persons, from proving the wrong
usually done at the convenience and terms of the powerful guilty person sans evidences in the
social situation under his prise.
The special laws must provide for vicarious liability that suspends over the head of the
social group concerned even though there is no evidence to ineatenate him with the offence.
Such criminal liability on the el patron while it checks him from encouraging or indirectly
fomenting commission of such offences through his acolytes in the social group, also drives
him to prevent those injustices in his group.
There should be mandatory minimum punishments prescribed in all social laws so that
the laws become inherently mordant, independent of the malicho of the pollent guilty
persons. The social laws should abnegate the behoofs of the anticipatory bail unless the
person against whom a prima facie case is made out satisfies the court about his innocence.
The present queasy trend of prompt anticipatory bails to fugacious social offenders can be
brought under control by this measure.
Each social law must provide ample opportunity for compromise on mutuus consensus
with an in-built raisonne mechanism prescribed to ensure corrective and remedial measures
in fit cases not involving serious guilt where such a compromise is certain to ameliorate the
position of the wronged persons. The penal sections of the social laws inter alia must
provide for huge fines and compensations with provisions to streamline the fines and
compensations for rehabilitation of the victims or their dependants.
The social nature of the offences in social laws makes witnesses to the offence who are
insiders of the society in most cases, reluctant witnesses for the fear of reprisals from the
society though injustice done to one of them turns their clinamen against the guilty. A
provision and concomitant device in social laws to protect the interests of the witnesses en
revanche to their ready cooperation helps investigation of the social offences.
It is rightly said that justice delayed is justice denied. It is strikingly so in social situations
where the exigencies of survival and coexistence and future interests force the parties
generally inter-related to apostatise and bury the past cicatrix, leading to the weak and
oppressed again submitting to the tyranny of the powerful for the sake of survival. In the
circumstances, each social law should prescribe time limits for the continuation of the
investigation and trial. The possibility of summary trails for social offences also should be
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probed into and employed as extensively as possible to ensure the galvanic trial of social
offences.
The raison detre of social laws is the extirpation of social inequalities and the
establishment of a just society. The telos can be better achieved if the laws are structured to
effect compromises to rehabilitate a bon droit the wronged persons, preceding the invoking
of penal sections in lost cases. The social laws true to their intentions must seek a device by
which every case of social wrong draws the attention of the authority for frack intervention
and on-thespot solutions which is statutorily binding on both the parties to avoid the crush of
the penal sections.
The device can be made a reality by the constitution of Social Justice Authorities at taluq
levels under a judicial magistrate with a police officer, an officer of the social welfare
department, a prominent lawyer, a representative of local womens organisations and a
representative of the legal aid board as members. The Authority must work as a team in the
taluq to hear cases of socially unjust practices on the spot and adjudicate them then and
there without resorting to judicial technicalities and adjournments. The Authority must have
an office with a multi-channel telephone working round the clock with a widely publicised
number by dialing which anybody without giving identification can report socially unjust
practices so that the Authority as a team reaches the destination within twenty-four hours
and passes orders on-the-spot on hearing the concerned parties. The Authority must exercise
pernoctation over the process of the compliances to the orders and pass sentences in cases of
default. In such a system, the address and telephone number of the Authority being known
in every village in the taluq is the clavis of perficient chevisance because then anybody
wronged can readily lodge querimonies for redressal. The approach of the Authority in
adjudication must be that of an adviser or well wisher rather that that of a government
organisation steeped in technicalities. The Authority should be able to reach every village in
the taluq at least once a month. The leitmotiv behind the set-up is to affect compromises and
rehabilitate victims by levying fines and compensations if necessary.
The administration of social laws is a specialised task requiring specialised skills in the
police force handling the job. The force has to be understanding and circumspect in its
approach though tenacious when circumstances warrant. It should have the right ken of the
social circumstances and their problems with a deep sense of commitment to social justice.
These operators should be kind and devoid of the malfeasance of harsh police methods and
should never forget that they are dealing with distinct problems which are the outcome of
historical reasons and special social situations, that they are dealing with a wider social
malady through the individual symptoms in their hands for solution and ergo there are no
villains in real sense of the term, that they are social doctors interests only excision of the
cancerous growths from society. This special decession from policing necessitates special
care in recruitments to the job to draw people of appropriate mental makeup and impart
specialised training to reinforce those special attribution. The police also requires periodical
programmes of sensitisation for the cause of social justice with exhaustive theoretical inputs.
These officers should be au fait in social legislations which are proliferating in geometrical
proportion. This exigency necessitates the constitution of a special police force to handle
social laws which may be called Social Police distinct from the normal police in charge of
regulatory and other police duties. The social police should have its parallel organisations at
all levels as per specific needs with distinct recruitment, training and sensitization facilities.
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PRAVEEN KUMAR
An extra-ordinary commitment to the social cause and out-of the normal alacrity in tackling
social problems should be the hallmarks of the social police.
Delayed trails of social offences are more a reality than an exception while promptitude
is a virtue de rigueur for tackling social offences. The inquietude of delays are often caused
by lack of commitment to social causes. The same can be said about easy anticipatory bails
and easy release of persons arrested for social offences and light sentences to convicted
persons or failure to appreciate available evidences which leads to frequent acquittals. Such a
predicament for social offences when they are treated on par with conventional cases in
courts in natural because of the popular perception of the social offences as trivial social
problems. A judiciary sensitized it de regueur if the cause of social justice is to be served in
the trial stage. The establishments of social courts to try exclusively social offences of al
hues is en regle in the circumstances and should prove efficacious. As distinct from
conventional courts, a committed judiciary should be the bedrock of these courts where
hand-picked magistrates or judges committed a fond to social justice and specially sensitized
to the social causes preside. The courts, owing to their specialisation in trying social offences
would be in a better position to appreciate the special circumstances of the offences and
therefore appreciate evidences in the right perspective and with sympathetic understanding.
The specialisation also facilitates fast disposals while the sensitzation helps to see through
the gravity of the offences so that unduly light sentences are not pronounced and persons
arrested for social offences are not wantonly released on bail.
Similarly, specially handpicked lawyers should be posted as prosecutors to the social
courts. These prosecutors should be selected on the basis of their commitment to social
justice and undergo a course in sensitization to social causes prior to their posting to handle
social offences. A case of social offence would be feracious in the hands of a prosecutor
who is committed to social justice and specially sensitized for social causes.
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ROLE OF POLICE IN THE CAUSE OF SOCIAL

JUSTICE
Article 15 (1) of the Constitution of India lays down that The State shall not
discriminate against any citizen on grounds only of religion, race, caste, sex, place of birth or
any of them. Article 14 that speaks about equality before the law or the equal protection of
the laws. Article 16 that speaks about the equality of opportunity in matters of public
employment and Article 17 that speaks about abolition of untouchability are mere extensions
and applications of the Article 15 (1). The Preamble of the Constitution identifies justice as
social, economic and political; and Equality as of status and opportunity. These declarations
of the Constitution provide the framework of social justice of the Sovereign Socialist Secular
Democratic Republic of India. The principle of equality enjoined by the Constitution gains
significance vis a vis the long tradition of discriminations and exploitations in India on the
basis of religion, race, caste and sex. Indian Constitution seeks to bring a halt to the vide
through the State Power. Police is the tool. Indian Constitution also seeks to establish
economic equality. Economic and social equality are inter-knitted with the cause of social
justice for the reason that economic status and opportunities more often than not decide the
position of religions, races, castes and sexes in society.
ROLE OF POLICE
Police are called social doctors. They examine, diagnose and treat misease in the body
of the society through the administration of laws and surgical operations. Discriminations
and exploitations are the deadly cancers that seize and disintegrate a society. Police are dutybound to keep these maladies under check. Their fight against the evils of a long tradition
and practices accepted by the society as legitimate by the stamp of time is a protracted and
frustrating struggle against the convictions imbued deep into the psyche of the society. Their
role as the ultimate enforcers of social laws brings them centrestage in the cause of social
justice.
SENSITISATION AND SPECIAL SKILLS
Administration of social laws is a specialised task requiring sensitisation to social issues
and social justice and special skills sine qua non for handling socially sensitive cases. Police
handling these cases have to be understanding and circumspect though tenacious when
circumstances warrant sans temulence of power and surquedry. These operators should be
kind and devoid of the malfeasance of immane police methods, never forget that they are
dealing with distinct issues which are the outcome of historical reasons and special social
situations, that they are dealing with a wider social malady through the specific symptoms in
their hands for solution and ergo there are no villains in the real sense of the term in the extant
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PRAVEEN KUMAR
issues, that they are social doctors interested only in excising cancerous growths from the
society. They have to be sensitive to human sufferings and committed to social justice.
Thesecharacteristics thought to be alien to police nature are not easy to come to police unless
recruitment process takes special care to draw men of appropriate mental makeup to the force
and their training process is programmed to reinforce the characteristics. The police also
require periodical programmes to sensitise them to the cause of social equality and social
justice.
NEED OF CIRCUMSPECTION
Social injustices of discrimination and exploitation are committed by the pollent on their
weaker counterparts. This makes witnesses to crimes reluctant witnesses for the fear of
reprisals. The natural resourcefulness of the police comes to the fore in handling such
obstacles. In a social situation where the exigencies of survival, coexistence and security
force rival parties to bury the hatchet and the weaker of the two submit again to the tyranny of
the pollent for the sake of survival, commitment of the police to the goal of social justice
plays a crucial role in bringing offenders to the book and absterging evils from the body of
the society. However discreetness and circumspection are the calves here. In nonserious
cases where possibility of exploitation in future is ruled out, rehabilitation and compensation
become important factors from the human side of the issue and the need of a fair settlement
gains ground. Police are required to attend these problems with discreetness and
circumspection in the best interests of the society and justice. Ability to handle situations
with creative ingine is the core of the skill of handling socially sensitive cases.
LOCUS STANDI OF ECONOMIC INEQUALITIES
Discriminations and exploitations based on race and caste take myriad forms and shapes
in India of a million races and castes, each individually and in groups discriminating against
the other. The main strain of this discrimination is about 20% of the countrys population
specified by the President as Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes under Articles 341 and
342 respectively of the Constitution being discriminated against and exploited by forward
communities. Discrimination against and exploitation of have-nots by the well-to-do is the
elan of all discriminations of race. Caste and sex practised in extant India. Power and
strength make all the differences in this world. Money, knowledge, mental ability, political
power and muscle power constitute real power and strength. Those who have access to these
powers and strength. Those who have access to these powers and strengths come out
successful irrespective of their race, caste and sex. It is the weak and powerless irrespective
of race, caste and sex are exploited most. Weak and powerless sections of society in race,
caste and sex are discriminated against and exploited most. The police with their statutory
powers, laws, arms and weapons are in position to give spine to the weak and powerless in
discharge of duties towards social justice.
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CONFIDENCE BUILDING
Police support to weaker sections can be physical and psychological. Physical support
covers aspects like providing protection, strict enforcement of social laws and honest
investigation to violations. Psyhological support implies carrying out above responsibilities
with an added objective of creating a sense of confidence and well-being in the exploited
sections of the society. Making enforcements of social laws a show-piece of deterrence also
helps. The psychological aspect needs emphasis in policing against social evils. Enforcing
laws for its own sake does not help tackling social issues. Involvement and participation of
the police with a sympathetic commitment to social justice is the clavis. The immane
approach of the rich and powerful to their weaker counterparts has to be countered with the
strong arm methods of the state power through its tool of police.
CIVIL RIGHTS ENFORCEMENT
Civil Rights Directorates au reste the executive police bear the responsibility of
protecting the interests of the exploited races and castes of the society. Police endeavour to
guarantee strict enforcement of the provisions of The Protection of Civil Rights Act, 1995
and the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes ( Prevention of Atrocities) Act 1989 as
amended from time to time and rules thereunder, au reste keeping pernoctation on violations
of constitutional safeguards and protections to Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes.
Police have responsibilities to give relief under rules and laws pertaining to bonded labour,
debt relief and land grants. They are duty-bound to trace the cases of misrepresentation of
castes to knock off the benefits given by the government orders pertaining to reservations to
these groups of the society. The responsibilities of the police is to ensure that really weak
and helpless among these weaker sections get maximum benefits of the state protection and
benevolence. The discreetness and circumspection needed to make this task of social justice
possible cannot be indited in law and has to be exercised by the police by its own
commitment to the cause of social justice.
ATROCITIES AGAINST WOMEN
Rape, unnatural offences, dowry harassments, abduction, kidnapping, outraging modesty,
eves teasing, marriage offences, causing forcible miscarriage and forcing to prostitution are
the most common outrages committed against women by the more powerful men. The
discrimination and exploitation accounts for about 50% of the population committing
injustices against the other 50% and for this reason assumes serious dimensions as a social
malady. Unlike offences against weaker races and castes, most offences against women are
punishable under the Indian Penal Code; rape and unnatural offences come under sections
from 375 to 377, abduction and kidnapping under sections from 364 to 369, marriage
offences under sections from 493 to 498, outraging the modesty under section 354, insulting
the modesty under section 509 and forcible miscarriage under section 314. The Suppression
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of Immoral Traffic in Women and Girls Act, 1956 and its amendment in 1986 with rules
thereunder deal with offences relating to immoral traffic in women and girls. The Dowry
Prohibition Act, 1961 with its amendments of 1984 and 1986 and rules thereunder deal with
dowry harassments and dowry deaths either by homicide or abetment to commit suicide
caused against young girls by their husbands, in-laws and their associates. The Criminal
Law (Amendment) Act,1983 (No.43/83) and The Criminal Law (2nd Amendment) Act,1983
(No.46/83) brought further safeguards to women during the investigation and trial of
offences under immoral traffic and dowry prohibition Acts. Dowry death cases have become
sensational topical issues these days with the public being highly sensitised to the menace of
the crime which deliver an innocent girl at the deaths door. Each such case outrages the
patience of thinking people and rouses passion and outcry against the perpetrators of the
crime. The police must give special importance to the prevention and investigation processes
of these crimes.
Social justice is a glidder concept that changes its hues with time depending on
prevailing social norms and social values. No age has a right to preconise its own norms and
values as absolute and peremptory. In this sense, every social law is passe and peregrine
beyond its immediate time frame. The deciduous nature of social laws necessiates
circumspect approach in their enforcement for the reason that mens rea in the sense it is
used in conventional offences may be absent in these cases. The change of the face of social
justice brings new social laws with it. Police must go pari passu with these developments
and differentiate between justice and injustice selon les regles in force at the time. Effective
enforcement of social laws reinforces reigning social norms and values by giving them the
teeth of law. How it is done depends on the commitment of the police to the cause of social
justice and equality.
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STATUS OF WOMEN IN EMERGING INDIA
Indian culture treats women with utmost reverence. Woman is identified with Adi
Shakti or the primordial energy; she is considered as the prikriti or the basic nature; she is
compared with the mother earth. Womans avatar as mother is treated as the highest
manifestation of human relationships. It is mother who gets precedence over all other
principles of life including father and god in importance. She is considered as the moving
force of life. It is presumed that there is a woman behind every great event of the world.
Indian scriptures state that where women are revered, god resides there. Great epics of India
like Ramayana and Mahabharata revolve around female characters like Sita and Draupadi.
This is only an illustration of the status of women in India, the honour and reverence with
which they are held from time immemorial, the importance given to them in the scheme of
the history and affairs of human life. Nobody can gainsay these factors in the scheme of
Indian life. However , these are conceptual realities. In a country and culture where a
sacrificial animal is treated as sacred and worshipped before slaughtered, conceptual realties
remain far removed from ground realities and may even symbolise dangers ahead as ground
realities. It is particularly true about the status of women in India.
Nature created women different from men with a definite purpose. Balance is stillness
and stagnation; imbalance is motion and progress. Nature designed life and motion by
means of the imbalance brought about in the traits of men and women. In the process, women
find themselves at the receiving end. They ended up as the weaker half of society by their
very nature and are naturally handicapped in a world of men, by men, for men. In a world
where strength commands charity and weakness receives cruelty and humiliations, women
suffered all along the centuries with patience and in silence. This part of woman is
symbolised in tradition by calling her as the Mother Earth who bears all sufferings. The
cardinal principle of the survival of the fittest applies to the weak natural attributes of
woman which renders her less fit for survival than man. She must live with his atrocities
unless and until society in an enlightened mood comes to her rescue.
The immane approach of the stronger world to its weaker counterparts has to be countered
with strong arm methods of the state power. In an enlightened age such as this, people in
public life are sufficiently sensitized to this issue and more and more legislations come up to
stop stronger people from riding over the weak and meek. India too has several legislations
that have become Acts to protect its women folk.
Atrocities against women in India are mainly rape and unnatural offences, dowry deaths,
abduction and kidnapping for various purposes and outraging their modesty apart from
minor acts like various marriage offences, dowry and other harassments, insulting the
modesty, causing miscarriage without consent and prostitution. Most of these offences are
punishable under the Indian Penal Code: in sections from 375 to 377, for rape and unnatural
offences; abduction and kidnapping girls for various purposes being punishable in sections
from 364 to 369, offences related to marriage being subjected to penal provisions in sections
from 493 to 498; outraging the modesty of a woman in section 354 and insulting the modesty
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in section 509 being offences. Section 314 makes causing miscarriage without womens
consent, a punishable act. The Criminal Law (Amendment) Act, 1993 (No.43/83) provided
for in camera trial of rape cases and also enlarged the scope of rape cases by placing the
burden of proving innocence on the accused persons apart from making penal sections more
mordant, particularly in cases of custodial rapes by public servants. The Suppression of
Immoral Traffic in Women and Girls Act, 1956 with the Suppression of Immoral Traffic in
Women and Girls (Amendment),Act, 1986 and rules framed by states u/s 23 of the Act deal
with offences relating to immoral traffic in women and girls.
Sensitization of the people and the government in the recent past to the ground-realities
has brought sea-changes in the status of women. Rise in female education as noticed in the
first decades of the present century opened up the aboideau of the resistance to sexual
discrimination. Though the process was very slow in principio , it gradually picked up pace
as decades passed by. Nineteen- seventies is a watermark in the process. The advent of Mrs.
Indira Gandhi in 1966 and the grit and strength displayed by her as the Prime Minister of
India and as the only real woman among the parliamentarians of the time, revolutionised the
concept of womanhood in India. It became a fashion even in tiny villages of India to
comfort while a female baby was born, that who knows, the child may also become a Prime
Minister or somebody big like her. Though India have innumerable valiant queens in its
history who led huge armies against formidable armies and fought jusqu au bout, they were
out-of-turn phenomena at their respective times and seldom touched the chords of the
women among the commoners. But, Mrs. Indira Gandhi was a product of the time, of the
process of the awakening of the women, and in turn, as a phenomenon, she greatly
contributed for the advancement of the process.
The Indira Gandhi phenomenon helped to improve the status of women in India in
another way. It crumbled male chauvinism. It humbled male pride. The historical cowerings
of great leaders of India of the time before Mrs.Indira Gandhi exposed the halo of the male
superiority as hollow. It made it patent that it is the power one weilds that makes the
difference, not the sex of the person who weilds it. Indeed, these are subtle realisantions that
shook the thoughts of the people though none said it in so many words to them. Rise of
Mrs. Indira Gandhi, sine dubio, will remain as a meith in ameliorating the status of women in
the annals of Indian history.
The trend of women going for jobs and pursuing professions started far before the advent
of Indira Gandhi at the centre-stage. Her advent revolutionised the trend. After Indira
Gandhi, women in jobs became more a rule than an exception and they looked for
progressively higher slots and sought fields where never before women stepped into. As a
result, more and more fields and higher and higher slots opened up for them. As time passed
by, the reservations towards recruiting or promoting women thinned and ultimately
disappeared. As a result, sexual discrimination in jobs is a matter of past now. More and
more people realise that is skill and other abilities that count in doing a job well and not the
sex of the performer. As far as jobs are concerned., sexual equality is a reality already.
Economic strength generated by jobs has successfully boosted the self-Image of women
in India. Economic liberation is the touch-stone of all other liberations. The power, status
and influence generated from the jobs add to the solidification of the status of women in
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emerging India. Evils like dowry are bound to be wiped out of the earth of India in the
emerging atmosphere. Being an evil, inveterate in Indian soil from millenniums, a historical
process like deracinating the assuetude of dowry cannot take place overnight. Such a
historical process takes its own time. And emerging India happily is on the road. It is only
a matter of time before India is free from the prise of this shameful menace.
Dowry death cases have become sensational topical issues these days with the public
being highly sensitised to the menace of the offences with the unfortunate swelchie of cruel
practices and circumstances deliver an innocent girl at deaths door. All institutions of
society including the government, press, womens organisations, judiciary and police handle
dowry death cases on a special footing. Each such case outrages the patience of thinking
people and rouses the passion and outcry against the perpetraters of the offence. The police
too give special importance to the investigation of these cases and closely supervises the
investigation process..
Marriage is often called the second birth in a girls life; it brings an entire metamorphosis
in the form and contents of her life and in the process exposes her to inopinate adaptation
problems. It is an irony of nature and social customs that it is the woman who is delicate in
nature rather than the man, who is selected for this difficile gauntlet of transformation in the
process of familial socialising. Percase, the gentle and amenable caractere of the female
breed expose hers to the natural selection for the purpose. In the process death of the most
unfortunate of them by felo de se or homicide because of the grind of the circumstances has
become an unfortunate phenomenon. Dowry is only one though primus interpares among
various immane manifestations of adjustment problems to which the tender psyche of a
young girl is exposed after her marriage. An integrated approach to all these symptoms of
adjustment problems to which a girl is suddenly exposed while her persona is yet
unprepared to meet the gauntlets alone can bring deliverance to the fairer sex of the human
genre. The entire process of social legislations and their enforcement is only a distant link in
the whole catena of luctation warranted to achieve this end.
The emerging sexual equality has another happy face vis a vis the conceptual reality of
the reverence and importance given to women in India and Indian culture from times
immemorial. The equality of man and woman on the field certainly tilts the balance of
advantage in favour of woman because of the favour with which she is accustomed to be
seen. This tilt of balance is not a forced one on the man, but one volunteered hors de combat
because of the natural attributes of a womans characteristics . This tilt is already in
evidence. Given equal chances, woman is favoured in recruitments and promotions because
of her natural sincerity, honesty and devotion to work. In this sense, women are overtaking
men. The process is on. They are in limine. It is a happy development. It is civilisation. It is
culture. It is good for the future of the humanity. Humanity can survive only if women with
their far superior attributes, lead men en face in addition to being driving forces en arriere.
Man sans woman is not only incomplete, but also lightless and lifeless
Not that woman and man are really equal. Nature meant them to be unequal for its own
purposes and process. Basically, they are in-comparable quantums, separate entities by
themselves. If to be compared at all, woman has an edge over man. Often the reality is
distorted by man by his brutish physical strength as against the gentle mental and spiritual
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attributes of woman and he forcibly cornered all opportunities of growth. If women are
opened up to their de jure opportunities, women as nature designed it for them, go ahead of
men and lead them to a far better world then existing now. A cultured and civilized world
must provide this natural opportunity to its women-folk for its own good. This is what is
happening in emerging India.
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POLICE AND THE UNDERWORLD
Behind every great fortune, there is a crime, said Balzac; behind every great crime, there
is underworld indulged in making unlimited profits. Might is right there and only the fittest
survive. Animal side of man is at its best in this business of organised crimes. Gangs operate
in violation of accepted social norms to make fast buck. They are antisocials and threats to
the peace and security of the law-abiding society.
POWERFUL CONNECTIONS
Pollent organisation is both a strength and weakness of crime syndicates. Organisation
provides these gangs the benefits of a well-oiled management machinery: objectives, targets,
data collection, through planning, right recruitments, motivation, coordination,
communication system, competent direction, infrastructure, efficient execution, leadership
and accountability, and with it, the all important ruthless efficiency. Added to this are the
ruthlessness and the enormous wealth of the crime world. The combination is deadly and the
result is powerful connections at right places doing right things at right times in their
interests. Silence and secrecy are the keys here. Powerful and the underworld complement
each other for mutual benefits and the arrangements usually cover politicians in power, top
bureaucrats, those high-up in judiciary and enforcement agencies including the police.
Enormous ill-gotten wealth amassed by criminal methods bring powerful connections within
the reach of crime syndicates to twist the arms of law. Thus develops an axis between
underworld and the powerful to the detriment of the country.
HAND IN GLOVE
Underworld is an independent world per se. It is a world of crimes, secrecy, silence, fear,
loyalties, dangers, wealth, outlaws, sui generis professional norms, efficiency and wideranging infrastructures. Here various gangs coexist with deadly rivalry or alliance and
partnership. There is no road in between. Choice in the netherland is between success and
imminent death. Though underworld and open world coexist on the surface of the Earth,
their objectives, values and norms of action render them worlds apart. It is only the police
from the open world keep avizefull eyes on the underworld. They are the bridge between the
open world and the underworld and form a protective sheath between the two. This position
places them in a pivotal role vis a vis crime syndicate survives without the active backing of
the police. The support boosts their confidence and gives strength to their criminal activities.
The police get a farthing share in the res gestae as the quid pro quo many times over their
salary. Police being hand in glove with the underworld, is a secret known to all.
UNDERWORLD DYNAMICS
Underworld indulges in extortions, protection money rackets, running vice-dens of
gambling, prostitution, cabret, bars, massage parlours etc, indulging in crimes like smuggling,
drug peddling, adulteration of petroleum products, land grabbing, arms shipments, hawala
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transactions, forgeries in securities, extra-judicial settlement of disputes under threats,

production and sale of apocryphal products, kidnappings for ransom and other tricks of
making quick money in violation of the rules of the country. Three facts that keep
underworld operations distinct are their secrecy, their antinational and antisocial nature and
their ability to generate huge money in a short duration. These operations are large scale
illegal enterprises run as a teamwork in secrecy and ergo the need to keep a band of loyal and
committed followers. The operations involve risks at every step. Law enforcing agencies
and rival organisations are heels to undermine their goals. As a result, members of the
underworld are liberally rewarded for their work and loyalty and their families are protected
and looked after for life in case of the bread-winner being killed or jailed. Similarly,
disloyalty is met with immediate lynching.
UNDESIRABLE AXIS
Though silence and secrecy are cardinal in underworld operations to help evade proofs
and the arms of law, the activities at that scale can hardly go unnoticed by professionals like
police. Underworld knows it. It has the option of taking on the fighting the might of the state
represented by the police or keeping it contented and in good humour. Being clever and astute
businessmen as they are and huge profits at stake, the underworld opts for cooperation in
sharing a farthing fraction of its res gestae with enforcing agencies like the police. Police
conducts prearranged raids under publicity blitz to straighten records once in a way. Here also
cases fall through in silence as a rule in courts. In cases of genuine raids by greenhorns,
underworld fautors are alerted in advance ab intra. The backing underworld receives from
the police constitutes its spine in pursuing more and more daring and dangerous schemes.
LUCRI CAUSA
More often than not, who is who in the underworld and who is behind what is a public
knowledge. The underworld operates on the knowledge that mere knowledge does not
constitute evidence in court of law. All cares are taken to cover anything that constitutes
valid evidence to crimes committed. Cut-outs is the technique. Silence and secrecy is the
method. Heads of crime syndicates operate with remote control. Contract killers are made
use. Hi-tech communication systems come to them before it reaches police. Dons guide
operations from foreign countries inimical and having no extradition treaty with the host
country a la Dawood Ibrahim holed up in Karachi with his many lieutenants operating from
Gulf and Far-East countries. An epinosic outcome of mafioso operating from inimical
foreign countries and joining hands with its governments is the misuse of the formers
criminal networks for subversive activities in the host country. The ISI of Pakistan used
Dawood Ibrahim in the serial bomb blasts of 1993 in Bombay. The don continues to be at
large. His various factions continue to operate in Bombay and other cities of India sans
souce. This is while their subversive activities like the serial bomb blasts in Bombay
resemble an undeclared war and seriously sabotaged the security and peace of the country!
The factions continue to operate with great abandon in their traditional strongholds like
Bombay and spread to other major cities like Bangalore sans a trace of remorse. Reason lies
in the enormous money the underworld generates and spends. It is public knowledge that top
politicians of the country from different political parties including a former central minister
were investigated and tried for harbouring associates of Dawood Ibrahim. This is only
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iceberg. India has chief ministers having close links with the underworld. Many rose to
powerful positions with the money and muscle of the underworld. Quid pro quo naturally
follows. Underworld has become a highly lucrative business in India.
GLAMOUR
Plush money and wealth make underworld a fastuous world. Members of the underworld
are seen in finest dresses, driving costliest cars, frequenting best five star hotels and living in
beautiful bungalows in best localities of the town. Their ostentatious and comfortable lifestyle, indulgences in sex and scandals, outrageous adventures etc. tend to fool the hoi polloi
to remanticise the underworld. The underworld itself uses masterly propaganda to boost its
image in the public eyes. Series of popular films extolling the virtues and lives of mafia dons
as heroes being churned out from Bollywood is a common knowledge. Indian filmworld in
the taut prise of the easy funds from the underworld help the latter to manipulate the
filmworld to its advantage. In the ensuing publicity blitz, guillible public forget that the
underworld is a pack of hors la loi indulging in antinational and antisocial activities. The
underworld knows the utility of the sympathies of the public. It uses every trick in the book
to win over an own following.The Arun Gawli phenomenon in Bombay as an instant
political leader and the ascendancy of his Akhila Bharatiya Sena is an extreme manifestation
of such a process.
EXPANSION
Underworld tries to gain a foot hold wherever there is enormous and instant easy money.
It does everything to grow, spread and ultimately take over that. It be hotel business, land
deals, film production of construction business, underworld steals a share either as
protection money or returns of direct investment. When construction business dried of plush
money, underworld turned to the film world in a big way with its easy funds at disposal for
investments in the field. Recent series of murders in the filmworld in Bombay and Bangalore
are results of the involvement of mafia in film business.
DANGEROUS GROWTH
The most dangerous trend of recent underworld phenomenon in India is the rise of a
supreme don and his unlimited powers posing threat to the peace and security of the country.
More so, while he is holed up in an inimical foreign country and guiding operations in India
by remote control. Various factions of Dawood Ibrahim are creating havoc in Bombay. They
are now looking outside to grow. Bangalore saw myriad gangwars and murders in recent past
as a consequence . Police knew everything and noticed every move. Underworld takes care
to keep key figures in police on the right side before forcing into a new region. Bangalore
underworld resisted Bombay underworld invading Bangalore. The result was gangwars and
murders. Police was vertically split ab intra between the two gangs. Plans of attacks on
rivals were plotted in posh hotels and bars and murders were committed in daylight. In spite
of the knowledge of the plots and plans, police come to picture after the commission of the
crimes. In a recent instance, a key mafioso arrested was taken to a district headquarters for
further investigation. The gangster disappeared from the toilet of a restaurant while police
officers having his custody were sipping tea in the restaurant. Such a fredaine is not possible
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without the active backing and cooperation of the police. In another instant in the same city,
a police team sent from the state capital to apprehend a budding mafia don, entered the place
where the gangster was hiding. The gangster was waitiing for his friend in a car outside
while the team arrived. A senior member of the police team came directly to the car and
informed the ganster to leave the place immediately as they had come to arrest him. The
ganster immediately drove away from the place. The police team formally conducted search
of the place and reported back that the gangster was not traced there. This is species of what
happens in most actions against mafioso and the underworld. In most gangwars and murders,
friendly police officers from the spot of crime are taken into confidence and informed in
advance about the impending plans by the underworld to keep ground ready in their favour.
This is the scenario of the axis between the police and the underworld.
Underworld can be brought on knees only by breaking the axis between them and the
police. While gangsers are the visible body of the underworld, police is its spine.
Underworld cannot stand up without the backing of the police. The axis between the two is
based on the money and muscle power of the underworld generated by massive illegalities.
Underworld is flanked by the laws operating against it on one side and enormous money and
muscle power working in its favour on the other. Though police has the responsibility to side
with the law, it finds the money on the other side more attractive and desirable. Ergo, the
vicious axis between the police and the underworld. This is the crux of the problem of
policing the underworld. The problem needs committed police doing professional policing
that is nonexistent in extant India. The country is caught in a 22-catch situation. Any attempt
to handle the problem of the underworld must begin with the police. Until it is done,
underworld is bound to grow from strength to strength to eat up the vitals of the country and
render it hollow democratically.
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KIDNAPPING FOR RANSOM

Kidnapping per se is a crime. Kidnapping itself as an end, as in a child being kidnapped
by either of the estranged parents of the child from the custody of the other or a minor
beloved being kidnapped by a lover, is a crime known to man from the inception of social
living. Kidnapping as a means of other crimes as in forcing governments to release
prominent terrorist leaders in custody in exchange or for procuring other illegal benefits is a
more heinous form of the crime and often led to cold-blooded murder of innocent people.
The world-wide rise in the incidence of kidnapping cases as a political tool in the
international crime scenario in 1970s is an important meith in the evolution of kidnapping as
a crime leverage. The next decade saw use of this tool by mafioso and criminal gangs as a
convenient means of extortion in India in states like Bihar, UP, Delhi and Assam. The
criminal virus is now percolating to healthier parts of Indian. The means which was once
confined to criminal gangs of Bihar, UP and Delhi and to terrorist outfits of North-East,
Kashmir and Punjab regions as means of meeting their respective criminal goals is now
becoming an ambitious adventure of resourceful street-hoodlums of big cities of India of
making quick easy money in oodles. The trend needs to be arrested quick and fast a toute
hasard.
SELECTION OF RIGHT TARGET
Most cases of Kidnapping for ransom are never made public nor reported to police,
Demands of the kidnappers are met posthaste and release of victims is obtained. Reasons are
many. Kidnappers who are after big money and professionally operate, conduct more than
adequate research about their target to ensure that the target is not only capable of meeting
their demands, but also efficacious of coughing up them in private to secure the safe release.
Secondly, the strike is mostly against people stacked with unaccounted money, who
therefore dare not public scrutiny of their ill-gotten riches and prefer private settlement. The
low credibility of the police in respect of its competence and commitment in handling such
sensitive cases adds to the misease of the maledict victim. Added to this is the fear of being
forcibly led by the unenlightened police to commit insensitive acts that may endanger of
safety and security of the kidnapped persons.
UNEQUAL POLICE
In cases reported to police, the chance of kidnapped persons safely returning home is
tout court a matter of rare accident in the ambience of present health of police competence in
handling the cases. Public of present health of police competence in handling the cases.
Public perception in this matter is accurate. The criminals are generally a highly qualified
and efficient group of committed people operating on their own plans and convenience.
Lots of thought, analyses and money go to the plans, strategy and technique before acted
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upon. Hi-tech facilities are employed to the best use. The success of police against these
tremendous odds in the absence of an elaborate strategy is a matter of pure chance. Even in a
chance detection, endless investigation and trial generally end with equital in extant judicial
system. Even in the rarest of the rare convictions, punishment awarded at a distant future
nowhere amate to the promised fortunes of a successful kidnapping case for ransom. The
balance of advantage algate is patently is favour of taking risk.
ROMANTIC IMAGE
In the age of high-money operation run through bank securities and other banking
channels, huge cash in hand is a rarity. This added to the age-old stigma, makes
conventional property offences like theft, HBT, robbery and dacoity lean and nonglamorous
crimes. On the other hand, crimes like bank robbery, kidnapping for ransom and mega-fraud
foot the bill as glamorous crimes in the extant high-money world and yield enormous grists
unheard of in other crimes and make the criminals instant heroes. The elaborate plans,
strategies and efficiency involved in the crime give an intellectual slant and bring the
elements of adventure and thrill to the whole affair. The romantic combination prompts
adventurous and ambitious unemployed youths in drones to take to the crime.
CRIMINAL OUTFITS
Many criminals take to kidnapping for ransom as a means to sustain their criminal outfits
engaged in other major criminal activities. They kidnap rich persons from the surroundings
to meet their monetary besoin. Notorious forest brigand, Veerappan, operating in forests
bordering Karnataka and Tamilnadu used to extort money from the owners of granite mines
in the areas of his operation. Any resistance was met with kidnappings for ransom. This
forced Karnataka Government to ban all mining operation in the area. ULFA activities
played the same trick in Assam with tea estates. The arrest of top officials of Tata Tea Ltd.
In 1977 on the charges of sedition inter alia for providing huge funds and other services to
banned ULFA terrorist outfit threw light on the going on in Assam for years under the pall of
the threat of kidnappings.
LURE OF QUICK MONEY
Other criminals take to kidnapping for ransom by the lure of the res gestae of the crime
and the easy money involved. These criminals with importable lure for easy money spread
like wildfire in Indian crime scenario and pose threat to the fabric of safety and security of
the country. Ambitious and der-doing unemployed youths constitute the core of this group
of criminals. Unlimited riches around, unfulfilled besion, own frustrations, the thrill of
violence and the promise of belle vue offered by criminal life as seen in television, cinema
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and cheap literature together spur faex populi to make it big at a single sway by taking
kidnapping for ransom.
SCOPE FOR INGENUITY

The crime provides ample scope for the bluette of ingenuity. It allows for immense
freedom of action and strategies depending on the mental calibre and material resources of
the criminals. Right strategies, efficient brasstacks and pernicketiness can make the crime a
foolproof operation. This is an inviting challenge to any resourceful and skeely criminal.
Use of hi-tech communication, transport and weaponry system makes the crime a highly
sophisticated operation. An elaborate and hi-tech kidnapping operation for ransom involves
huge money. In the circumstances of de trop riches and plush targets capable of huge yields
as res gastae of a kidnap effort around, intelligent and enterprising criminals take it as a good
investment. Liberal spending in the stage of reconnoitre is the hallmark of criminals
resorting to this crime. They hire safe-houses at posh areas at exorbitant rents, wear rich
dresses and move in luxurious cars while preparing for their strike. The criminals in Nirmal
Jaipuria kidnap case of Bangalore of 1977 who made a ransom demand of Rs.5 crore, hired a
house in Bangalore as the centre for their operations at a rent of Rs.1.5 lakh a month for
three months prior to their strike. An investment of a few lakhs of rupees is more than worth
in an operation that promises to yield Rs.5 crore in a single sweep.
SPREADING THE CRIMINAL VIRUS
The crime as isolated adventures for quick money in unorganised sector poses the greatest
thread to the peace and health of the country. The youths in the crime seek their targets far
away from their home state to avoid detection and other embarrassments. This is how youths
of Delhi, Punjab and UP are found operating in a southern city like Bangalore. The process
helps the spread of the criminal virus of a crime-infested region to healthier regions of the
country. Medical and engineering colleges that offer seats to the sons of crime tainted and
black-money-plush parents on the strength of donations help the spread of crime tendencies
to other parts of the country. This is how the crime culture of UP and Bihar is spreading to
relatively crime-free areas.
Cases of kidnapping for ransom pose a tough gauntlet to the skill and ingenuity of a
police professional. His competence is openly on test while criminals negotiate ransom with
the victims. This is the stage in which the scelerate ingenuity of the subdolous criminals is
in excelsis while providing the real opening to the police to catch the criminals red-handed.
The incertitude of the situation bring the true skill of the police to the acid-test. It is a live
challenge to the police- a climacteric. His single faux pas in the glidder path of his
manoeuvres may make life and death difference to many. The knowledge makes him
nervous. The albatross gives him delitescent strength and drive to move him forward with a
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resolution to succeed. This is the real moment of policing. The thrill of real policing lies in
such live moments and real joy in bringing relief to the people in real distress.
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INDIAN POLICE: WHAT COURSE TO PURSUE

IN THE 21ST CENTURY?
With the accrescent demands for limited resources of the Earth and concomitant
concours for survival in the world of the survival of the fittest, the advent of the new century
is bound to herald ascensive economic bewilderments in the crucible of hotting up social
complexities. Reintepretation of life in the complex environment of technical advancements,
systemic and structural changes in society and spurts in criminal activities is likely to provide
the paramenters of the coming age and determine the quality of life in the coming century.
The police, as the custodians and enforcers of the safety of life and property, have to move
pari passu with the time for perficient handling
of the emerging situation. They cannot
afford to adapt to challenges as and when they are posed as in vogue in government service.
Assessment of situations ahead, defining the future challenges and deriving means to
checkmate them in advance form the basic tenets of good policing and are sine qua non with
the survival of the country and its peaceful life.
The piece de resistance of future policing has to be perficient performance with minimal
visible presence. This means a far more professional organisation than now. This means far
more skilled policing than now. This means better management of the police organisation,
better equipped force, men of higher calibre and devotion to work and more contented people
manning the police hierarchy.
20th Century saw the expansion of the utility of the police to every conceivable field of
human activity in social and national life. Security duties are increasingly encompassing
ceremonial objectives. Traffic and law and order police are more and more replayed to add
grandeur and humour to private functions of the well-to-do and powerful. The presence of
the police is becoming more a matter of prestige and social standing in society than an
emergent need of protection. The police are now called to mediate and solve familial
problems, labour disputes and case and communal differences. People call them now to
intervene in their differences with others, expect them to handle rescue operations during
natural accidental and man-made calamities. Their services are warranted to bring order
wherever and whenever things go wrong at public as well as private events with unending
number of acts, rules and their amendments passed every year by the legislatures. This wide
use of the police in the vast spectrum of the statecraft rendered it jack of all and master of
none. The transformation blunted the effectiveness of the police in handling its cardinal
duties of providing security, maintenance of order and investigation of crimes.
Policing is presently seen as an unintellectual exercise with a flare for brawn,
ruthlessness and derring-do. Reality is not very different from this image. The situation
certainly does not do in the future complex societal network as the breeding ground for
complicated criminal activities warranting skilled and intelligent policing. The Police of the
21st century have to be manned by highly intelligent and brainy species of men should it be
feracious in meeting challenges and showing results. The change, apart from improving
the quality of policing, will bring respect to the job in addition to the present awe and fear, the
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police inspire. An overhaul of selection and training policies to infuse and buildup mental
and intellectual strains in the manpower of the police should be the bedrock of the efforts to
snod the organisation to meet the challenges of the future.
The paramount need of the future police is a professional image tout au contraire to
present image as a handmaid of rich and powerful. What is required is a perspicacious
definition of police duties and responsibilities and relegating the force to perform the duties
under the avizefull eyes of the constitution without the distractions of interferences ab extra.
The police should have free hand to tackle and solve issues cropping up during the process of
policing with concomitant responsibility for any failures squarely lying on its shoulders.
Hi-tech policing is another imperative of the 21st century. Police cannot afford to lose
ground to criminals in the field of hi-tech. Efficiency of policing is pro rata to competence to
perform in a given situation in meeting challenges offered. The competence necessarily
implies moving pari passu with the fast changing hi-tech environment in the fields of
transport, communication, weaponry and detection system. Police can ignore this need only
at its own peril.
The growth of police in the 20th century is marked by its insulation from the intellectual
explosions of the age. Police is seldom touched by the zeist geist. Policing methods and
ideas remained stagnant throughout the century sans effective voice raised to infuse new spirit
to the body of the police. The century saw no concrete and concerted efforts to bring crime
investigation on modern lines. The problem of human rights violations remained a major
blot on the policing process throughout the century. Use of third degree methods in
interrogations sullied the image of the police in a century which brought revolutionary
changes in the concepts of human dignity, equality, justice for all and basic rights. The
image of the police in the 20thcentury is that of a licensed criminal syndicate run by the
government to checkmate unlicensed criminal activities.
Indian legislatures churn out new legislations and bring out amendments threeon in such
numbers and festination that neither those legislatures nor the police who enforce them can
afford to keep a track of the enactments and their provisions. This Achilles heel in the law
enforcement machinery will perforce disappear in years ahead. A solution is creation of the
Community Police as enforcers of the social legislations as distinct from the body police.
The community Police require skills different from those in general policing owing to the
special nature of the social legislations and special sensitivities of its enforcement. The
huge share of the social legislations among new enactments and the gargantuan task of
enforcing them is another justification for creating a separate community police wing out of
the present police. The measure will relieve the body police from lots of work-pressures and
provide it spare time and energy to concentrate on vital issues of the general policing.
Another task ahead to attend tout de suite is sewing the investigating responsibilities
and the prosecution duties to a single whole. Inter-departmental co-operation though
specious in theory on paper, it is exceptions in field in the Indian environment of
interdepartmental jealousy and rivalry. The police with the need of prompt responses and
quick decisions vis a vis the complex nature of emerging crimes cannot do for long with the
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extant system of the police and the prosecution pulling apart from opposite directions in the
race for one-upmanship.
The key to the success of the police is its response time, the speed with which it
responds to the challenges of the crime. Where time is a precious commodity and a
difference of a couple of seconds make the difference of success and failure of a police
operation, persistent efforts to shorten response time will get the highest priority. The thrust
of the police administration of the next millennium will be directed to bettering the response
time as speed will be the mainstay of crimes and criminals of the coming age. Short
response time implies improved communication and transport network and highly motivated
human resources ever-ready to handle challenges. Outmoded communication and transport
facilities in disrepair conditions most of the time have no relevance there and casual
manpower is rather passe in that ambience. The millennium will see the police force in the
finest fettle in terms of orgtanisation, manpower and equipments and becoming a highly
organised efficient limb of the state apparatus.
The 21st century police will be required to shed to idee fixe for the show of strength in
lieu of efficient policing. The stress in future will be on lean and fit policing. The structural
deformity and oveweight caused by redundant posts, undefined jobs, lack of accountability,
epinosic equation of rights and responsibilities, top-heavy structure, erratic span of control,
demotivating factors, nonprofessional ambience and uninspiring leadership will become a
matter of the past with the police going perforce competitive en face gargantuan challenges
from criminals posing threat to the raison detre of the police and its relevance to the extant
society.
Going hi-tech to match the gauntlets of the crime world is another possibility open for the
police of the 21st century. The age will see the needs of investigation process expanding the
horizons of science and technology rather than the other way round. Gene tests will become a
strategic and commonly employed tool of investigation against crimes relating to bodily
harm, paternity and even bodily associations. Laser guns will come handy in handling
violent law and order issues. Night-vision instruments will become an essential part of the
investigation and security operations kits to be handled by every policeman. The age may
see police using eaves-dropping instruments to overhear unsuspecting people from distance.
X-ray eyes aid viewing across walls or closed doors. Computers will become an integral
part of the routine as well as special police works and police stations. Police may see
software devised to guide investigating officers in investigating every kind of crime at every
level. Helicopters and mini-aeroplanes will become common mode of transportation for
carrying investigating teams, deployment of security staff and airlifting armed forces to
disturbed places as time becomes precious and criminals become ingenious in dodging the
police.
An important possibility of the next millennium is the police becoming an elite force with
even its bottom levels being manned by highly qualified, skilled and enlightened
professionals as a result of the pampering ahead for the police in the administrative
hierarchy. Constabulary will be spruced to striking forces and manual works without policing
powers. With it, may go the pernicious misuse of the constabulary as household assistants.
Single-point recruitment will come to vogue with linear promotions from the lowest to the
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PRAVEEN KUMAR
highest ranks on the basis of merit and actual performances in the field as assessed by a
panel of distinguished public figures, constituted for the purpose.
A cost-efficient manpower policy in future police administration will bring motivation
and commitment centre-stage. The extant diffident response of maximum mobilisation or
raising of new units under every new challenge will give way to perficient strategies and
tactics. The present tendency of doing minimum required in a given situation unless
otherwise compelled by the situation amounts to criminal wastage of manpower. The 21st
century will require every single policeman straining his best with a sense of motivation and
commitment in the interests of superior policing.
Motivation and commitment are derivatives of self-actualisation in the need hierarchy
postualted by Maslow. Pride of performance can be a reality only while lower physical,
security and social needs cease to be issues. Indian police planners have no alternatives to
grooming the police manpower of the next century to this level of sans souci. This means
good living conditions, job security and sound social status. The police must find a
respectable place in the hierarchy of state administration and shed away the extant obnoxious
image of odd-job-man of the government as well as political leaders to inspire awe and
respect in the hoi polloi. The transformation is sine qua non with the new age.
Creating a self-contained police machinery in place of the present mere nuts and bolts of
the administration is cardinal need ahead. The nasty political and bureaucratic interferences
in professional policing have done no good to the country and its police in the last five
decades. Insulating the police from the vice prise of ectogenetic pressures and influences
needs to be a reality in the coming decades should the police have relevance in the
governance of the country. This is possible only by the metamorphosis of the police to an
independent body with goals and objectives perspicuously defined and laid down. The new
police have to be responsible only to the constitution through a suitable machinery of checks
and counterchecks exercised by constitutional bodies manned by people of proven trackrecord in matters of integrity, competence and other mental attributes and chosen from
academic, bureaucratic and political fields as well as public life. The change may bring a
semblance of justice and fairplay to administration and ipso facto infuse a value system to
Indian public life and bring the fear of god to force strict adherence to probity and the rule of
law in public life. India has no alternative to this metamorphosis should the country survive
the moral crisis and degringolade of national spirit, it witnessed since independence.
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POLICE IN THE
ADMINISTRATION OF JUSTICE
Justice begotten at a cost is justice lost. The fact is lost sight of by the present
administration of justice. Justice is a natural right. It is the sine qua non and raison detre of
social grouping. Justice in a social environment have to be as natural as sleep or oxygen to a
living being. Free and fair justice is the leges legum of human rights. The proficiency of
justice administration has to be assayed with this litmus test and the role of the police in the
system has to be judged by its contributions to this goal of the justice administration system.
Justice in its basic sense necessitates an integral vision. Justice abstracted from its
environment, past, present, future, diverse issues, dramatis personae and related events
cannot be justice in the true sense of the word. Justice in parts is no justice that lasts. Justice
involves delving deep down to the heart of an issue and delivering justice in reference to all
related issues and matters to the rightful entitlement of all. This presupposes a passion for
objectivity and justness and above all, selflessness in the arbitrators of justice as well as in
those who are in the service of the administration of justice. The role of the police in the
administration of justice comes to scrutiny in the context of their non a such part in the
investigation of crimes and maintenance of law and order.
Police play umpteen roles as grassroot executors. They are basically performers, actual
doers in the field. Passion in the normal trait of action. Objectivity and justness seldom give
company to those who act to show results. Expecting selfless traits in a profession like police
is waiting for rain drops from white clouds. They do perform duties with normal flair and
loyalty while put in service of justice. The tragedy is that the loyalty of the police prefers the
interests of the rich and powerful to the abstract idea of justice they are put in service of.
Loyalty to justice is a noble cause. It signifies a heightened mind bound to a heightened
cause. Loyalty to a value or a just cause is always a great virtue. The same cannot be said
about loyalty to individuals of whatever importance. Loyalty by definition signifies loss of
freewill and independence of thought. Loyalty is a binding, strong in that, an emotional
binding by volition, but a binding nevertheless; there is no independence in it. It is a
mortgage of the self. Loyalty denotes polarisation of the self; devotion to one, and
thoughtless opposition to whoever stands up to the object of the devotion. This notion
renders loyalty devoid of any sense of justice, which bounces from the springboard of
freedom of thought and independent judgement. Ergo, individual loyalty in the service of
the administration of justice is self-defeating to the cause of justice. The Achilles heel lies
in loyalty basically being a faith, a blind faith. Sans stirrings in the conscience. It is an
inferior submission to a superior existence, ipso facto subverting per se the very foundation
of the cardinal principle of equality among individuals. The only loyalty to conscience,
freedom of thought and independent judgement. A police man with this loyalty can do
exemplary job in service of the administration of justice.
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Police as the cuttingedge of the governance, enjoy enormous powers. Bringing lawbreakers and criminals to book is just a part of the gargantuan responsibilities on their
shoulders. As the task-masters of the statecraft, they are invested with diverse rights and
privileges. They have a peek to all private as well as public activities of the citizenry. They
can constrain people to perform specific tasks and forbid from doing others in the national
and public interests. They prevent, check, prohibit, restrain, regulate, confine or arrest erring
people depending on time to time needs dictated by the circumstances. They can forcibly
break open, enter, search and seize when need arises. They use weapons to hurt and kill. The
wide spectrum of powers impinging on the basic rights of the plebeian places the police on a
pedestal different from that of the common man as far as the administration of justice is
concerned. These extraordinary powers are tools of the police in serving the interests of
justice. The police, as the means of justice, are often exempted from the process of justice by
the law itself. Human nature being what it is, the need of keeping the police in tight leash
regarding exercise of their sensitive powers has become conditio sine qua non for the
administration of justice.
The relevance of the police in administration of justice is two fold; one, fair exercise of
their responsibilities in the interests of justice; two, fair exercise of their powers to ensure that
no harm is done to the process of justice. As dispensers of justice during investigation of
crimes and maintenance of law, police perform highly sensitive tasks capable of undermining
the very process of the justice administration, Police enjoy unrestricted freedom unbecoming
to the sensitivity of their job. Practically, there are no means to force them to comply with
the needs of objectivity and fairplay in work save their own interpretations of laws and
actions. Postliminary intereferences of courts are too little, too late to be meaningful. By
the time an issue knocks at the doors of courts, damage to the process of justice could have
been irrevocably done. Whatever courts to thereafter help only partial recovery from the
damage. Innocent people would already have been arrested, chargesheeted and harassed;
decent people would have been dishonestly denied rightful dues in the name of maintenance
of law; criminals would have been willingly let off the noose; or hors la loi would have been
let free to do things in violation of the extant laws as quid pro quo. What police do in the
name of dispensing justice are material to the hoi polli, not what courts deliver, if deliver at
all, at some distant future. The fact brings the police centre-stage in the administration of
justice. Police unequipped for the crucial role is the crux of the issue. Lack of sound
mechanism of supervision and poor position of policeman in society, mediocre education,
deviant job culture etc inhibit police from performing at levels adequate for the importance of
their responsibilities. It denies them organisational pride. Field orientations distract them
from high human values. Weak economic position and easy opportunities for dishonest
riches render them prone to corrupt practices. There is nothing tangible in their service to
inspire commitment to noble causes. Their job culture does not inspire them to delve deep
into diverse nuances of their job. Their service lacks in facilities to enhance professional
competence. Consequence is shallow policing, mechanical works en face policing crying for
deep, intellectual analyses of its relevance for establishment of a just society and national
well-being. Shallow policing is responsible for all the mishaps and turbulence of the first
half century of independent India. The period saw police distracted to go berserk seeking
parochial and selfish ends. A force committed to parochial and selfish interests can hardly do
any justice to the administration of justice.
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Another relevance of the police in the administration of justice is exercise of their special
powers without committing wrongs against justice. Police are dangerous fences with their
extraordinary powers potential to uproot and destroy the crops they are put in charge. Their
enormous powers presume special responsibilities on their shoulders to protect innocent
people from rash exercise of powers. This is an infinitely more difficile responsibility
considering what human nature is and how every man suffers from a blind spot about himself.
Every person is right for himself. Every criminal is just in his own assessment. Every act,
every human being, does has its own logic, reasons and justifications. Nobody ever is wrong
to himself. This is true of the police too. Every encounter, every lockup death, every third
degree method, every wrongful confinement, every illegal arrest, every excess committed
by police has its own police justifications. It is irrelevant how the justifications. It is
irrelevant how the justifications appear to outsiders. You seld find police confessing to a
wrong or an excess committed. We have examples of police commissioners justifying
gunning down of innocent citizens by subordinates in broad daylight in a busy street as a
bonafide cause of mistaken identity. We have any number of cases of senior police officers
colluding with subordinates in destroying evidences of lock-up death cases. Punjab police
revelled in hushing up cases of cold-blooded murders through false encounters. Police
excesses are justified by the top-brass per procurationem of the solidarity of the police force
as though the concept is inimical to the interests of justice. Use of third degree methods is
excused as the bedrock of policing as if justice is as irrelevant concept as far as police are
concerned. The ambience, with the police going berserk with their special powers to
establish a just society, is not conducive to the administration of justice. The police are
committing wrongs against justice by the very means invested to them to protect the interests
of the justice. This is an irony of the relevance of police in the administration of justice.
The cause of failure of the police lies more in the systems failure the character of its
dramatise personae, deviant job culture and wrong leadership than in the concept of police.
Police in inappropriate milieu may turn into a Frankenstein. It is like a herd of tamed
elephants in a khedda operation. Lack of direction, weak management and poor organisation
turn the tamed rogues on rampage against the organisational goals instead of bringing of
knees the ferae naturae. Remedial measures have to be found for the prevarications rather
than blaming the police tout a fait.
Policing being a specialised job with rare keeks inside by outsiders about measures and
decisions taken in disparate circumstances, few outsiders comprehend that the job gives
tremendous leeway for work and decisions, be it crime investigation or maintenance of law.
This is a dangerous liberty in the system of dispensing justices that warrant preciseness and
smug exactitude in the sensitive business of balancing justice. The sensitivity is briller par
son absence in the present police and policing system. Justice being what it is in the present
age of prolate concours making threatening differences , the leeway in policing process gives
scope for favours, misuses and corruption. Lack of real supervision and control over the work
ab extra is another face of the problem. Beginning from deciding whether a prima facie case
is made out in a complaint and whether the case is to be investigated to whether it is to be
chargesheeted, at what stage, on whom, with what all evidences, every decision is exclusive
police decisions. How an investigation proceeds, at what speed, whom to arrest and whom
not, at what stage, whom to release on bail and whom not to, what to search and seize, where,
at what juncture of time, the direction of the investigation to be pursued and what turns to be
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PRAVEEN KUMAR
taken at what phase, police decide on own without reference, supervision, guidance or
control from outside. Though laws provide for courts to keep track of the process of
investigation, it is rarely the case in the field. The situation is blatantly glidder in the field of
maintenance of law sans the mechanism of courts keeping track of the issues unless the
matter is filed, before a court of law. The Achilles heel is taken advantage of by the rich and
the powerful. Police have become willing tools in their hands in warping justice in barter of
the crumbs they throw from the res gestae of their unjust deeds. The situation is conspicuous
in police bending laws in favour of the people in power to let them out of the noose of laws
or crush their enemies or keep Sophocles sword hanging on the crowns of their opponents to
ease political manoeuvres. The degringolade began during the emergency of 1975, saw a
rising swing in 1980s and found in excelsis in the early 1990s with courts taking cognisance
of the situation and convinced about the need of their intereference in the interests of the
administration of justice. Public interest litigations became popular. Higher courts ventured
into close scrutiny of investigations into cases against people in power. It became public that
there was no history of convictions of powerful politicians in independent India in criminal
cases investigated by investigating agencies including the CBI and rarely such cases were
investigated but on political compulsions. The premier investigation agency and its chief
were subjected to strictures in open courts for nonperformance, partisan approach and
contempt of court in investigations to cases against people in power. Close scrutiny of the
investigations led to arrest, chargesheet and conviction of powerful political leaders. The
tragedy of the awakening is that the so called judicial activism saw itself serving the interests
of the political witch-hunt preceded it. This considerably reduced the impact of the elert
courts on the national scene.
The witch-hunt became a part of the policy of survival of United front government that
followed. The use of the CBI and revenue enforcement agencies to bring political rivals to
submissions led to the fall of government in April 1997.
The state terrorism against political rivals became a perfect art in 1970s with the use of
intelligence agencies for surveillance and opening secret, files, and in 1990s with the use of
investigation agencies for manoeuvring investigations into criminal cases, with the willing
cooperation of police leaders in the respective agencies. While the trend strengthened the
position of the chief executive of the government, it sine dubio, weakened the political fabric
of the country, so essential for a democratic process. In comparison , misuse of investigating
agencies proved a deadlier assault on the political process of the country. Jain-Hawala case
caught the popular attention as nothing before. The case took down its author and his party
with his political rivals to the drains. The coalition government that followed used the same
ropes to strike a wedge among the leaders of the party that supported it from outside by
terrorising some through the CBI and revenue enforcement agencies and luring others with
the crumbs of power. Bofors kickback case got a lease of life. St.Kitts forgery case and
Lakhubhai Pathak cheating case were re-enacted and manoeuvred to net-in strategic political
rivals on filmsy evidences.Rs.133 crore Urea scam and JMM bribery cases loomed large. A
key leader was interrogated without sound grounds for possessing wealth disproportionate to
known sources of income and later implicated in Tanwar murder case on suspicion. The
party was subjected to various enquries by revenue enforcement agencies. The acts nailed the
fate of the coalition government to prove that misuse of police often goes counter productive
in political manoeuvrings as did in Tamilnad where erstwhile Chief Minister, Ms.Jayalalitha,
230
found a series of criminal cases stacked against her and her associates, once she fell out of
power and popular support.
Recent past saw executive heads of government opting for their own men in the police
force to head the premier investigation agency of the country and political rivals being
investigated and chargesheeted at politically opportune times on flimsiest grounds while
cases of national significance on sound footing were dragged on for decades wantonly.
Often, ambiguous entries in diaries to prove bribery and old photographs together in public
functions to prove collaboration became conclusive evidence to proceed against inconvenient
political leaders. It was a scene of every successor hurling criminal cases against his
predecessor. Police reduced to a tool of political revenge in this powergame. In the process,
the police lost its credibility as a nonpartisan player and an invincible tool of establishing
justice. It is a pity that the lee-way police enjoy in policing contributed to its loss of face and
spine by its patent sequacious comportment and lack of passion to the case of justice.
Opportunities of dispensing favours during maintenance of law are common and aplenty
in policing. It be raids on vice dens, issue of licences, or action on rowdy gangs, decisions of
police about whom, when and how, play important role in political gameplan. The decisions
and concomitant actions more often than not, are taken on political convenience rather than
as measures of curbing lawlessness. Police act as conduits of partisan measures in favour of
the powerful rather than as tools of administering justice to all. Power assumed higher
importance to police than justice. Vice dens, criminals and rowdy gangs, bien chausse with
political patronage or money power, are not only allowed to run trouble-free, but often
protected to the hilt by the police. This is how the police in the job of serving justice are
stabbing it en arriere.
Police patronage to hors la loi is ephhemeral and changes colours with the change of
guard in the government. Personal ambitions of some in the organisation lead to partonages
ectogenous to political manoeuvres in form of crosspolitical allegiances and subservience to
rich and influential segments of the society. In the maelstrom, justice suffers, and the
nation, its constitution and the general public to whom the police as the guardians of justice
are responsible, suffer.
Police is not the odd-job boy of the government. It is not the hand-maid of politicians in
or out of power. Police is an organisatioon of professionals committed to the safety, security
and well-being of the country. Justice and rule of law are the litmus tests available to
achieve these ends. Once police miss the bus of justice and the rule of law, their goals of
safety, security and well-being remain a distant dream. They lose the credibility and respect
of the public, so essential for effective and perficient policing. The fear the police inspire
can not take it far in absence of credibility, respect and sympathy of the public. Once the
police lose their usefulness in political and power gameplans consequent to losing public
credibility, their political patrons will discard them like used condoms. The best bet for the
police is to be professional and committed to their responsibilities towards the administration
of justice. Police would forget this need only at their own peril. Doing anything violative of
its raison detre like sabotaging the course of justice will prove to be fatal to the relevance of
the police for the society.
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The relevance of the police lies in its usefulness to the administration of justice au reste
safety and security. Police are the arms of the administration of justice. They are the drive
and thrust of the administration of justice. Paralysed arms crumble the body of the
administration of justice. Arms struck by struck by gangrene, poison the whole system of the
administration of justice. As a vital organ of the administration of justice,police have
inherent potentiality to sabotage the interests of justice ab intra in umpteen kinds including
blatant mendacity. Inordinate delays in the process of investigations is one. Bartering
justice is another. Subjecting justice to the terms of quid pro quo is one more. Inefficient and
shallow policing add to the list. Delivering partial justice adds to the problem. Refusing to
act against injustice is another kind of injustice to justice. Making justice a costly affair gives
another dimension to the issue. Effectiveness of police lies in its ability in making justice an
easily and cheaply dispensable commodity. Police are the first line of the means of dispensing
justice. Courts come to the scene only in far later stage for restricted number of cases. For
the hoi polloi, police is the first and the only easy defence against injustices. Most cases of
disputes never cross the thresholds of the police stations. Police do act as arbitrators of
justice in criminal as well as civil cases in exercise of the wide spectrum of responsibilities of
crime investigations, investigations, maintenance of law, enforcement of order, preventive
measures and security duties. They enjoy a key position in the administration of justice. A
good police certainly symbolise effective administration of justice more than courts and
prosecution department together do. That is why a sound police system is conditio sine qua
non for the health and progress of the country and its tenuous social fabric.
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WHERE PROACTIVE JUDICIARY LEADS INDIA?
Be you ever so high, the law is above you said J.S.Verma Former Chief Justice of India.
The law of the country represents the aspirations of the people in running the country in a
democracy. That is the adhesive that binds the people, the country and its administration
together. That is the thread that holds them together into a system and defines the latters
ends and its means. In this sense, law is above the people, above the country and above its
administration. Taken away the law, people do not remain people, country does not remain a
country and administration does not remain administration. Sans law, there just will be a
jungle raj.
LEGISLATURE, EXECUTIVE AND JUDICIARY
Law protects people, country and the administration as much as people, country and the
administration protect the law. The ultimate responsibility of protecting the law lies on the
administration. Legislature, Executive and judiciary as Brihma, Vishnu and Maheshwara,
the all powerful trinity of the Hindu mythology, share the peise of protecting the interests of
the rule of law. Legilslature creates law, Executive enforces it and judiciary adjudicates it.
Difficulties surface while Brihma, Vishnu and Maheshware begin to encroach into others
domain for supremacy by claiming themselves as the true arbitrators of the interests of the
people, and each seeks to usurp the responsibilities of the other eo nomine. India is
witnessing the farce in its democratic system on the eve of golden jubilee celebrations of its
partition and independence.
A PAWN IN THE POWER-GAME
Sine Dubio, Legislature let down the country by over-indulgence in petty politicking and
Executive plunged itself in ineffciency and corruption to be any more relevant to the interests
of the country. Similarly, goings- on behind the veil of the threat of contempt proceedings in
Judiciary is in no way really sobering. Any one of them taking advantage of the general
breakdown by raising accusing fingers on the other and assuming on itself, the role of the
champion of public interest may not ported well to the democratic traditions of the country.
Such an eventuality does stir the hopes, expectations and imagination of the frustrated and
defeated hoi polloi. But, as time wears off, they come to realise the power-game for
supremacy among the contenders. The plebeian more and more understands that he played as
a pawn in the power-game. This deepens his frustration and intensifies his sense of hurt,
defeat and let down. This is what is happening to Indians after half a century of self-rule in
the rumblings of the pro-active judiciary.
LIMITATIONS OF THE JUDICIARY
Legislature, Executive and Judiciary have their own roles to play as demarcated by the
Constitution. Article 142 (1) of the Constitution of India while dealing with the enforcement
of Supreme Court orders perspicaciously lays down as, The Supreme Court in the exercise
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PRAVEEN KUMAR
of its jurisdiction may pass such decree or make such order as in necessary for doing
complete justice in any cause or matter pending before it, and any decree so passed or order
so made shall be enforceable throughout the territory of India in such manner as may be
prescribed by or under any law made by Parliament and, until provision in that behalf is so
made, in such manner as the President may by order prescribe. The Article provides a clue
to the spirit of the Constitution in matters of the responsibilities and limitations of the
Judiciary vis a vis overall governance. The key phrases that prescribe the role of Judiciary
here are in the exercise of its jurisdiction, for doing complete justice, in any cause or
matter pending before it and enforceable.. as may be prescribed by or under any law made
by Parliament . The phrases make perspicuous two limitations on the Judiciary, namely that
it shall act only on matters pending before it in exercise of its jurisdiction for doing complete
justice, and that the operation of its decree or order is subject to the law made by Parliament
or Presidential order. The limitation of jurisdiction and the need of matters being pending
before it, together constitutes a serious limitation on the Judiciary to do anything for doing
complete justice. The role of the extant pro-active Judiciary has to be discussed under the
light of these limitations.
USURPING EXECUTIVE POWERS
Judiciary indubitably is responsible for doing complete justice. Facts and evidences are
the basic tenets of modern judicial system and judiciary cannot overstep these needs in its
entrainement of doing complete justice. Executive exercises the power of transferring
investigating officers and other police personnel selon les regles. Jus naturale dictates that
anybody encroaching upon the jurisdiction of the other for whatever reasons amounts to
usurping the powers of the other by postern means. Judiciary as the ultimate machinery of
providing justice, resorting to superrogatory means to meet a cause amounts to irrevocable
breakdown of the Constitution and the rule of law and Executive en attendant finds itself
nowhere to go for redressal against the injustice. Being the ultimate dispenser of justice,
weighs down the Judiciary with the need of being moderate circumspect and scrupulous in its
means. Supercilious radicalism by the Judiciary prompted by procacity is like wild run of a
bull in a chinashop.
People cannot approach anybody for redressal when they are wronged by the Judiciary
and the sword of contempt proceedings constantly hang over their heads lest they open their
mouths in public. Self restraint is the lex non scripta of a sound Judiciary. There is nothing
so fatal to the independence and democratic traditions of the country as the delubrum of the
rule of law and justice with all its special powers and privileges growing to be a cimmerian
monster. The sickly developmetn violates the very raison detre of the Judiciary. When
Judiciary fails to recognise its limitations ex mero motu, none is there to do it for it.
Uberrima fides is basic to Judiciary. When Judiciary prevaricates from its rightful path, that
rings the death-knell of the democracy and leads the country to the ineluctable anarchy
through constitutional breakdown.
LOSS OF CREDIBILITY
Intentions of the Judiciary may be good. But, intentions alone do not constitute the right
to act in anyway desired. Indian Constitution does not provide for that even for doing
234
complete justice. Supreme Court of India on its verdict on 13 August laid guidelines to
protect the interests of working women from sexual harassment and ruled that the guidelines
would be in force till due legislations replace them. Intentions of the court in such a course of
action is definitely very `noble. But means pursued to the end may not be in the best interests
of the country and its constitutional machinery. Judiciary acting on Public Interest petitions
is certainly a step forward towards better judicial system. But, Judicial meddling in every
state affair outside its jurisdiction may prove costly to both the Judiciary and the country.
Indian Judiciary is certainly losing sight of the difference between pronouncing judgements
and making Executive orders. The latter part of the Article 142 (1) clearly dictates that the
operation of the decree or order made by the court is subject to the law made by Parliament
or Presidential Order. The Executive Orders, Indian Judiciary now ends to make are in
violation of the spirit of the above constitutional provision. The parturition of the Judiciary to
shift polluting industries from the heart of Delhi to the outskirts pro bono publico, led to
stirrings against the very well-meaning verdict. Paroxysms of the Judiciary in Patna in Bihar
Fodder Scam and later on the use of Article 356 in Bihar led to open protests in Parliament
and outside. The apostasy Indian Judiciary suffers by encroachment on the domains of the
Executive and the loss of restraint in Judicial proceedings lead judiciary to the cul de sac of
the loss of dignity and credibility.
Unless those at the helm in Indian Judiciary wake up from their somnolency and realise
where indiscreetness in their part is leading the country to, the future of Indian democracy is
bound to be bleak and mired in incertitude and disaster.
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PRAVEEN KUMAR
IN DEFENCE OF JUDICIARY
Judiciary deals with and justice pertains to specifie cases and an individuals past, present
and repute have nothing to do with justice and judiciary, as for as it does not entail with the
case under adjudication to surface the truth. Judiciary, in its present system, can not bother
about a persons history and other attributes as much as how his particular act wronged an
aggrieved party. Judging the judgement of the judiciary extra muros of this scope is a great
disservice to the judiciary and the people whose rights cardinal guardian is the judiciary.
After all, wrong committed is wrong whether it is committed by a person of honesty and
integrity or by a person sans the virtues. The reason that a wrong is committed by a person of
honesty and integrity, does not abate the incisiveness of the injustice to the wronged party. In
the circumstances, berating judiciary for punishing a person for committing a wrong, just
because the person enjoys a good reputation, is travesty of reasonableness. It is in fairness
to presume that the judiciary which is posted of all aspects of a disputed issue for years,
studied them in pro rata importance before pronouncing its judgements in all its variance.
Such a faith in judiciary is sine qua non until myriad slip in part of the judiciary in major
cases of national importance disturb the national conscience at all strata to prove, sine dubio,
that the judiciary no more remains the cardinal dispensor of justice. Taking judiciary to task
in other circumstances on the basis of punishment awarded to an individual or a blessed
section of the society for a proved wrong as the judiciary sees it or for the quantum of
punishment awarded as the judiciary sees it in its wisdom as right vis a vis the injustices
heaped upon the plebeian everyday in India by various government bodies and civil servants
sans an easy recourse for justice and for that reason, accepted in mute suffering, is height of
unbalanced appropinquation in public affairs.
When judiciary, particularly the highest seat of judiciary in the country, decides the
quantum of punishment to be awarded for a wrong, it keeps in mind the gravity of the wrong,
mens rea, suffering undergone by the petitioner, the message of the judiciary in the
circumstances to the public at large, dignity of the judiciary and the interests of the nation
and its people. Judiciary is a professional body to consider all these aspects before passing its
judgement. When so many aspects are in stake, just the dignity of a privileged individual or
section f society cannot be a criterion for relaxing the quantum of punishment. Anybody
arguing against judicial pronouncement because of sympathy for a privileged individual or
section may not be doing his public service in excelsis.
Often, judicial pronouncements are commented upon for using diverse yardsticks in
awarding the quantum of punishment for the same wrong at different times. Such comments
are based on wrong notion of judiciary as a linear punishing apparatus. Judicial function at
no time, even in ancient India, was limited to the simplistic job of equating the quantum of a
wrong with the quantum of punishment. Indian judiciary was and in its western heritage of
present days is, always creative in its dispensation of justice and takes causes and effects and
overall interests of the public in its administration of justice. It is in the interest of the
administration of justice and the system of government to leave the matter at it with liberty to
the judiciary to compute more suo, the quantum of punishment to be awarded on its own
236
wisdom rather than shattering the public confidence on the judicial system with comments
based on clouded thinking.
Judiciary is blamed of activism. A change in the thinking of Indian judiciary is patent
these days. But, it is not activism. It is the process of judiciary coming to its own. It is the
process of Indian judiciary abrading itself from its long gratuitous slumber, at last. What we
had was a dormant judiciary, pronouncements of which could be easily ignored and ensuing
contempt proceedings could be staved off by obtaining an innocuous warning. In government
circles, judicial pronouncements had become a matter of choice. Even the lowest of the low
in government circles treated court orders with contempt.
In the process justice suffered. In the process hoi polloi whom the judiciary has to
protect from injustices heaped upon them by the mighty, suffered. But, judiciary was
complacent about its dormancy and impervious to the sufferings of the wronged people. In
government circles, a situation has reached wherein it is generally accepted that pleading with
judiciary for justice against injustices in service matters bring nothing more than waste of
time and money, for, court judgements at all levels of legislature-executive combine are
circumvented as a rule rather than as an exception and everybody knows that no justice can
be expedited by any court of law. It is a good tide of events that the judiciary has awakened
now. It started to see its responsibilities to the common man more clearly and started to
assert selon les regles. The nation should have celebrated this change for better rather than a
few opinion leaders rousing public opinion against judiciary for punishing some who treated
judicial pronouncements with scarce respect and ignored the commands of the rule of law to
further suffer wronged parties in pursuit of the deplorable tradition of ignoring justices and
fairness in administration.
An awakened judiciary has to break a new path to show that what was happening to
judicial pronouncements was not right. It has to choose a time-may be yesterday or today to
tomorrow or someday to do this. It chose a day and acted to show the gravity and seriousness
of its judgements. In the circumstances, questioning the judiciarys will on the basis of why
today, why not yesterday and why not tomorrow, is rather preposterous, for such a change in
the judiciarys approach either yesterday or tomorrow can be posed with the same doubts.
And certainly judiciary cannot continue with its sedentary responses for contempt of its
judgements for the fear of breaking the path of dormancy of old times even after being
awakened to its footle. None should fault the judiciary for what it is doing.
Another question strikes about the bourasque roused while judiciary punished somebody
for committing wrong is why the same responses not raised about those punished persons
while consciously ignored doing justice to wronged persons even on orders of the judiciary
and tried to perpetuate the sufferings of the wronged persons. Such disparities of approach
to sufferings of people do not go asey bien with public interests.
Judiciary proceedings of modern days are based on perspicaciously laid-down rules that
give more than adequate scope for all the concerned parties to explain, provide evidences and
defend themselves before being judged by the judiciary as responsible for wrongs. Any
judicial proceeding involves a petition of wrong committed, persons who allegedly
committed wrong and the judiciary to adjudicate the matter. Once commission of a wrong is
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PRAVEEN KUMAR
a res judicata, judiciary may be called to judge who committed the wrong. On the strength
of the facts and figures provided to it by various parties. All the concerned parties are ad
libitum to show before the judiciary how and why they are not responsible for the wrong
indubitably committed. If somebody fail to defend themselves to the satisfaction of the
judiciary by parting relevant information at their possession, even after judiciary, called them
to do as judicial procedure lays down, the people are doing so at their own peril and
responsible for the consequences of the judiciarys ultimate findings. The judiciary cannot be
held responsible for the glitches of the concerned parties at all. The concerned parties are free
to exercise their option either to own responsibility for the wrong under issue or to show to
the judiciary, under what circumstances they were forced not to do full justice as judiciary
thinks it had to, even though such revelations put them and other concerned persons in
difficulties, judiciary cannot be blamed for passing orders against persons who fail to come
clean before it, even after being called to do it.
What is called as activism in judiciary has come as a blessing to India. The process may
more appropriately be called as creative judiciary and will certainly do a lot of good to India,
its people, its judiciary and its system of government. Rather than advocating sticking to the
old grannys back, Indian opinion leaders including intellectuals, press and electronic media
must support judiciary to shed its lethargy and come actively to perform its sacrosanct
responsibility of reigning in pandemic injustice in Indian society. It is a wonder that Indians
are in reverse gear while its judiciary rose to its constitutional responsibility.
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THE ROLE OF POLICE IN A DEMOCRACY
Democracy stands for popular rule. Popular rule implies mass involvement of people
in the political process. Mass involvement of people necessitates rules and laws and an
agency to enforce it. Here lies the relevance of police in a democracy.
The seed of democracy is self-discipline. It involves responsibility to the interests of
the country and identifies self-interests with the national interest. In this sense, every person
is police for himself in a democracy. This being only an ideal situation, field realities
necessitate an external agency per procurationem of the government to enforce rules and laws
and police the national interests from the assaults of parochial and anti-social interests lurking
in shadows of a democratic rule. This is the police of a democracy.
Police is a double-edged sword. Its front is national interests and safety and security
of the national life. Its one edge accounts for policing of the people; the other, for policing
the process of governance. Though the two functions towards the well being of the country
appear intrenchant prima facie, they do make significant difference in the actual process of
policing. In one, police police the ruled from the side of the government. In the other, police
police the rules from the side of the people as true power-wielders. While in one, it is the will
of the rulers that prevails in driving the police to police, in the other, it is the will of the
people as expressed through the public media, bind the police to police in a particular way.
Police in a democracy are no more than a system driven by the pulls and counter pulls of the
government and the public opinion in one hand and the laws in force and the safety and
security of the national life on the other. For the infaust police, the diverse contradictory pulls
and pressures only multiply with the ascensive complexity of the national life. This situation
of policing in a democracy makes policing an infinitely more difficult task than otherwise by
forcing police to make decisions and take sides. This may be an opportunity for better service
in the circumstances of true professional work. It turns to grave mess-up in absence of
professionalism probity and genuine national interests.
The key of policing in a democracy is sensitivity; sensitivity to the needs of the
society and the nation. Policing in a democracy involves keeping eyes ears and even olfactory
organs open with an argute faculty of conceptualization to understand the fast changing
dynamics neath the frontal layers of the society and ability for fast responses to handle
emergent situations. No society is static. Changes are repaid in a democratic atmosphere with
group interests in constant conflict. The kaleidoscope of changing faces of the society is best
accounted by the media in diverse forms. Though government is expected to be alert to the
needs of the society, factors like inefficiency and corruption more often than not work against
social vectors and lead against social sensibilities. Policing under such a government hardly
fulfill the needs of the national well-being. An avizefull police can always comprehend the
complexity of situation through media and judge the right course of action on its own
wisdom. However, media in a democratic ambience is not infallible. Public opinion is more
an artificially created venal commodity than a natural phenomenon in a democracy. Media
has become a hi-tech business in the age of power through elections. Most tools of creating
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and arousing public opinion are instruments of propaganda. In the circumstances, blindly
relying on opinions artificially trumped-up by the media may not lead police anywhere.
Rather, it may mislead police in its pursuit of justice and well-being of the country. Ergo,
perpetual pernoctation is the watchword of a democratic police while being sensitive to the
needs of the government au reste the ripples of the public opinion with the national interests
and its well-being as the litmus test.
Police is the ultimate weapon of the rule of law in a democracy. Government, laws
and police form a holy trinity in a democracy and each is sine qua non for the other two in the
system. The fact is that laws are mutable. They are enacted to meet the challenges of the
society from time to time. Laws are collective responses of the legislators to a given situation.
Chances are that laws in force are not adequate to handle extant challenges in the field. It is a
serious problem, police face. Policing is not exactly like a football game wherein rules of the
game are paramount and goals are scored selon les regles. Laws are sine dubio paramount.
Equally paramount is the safety and security of the national life. Here lies the dilemma of the
police. When the two paramount objects refuse to go pari passu, police find themselves in the
precarious position of making a choice between the two as in national security decisions.
Laws have to be broken in the larger interests of the country while national interests cannot
wait for the enactment of requisite laws. The situation leads to human rights violations and
popular condemnation of police in some cases. Police have to bear the humiliation with
dignity in the interests of their professional objectives. The pith of the issue is that what
constitutes national interests and what not, and how far police to be trusted in deciding where
they can be given leeway to break laws in the presumed interests of the safety and security of
the national life. Even while laws provide for action, laws only speak what to do; it is left to
police how to do and how much to do. In the polluted atmosphere of criminalization of
politics and the politicization of police, neither the police nor the political leadership as the
highest layer of governance in a democracy is worthy of a trust of such a magnitude. The
need is a sensitive balance between the laws in force and the safety and security of the
national life. Police in a democracy need to be perpetually alert to both the needs and find an
aurea mediocritas to fine-tune its professional objectives.
Police enjoy tremendous leeway in governance in a democracy. The only limiting
factor that works on it is pulls and counter pulls. The contradictory pulls and pressures are the
clamor of the public for professional and honest policing on the hand and the call of
politicians and bureaucrats steeped in personal interests for work as their handmaids on the
other. The cardinal issue is where the loyalty of police should lie in the exercise of leeway in
pursuit of professional objectives in a democracy. Is it the convenience of the government or
the public interests? People in government claim that the first loyalty of the police to
government is en regle. Their argument is based on the position that police form a part of the
government. The government appoints men and officers of the police force; they are
subject to conduct rules, administration and superintendence of the government. The
other side claims that the police are responsible only to the laws in force and for nothing else.
Such a commitment by police is the foundation of the administration of justice. This is the
situation even in England from where India adopted the gestalt of its democratic system. In
the famous Blackburn case in England, Lord Denning in reference to police, pronounced,
is not the servant of anyone, save of the law itself. No minister of the crown can tell him
that the must or must not keep observation on this place or that; or that he must or must not
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prosecute this man or that one. Nor can any police authority tell him so. The responsibility for
law enforcement lies on him. He is answerable to the law and to the law alone.
The responsibility of the police in a democracy is multifaceted. It must guarantee
justice and safety to all strata of people and ensure equitable enforcement of law sine
ira et studio. This implies special care and protection to weaker sections en face exploitation
from the powerful and involves contranatant stimuli. This is where the sphere of social laws
comes to picture. Police has to paramount role in social transformation in a democracy.
Resistance is inherent and conflict is inevitable in the world of changes. Group dynamics
make conflicts pronounced in a democracy. The roles police play in social conflicts have a
major say in determining the futuristic pattern of society. The importance necessitates police
to be a thinker and a judge in addition to being a cutting-edge executor. A thinking police is a
special need of a democracy. Laws only say what to do and what not to do; it is left to police
to decide how to do and how much to do. It decides where, when, how and how much
invokes what laws. Only a thinking police can handle the responsibility perficiently. It has to
deal with a variety of situations of different points of time in enforcement of laws. Failure
cripples the evolution of social system to social justice.
A special feature of police in a democracy is involving people in policing. People
policing themselves are the leitmotiv of in involving people in policing in a democracy. The
regular police force is just a skeleton for the true policing efforts of a democracy wherein
every citizen is a policeman of his country. The regular police force is just a reticulation with
necessary structure, resources and expertise at its disposal towards that end. The potentiality
of the citizens to police themselves being fully exploited is an essential ingredient of a
successful democracy. No police organisation can succeed in a democracy without people
being activity involved. The involvement can be either formal or informal. In informal
involvement, services of eligible citizens are enlisted for policing under diverse categories of
schemes provided by police Acts like Special police Officers, Additional Police, Traffic
Wardens, Village Police or even Home Guards as provided by the Home Guards enactments.
The citizens so enlisted help the regular police in various police duties with special rights and
privileges under the supervision and superintendence of the police force. The services are
normally voluntary. The skill of the regular police lies in making the voluntary schemes
attractive and popular and enlisting enthusiastic citizens to its fold in large numbers. Not
much is done in India in this area. Nor real efforts are made to activate such voluntary
schemes provided by the law. The result is that Indian police sweat out without a mass base in
a maelstrom and bear impossible burdens on its weak frame to the point of breaking down.
The informal involvement covers the use of citizens during the policing. The help the
citizens render to police varies from being informers, witnesses and signatories to various
panchanamas in criminal cases to patrolling in groups in strife-stricken or dacoity-infested
areas at nights. These duties are principal to the success of policing. The skill of the police
in enlisting the cooperation of respectable citizens plays an important role in making policing
successful. Not much attention is given to this skill in the present scheme of things in police.
The result is poor policing for lack of involvement of the people. Stock witnesses are the
order of the day. Willing cooperation of the public in policing is a rarity. Police are more
hated, feared and distanced than respected and helped.
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Involvement breeds a sense of belonging. It brings police and the public closer. This is
a major step towards the relevance of police in a democracy. The sense of participation in
policing helps to appreciate the problems of the police and policing. It enthuses citizens to
partake in nation building and boosts patriotism.
The relevance of police in a democracy lies in the direct interaction between the
people and their police. Utility of police lies in its usefulness to the people and the country. A
two-way channel between the people and the police makes a democracy really democratic.
Periodical meetings between the public and the police at various levels serve the purpose.
People from all walks of life of a specific area interact with the police officers of the area in
formal meetings held periodically on policing issues. The exercise helps the public and the
police know each other better and appreciate mutual limitations in right perspective. It makes
better cooperation between the public and the police possible. Informal contacts between the
police and the public at different levels also help the process. It boosts mutual confidence to
the benefits of both the sides and makes policing cost-effective and efficient. The interactions
develop a sense of belonging between the two to the advantage of both the sides as an
essential ingredient of good policing in a true democracy.
Policing in a true democracy can be extended to a wider scope of experiment a la the
Goa Police Bill, 1995. The bill modeled on Singapore police, provides for creation of
auxiliary police force by owners of private establishments to safeguard life and property in
specified areas apart from being empowered to maintain law and order, preserve public peace
and prevent and detect crime within that area. The auxiliary police force enjoys police powers
and protections provided by law on par with the regular police. It is a welcome experiment in
India in democratizing the police of a democracy, provided every act of the auxiliary police
force is subjected to effective control, supervision and superintendence of the regular
police force to avoid misuse of powers. The idea of people policing the people should not
degenerate to a situation where bigger fishes gorge the smaller ones or the fittest only survive.
Democracy is not a free- play of powers. It is a balanced exercise of power wherein all people
co-exist irrespective of whether they are weak or powerful. Giving them policing powers to
police themselves is in line with the highest traditions of the democracy. In the circumstances
of the corrupt society, the vigil of the regular police as the symbol of the state power is
absolutely necessary to make the auxiliary police force behave within the parameters of the
law. The same thing can be said about provisions in the Bill to punish uncivilized conduct
like spitting, smoking, urinating, throwing garbage etc in public places. They are bound
to be appreciated in an enlightened democracy as a measure of cleansing their cities and
inculcating decent and healthy practices among them while in an unenlightened democracy
like India, there is bound to be opposition to the provisions as an intrusion on their right of
doing what they want and irresponsible and sensation- mongering Indian media is bound to
linger on the protests as an event of national significance. Both sides are the part of the
democratic interplay of a democracy.
The options before the police in a democracy are often a bundle of non- options. They
find themselves in the precarious situation of neither taking a decision nor avoiding it. It is
like being caught between the devil and the deep sea. Democracy let loose contradictory
forces to pounce on police from all sides. A police not steeped in professional resolve gets
seized in the melee and exposes itself to grievous errors. A good example is the case of
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dreaded underworld don Arun Gawli of Mumbai. The world knows that he is a dangerous
criminal with scores of criminal cases pending against him. Mumbai police obviously was
helpless in containing his criminal activities. Large sections of the people in Dagdi Chawi,
Mumbai and Maharastra idolized and supported the criminal. Democracy dictates
respect to the feelings and sensitivities of all sections of the society. Shiva Sena supreme, Bal
Thackeray and his party called him as their answer to dreaded underworld don Dawood
Ibrahim and tried to promote him and his gangsters. He become a respected figure to Mumbai
police under Shiva Sena Chief Minister, once he established his Akhila Bharatiya Sena (ABS)
at Mumbai and other places of Maharastra. When he fell foul with Shiva Sena and its
supremo, political parties like congress tried to woo him and his muscle of labour
organizations to their fold. Then Mumbai police under Shiva Sena government realized that
Arun Gawli and his criminal activities are security threat to the nation and he was arrested
and detained under NSA for a couple of extortion cases and harboring criminals. Nagapur
Bench of Mumbai High Court declared the arrest and detention under NSA as illegal. The
episode explains all the maladies of policing in a democracy in the ambience of
criminalization of politics, politicization of police, lax judicial system, constricting group
dynamics and the ability of criminal elements to take advantage of the Achilles heel of a
system. A flexible police is the centre of all these malaises.
People, their group interests and concomitant conflicts are centre stage in a
democracy. Police are caught in the web of the dynamics of a democracy. In a situation where
government and power depend upon the vote banks of groups, the task of police weaving
through these groups to police them and bring wrong- doers to book pro bono publico is an
unenviable task demanding tact. In the notorious Shivani acid attack case of Jaipur, a 17 yearold girl, Shivani Jadeja on way to school from her residence on April 12, 1997 was attacked
with acid, allegedly by the son of the transport minister of the state and his friends; the state
police turned impervious to the statement of the victim recorded by them and her letter
addressed to the Jaipur Superintendent of Police about the involvement of the ministers son
in the offence. Even public protests and agitations by womens groups and the interest of the
media in the case failed to deter the state police from its inaction against the actual offenders.
Even the state police chief gave evasive answers to the media about action against the
offenders named by Shivani. This is the quantum of political pressure on policing. It was only
after two representations from socially conscious organisations being treated as Public
Interest Litigations that Rajastan High Court directed the state government to withdraw the
case from the state police and get the investigation done by the CBI. This is the extent of the
credibility of the police under political pressure. Police just cannot do justice to justice under
the extant democratic pulls and pressures. Every interest group in a democracy is powerful
with scores of followers. Police by the very nature of their work cannot please every side and
therefore bound to work in an atmosphere of hatred and inimical feelings. In group dynamics
of Indian kind, law, justice and propriety make little sense.
Even
criminals
form
a
pollent
group
of
considerable
political
maneuverability and strength in a democracy. Any move against the interests of this group is
bound to create serious problems to police. A police officer with a commitment to crush
crime syndicates and their criminal activities on coming to power meets with dramatic rise in
crimes and law and order problems in his area to the extent that he soon realize that he has no
alternative to keep the underworld on right side were he to save his professional reputation,
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his new position and peace in his area. A few fools, who fail to read the writings on the wall,
get thrown out of their post and avoid any responsible job thereafter on the charge of being
incapable of controlling crimes and maintaining law and order. Cooperation of the powerful
criminal groups is conditio sine qua non for smooth policing a democracy. The recent
example is a state capital in India. Its new Police Commissioner adopted a soft approach to
powerful mafia gangs of the city and shut eyes to the flourishing business of cabaret, live
bands and nightclubs. The result was a relatively crime-free tenure for him in the city. But, he
rubbed the media on the wrong side on the first day of his taking charge in the city. As a
consequence, he had to bear an unfavorable media throughout. The next Police Commissioner
of the city was after stopping the menace of cabaret, live bands and night clubs and
containing organized crimes in the city. The immediate response to the new Police
Commissioner was inordinate rise in crimes like chain snatching, kidnapping, extortion, gang
war, housebreaking and dacoity and law and order disturbances. It was the crime syndicates
sending signals to come to terms with their existence and activities. The political pressures
the underworld wields au reste the warning shots are capable of bringing a practical police
officer to his senses. He is forced to compromise his convictions to retain his position. This is
how police is under seize in a democracy. Police derive strength by adhering to law and
justice. Once off the track to aggrace political masters. Thus develops a vicious circle that
leads police to be perpetually under the beck and call of the politicians in power. The
beginning of the collision of politicians and the police in a democracy is always for mutual
benefits.
Police is a democracys spine, its conditio sine qua non. It is an instrument of
containment in the ambience of narrow interests trespassing on each others interest. Success
of a democracy entirely depends on the effectiveness of the police there. It is the only
instrument available to bring people to their senses and to the needs of the laws. It is unlike
other forms of government, wherein other forms are created to bring the people to submission
to the will of the rulers. Private armies in whatever name sans the leash of law, operate as
executors of the will of the rulers in non-democracies. Indian police these days with its deep
politicization is gradually approximating to the sad state. Mass transfer of police officers at all
levels with the change of government, use of intelligence units for political maneuverings,
use of investigating agencies to keep political rivals in check etc are just the signs on the
surface of this tragic malady. The slant is not in the interests of democracy, for, the strength
of democracy is pro rata to the professional resolve of the police. A weakened and ineffective
police is a sure sign of crumbling democracy. A democracy just cannot stand up without the
spine of the police, especially while people are yet to realize their democratic
responsibilities. Strengthening the police is the foremost need of firming up democratic
traditions. How soon India realizes this, so much good for the country.
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POLICE AS SOCIAL SURGEONS
Police deal with social ills as physicians and surgeons deal with physical ills. A surgeon
incises parts of the body to set right wrongs and remove dangerous growths from the system
to save a person while a police do the same for the society. Police job like the works of a
surgeon involves administration of bitter potions, prescription of restrictions and incisions to
lay foundation for a sturdy system. Like medical profession, policing is a highly responsible
function and ergo needs to be bound by moral ethos as lex non scripta to avoid misuse of
special rights involved in discharge of duties. Both professions involve independent
decisions in handling each case and exercise of infrangible conscience in doing justice to it.
The difference lies in the medical profession mostly maintaining its pristine purity as a
profession while police as a splinter of bureaucracy being illaqueated by formalities and
procedures inherent in government functions at the cost of forthright involvement and
commitment immanent to a profession. The ineluctable hierarchical order as the spine of
policing and the concomitant interferences from above bring a measure of incertitude and
render honest and professional policing nonpossumus by depriving field officers their
freedom in handling cases on dictates of the conscience. This perforce adversely affects the
effectiveness of policing and ipso facto, the health of the society. It is the reason why in spite
of sound presence of the social surgeons, Indian society witness the deterioration of its health
de mal en pis each passing year.
TRUST OF THE PEOPLE
Physicians and surgeons have as much potentiality and opportunity to damage as to save
health. Because of their expertise and credibility, surgeons have umpteen opportunities to use
their tools and instruments on people on the claim of restoring health. The whole process is
based on trust on the surgeons and their honesty. Imagine the situation when the lot of
surgeons is greedy and sans scruples, while the people have no alternative to offering
themselves for surgery to their hands in times of need. None can be sure what would happen
to an unconscious patient on the operation table in the hands of such surgeons behind the
closed doors of the operation theatre. The whole situation becomes hopeless when the whole
setup is run by similarly profligate surgeons and the precept that birds of the same feather
flock together operates to hold them in syndesis at the expense of any relief by appeals or
complaints. The harm done to the patient to meet the greed of the surgeons would be pro rata
to the latters immoral propensities. Synergy among them may lead even to venal deals in
human organs at the expense of the health of the ignorant people. Their contempt for
professional skills and negligent work may tremendously harm the safety of the patients. The
situation in the field is certain to wreck the trust of the people on the surgeons. The
predicament forces them to rely on the contabescent setup foute de mieux. The hapless
position spawns a sense of disillusion in people and they even resign to the situation as
helpless subjects. This exactly is the situation of the social surgery by the police in India.
The society has to depend for surgery upon an epinosic organisation, which is inefficient,
enrivon with quandaries, mismanaged, enfested with scandals and above all, undependable.
The society, for its well-being, has to fall on an organisation with which it tends to keep
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distance and thinks it indignity to associate, its womenfolk consider as an insult on their
womanhood to approach and its children see it as an image of fear and silenced by invoking
its name to gallow. It is the predicament of the Indian society. On the one hand, the popular
image of the police in Indian psyche is that of a devil, of an evil. But, it has to fall on the
police for all of its social evils. Though part of the bad image of the police is sheer myth, part
in quiddity is the result of wrong people and wrong concepts coming to the centrestage in
Indian police from a long time.
RELEVANCE OF CRUELTY
The similarly of surgeons and police basically is their hard means to achieve the desired
end- surgical methods involving incisive tools to cut and remove unwanted growths. It is en
regle as far as surgeries and concerned. The tragedy of the police lies in de trop extension of
the hard means unlike surgeons to other aspects of life. The difference between a surgeon
and a police is that while a surgeon outside the operation theatre is a gentleman every farden,
unaffected by the ambience, the hard approach renders a police apocryphal at the cost of civil
living and basic human nature. This is why the image of the police is very low. The hard
methods in police extend even to its policy of human resources management at the cost of
neoteric principles of man management. The rule of thumb continues to be the bedrock of
handling human resources. Ruthlessness and cruelty are its principal weapons in bringing
subordinates and the public to submission. Human dignity is an unknown concept in the
police. The result sees motivation becoming a casualty in the bedlamish system.
SADISTIC PLEASURE
The endless affairs with legal matters perhaps insensitise the police to the problems of
legality. This is evident in their hors la loi approach to various issues. The police seem to
think that end justifies the means. The problems of malfeasance are common in the police.
The mode of approach of the police to man management proves this. No scruple is shown in
measures meant to bring a subordinate to knees or an accused to confess to the offence, he
had not committed. Third degree methods in interrogations is a too familiar issue to discuss
here. Though third degree methods are universal in application in police investigations, there
are vital differences in their use in advanced and countries like India. While utmost care and
discreetness are employed in englightened police forces of advanced countries in deciding
whether a particular individual has to be subjected to serve interrogations, where imminence
of the concerned person being an offender is a prime criterion and the methods are used as the
dernier ressort, Indian police like their counterparts in backward countries adopt third degree
methods in investigation as their staple right over innocent citizens and fall to it in the first
available instant like wolves on their preys. It cannot be gainsaid that there is a streak of
sadistic pleasure in Indian police. They think that third degree methods are de rigueur in
crime investigation. The sadistic pleasure finds expression in severity down the hierarchical
ladder at the cost of dignity and self- respect of others down the ladder. It is a free-for-all
field. Basic values like mutual respect and courtesies are rare in Indian police. Ruthlessness
and cruelty are the ropes Indian police find commodious with. This invidious stria is hardly
the desirable attribute to which any decent society wants to submit itself for any treatment.
LACK OF COMMITMENT
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A ken of the extent to which the Indian social surgeons are committed to their work and
goals can be had from the fact that in a small department headed by a Director General of
Police, deputed from the police department in a southern state of India, a criminal case of
fraud and forgery involving a huge amount was launched against some staff members of the
department in a police station after the misdeeds were unearthed during an audit. The
circumstances of the case normally warrant departmental actions like suspension of the
officials, departmental enquiries and measures to recover the loss to follow the launching of
the criminal case. In this case, the department washed off its hands after launching the
criminal case as if it had nothing to do about the fraud and forgery in its own organisation.
No suspensions, no departmental enquiries, no recovery processes. Even the criminal case
was just a front to save the skin of the people at the helm of the was just a front to save the
skin of the people at the helm of the organisation. Advice from well-meaning officers in the
department to the DGP in 1996 to take the affairs to their logical ends by initiating essential
departmental actions as an apotropaic measure fell on dunny ears. In addition, the police who
were investigating the case were surreptitiously advised by the DGP to go slow with the case
till the people involved in the case easily retire. This much about the zeal of Indian police as
social surgeons in tackling evils.
Surgeon is an abracadabra; the concept of social surgeon is pregnant with highest
ideals human mind can conceive. The application of this concept to recognise the duties of
the police is the highest honour the society has invested the police with, and ipso facto lays
sublime responsibilities on the rough and tough little shoulders of the police. Unfortunately,
police suffer from alexia and fail to read the elevated position in which they are held while
recognised as social surgeons. It is position in which they are held while recognised as social
surgeons. It is sad to see how the sacred responsibilities are not only frittered away, but
abused at will to the chagrin of the hoi polloi. The consequence is that while the police is yet
seen and called as social surgeons foute de mieux, they are no more loved and respected as
social surgeons should be. On the other hand, they are misprised and distanced for the
apostasy, they suffer from their avowed path. Indeed the fear of police is there because of the
weapons and the muscle of power they weild. In some parts of the country, even the rear is
glidder after the pelbeian has learnt the lesson that money can do any tricks with the police.
The cause of the degringolade certainly lies in the police itself, in the type of people enter the
service, their calibre, their values and convictions and the professional atmosphere created by
the service. If the organisation and the people in it cannot rise to the high levels expected of
it and prove their raison detre, the reason lies in its ephemeral self-interests ectogenous to
the professional values and ideals. Police as social surgeons perforce require single-minded
commitment to the cause of well-being of the society. It is seld or never found in present
Indian police. The society whose well-being is the responsibility of the police, know it. The
police know it. The society is left to itself to mend its problems. Police work only when there
is gratification and while people with muscles of money and power need help. This certainly
is not characteristic of a social surgeon, but of a social-wrecker. Sadly Indian police is
becoming that in oodles, the protector of and tool in the hands of rich and powerful. The
preposterous trend has to stop in the interests of the police as an organisation and a
profession, the society, the country and the humanity. The key for this change lies in creation
of right professional ambience in the police system. The secret of creating right atmosphere
lies in right leadership and the burden of right leadership lies on right convictions about the
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importance of police and policing as a profession. The malaise of Indian police lies in lack of
right convictions about the importance of policing as a profession. The result is that all types
of wolves ab intra et ab extra falling on the system to tear it from all sides and eating it. The
wolves within are more dangerous than outside. The ensure that no upright resistance breed
ab intra to the detriment of their esurient appetite and no professional pride raises its head to
topple their schemes of self-promotion The only response of their greed is wrecking
uprightness and professional pride wherever they are traced. Such hawks in higher echelons
of the career-ladder succeeded in their schemes and the result is the Indian police in its
present wretched state. The salvation of Indian police lies in breaking the vice prise of these
arriviste and laying it in the safe hands of the professionals steeped in the foundations of
professional pride and uprightness, to make the system acceptable to the society as its
protector and social surgeons true to the abracadabra.
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POLITICAL CRIMES AND SECURITY
The importance of political crimes for the police lies in politics and crimes being two
fields ex utraque parte of policing with the police depending on political leaders for
sustenance while acting on criminals to justify its raison detre. The police can ably deal
with politicians and criminals separately in discharge of their professional duties with their
obedience and subordination side furbished for political masters and tough and ruthless side
reserved for criminals. Unfortunately, the police are not required always to deal with politics
and crimes separately. They are more and more required to handle a special category of
crimes by the name, political crimes where their masters and subjects join hands to their
chagrin. To further flummox the issue, the political crimes rate the highest in the scale of
importance of various crimes on the basis of national interests at stake, the prominence of
personalities involved and the magnitude of interests, the crimes arouse in the country and
outside. The scope of political crimes range from petty crimes committed by political
activists to serious crimes including white-collar crimes committed in the colour of
performing political duties to grave crimes against national interests committed for political
reasons from within or outside the country. The gravity of political crimes and their threat to
the national interests subject them to the scrutiny and handling by a district of distinct
security apparatus attached to the intelligence setup in addition to the usual purview of the
uniformed police. But, the technique of handling political crimes in India is yet to be
perfected. The present technique is yet a patch work and the police especially at the top are
psychologically ill-equipped to handle political crimes as seen by poor performance of the
Indian police in handling of such important political crimes as Bofors Gun deal, St.Kitts
affairs, Jain Hawala case, anti-sikh riots of 1984 and investigation of cases against godman
Chandraswamy. The result is proliferation of political crimes in India and fear of a parallel
rule by the crime world coming into existence under political patronage.
CRIME AS A TOOL OF POWERGAME
Vohra Committee report on the nexus of politicians and criminals perspicaciously
indicated Indian political culture for its close links with the underworld and provided a
compte rendu on the havoc created by the criminalisation of politics and the politicisation of
crime. Politics imprimis being a powergame and an art of possible, Shakespeares
characterisation of love and war where everything is fair, most politicians obviously
presume, holds good to their profession as well. War and politics being two facets of the
same powergame, one external and one internal, there is no point why the axiom that
everything is fair in politics should not be honoured while fairness of war in all its shapes
and forms is sacrosanct. As politics being a powergame in extremis like war and decides the
degringolade or steep rise of those involuted in it, the politicians are convinced that they are
justified in seeking any means, apocryphal or de jure, to ensure that they win and survive.
Afterall, being suicidal is not a virtue; nor faulting the art of possible bring any credit in
public life. Ultimately, it is success that decides what is right and wrong. There is no sin or
wrong worse than a defeat. History has shown how success can absterge even the sin of mass
murder of innocent people by dropping atom bombs. The cardinal goal of survival and
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success is the first priority and the means to achieve it takes care of itself. Depending upon
the success or failure of the mission in hand. So goes the thinking of politicians maintaining
close links with underworld. The only gaffe in their perception of politics is their failure
understand politics in a civilised system like democracy as a powergame selon les regles
unlike emotional games of love and war, where everything goes by emotion and passion. In
a democratic party system, where procedures are shaped to make the rule of the majority a
scientific reality in form of constitutional provisions, rule of law is paramount and one who
moves extra muros is not only debarred from the game, but also dealt as a criminal. However
, many politicians refuse to accept constraints on their political powerplay and continue to
indulge in links with criminal world to have immediate need of winning power fulfilled. The
crux of the problem of Indian politics lies in this with certain categories of crimes in delicius
of Indian political field loosening the very terra firma of the Indian democratic system.
POLITICIAL MURDERS
Political murders are common features these days in India. When a political adversary
grows to be an irritant, too serious for comfort., he is seen to be eliminated. No career
politician wants to stain his name with a murder case and get his name registered as a
criminal in police station. He does the work through his faithful underworld henchmen
whom he keeps in good humour always for being available for such a need, by providing
him political support and protection. For this, he keeps the police at his side. This is easily
done by intervening in police postings and helping to get early promitons for favoured ones.
BOOTH CAPTURING
A candidate for an election may even resort to booth capturing through his criminal aides
to facilitate his victory. This operation requires through planning and training of the men
involved, apart from the willing cooperation of the police. An attempt at boothcapturing can
succeed only with the intrenchant nexus between politicians, criminals and the police for
synergy.
POLITICAL KIDNAPPING
Political kidnapping is an international phenomenon that comminated the world of
diplomacy in excelsis in the 1970s. The Menace trickled onto the Indian scene though
slowly, decisively in the 1980s. The realisation that political ends can be easily met by the
malengine of the kidnap-drama opened up an aboideau to the terrorists who were acharne to
meet their political telos. The increase in terrorist activities in India, perchance, as an
outcome of the suspected balkanisation of India policy adopted by some foreign countries,
made political kidnapping an ubiquitious reality on the Indian political scene from the latter
half of the 1980s. The terrorists of Kashmir and Punjab set the tone in India which was
picked up by the Peoples War Group and the ULFAs in the 1990s. The inexperience of
Indian political leaders in tackling the problem complicated the matter. While most countries
around the world explicated a policy of stubborn refusal to yield to kidnappers demands
under straints, the Indian leaders goofed by displaying their weaknesses while people close to
them were abducted, in yielding to demands as a quid pro quo in releasing large number of
dangerous terrorists, who were arrested at huge cost and loss of lives. The situation has been
250
further complicated by adopting a policy of double standards in sacrificing the lives of lesser
mortals in some other cases. It is obviously sending a mauvais depeche to the would-beterrorists that the closer the proximity of the kidnapped to a political leader, the bigger is the
chance of meeting their political ends.
The reclame attached to the kidnap-drama and the arousal of the public interest in the
developments that follow is another dimension of the political kidnapping that brings an
identification and gives an image to a terrorist outfit as nothing else can. It has become a
fashion to initiate a terrorist outfit with a kidnapping operation. The chevisance in the
inchoate drama proves the strength and resourcefulness of the new outfit and its locus standi
among such other outfits, in the way the murders committed by a recruit decides his place in
the mafia. The finesse displayed in executing the operation to a successful end decides the
futue of the organisation, a part form the advantages of the ransom money and the release of
compatriots. Interestingly, the first experiment of political kidnapping in the Indian scene
was conducted in a foreign country in the form of the egregious abduction and killing of Mr.
R.H.Mhatre, a junior diplomat in the Birmingham consulate in the first week of February,
1984 by JKLF militants.
POLITICAL KIDNAPPING VERSUS DISPLOMACY
Political kidnapping and murder is tout court the most heinuous crime that often involves
cold-blooded murder of absolutely innocent people for political ends. The mental agony and
postliminary destruction involved to the maledict hostages and their near and dear ones
because of the misguided entrainement of a handful of greenhorns go waste and make
kidnapping an infructuous political tool at the end. The considerable fall in the incidences
for political kidnapping on the international scene of late is an indication of the increasing
realisation of this fact, Crime scarcely survives in the situations of haute politique like
diplomacy and relations between nations. High thinking by enlightened people functions as
a catchpole to check the criminal tendencies from being perpetuated. Political kidnapping in
the Indian scene is also bound to be a temporal phenomenon as seen otherwhere in the
world.
PROFESSIONAL CRIMINALS IN KIDNAP DRAMA
A disturbing tread in political kidnapping is the possibility of professional criminals like
smugglers and drug peddlers resorting to political kidnappings at the hest of their illegal
profession in the guise of political kidnappers. The accrescent dependence of terrorists and
professional criminals on each adds to the complexity. This unhealthy situation is already
true in India as it is in many other countries.
POLITICAL KIDNAPPINGS IN INDIAN SCENE
The operation Rhino against the ULFA activities is a direct off-shoot of a series of
kidnappings of Indian and foreign nationals and killing of some of them by the ULFA
militants in Assam. The peoples War Group in Andhra Pradesh is going progressively active
in kidnapping government officials to bring the state government on its knees. The
government of Andhra Pradesh is yet to take the gauntlet by the horns. The kidnap dramas
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excoriate criminals, politicians and the police to a war of nerves and those who have steelnerves in them, emerge successful in the end. The political kidnappings are further
complicating the welter created in the Indian and international scene by the rise of
kidnappings by misadventurous individuals or groups lucri causa. The kidnappings
becoming the piece de reistance of organised crime as a means of making a fast buck is
already evident on the Indian scene as more and more reports of businessmen, industrialists
or their relatives and children being kidnapped for ransom appear in newspapers in Bihar,
Uttar Pradesh, Assam, Punjab, Delhi, Calcutta, Bombay and even smaller places. Ascensive
anfractuosity of egregious mafia gangs in these operations is a pollent possibility. The
relevance of the police comes into the picture in their ingine to check these pernicious
developments. The triste reality is that the Indian police has failed to rise to the occasion till
now.
UNITY OF PURPOSE IN INDIAN POLICE

The political crimes of gargantuan proportion can be successfully tackled only by pollent
police organisation with its all resources and resolves pooled together. In the current system
of policing in India, police stations and district police units form basic units of the
administration. Some of the functions discharged at these levels have concurrent jurisdiction
with some special units at state and national levels. Crime investigation in special
circumstances can be taken over from the district police administration by the state CID or the
CBI at the national level. So, it is with the intelligence collection, security operations, the
raising of armed police forces, maintenance of crime records etc. The police in the state is
devised as an independent unit. In a vast country like India, policing being shared between
scores of independent units with no perspicaciously defined mechanism of cooperation, the
problem occurs of coordination and units of purpose in tackling challenges that cover more
than one of these unity. There are too many challenges such as these in the increasingly
complex society of India. Except for the sense of national unity there is nothing common
among these units to approach the gauntlets with a common cause. Even the common Indian
Police Service is unable to bring about a unit of purpose to policing throughout India. This
gives an impression of fragmentation in the Indian police. A fragmented police cannot turn
out work in full-stream owing to the waste by leakage in the process of co-ordination between
the fragmented parts. India must consider devising a pollent unitary police administration
at the centre with full control over subordinate state and union terrotory police setups. This
would avoid coordination problems and help policing to be more purposeful in tackling
challenges from the national perspective . It also makes available larger resources from the
national level for policing apart from strengthening the sense of belonging to one police. This
is necessary in the interests of the country and its policing in the future.
CRIMINAL LAWS
A few glaring anomalies and some erroneous provisions in the extant criminal laws of
India contribute to be easy escapades of criminals from the clutches of law in many cases and
harassment of innocent persons by the police in some other cases. The loopholes in the
criminal law have to be plugged imprimis if crime administration has to be effective in India
and command a semblance of respect and confidence of the public.
252
The police or judicial officer under whose custody a person is kept under detention
should be made responsible by name for the latters timely release with a provision that if
detention exceeds the period provided by law, it will make the concerned officer liable for
proceedings for unlawful detention without the privilege of exemptions for actions
performed in official colour, available under the extant laws. Also, all cases of violence and
physical outrages committed in police custody should be made punishable with exemplary
penalties by special legislations. Such outre measures may bring an end to shocking criminal
acts committed eo nomine policing in some quarters and save the Indian police from the
embarrassment of serve public resentment.
CRIMINAL LAW BOARD
India requires the constitution of a statutory Criminal Law Board as an advisory body to
liaise between the police setup and the union law ministry regarding criminal laws to
facilitate glib policing. The board, as a permanent body, may have seniormost officers of the
central government from home and law ministries, police and prosecution departments,
distinguished humanists and senior advocates of the Supreme Court as members with the
union home minister as its chairman. It must undertake the study of the need of changes in
criminal laws from time to time. The board may meet every quarter or a year and discuss
extant criminal laws and their shortcomings in the light of representations received from
officers in the field from the police and prosecution departments and make proposals for
requisite changes in criminal laws e ra nata.
HUMAN RIGHTS CELLS
Political crimes whether it be of the stature of national politics or international politics,
have the queer propensity of arousing issues of violation of human rights to crumble the
credibility of the law-enforcers in the eyes of the public. Institution of human rights cells in
each district and metropolitan city as advisory conseil to the police of the region with local
human rights champions as its members to draw attention to specific instances of inhuman
conduct by subordinate officers would meet the needs to keep the police on pernoctation
against political crimes credible vis a vis likely false hue and cry by affected political
leaderships. The human rights cells should be a dynamic part of the police administration in
the regions and its observations should set in motion a process of verification and
peremptory action. Though subjecting police to the scrutiny of an outside setup may appear a
retrograde measure, it may help the assuefaction of the policing methods to human comports
in rerum natura and save the establishment from the charges of violation of human rights in
controlling political crimes a la Kashmir, Punjab and elsewhere in the country.
INTELLIGENCE OUTFITS
Collection and analysis of intelligene and special operations from the building blocks of
all nuances of the police operations. Indian intelligence system is yet to stand up to the
enormous challenges thrown to it in detecting and controlling political crimes and can
nowhere be compared with its counterparts in developed and even a few developing
countries. Various intelligence outfits of India are often found functioning at cross purposes
even in protecting VVIPs and other sensitive targets from political crimes. India should
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reorganise and strengthen its intelligence outfit if it is to survive the challenges and stand up
to the threats of political crimes to the integrity, security and law and order of the country.
UNIFIED INTELLIGENCE AUTHORITY
The Indian intelligence system may develop unity of purpose and operation to control
political crimes ab intra and ab extra by working under the umbrella of an unified
intelligence authority with the chiefs of all intelligence organisation as members. The
authority must affect a synergy of intelligence operations through its various wings of
internal, external, counter, military and security intelligence. Sufficient attention has to be
given to infuse entrain to the intelligence system of India and modernise its methods to raise
it to a few degrees closer to the international standards. The interferences of offficialdom
need to be minimised and a sense of commitment and dedication to be infused by making
intelligence operations a lifelong career.
The ultimate purpose of all police functions is public security. Either it is intelligence
collection or crime investigation or maintenance of law and order, all roads leads to this
single aspiration. Therefore, the security operations form the crown of policing activities,
without which all other police operations prove futile exercises.
SECURITY OPERATIONS
India needs specially trained battalions of security operators in every state to take charge
of the security of vital installations and VIPs. Also each state police unit may have a small
commando force to meet threats during emergencies like hijacking, VVIP security under
difficult circumstances, complicated operations against terrorists etc. This special group has
to be brought into operation only under exceptionally difficult circumstances. Otherwise, it
has to be involved in continuous commando training of the highest order. The commandos
have to be well-equipped with the wherewithal of commando operations of the latest order.
Only select officers may be recruited to the group with extra emoluments to make the job
really elite. The commando units of the central government must train the state commando
forces.
The need of commando groups in the state police forces will be increasingly felt in future
as the menace of terrorism and sabotage grows uninhibited with the future possibility of
violent methods being accepted as legitimate ways of expressing political dissent.
INADEQUATE SECURITY PLANNING
The present perception of internal security in India revolves round a few catchwords like
prohibited areas, protected areas, official secrets, sensitive installation, static guards, armed
pickets, mobile patrols, striking forces, perimeter protection, infiltration, mechanical
breakdown, external and internal attacks verification, unobtrusive watch, internal watch,
intelligence collection, top-secret papers, security information, leakage of information etc.
Model internal security scheme, containing jugglery of these words are available in all district
police offices. The plans in the schemes do not touch even the fringes of the present security
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needs. Secondly, the model schemes are based on outdated facts and statistics which have
become irrelevant in postliminary periods. Though these model schemes are expected to be
updated
from time to time, seldom are they touched. This renders them irrelevant to a
given phase of time. Thirdly, the security guidelines in the model schemes can in no way
make a claim to expertise. They are simple suggestions based on common sense. Any police
official with a sound field knowledge can improve on them according to specific instances by
relying on his own savvy. For all practical purposes, these model internal security schemes
have become passe and impair. They have only historical interests in the neoteric scheme of
things.
The model security schemes enumerate in terrorem the likely sources of threats to the
countrys internal security, such as aggression by an alien power, sabotage and subversive
activities, communal riots, student unrest, extremist activities, violent labour problems,
natural calamities etc. The schemes distinguish between peacetime threats and wartime
threats and deal with each period with various stages of approach like precautionary stage,
preventive measures and protective measures. What are striking in these schemes are the
details of work to be attended to, like evacuation of lunatics, police-public relations peace
committees, mobilisation of NCC and volunteer organisation etc. But, unfortunately, there is
nothing really instructive in these schemes for a security officer of good field experience and
sound common sense. The only advantage the schemes provide is that all obvious measures
are listed in a raisonne nutshell for easy reference. But, as said before, albeit the measures
listed out are exhaustive as routine jobs to be performed in such disturbances, they in no
way, help in tackling complex internal security challenges of the present day. The reason for
this is that the format of the schemes was conceived decades back when challenges of
internal security were simpler and on expected lines. No serious thought was given to
overhauling the format of the scheme since then. The position though is similar in respect of
the blue book which deals with aspects of security for dignitaries, political compulsions
helped to update them as more and more dignitaries fell to the bullets of exremists. The
updating of the blue book is one of the plus points of the subservience of the police to
political masters. Yet, the blue book too needs a complete overhauling on the basis of the
new realities of security challenges and new perceptions and conceptions about meeting such
challenges.
CHALLENGES OF INTERNAL SECURITY
What the new blue book and new model internal securiy schemes need are guidelines on
how to approach a security challenge and not what peripheral matters should be attended to,
Each security challenge of the present day is sui generis and needs a specific approach
depending upon the time, the place and other circumstances of the challenge. It is too
simplistic to imagine that a common formula, however exhaustive it be, can tackle all internal
security challenges of the present day. The blue book and model internal security schemes
must lay down broad guidelines and the spirit with which security challenges, available
methods of approach for each class of challenge, salient features of the risks involved and
precautions to be attended to alternative courses of action and assessment of the chances of
success for each course under different circumstances etc. The security guidelines must name
the nature of security threats under various situations and list out likely targets of sabotage
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under all imaginable circumstances. They must be able to forewarn about potential sources
of threats and suggest ways and means of overcoming them and invent short and long-range
plans to meet likely serious challenges. Such an approach to security relieves pressure on
prototypal security and shifts stress to creative security and saves manpower and other
resources from being wasted on unproductive quotidian mobilisation. This works an a
panpharmacon to the under-utilisation of precious security tools by unintelligent routine
deployment.
Political crimes call for special skills in police in handling them as the crimes involute
political leaders and ergo, sensitive in nature. Such crimes are often of national importance
and draws the glare of pubic attention with all hues of judgements passed by all kinds of
people. There would be pulls and counterpulls by influential people from different sides at
all levels of policing to handle them in a particular rendering objective appropinquation to
such crimes non possumus, unless concerned police officer dares to endanger his own career
prospects and even his life to achieve the object of objectivity. Only special skills save police
from such a terrible fixe. The skills are hard to come and very taxing on the police. But, these
are the job hazards and police must learn to live with it.
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POLICE AND ADMINISTRATION

The police basically is a backup force of the state administration. Its primary functions
are en arriere. It is the backbone of the state administration. The police is the enforcer of the
rules and laws of the land and safeguards its compliance by all. For this reason, the police
can be rightly called as the guardian of the state administration. State administration would
be edentate sans the police with none to keep people on the right sides of the rules and laws
of the administration and make the state administration more than mere paper-work. Even for
the hoi polloi, administration is mostly police functions and nothing in state administration
holds its attention as much as what the police does. The police is the most visible and the
most obvious state functionary for them, by its striking uniform and prim mien in addition to
its availability as the dernier ressort of the state administration. The police forms the
cutting-edge of the statecraft. The police functions as both the enforcer of the countrys laws
and as the investigator of the crimes. Ergo, the police both precedes and succeeds the law
enforcement process and ipso facto encompasses the whole gamut of the state legal system.
The very fact that no folds and rumples of the state administration are excluded from the
field of the police reveals that the range and scope of the policing is as wide as the
administration itself and often exceeds it. Take away the police, the state administration
crumbles and collapses like a messy mass without backbone. The sine qua non of the police
in the statecraft is a widely recognised fact among the scholars as well as the plebeian.
The inevitability of the police in the statecraft also renders it the most abused setup in
the spectrum of the tools of governance. Control over the levers of running the police
organisation is considered to be a significant privilege in the realm of state administration.
The explains the range of influence peddling and prolate pressures on police transfers and
keen concours among politicians and others to befriend the police.
The significance of the police lies in the lowest nature of the work it does in contrast
to the highest degree of awe and weight it commands among politicians, administrators and
the general public. The esteem, however, worked only to the detriment of the police
organisation. The propinquity to pamper the police while helped the growth and expansion of
the organisation, it certainly spoiled the police setup and crumbled its professional value
system. The development is obvious in post-independent era for the simple reason that the
propensity to paper the police saw abnormal rise after the countrys reign came to peoples
hands and politicking and political cabals became the rule of the game. While friendly police
became valuable assets to politicians in the chess-board of the countrys politics, it became
the mainstay of the administration with the gradual fall in the skill and acumen of running the
administration. The police, which once in pre-independent days was basically a force to
keep the freedom fighters at bay and maintain law and order, became the alter ego of the
governance sinsyne.
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THE POLICE AND THE CIVILIAN AUTHORITY

The root of the problem lies in the civilian control of the police; this control renders the
police liable to function at the pleasure of the civilian authorities against whom also the
police are required to proceed as required by its professional ethics relentlessly in case of
commission of criminal acts. This is a strange position in a disciplined organisation in which
absolute obedience to masters in the most sanctimonious obligation. Thus the police finds
itself in an unenviable position of being absolutely obedient to its political and civil masters,
antilogous to being ever-ready professionally to proceed against to put them in the gaol. This
is an impossible position for the police and against the tenets of the human nature. But, this
impossibly contrarious functions are expected from the police The problem is overcome by
advanced countries like the United Kingdom by strict adherence to the chain of command
with the head of the organisation responsible to the laws of the country while civilian
authority has to be contented with the administrative control of the police. The safeguard is
yet to seep into the police system of democratic Indian.
THE POLICE AND THE MAGISTERIAL POWERS
However, complete insulation of the police from the civilian control may not be a healthy
development per se in a democratic rule. Here, the need of check over a function through
the bifurcation of operation and control processes in related job a la the bifurcation of
accounts and audit functions in accounts department come to the fore. The police au fond is
arms and muscle of the administration; it basically is an operational wing of the
administration. It is only the watchdog of the administration. This locus standi of the police
imprimis denies it any job, related with administrative decisions and assessments. The police
is there to obey the orders of the administrative machinery above it to exercise control over
it. A watchdog perforce indicates a master to rein in. This nature of the police functions
necessitates administrative control over it in the use of force and other enforcement activities.
This is the backdrop of magisterial powers being denied to the police except where police
commissionerates are organised. The demand of the police to invest it with the magisterial
powers is a corpus of the ongoing dispute. The matter continues to be a contentious issue
between the police and the civil administration and a major source of dissatisfaction in the
police force. The civil administration is resisting a toute force any attempts to do away the
magisterial powers from its hand in favour of the police, it be in promulgating preventive
orders or issuing search warrants or conducting inquest proceedings or initiating externment
proceedings or initiating preventive proceedings or ordering the use of force, to name only a
few. The argument of the police is that the denial of the magisterial powers which are
exercised by officers as low as Tahsildars in the civil administration is a preposterous step
sans any rational basis and suggests lack of trust in the police organisation. The denial of the
magisterial powers to the police has nothing to do with trust or lack of it a la audit control
over accounts function does not suggest lack of trust in accounts. The police have forgotten
that the civilian control over the police is in step with well established principles of
administration and functions as a safeguard to the hoi polloi against the dangerous
overstepping or overzealous use of police powers, potential of bringing destruction including
258
death. Use of force by whomever it be, has a tendency to exceed the limits of requirement
and the plebeian has to be protected from such possibilities. Ergo, the magisterial control
over the police. It is a professional requirement in sound administration rather than an issue
of who is more trustworthy. The resistance of the civil administration to the demands of the
police for the magisterial powers is justified to that extent. The police commissionerates are
special organisations for special circumstances requiring intensive policing under the closer
scrutiny of the government in charge of civil authorities. Yet, both magisterial powers and
the police powers being invested in the same hand requiries lots of explanation to be a
convincing administrative arrangement.
PROFESSIONAL POLICING
In professional terms, insulation of the police only implies insulation from the political
control of the police functions. Neither the magisterial control over the police functions nor
the administrative control of the police force by the civil authorities come under the meaning
of this concept. The symbion between the magisterial control and the policing functions in
one hand and between and administrative control and the organisational buildup on the
other hand is essential for a healthy police setup. The symbion should stop here. Nothing
more. When it comes to policing by the police per se, when policing operations demand
professional decisions, it should perspicaciously be professional police decisions sans outside
interferences in any form. The police organisation has to be built up as a system to achieve
this essential goal to make policing a professional, convincing and creditable job wherein
there would be no scope for any outside interferences in policing with the highest authority
in the setup being responsible only to the rules and laws framed for the purpose a la the
policing system in Britain.
JUDICIARY AND THE POLICE
The position of the police as the enforcer of the laws of the country gives it an important
place in the judicial system of the country in enforcement of laws, preventive measures and
investigation of crimes and provides it a strategic relationship with the dispenser of laws
namely the judiciary. Though the judiciary has absolutely no say in the organisational
matters of the police force, it, if it so desires and have adequate resources to do it, can have
absolute control over the police functions as the police au fond is the enforcer of laws and the
judiciary is the interpreter and dispenser of the laws and the synergy between the two
functions perforce implies absolute subordination of the police functions to the judicial
review. However, this may not be the case in practice for several reasons. One is the concept
of judicial restraint. Another is the constraints within which the judiciary functions. The
other is the disinclination of the judiciary to interfere with the executive functions of the
police unless circumstances compel it to do so to discharge its cardinal responsibility of
upholding the rule of law and justice in the country.
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In the spectrum of the state administration, the police enjoys or suffers a rather polemic
position defying many principles of the statecraft like the insulation of legislature, executive
and judiciary in the machinery of the state governance or the compatibility between the
constitutional rights invested with the importance enjoyed by a government organisation in
the state administration. The police organisation on the other hand is the best example of the
unity of state administration, of the synergy of various organs of the state governance. It, as
an enforcer of laws, investigator of crimes and an apparatus of state security, share a lever
with all the pockets of the statecraft and acts as the spinal chord of the government by
coordinating the functions of the legislature, the executive and the judiciary in establishing
the rule of law. Its bonds with the executive and the judiciary are equally strong and act as a
powerful link between the two powerful sings of the government. It is a string that binds
disparate wings and organs of the government together and give it a sense of oneness and
belonging while itself remains en arriere. This explains the sine qua non of the police in state
administration while denying it a ranking place as a governing body sui juris like many other
organs of the state administration. The police as a government agency represents the driving
force of the executive and the controlling device of the judiciary. It is the working muscle of
the government. It represents the law of the country and therefore ultimately responsible to
the laws of the country. While it is part of the executive, its subordination to the judiciary
and responsibility towards the law of the country raise it above the scope of the executive
functions. While it is part of the judiciary, its position as a handmaid of the executive,
spreads its role above the scope of the judiciary. Ergo, the police is a government agency that
performs functions both within and above the scope of the executive and judiciary as well as
the legislature. The police is a government agency that performs functions both within and
above the scope of the executive and judiciary as well as the legislature. The police is part of
all these wings of the government and subordinate of each to them while outgrow each of
them in professional discharge of its responsibilities. What is required is the realisation of
this sui generis position of the police and preparing itself mentally to discharge these cardinal
responsibilities in compatibility with the professional requirements.
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RAT-RACE AT TOP AFFECTS POLICING
The British were the forefathers of the unified Indian police. They created the reticulation
of the police force for India with their own designs and objects in sight. It was a force that
met the needs of the time. In an age of rapid changes due to the opening up of new vistas and
dimensions to life by inventions and discoveries in science and technology, nothing remains
quiescent. The scope, design and objects of the Indian police underwent a basic
metamorphosis with the transfer of government to native hands. The process spawned a
synod wherein undemanding aspects of both the worlds survived to create a new police
culture. The distinguishing traits of the Indian police of the British vintage like objectivity,
apoliticism, commitment, discipline, quality and high standards were discarded as peregrine
and irrelevant in the changed circumstances; and traditional Indian values like simplicity,
charity, wisdom, mutual respect, encraty and human qualities were distanced as Indian to the
police culture. The convenient factors of the old and new worlds were chosen to warp a new
world of police culture while demands on policing were at the crucial stage in the creant
years of national independence. The cabal was struck by the Indian police officers who
rapidly rose in their career overnight to fill the void, created by the resignations of their senior
British officers in the ancien regime on the eve of independence. The demand for creating a
new work relationship with native political leaders was a historical opportunity to carve a
new police culture in free India. The incompetence of the then police impresarios, their
greed, parochial approach and self-interests spawned the wrong type of police culture. They
laid mendacious praxis to those lower by bending laws and conscience to aggrate men in
power with the myopic object of promoting ain career and personal interests. The police
became a lithe tool in the hands of the power-brokers of free India. How can the police be
objective, honest, apolitical, committed and disciplined in such an atrophy and how can it
uphold the rule of law and justice in line with its professional edict in such a circumstance?
A fixation towards political masters at the cost of professional uprightness is the most
obvious manifestation of this organisational character of the police setup. The symptoms are
deeper at higher ranks and reach their saturation at the rank of the chiefs where political
selections are crucial in appointments to the levels. Except in rarest of the rare cases, every
police officer ascensively obtempers and goes sequacious to political masters as he comes
nearer to the coveted selection post. Two distinct types can be marked in this approach. In
one, officers take to subordination to political leaders as a convenient policy from the very
beginning of their career, and as a policy, make themselves subject to the dictates of all
political leaders. The very concept of politics is sacrosanct to them and anybody in it
deserves their absolute obeisance. They find the germ of professional rectitude in meeting
needs of political masters and other political leaders. Any talk of professionalism in the
police ectogenesis to political relevance does not make sense to them. Every state in India
has a set of such police officers who are generally meek and very popular with politicians of
any colour and succeed in getting favourable postings which ever party comes to power. It is
not an accident that these officers often become intelligence chiefs and in most cases succeed
to retire as the chiefs of the concerned police organisations because of their easy proximity to
politicians and willing readiness to stoop to any level at the behests of their political masters.
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Politicians in power need such officers in jobs where lawless operations like tapping of
telephones and illegal operations are part of the game.
There is another set of officers who turn soft to politicians as they reach the stage of being
subjected to political scrutiny for being selected to coveted posts like the chief of the
concerned police set up. These officers are generally known as strict officers and hailed for
their professional uprightness and competence from the beginning of their career, which is
marked with erratic rises and falls on political whims. The public mark them as ideal
professionals. But changes appear in them as they approach the D-day of their career and
they become the best friends of political heads to corner selection posts with the zeal of a new
convert.
In an annual conference of police officers in a state police chief lambasted his Chief
Minister and Home Minister in his speech en face for denying him free hand in posting of
officers in professional interests. The officer next in seniority to the chief, whose selection as
the next police chief was to be decided soon rose to the occasion and against the decorum of a
professional meet, contradicted his chief to state that it was the prerogative of the ministers
to post officers at their will. This shocked the assembled officers as he did that while he was
known as a through professional and strict adherent to professional values and ethics. His
apostasy astounded the police officers attending the conference who trusted him to up hold
the values of his profession till the end.
It is a common practice in some states of India to change key officers of the police
department when a new dispensation takes over the rule. Changes in key position of the
police department following changes in political rule are a common feature in most states.
This reflects how the political leadership of the country sees the professional loyalties of its
police. This credibility of the professional loyalty of the present Indian police is
incredulously low even among the public. Political leadership believes that all those in police
are venal commodities, who can be win over by throwing loaves and fishes. It is convinced
that most in the police are loyal to one or the other political groups of the country and its
leaders and these factious loyalties within the police setup do make substantial differences to
its political fortunes. Ergo, the mad rush to place favourite police officers at key positions
tout de suite of taking over the administration. Fractured loyalties of those in the police setup
are responsible for this triste affaire. It is natural for any to respond to the state of affair and
make hay while the sun shines. While political leaders play some police officers in deliciis
and not others, they are only exploiting the Achilles heel of the organisation offered to
them on a platter and sharing the res gestae. The culprit here is the perverted loyalties of the
police. When the police play their priorities well by perspicuously defining their loyalties in
favour of professional objectives of the police rather than myopically prevaricating to the
mire of personal loyalties against professional dignity, no more the political leadership finds
it feasible to keep its avizefull pernoctation over the police to play one against the other.
While the police en semble are committed to their professional objectives, there is nothing to
the political leadership to choose from. What is termed as political interferences in
placements of police department is patently the making of the police by their gratuitous
personal loyalties and any blame on the political leadership on this count is assez bien
uncalled and due to parablepsis.
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DEVALUATION OF PROFESSIONAL QUALITIES

The intelligence unit is the most abused section and its chief is the most willing loyal
subservient policeman available to political masters in most of the police forces of India.
Intelligence officers have a responsibility to their organisational objectives and they ought to
be loyal to it and work towards meeting the objectives. But, misplaced loyalties overturn the
scope of intelligence units everywhere in present Indian police. Intelligence units as a
consuetude are seen as the political handmaid of the ruling parties and their leaders. The
usefulness of the intelligence units as political tools is so pronounced in India that the units
are ascensively brought under the direct control of the chief executive of the government
from its traditional field of the Home Department and as a consectary, intelligence chiefs are
accrescently becoming the prime advisers of the chief executive head and shoulder above
even the chief secretaries in states and the cabinet secretary in the centre. The out-of-turn
importance is a quid pro quo to the lengths to which these officers go and risk their personal
and career safety and honour in indulging in all types of illegalities to oblige the political
masters, lllegalities and unethical practices like telephone tapping and shadowing political
rivals of the ruling party leaders are only minor prevarications these loyal police officers
indulge in to keep themselves on the right side of their political masters. Assessment of
political trends and suitability of various candidates in different constituents during
elections and reporting of political and other activities of politicians within and outside and
ruling party are now wrongly seen as legitimate functions of intelligence units in Indian
police. The zeal of police officers to prove personal loyalty to the ruling political party and
its leaders often lead them even further. Though the loyalty of these police officers to their
political masters foot the bill for any encomium, it sadly goes against all professional tenets
of any police organisation worth the name. But this is inconsequential to these police
officers. Professional interests lose all significance to them vis a vis loyalty to powerful per
procurationem self-promotions. Where loyalty to right ideals is a basic tenet of the policing,
loyalty becomes a venal commodity to these police officers. The intelligence chief of a
particular state who was a favourite of the chief minister of the state and retained his
position as the chief of the intelligence in additional charge even after promotion and posting
to a higher slot, led a huge contingent of intelligent officer and camped in Delhi for several
days to help his political masters manoeuvre for the Prime Ministership during the turbulent
weeks of unstability after the general election of 1996. The tragedy of such a perverted
loyalty is the devaluation of the professional qualities of the policing apart from financial
implications of such operations and the block they create in legitimate government works.
This is a fine example of sacrificing public interests at the altar of self-promotion of few
individuals.
Political leaders make best use of this Achilles heel in the police setup. How low police
officials at higher ranks stoop to be in good books of political masters can be seen in some
states by the concours among the two important pillers of the state police setup namely the
state intelligence chief and the Police Commissioner of the State Headquarters in front of the
state Chief Ministers residence early every morning to have the first private audience of the
Chief Minister to themselves. This was a laughing matter in official circles some years back.
Though the hard work of these high profile police officers to rise everyday early in the
morning to pay their obeisance and report to the chief executive of the state and their
sedulity to their work in hand have to be respected and appreciated, the issue is cannot they
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discharge these duties sans breaching the pride and dignity of their ranks and posts and
without so obviously expressing their sequacious tendencies? After all, they have a
responsibility towards keeping the pride and dignity of their ranks and profession, if not of
their individuality.
SALVAGING OPERATION
The situation can be salvaged by clearing the cobwebs from the entrails of the Indian
police. There is a catena of self-motivated officers in key positions in the police who
unknowingly brought about the degringolade of the Indian police in the post-democratic era.
They corrupted the police atmosphere, set wrong precedences, encouraged self-indulgence,
pulled down its no-nonsense tough image and reduced it to its present cadaverous
existence. These elements should be side-lined to absorb men of probity to refurbish and
rebuild the police setup. Only really capable impresarios can pull the Indian police out from
its present fix.
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NEED OF COMPETENT BRASS IN POLICE
Police is one of the most vital instruments of the public administration and works as a
link between the executive arm and judiciary. It is the ears, eyes and limbs of the
government. No government with a failing police system can survive whatever be its other
assets, It is against this background that the glitches bedevilling the present Indian police
should be viewed. Any complacency at this stage about the existing police system may
prove too costly for the unity and well-being of the country and the health of its governance.
A job culture involutes basic beliefs and objects of the organisation, professional ethics
and the degree of commitment to the aspirations of the organisation, as laid down by
precedence and practice. To what results precedence and practice mould the job culture
decide the success or otherwise of the organisation. The decisions and conduct of those at the
helm as the point d appui of police circles substruct the life-lines of the organisation. It is
important that only right people reach the top. A headless organisation is better than one
headed by a degenerate weakling. This is why the policy of selection and promotion at high
levels plays a vital role in the growth of the organisation. In a democratic age of selfseeking, short term political leadership, where sycophancy is the sole criterion for ascending
the career ladder, the policy of selection and promotion is misdight at best and motivatedly in
the reverse gear at the worst, to the detriment of the growth and functioning of the
organisation. All those committed to the cause of police and effective policing must break
the trend and endeavour to provide a fresh lease of life for effective policing.
How deeply the police is self-centred even within its own organisation and what care and
concern the police leaders show to evolve a perficient and planned police organisation can be
assessed by the trend of evolution of the police organisation as an increscently top heavy
setup and the speed with which promotions are effected at different levels. In states where
there were only two officers of the rank of Inspector General of Police, for say forty
thousand men and officers about 20 years back, there are now nearly 30 officers of and above
the rank of Inspector General of Police, for say 80,000 men and officers; thereby the last 20
years account for 100% expansion in the lower levels against 1500% expansion at higher
levels. What these people at the top do for policing apart from being a drain on the state
revenue and a strain to officers down the levels with conflicting instructions of dubious
merit? Almost nothing. It is unfortunate that none in the police administration realises that it
is not the rank but the real human stuff inside that decides the height, excellence, merit,
intelligence, honesty, integrity responsibility, work knowledge and human qualities of a
person. Promotion to higher rank serves no purpose unless the higher rank provides a really
higher challenges and job content and a suitable man is perforce selected to meet the
increased challenges. This is not the case in present police promotions where sinecures are
created to facilitate promotions to satisfy in-group instincts, Most of these jobs are without
any job content and responsibility and often are places to relax from the pressures of family
life. However, the same courtesy does not extend to the more unfortunate ranks at lower
levels including the constabulary. While vacancies at the topmost level are filled up by
promotions strictly overnight, promotions at intermediary levels are effected in weeks or
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fortnights or months, depending on the rank in the police hierarchy. It is years in the case of
the constabulary. There are cases where vacancies of Head Constables and Assistant SubInspectors or Sub-Inspectors are not filled up for several years, depriving the constabulary of
their de jure promotions. There are any number of instances of men in the constabulary
retiring without promotion non obstante their eligibility and seniority for the existing
vacancies, which are not filled up from many years. Policing is a job performed mostly at
lower levels with decreasing involvement upto the level of Superintendent of Police. Beyond
that, it is tout court a supervisory task and in a police force with no supervision to speak of,
higher ranks are just de trop. Any move to expand these ranks and any undue haste to
promote to these levels cannot be called honest decisions in the functional or public interest.
Unfortunately, the Indian police is doing just that and there is none to put it back on the right
track.
DYNAMICS OF CORRUPTION
A fall-out of corruption in the police is buildup a dynamics which promotes the interests
of corrupt in the system at the cost of those who retained the pristine value of
professionalism. The flexible elements who can be menoeuvred to required moulds through
the juste milieu of pelf and position are useful assets to people in key position to save their
kith and kins interests as and when they get involved in criminal proceedings. Such
characters in police are always cultivated and posted to key positions so that striking
compromises when situation warrants becomes easy. This strategy ends up in honest police
officers being sidelined and it promotes corruption. The dynamics while helps influential
individuals to evade the long arm of law, harms the interests of the country, its police and the
rule of law. Police officers of plastic conscience are preferred to upright professionals to key
posts even in national level police agencies like the Central Bureau of Investigation and the
Intelligence Bureau. Police officers known for professional approach are spurned and
distanced as inconvenient elements. In the situation, competence plays no role in preferences
while honesty, integrity and professional commitment play negative roles. A history of
bending backward on nonprofessional considerations always becomes a qualification in
obtaining preference to more sensitive jobs in important police organisations.
The first and foremost job to be done is to free the police from the unhealthy influence of
all hues by making it responsible to an independent authority with absolute power to take
decisions on matters pertaining to policing and police organisation. The authority should be
a professional body with men of proven probity and quality as members, who have reached a
stage from where they need not sacrifice their convictions to appease those in power. A
working arrangement is to be devised by which the authority is responsible directly to the
legislature and functions as an independent authority like the judiciary, Comptroller and
Auditor General or Election Commissioner.
Creation of a high core group of people who are adept in assessing men and character
within the aforesaid police authority may help to create a feeling of confidence and job
security and prod them into discharging their official duties fearlessly. This group which
oversees the work of police personnel from a distance should be made ultimately responsible
for all career decisions. The responsibilities of officers in assessing the work of their
subordinates which forms the major embarrassment of the present Indian police must be
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limited to giving their opinion about performance to the core group; the expert core group
processes the opinion by its own research, expertise and discretion and takes responsible
decisions on its own. The group must be made responsible for development planning of the
police, work assessment, job analysis, recruitment and management of human resources,
Institution of such a core group to oversee the career development of police personnel
without personal bias may bring revolutionary changes by committing the police to its workethics and professional ends with due single mindedness.
The extant system of selecting the police chief is erratic at best and motivatedly amoral in
that it meets political ends of the rulers at worst. A conspicuous example is from a southern
state of India where a police officer who was sidelined in his career as an inefficient person
and degenerate habitual drunkard was given a fresh leash of lefe in career a Iimproviste and
posted as the chief of the state police in July 1980, after being promoted as the first Director
General of Police of the state to meet the political and personal ends of the new Chief
Minister of the state in new dispensation that came to power in the state in elections. Soon,
the state found itself engulfed in law and order problems, rise in incident of crimes,
indiscipline and discontent in the state police force and dangerous union activities by the
police personnel. The new police Chief who was arranged to retire as IGP of the State
Vigilance Commission before being awarded the coveted post of the state police chief was
known to attend office in inebriated condition and while away time in offence, doing nothing,
However, political needs overshadow all such facts in selection to the posts of Police Chief.
This is a dangerous trend. Attempts of the Supreme Court of India in its recent order to
formulate a system for the selection of the chiefs of important police forces of the country
like the CBI is a welcome measure at least in its intent and must spur steps to formulate
procedures of the selection of all key police posts to insulate the process from amoral and
very dangerous extraneous considerations. This is a must in the interests of the country.
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PRAVEEN KUMAR
RIGHT ORIENTATION
IN GOVERNMENT SERVICE
Government service in a democracy is the service of the people by the people for the
people within the reticulation of the rules and procedures in force. It is the core service of the
governance and implements the will of the people expressed through the collective political
leadership. It is the tool that really manages the country on the tapestry of the adopted policy
by exercising all the wherewithal of a management tool-box like planning, organizing,
execution and control by its ubiquitous presence. Right orientation is sine qua non for the
self-management through own representatives under the political leadership in the
government. People au naturel are unifocal in self-interests au fond. An orientation of the
right kind to lift them in the direction of the larger interests of the largest part of the
population is the raison detre of any government service. It is this higher direction that
ideally differentiates those in government service from the hoi polloi. Reality is different in
the field. The reasons for that are as diverse as wrong orientation and wrong people in the
service.
OPTIONS
The choice is bifocal to redeem the situation: either select only the people of right
orientation of larger interests in heart or inculcate the right orientation by right training, right
practices and right job culture on those who are selected. The process of selecting the people
of right orientation to the behemoth of government service of Indian dimension is easier said
than done. The Indian institutions constituted for the purpose are too ill-equipped for the job
and too steeped in inefficiency, corruption and lack of positive approach for any perficient
performance even in responsibilities of far lesser magnitude. India has no alternative but to go
for the latter option of inculcating the right orientation.
The second option at best is a weak shadow of the first. Its tools are directed towards
attitudinal change. The tools are too weak for the immanent changes warranted even if
presumed that right training, right practices and right job culture to bring about the new
avatar exist at all. Human nature is too complex for such an easy metabasis. Right tools are
becoming ascensively far afar to find in the extant power-hungry milieu of the present
government service. The legacy of the colonial rule in power-centric governance continues
even after more than five decades of the independence. The prise of the power-orientation in
preference to service-orientation is accrescently going tenacious in government service.
Combined with the fact that lesser mortals are now joining the fray of the government service
courtesy selection institutions nonpareil to the job, the situation can only be imagined. People
of all kinds join the service and indulge in all kinds of loots and sins. People accustomed to
long colonial rule are taking umbrage under the Karmic Law as the misdeeds in name of
governance by their own people are found to be the ineluctable reality of life. They take
epinosic satisfaction by the facts that the situation is worse in neighbouring and African
countries. We are taught to be patriotic and committed to the country and the government
which sins against us. We are perorated with such inutile plangent phrases as ours is the
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biggest democracy in the world and we are a nuclear power ad manum to be a super power of
the world that signify nothing to most Indians weighed down with misrule. Only right
orientation in government service can save the country from the entoilment and spread a new
entrainement in the people.
LARGER INTERESTS
The raison detre of the government service is its orientation towards larger interests en
face the extant tournure of the narrow interests critical to human nature. Larger interests
imply a sense of right and wrong, sensitivity to others sufferings and a genuine love for the
human kind. Even after presuming the exiguity of such noble qualities in the ambience
around, the standards existing in the extant Indian government service is far from satisfactory
and horrific tout court by any standards. It is just perversion drunk by the temulence of
power. It is erratic to say the least. It is insulsity at best and perversion at the worst. It is
twisting rules and procedures to meet self-interests al piu. What is striking is the fact that it
has become the culture of the governance of free India. India has become free perchance to let
its government service to have a dissolute culture of its own choice sans interference ab
extra. This seems the ground reality of the last five decades of the Indian independence. An
example illustrates assez bien the degringolade of the government service and those who man
it.
WRONG MODEL
A Mathematics lecturer from a college joined government service four decades back. His
fastus from the sudden rise perforce cost him his seniority in preference to a junior during the
training. His unpopularity among the public got him an entry as immature in ACR. He got
an important posting on promotion where he betrayed gratuitous harshness that cost him the
post in less than a year to be posted to head a training institute.
This is where the crunch of running the government service comes to the fore and exposes
itself in puris naturalibus. A training institute is the first point of tryst of a recruit with his
future service and its head his true model to become. Hundreds of young recruits passed out
as officers in the next three years from the institute with its head as a model binged in them.
Later, many a precious careers withered under the peise of the wrong model. The wrong
orientations received during the training make inveterate and lasting impact that cannot be
easily deracinated. Wrong models unwanted other-where heading training institutions is the
first symptom of a grave malady the government service is suffering with.
The officer was denied decent postings promotion after promotion. He was sent on
deputation to head a middle sized state undertaking. His misconduct there led to a state-wide
agitation of its staff in 1985. Later, he was deputed to head the state prisons department. His
stewardship there witnessed an unprecedented mafia gang war within the four walls of a
prison resulting in murder of an egregious inmate in 1995. An enquiry by the Home Secretary
arraigned the officer for serious lapses.
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PRAVEEN KUMAR
MISCONCEPTION
The officer headed his department for five months before retirement. This is another post
where the fonctionnaire serves as a model to the subordinates. His appointment to the post
was opposed by some on the grounds of merit. This gave rise to two groups in his favour and
against in the department. The new chief in excelsis in his career acted avec acharnement
against those belonging to the opposite camp by sending them to insignificant posts in godforsaken corners of the state. He, drunk in the fulgour of his new status, unreasonably acted
on some others assuming the role of a soi disant motivation specialist and brought gratuitous
sufferings to them. A nave officer with complete fide et fiducia on the new chief sought
transfer back to the state capital to any of the umpteen vacant posts existing. The new chief
promised an immediate posting and consented for the subordinate going on leave pending the
transfer. Thereafter, the chief went on delaying the transfer by encouraging the pianissimo
subordinate to extend the leave for the next four months until himself retired. The subordinate
au desespoir approached the State Chief Secretary only to find that the latter was advised by
the chief not to meet the subordinate. The Chief Secretary did just that. This speaks volumes
about present administration. The achilles heel lies in the mediocrity and the inability of
those in higher levels of the government service in this star-stricken land to comprehend what
really constitute administration and misconceive it as a show of ruthlessness and cruelty. The
justification of the chief for his queer and perverted conduct oblivious of the sufferings and
agony caused was that he was doing all those things as a motivation specialist to help the
subordinate in his career! His preposterous motivation skills ens rationis was really a cloak to
his native sadism that cost the enfested subordinate his faculty of trusting anybody. This is a
case of pure schadenfreude en pure perte.
SERVICE
The core of right orientation in government service is an understanding of the sufferings
of others and willingness to mitigate it through the accepted means of rules, laws and
procedures. Power is only the subsidiary of the process and comes to play as a tool in aid of
making service to the people possible. There is no place for fastus, show of power,
schadenfreude and playing with the lives of others in the scheme. It is humility and a
gemutlich sense of service to others that is fundamental to it. Any government manned by the
people without these essential ingredients is bound to be a heath of tyranny and face the wrath
of the plebeian in rerum natura. That is why the manning of the government service warrants
utmost care and expertise in running the government. The edifice of the right governance
stands on the terra firma of the right orientation. The governance is just nonexistent or leads
to a welter of tyranny of the people in the skein of wrong orientations.
RIGHT PLACES
The right orientation can be either inborn or acquired. In absence of appropriate tools
to trace inborn orientations with certitude, only the process of acquiring the right orientations
can be depended upon. Right models have tremendous impact on the process as do wrong
models. It is the models and the precedents that determine and festinate the orientation of the
future. Models in right places have tremendous impacts in enracing right orientations in the
body of the government service. Head of an institution that trains recruits exercises powerful
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influence on the recruits. So also the head of the department. Right orientation in government
service can be made a reality by manning these key posts with right persons.
Another tool towards this end is encouraging right orientation by the reguerdon of good
postings. The objective is bifarious: it inspires the adoption of the right course; also, rewards
to the right people a natura rei act as a stimulant to create the right job culture. Such a
stimulant is briller par son absence in Indian ambience. It is the reason why government
service now is not what it should be in a democracy.
POWER
The nature of the government service now is power-oriented; that is, the exercise of
power for the sake of power. It has become an ide fixe. There is not even a tinge of service
orientation in the extant government service. Even the pretence is left to the care of the
political leadership that must depend on the hoi polloi for survival. Those in government
service need not even pretend to that as they have a secure tenure of service and go
impervious to the plebeian. The accrescent falsidical sense in government service now is that
they are meant to implement the wishes of the political leadership without any commitment to
the ordinary people. The falsetto must be replaced with a sense of service to the people. There
is no deliverance to the country without it.
The power-orientation of the government service is the seed of all ills of the country.
Power corrupts. So, any government service erected on the pillars of power cannot be
anything but corrupt. A corrupt government corrupts the country and a country under seize
and caught in the tourbillon of corruption cannot be anything but tyrannic. This is the
maelstrom India finds itself with now. The country can be saved from the avernus and a stage
for the risorgimento can be set only by giving right orientation to its government service. It is
a gargantuan task. The path of corruption is easy, but retracting the course back is difficile
and almost impossible. But it is a job that has to be attended to on priority in national
interests. If not a pas de geant, the problem has to be approached in farthing-steps. Relief
from the temulence of power cries for the priority attention. Once the cobweb is removed, the
space will be free for the inculcation of service-orientation within the limits of the policy and
the rules and procedures in force. Right placement of the right models is crucial to the
process. That brings the apollyon of the government service to heels to ultimately wipe out of
the system and dawn a new era of a healthy government service in the country.
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PRAVEEN KUMAR
VALUE SYSTEM
IN INDIAN BUREAUCRACY
The word value from the French root valoir suggests a sense of worth as rising from the
innards of the conscience. The perception of a given value varies with the variae lectiones of
the amoebic milieu. The dependence of the value structure on milieu is the source of all the
corrida de toros of the human world. The value system of an individual and an organization
of which he consciously or by compulsion is a part are rarely identical. This basically is the
source of all human conflicts. This is more so in the present age of accrescent entoilment of
human activities. Nowhere in the extant world, the conflict of value systems is found as
obvious as in the behemoth of the Indian bureaucracy. That is why people with a strong
conscience find themselves in cul-de-sac in government service unless they adapt personal
value structures to the needs of the bureaucracy that is mediocre at the best and criminal at the
worst.
CONTRARIOUS VALUES
The value system in bureaucracy is bifarious: inherent values and survival-oriented
values. The two facets of the same value system further metagrobolise the complexity of the
value system of the bureaucracy ab intra. Add apocryphal elements in the garb of values
natural to the Indian bureaucracy to the broth, the field is ready for all the dramas of this
world.
A persons locus standi in the affairs of his life is subject to his position in the mlange of
these often contrarious values at diverse ambiences. Adamantine commitment to a value has
no place here. Skeely manoeuvring of positions from time to time, unfortunately, decides the
success in life. If value is understood by its true definition, the extant formula of flexibility
for success is nothing but refutation of the concept of values per se. This is the ineluctable
fact of life to which human activities have devolved themselves. An illustration suffices to
make the point clear.
A young officer in 1960s began his career in a South Indian state with commitment to the
high values of public service laced with strictness and discipline of very high order au naturel
to his age and the nascent stage of his career. He was a terror to wrong-doers in 1970s as a
district level executive officer and proved very successful in his work. His unimpeachable
integrity as also no-nonsense mien rendered him unpopular among both subordinates and
superiors. He was removed from his district posting in less than a year on the pressures of the
vested interests and never found a responsible posting sinsyne with a profile in official
records as immature inter alia. His failure lay in his individual value system not being attuned
to what the bureaucracy expected of him.
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SURVIVAL INSTINCT
Being enervated by the developments and angst-ridden, he realized that he has no future
in the career with his own convictions and values. This turned him so much inward that he
became proficient in psychology and soon got doctorate in the subject. He did everything to
reconcile his traits and nature to the imperatives of the bureaucratic values. He went out of his
way to please everybody and made it his habit. The changes found favour with none with the
aura popularis yet defying him and he went on losing mainstream postings as rose in rank
and even remained without posting for nearly a year in 1990s at a very high rank on the
suspicion of gross negligence in discharge of duties leading to a serious disaster as a
consequence of his newly acquired traits of casualness. With the ablet, his nature saw the
affret of enthusiasm to please the political leadership of the state a toute force as he
approached the benchmark of the selection to the post of the head of the department. As the
popular perception continued to be against him as a candidate for the coveted post, the
energumen began to play the caste card with the political leadership a corps perdu. His
efforts to undermine the chances of a senior backfired as the latter after retirement as the head
of the department filed cases against the former succeeding him as the departmental chief.
The point is that the officer succeeded in heading the department as the altaltissimo of his
career though for a short period by the surgery he performed on his persona, convictions and
innate values. Though flexibility paid, one wonders whether the quid pro quo was worth the
surgery and could not he be a person more in harmony with himself if he had continued with
his pristine value system avec acharnement. His predecessor is another example of the same
process but for that that after finding failures of the new values to provide the aex triplex he
needed, he took recourse back to his innate values and won court battles to head the
department.
CRISIS OF VALUES
The tragedy of the officer was that the process of the changes found him shedding away
truly noble values innate to him. His integrity became a disaster in the process. His name as
the Managing Director of the states Tourist Development Corporation in 1980s was linked to
his young PA after he was noticed spending long hours with her under locked doors and
irregularly elevating her to officers rank to the consternation of the entire staff that went on
state-wide strike against the Managing Director. He was also suspected of wrong-doings in
purchase of hundreds of cars by the Tourist Development Corporation to run as tourist cars.
It clearly is a case of honest besoin to adapt to the imperatives of the bureaucracy for
survival going awry. The attempts are justifiable on the grounds of the survival instinct basic
to human nature, because the bureaucracy as it is has no value for anything extra muros. It
recognizes only its values and remains adamantine to anything ectogenesis. Therefore, the
choice for a principled officer is between an unsuccessful career for adhering to ones own
values and convictions or quitting. Good jobs are difficult to come. Ergo, ordinary mortals
survival instincts lead to sacrifice his values and principles to adapt to the requirements of the
bureaucracy at any cost to the self and its convictions. Everybody cannot be a saint. Thus the
need to adapt own values to the bureaucratic imperatives is ineluctable until Indian
bureaucracy grows to be mature enough to accept and absorb higher values ab extra.
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PRAVEEN KUMAR
XENOPHOBIA
A process of ossification has set-in in Indian bureaucracy in absence of real growth and
evolution after independence. The political leadership find the development to its advantage.
The bureaucracy found itself as fish out of water when its leading guides returned to Britain
after independence. Those who handled the higher bureaucracy sinsyne followed from where
the British left with their own mediocre interpretations of an ideal bureaucratic setup. The
result is the extant bureaucracy of India devoid of creativity, initiative, understanding and a
sense of public service. This reduced the definition of the public administration to mean use
of rules and procedures to delay or obstruct decisions or actions just for the purpose of
proving existence. The new setup developed a queer xenophobia towards deviations from the
set patterns as a threat to the very existence of the bureaucracy. The mindset evolved to a
pernoctation against any fresh breeze ab extra and a tendency to deracinate any move to that
end in the bud itself. Nothing fresh can leak-in to such a bureaucracy a huis clos.
BUREAUCRATIC CULTURE
The indifference is limited to the values ectogenesis to the home-grown value system. The
three factors that exercise true prise on Indian bureaucracy beyond the limits are caste
affiliations, political patronage and money power. They have become pollent values inter se.
You can buy practically anything from the present Indian bureaucracy with them en arriere.
And you find what virtually is hell on the Earth without these factors to back you.
The bureaucracy of India in the last five decades has become a law to itself with an opus
musivum of a ribald culture spreading tentacles of a reticulation of rights and wrongs beyond
the reach of any known precepts of decent human conduct. Here, power is the supreme deity
that absterges all sins, reasons and feelings. That naturally renders the rank in bureaucracy the
highest virtue and age, merit, character and human dignity eat dust in the milieu. Such a
bureaucracy is a perfect ground for the growth of all types of evils and human weaknesses.
There was a Sanskrit scholar with moderate successes as a writer in a provincial language
holding a very senior post in the bureaucracy of a South Indian state. He held huge functions
for the release of his books by dignitaries including the state Chief Minister. A junior who
became distinguished as a poet and as a writer decided to release his book through the
Governor of the state. The senior in the bureaucracy out of sheer jealousy spread canards and
exercised his personal weight to ensure that the function was cancelled just twenty-four hours
before the release of the book by the Governor of the state. This is Indian bureaucracy after
independence in puris naturalibus.
POLITICAL LEADERSHIP
The cardinal question is why the Indian political leadership tolerated such an
obstructionist bureaucracy for all these years. The reason is that the political leadership finds
itself comfortable with the ossified and unenlightened bureaucracy. There is no danger of an
enlightened bureaucracy overshadowing it and taking all the limelight for positive
performances. On the other hand, an inert and unenlightened bureaucracy is a handy tool to
bear the burdens of all failures. An ineffectual bureaucracy naturally brings higher stature to
the political leadership in public perception. It has become a fashion in India to blame the
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political leadership for all evils of the country. The true blame for the maelstrom the country
finds itself with, must lay on the threshold of the crippled bureaucracy and its blotched value
system. Sine dubio, Indian political leadership now is more enlightened than its bureaucracy.
The edge of the bureaucracy seen in pre-independent era is no more evident now. The reason
is that the political leadership kept its doors open for fresh air and updated its value system
from time to time unlike the bureaucracy. While the bureaucracy rarely looks beyond the
edges of its desk and never outside the window, it is the political leadership that navigated
India through diverse innovative phases like NAM, mixed economy, socialistic pattern of
society, social control and now economic reforms. Even the recent Agra Summit to bring
peace to the South-Asia region is a fine example of an innovative political leadership.
An enlightened bureaucracy with a noble value structure is a great blessing to any
country. Unfortunately, Indian bureaucracy at all levels flourish on the ruses like falling on
each other to lick the boots of the rich and powerful and bending double over to please the
political leadership or play the caste card. These ruses always payed a natura rei in the
ambience of the Indian bureaucracy after independence courtesy the tendency of the political
leadership to play the bureaucratic minions against each other. This prevented the evolution
of higher value system in Indian bureaucracy.
Every setup strictly has its own culture and value system. An individual perforce
reconciles his personal values with that of an organization when he chooses to be its part. He
is required to sacrifice his own convictions and values in the service of the larger interests of
the organization. The predicament is perficiently brought out by William Butler Yeats in two
lines of the poem, An Irish Airman Foresees His Death when the airman sings,
Those that I fight I do not hate,
Those that I guard I do not love;
Such a situation is common while organizational objectives and values take precedence over
individual objectives and values. The conundrum of such a reconciliation lies in resorting to
the adaptations while the organization as in Indian bureaucracy suffered degringolade in its
value structure en face the higher value structure of the individual. The ambience necessitates
the individual lower himself to the lower world to fit-in for survival with the full knowledge
that he is becoming a lesser human being in the process. That is the true challenge on the
fresh recruits to the government service in India who enter the services with starry eyes and
true commitment to the public service inspired ab imo pectore and soon end-up perforce in
the quagmire of conflicting values.
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PRAVEEN KUMAR
REQUISITES OF GOOD GOVERNANCE

Governance is steering and guiding the country in its course by right policies,
decisions and actions and the apparatus invested with the responsibility is government. A
government may have different gestalts, colours and priorities depending on the needs and
circumstances of the country at the time. Steering the rudder in proper direction through all
weathers constitutes the core of the governance. Those holding and attending the rudder
decide the destiny of the country. Their character, attitudes and competence determine the
tournure of the future of the country and its people.
TWO TIERS
Governance in a democracy is a bifarious exercise with the political rung controlling the
policy and decision-making apparatus while the administrative rung handling the decision
and action apparatus of the governance. The political and administrative faces are the two
sides of the same coin of the governance. The political rung represents the will and
aspirations of the people. People get the politicians they deserve. Any expectations and
manipulations about the will of the people are undemocratic au fond and unconstitutional
even. The case is tout a fait different with the administrative rung which functions as an
interface between the policies and its implementation and between the political rulers and the
hoi polloi in the matter of governance. While political leadership is ephemeral VVIP guestcomponent in the arena, the civil servants are the abiding framework of rules and procedures
within which the minutiae of the governance are conceived and built brick by brick. It is these
civil servants at diverse ranks, levels and fields that really hold the rudder of the governance
to steer the country in whatever course their composite character and competence permit. The
true governance depends on their abilities and attitudes.
CIVIL SERVANTS
They are professionals in the field of governance unlike the political leaders who handle
governance ens per accidens. They are career administrators and specialists eo nomine by
choice all their lives and constitute more than 99% of the manpower in the field of
governance. It is they who by their conduct and attributes decide the nature of the governance
in the country and constitute the mainstay of the government irrespective of what party comes
to power and who control the reigns of power. Karunanidhi as CM heaping corruption cases
against and putting former CM Jayalalitha behind bars and Jayalalitha reciprocating by the
same coin when she comes to power or Bofors gun case of the Congress and Tehelka tape
case of the NDA in the centre are all dramas of gratuitous media hype of little significance to
the future of the country until the character of the administrative rung remains unchanged.
The political face can make really little change to the country. It makes little difference to
Bihar who heads the government until the civil servants there change their character and
mindset. It is unrealistic and too simplistic to presume that the political leadership provides
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model to the administration down the line. The bureaucracy of India is too hardboiled a unit
for such a quick change of colours. The reality is the other way round. The political leaders
who come to power have no alternative but go d accord with the demands of the bureaucracy
or perish. Politicians as they are, do adapt to their survival instincts and barter their visions
for possible quid pro quo in power. The bureaucracy in India really enjoys a commanding
position in the governance of the country.
WRONG ATTITUDES
The tragedy of India is that their position and importance is not amated by requisite
qualities, merit, passion and commitment for effective and good governance. The Indian
bureaucracy is seized with wrong attitudes and evils that waste it away ab intra. Competence
has become a disaster. Wrong people in wrong jobs is a serious malady enervating the public
administration of the day. Political heads are wrongly blamed for the havoc. It is the
bureaucracy for its own parochial ends at the cost of the bureaucratic integrity and ideals that
invite the trouble and guide the political leadership in the evil path.
HUMAN ELEMENTS
The extant bureaucracy ensemble is marked by lack of human concerns and empathy for
the fellow men. Being as rigid as rules and procedures of which those in the bureaucracy are
custodians of is wrongly accepted as en regle for those in the bureaucracy. This has deprived
the elements of heart and compassion from the body of the bureaucracy. Initiatives, novel
ideas and creative pursuits are seen as the antithesis of the governance. This has deprived the
elements of brain and intellect from the corpus of the public administrative system. The result
is a deadweight-bureaucracy weighing down on the live India and sucking it dry with evils
and misuse of the powers invested on it for governing and steering the country ahead.
INTEGRITY
India is an egregious forerunner in the world among countries most corrupt in public life.
The root cause of this grave malady is Indias corrupt governance pregnant with inefficiency,
indifference and gross temulence of power devoid of human elements. Bureaucratic measures
have become synonymous in popular parlance and perception in India with foolhardy
decisions and actions far removed from reality. Lack of accountability is the leitmotiv of
governance in India. This is a malengine consciously evolved ab intra to safeguard selfinterests. Power sans accountability rendered governance in India an evil per se.
INSENSITIVITY
The evils of governance need not always be directed only against outsiders. Inscience
knows no boundaries. Even those within may become cruel victims of its grossly unrealistic
and farcical decisions as in the case of a highly talented and multifaceted genius who joined
government service in 1978. He was soon recognized for sheer brilliance and purity of
character as a diamond that can fit anywhere and as a peacock among the fowls. Soon the
recognition itself turned a noose on his neck. It was assessed by the inscient bureaucracy that
his outstanding attributes might prevent him from becoming popular among the seniors and
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prevent him from reaching higher levels. A two-pronged strategy was devised. He was to be
roughed-up and denied promotions to rub-off his superior qualities and the intimidating aura
till the detrition by the sufferings forces him down to the ordinary level. Once the job is
accomplished, his lost seniority was to be restored a few years before retirement.
ATROCITIES
He was denied promotions following the meretricious career plan year after year till his
junior colleagues became senior to him by two ranks. He was posted to most humiliating
posts and harassed endlessly. However, the process got caught in a skein as the infaust officer
refused to come down from his immanent and really superior qualities even after two decades
of immanity and sufferings while the bureaucracy refused to yield and give up its illegal and
unconstitutional stance until the officer condescends to the mediocre levels. The refusal of the
officer to approach judiciary against the ill treatment for redressal and his resolve to depend
solely on his talents and character helped the establishment to persist with the preposterous
process a corps perdu. His morale remained en bon point and high throughout non obstante
serious humiliations and endless grief. He aequo animo sought refuge in other fields and won
nonpareil accolades from everybody by sheer talents. His tormentors tout de suite followed
him there too. The head of the State Intelligence who himself a small-time writer and
published a few books in a regional language used esoteric threats in 2000 on the publishers
of the accurst officer to discourage them from publishing his books. The publishers who
already had published half a score books of the officer returned a contre coeur two
manuscripts of the officer in sheer desperation a natura rei expressing helplessness en face
the police interferences.
TRANSPARENCY
Fanciful premises bordering madness tout court leading to irresponsible and eristic career
plans of that dimensions are possible only in governance utterly lacking in accountability and
only a sacred country like India can produce such gross grief, sufferings and humiliations eo
nomine noble intensions en pure perte. Lack of transparency makes such etourdi atrocities
possible and permits its practice for decades en pantoufles as in the case study.
PUBLIC CAUSE
The case is an eye-opener to how merit, talent and character of very high order meted out
by the mediocrity of the governance in the Indian milieu. Jealousy is common. Anybody
junior receiving limelight is seen with resentment and suspicion. The major achilles heel of
the governance in India is its inability to understand others predicaments. Governance in
quiddity is safeguarding national interests and the welfare of the people. These factors
perforce involve empathy with the people and sensitivity to their interests. These are the
springboards of good governance. No governance worth the name can render meaningful
public service sans the spirit of building bridges to the hoi polloi in whose service it draws
sustenance and what constitutes its raison d etre. Good governance must be built on the terra
firma of human concerns and sensitivity to others predicaments.
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ACCOUNTABILITY
Another requisite of good governance is accountability. It gives sanctity to power and
makes it meaningful and relevant in the scheme of governance. Power is a raw energy.
Accountability gives it sophistication and purpose. Governance sans accountability has the
tendency of hijacking the country to the pit of evils that power breeds. Checks and
counterchecks serve the purpose of good governance by rendering itself to the litmus test of
accountability, ipso facto bringing in the elements of responsibility to the field of governance.
In the ambience of civil servants functioning in the shadow of the political leadership, the
former mastered the art of evading accountability and responsibility. The successes boldened
them to the derring-does of larger dimensions. The recent US-64 debacle is the point. India
can ill-afford repeat performances of that dimension and must save from such disasters in
future through an uneluctable parameter of accountability that alone can dawn an era of
responsible governance in the country.
OBJECTIVITY
A cardinal principle of good governance is objectivity and fair play. The governance as
public administration is inevitably circumvented by pulls and counter-pulls of diverse kinds
to influence decisions and actions. The compulsions for yielding to either side are enormous
and it reduce the governance to a mere play or dynamics of lobbyists and influence-pedlars. A
good governance must stand up to the pressures. This requires tremendous inner strength and
singular commitment to the public cause. It is easier said than done. However, this
commitment is sine qua non for good governance. While accountability is an apparatus to
protect the governance from the indulgences of the fonctionnaire ab intra like greed,
irresponsibility and love for easy life, the shield of objectivity protects it from the ectogenous
onslaughts of pressures, temptations and threats. While accountability must evolve as an
external mechanism ingrained in the body of the governance, objectivity is an inner faculty
either inborn or acquired as the fond of good governance.
IMBALANCES
Good governance should have its powers and responsibilities amated and evenly
distributed in the fabric of the governance. This ensures smooth governance d accord with
the principles of democracy. Another factor core to good governance is a balance of powers
and responsibilities propped up with transparency in state affairs. Responsibilities sans
powers end up with failures in performance and powers non compris responsibilities breed
undue morgue and lead to harassment of the public. Governance sans transparency is at the
root of all evils and goes tout au contraire to the very rationale of the democracy. It can
neither be fair nor earn the trust of the people.
OPEN MIND
No governance is worth the salt without a passion for developmental and welfare
activities in national interests. The passion widens the horizons of the mind as against that
circummured by isms of theoretical hang that can never provide a good and open governance.
A passion pure and clear for the welfare and development of the nation and its people by any
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means is a prerequisite for good governance. Only that keeps mind open for all developments
worldwide and absorb really the best for the country.
VISION
The most basic requirement of any good governance is a vision, an ability to look ahead
to the future of the country with great expectations and endless possibilities in sidelines. This
is potential of evolving the governance to greater heights to herald an era of successes and
prosperity. Visions carve paths to the future and prod the governance to navigate along the
course. It provides a break from the quotidian plod in preference to innovative strides to fulfil
the vision. Governance sans vision is like building an edifice a tatons without a plan or
blueprint. It at best is a random erection. Vision gives direction and purpose to the
governance. It gives a grandeur and a proportion to the process. No governance can be good
and complete without a vision to steer ahead and a true governance can be built only on the
terra firma of a vision. The old concept of a prosperous India is based on the vision of
Rama Rajya. The new concept of India coming of age is based on the vision of a world
power or a regional power in Asia. Once a vision of that dimension is en arriere to back, it is
easy to put the pluses and minuses to conceive a strategy towards the end. Otherwise,
governance is nothing more than mechanical motions.
India in its long history saw governance of all kinds, proportions and dimensions and
survived through them. It saw the worst and the best in its 2500 years of recorded history. It,
like other old civilizations of the world, has worked as the crucible of various experiments in
governance. The governance in India now is based on this long experience. It is the collective
will for good governance that is lacking in India. The consequence is that the hoi polloi suffer
and the country fails to reach the height it is potential of. The besoin of the extant India is the
evolution of a collective will to have a good governance. People must pool their energies to
force a good governance for the country. Indeed the job is not easy and the resistance from
those in charge of the governance whose interests lie in the status quo is bound to be hard.
But, this cannot be a reason to leave the matter of this dimension unattended as the fate of one
billion people depends on this development. Only such a collective will can devolve truly
good governance for the country.
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INDIA AND ALL INDIA SERVICES
Aux grands maux, les grands remedes. Timely remedy is best. But, belated remedy is
better than no remedy at all. Perhaps the greatest among the legacies of the British rule that
caught with free-India was its steelframe of the All India Services. Fortunate to India, the
Indian political leaders of that vintage in their best wisdom in an age of honesty, humility,
integrity and other higher values decided to continue with the All India Services legacy of the
British with minor adaptations in spite of the inchoate mad rave to indigenise everything and
obliterate all traces of the foreign rule. Kudos to the leaders for their wisdom in keeping an
efficient tool of administration intact. But, alas, the euphoria proved to be ephemeral. The
rapid degringolade of values and passion for excellence and efficiency in India of the postindependent vintage was to progressively obliterate all the advantages of the sound judgement
of the whilom leaders. The deterioration was to be complete in the next five decades and we
now stand exactly in that compita. The situation calls for les grands remedes.
Dispensability
The fall was ominous. Every system is bifacial; external structure and internal
character daccord constitute a true system. The advantages of the gestalt of the All India
Services of the British vintage was to be bientot frittered away by the falling values and rising
material aspirations of India of the sixties and sinsyne. The All India Services of the postindependent vintage dearly lost in the battle for internal character. Negative selections and
recruitment, deviant values and aspirations of its members thus selected and recruited and
mismanagement of the All India Services in governmental realms because of its obvious
dispensability in terms of excellence and strength of character all badly contributed for the
extant triste state of affairs in the realms of the All India Services.
A major advantage of the All India Services is its all India nature; its members as a plexus
from all over India carrying out administrative functions at senior levels throughout the
length and breadth of the country give it a sense of oneness and belonging. Another
advantage inhere in the concept is the belief that the best minds chosen from all over the
country are entrusted with the prime function of the nation-building through the structure of
the All India Services. They are commendable concepts indeed and worked to perfection
during the British era and perhaps for a decade thereafter. It is distressing to note that the
same advantages turned to acute disadvantages in the last five decades in our own hands
proving what Churchill said about natives ruling India.
Survival of the Fittest
If a single reason for the steep fall is to be accounted, the albatross can be found squarely
fitting in on the lap of the fast disappearance of the ancien regime of pristine values and the
accrescently valid concept of the survival of the fittest gaining ground at all levels in the last
half century, it be in politics, administration, professions and even social service. Pristine
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values of grace, integrity, humility, fairness and humane approach are increasingly at a
premium. Reaching top by any means is the motto. The gestalt of the All India Services was
conceived and designed to overcome exactly this milieu. But, alas, it proved no match to the
sweeping sleight of the Indian talent.
Crisis of Material
The primacy of the katabasis necessarily goes to the crisis of material, it be in the
members of the All India Services or the selecting and recruiting agency for the services or
the governments that manage the services. Right people are not in right positions. None can
contend that a vast country like India does not have people of right fortitude, strength of
character and creative talent who can withstand the lure of survival instinct at the cost of their
conscience, however bad be the milieu around. India does have people of such calibre in its
fold even now as it was always. The tragedy is that the agency charged with the sacred
responsibility of identifying such talents and selecting, in the deviant intelligence of its
equally mediocre human material that lacks creative depth, is failing the country by doing just
the opposite by filtering such talents away as incompatible with the present political
dynamics and thereby perpetuating the rotten state of affairs in the country. What India needs
at this juncture are men and women who can stand for their conscience nec cupias nec
metuas.
Vicious Circle
Politics being the art of possible, it is to the credit of the Indian politicians that they did
job extraordinaire in taking full advantage of the pusillanimous All India Services of the
post-independent vintage in the last half century to promote the interests of their own, their
political parties and the political field in general though at mammoth cost to the interests of
the country, its public morale and its people. The situation has spawned a vicious circle to the
advantage of the political masters wherein the All India Services are seized with a crisis of
confidence in the popular mind as far as its superior merit, integrity and competence are
concerned and in that further helped the politicians to corner the whilom superior services. No
state or union territory now needs them. They prefer local talents. Those forced on them by
the Central government are sidelined to insignificant jobs unless there are special reasons
involving quid pro quo. The situation only can add to the parochial and regional sentiments in
the country and boost divisive tendencies rather than working as a unifying factor.
The All India Services are fast losing the sheen of their all India nature because of the
inadequacies of the agency that makes selections to the services; there is undoubtedly wild
demand for superior merit, integrity, efficiency and excellence in running the country and the
rare virtues do prove the aex triplex of the services. No sane political leader can ignore the
need of such rare talents helping in running the country. Sadly, the All India Services not to
be that in free India.
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Strength of Character
Excellence and courage to stand up to conscience go together. It is these that made the
All India Services of the British vintage the steelframe of India. If anything, the extant All
India Services lack both. There is nothing like a steep fall. None know it better now than the
members of the All India Services. They must double bend to the dictates of criminal nuances
of their political masters for survival or face sidelining. Most condescend and rise to glory
while a handful resist and perish. The situation needs strength of character kat exochem to
stand up and cleanse the system and can be met only by diligent selections and support by
men of true calibre. Sadly India is dearly lacking in this department.
Virtus post Numnos

Situation is extremely bad in public administration even in best of the states of India. A
cut of 10% to the concerned minister from every fund released, it be for developmental works
or a special law and order programme, is a normal affair and treated as a legitimate cut. It
would be followed with other cuts down the line. Any resistance is invitation to be shunted
out and sidelined as an inconvenient and problematic candidate. Either you connive in the
crime or perish. There is no third choice. It is the case with plump postings also. It is virtus
post numnos. Either you bribe and connive in criminal activities with those who count or
waste your entire career in insignificant posts. There is no other choice. Most in the extant All
India Services willingly oblige and see the glory of their career. They are in majority and call
themselves practical. But, practical at what cost? The trend grievously belies the very raison
detre of the All India Services.
How the situation can be saved and the tide reversed? The only way out is restoring the
All India Services to its whilom glory of excellence and strength of character. This involves
right selection. Excellence and strength of character once around, naturally rally efficiency
and integrity around and perforce compel political bosses to see reason and follow the rule of
law. Political leaders as zoon politikon, what really they are, are nothing if not chameleonic to
the milieu around as a professional compulsion. It is left to the senior civil servants at the All
India Services rank as a group to create right atmosphere as a model of the public service.
Political leaders have no option but to fit in to the frame. This is why once the All India
Services was called the steelframe of India. Indian constitution makers did provide a right
gestalt for that. It is left to us to infuse right character to the system before it is too late.
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NEED OF LEAN AND MEAN CIVIL SERVICES

Civil services are the pillars on which the gestalt of a nation stands and structure is
built. Pillars need strength and height to make an edifice stable and meaningful. So also are
civil services. Civil service is a mammoth plexus of complex interfaces spliced together to
facilitate the governance of the country pro bono publico. It is not a decorative piece of the
public administration. It has to be purposive and focused and deliver goods efficiently
without proving a burden to the structure. It should be lean and mean and feracious.
Inefficient and bloated civil service only tends to be furacious.
Indian national leaders by 1947 had come to appreciate the advantages of having a highly
qualified and institutionalized administration in place a la the elite Indian Civil Service and
allied services of the colonial British Raj especially at a time when social tensions threatened
national unity and public order. Indian Constitution established the Indian Administrative
Service and other civil services to replace the colonial Indian Civil Service and allied services
and ensure uniform and impartial standards of administration and promote effective
coordination in social and economic development.
Although the elite public services continue to command great prestige, their social status
declined in the decades after independence. India's crme de la crme are increasingly
attracted to private-sector employment where salaries are substantially higher. Public opinion
of civil servants has also been lowered by popular perceptions that bureaucrats are
unresponsive to public needs and corrupt. Corruption has become a growing problem as civil
servants have become subject to intense political pressures.
The Indian civil service system has followed the classical Weberian model and tends
to be conformist in the process of cooperating with the politicians. The public perceives the
Indian civil service system as the no-change agents. It lacks innovativeness, initiative,
empathy, and drive for change. The Government of India and its 25 provincial governments
spend about 3.5% of the GDP on its civil servants. They employ about eight million in the
civil service, which is 50% of the employment provided in the organised sector.
The Fifth Pay Commission in its report submitted in January 1997 had suggested a
30% downsizing of the civil service across the board. According to the Ferrel Heady
configuration, the Indian civil service system has a majority-party responsiveness. The sense
of mission held by it is a mixed bag of compliance, cooperation, policy-responsiveness,
constitutional responsiveness, and guidance. Though the configuration of Philip Morgan
identifies the Indian civil service system as the principal agent of the state, some of the
characteristics of the patrimonial state still pervade the country and to that extent its civil
service system.
Vishnugupta of the Mauryan period authored a treatise known as Kautilya's
Arthashastra around 313 BC wherein he laid down the qualifications of the civil servants for
appointment to the court. He opined therein that loyalty and sincerity should be the main
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qualifications in a person to be appointed as a civil servant and recommended a system of

checks and balances in the appointment of civil servants covering clearance by the vigilance
department, a continuous watch on their performances and quotidian performance report to
the king on each key civil servant. The recommendations hold relevance even today after 23
centuries in a democratic setup. The civil service contrived by Akbar, the Great had welfare
and a regulatory-orientation. The British model of the civil service in the earlier stage were
far away from the common people and never tried to mix with and impress upon the people.
They had least interest in the transformation of the Indian society. The British government set
up the Indian civil service in 1911 to strengthen the British administration and its colonial
base in India. The independence of the country posed new challenges to the civil servants.
Welfare of the people and the internal peace and security became the prime tasks of the civil
services.
The onset of economic planning in India in 1951 with the First Five-Year Plan
enjoined on the Indian civil services the role of development administration covering the
administration of public enterprises, regulation of the private sector, formulation of socioeconomic and political policies, elimination of poverty, development of rural areas,
combating inflation, effective monetary management, reduction of gender gap, elimination of
social inequity inter alia. India encountered severe resource crunch in early 1980s that further
deepened by the end of the decade leading to a new economic policy in 1991 that saw a
rollback of the economic activities to liberalisation and privatisation at macro and micro
levels in the changed global environment. While civil servants acted as personal servants of
rulers in ancient India, they became state servants in the medieval age and acquired the
complexion of public servants in the British India. The ethos of the civil services changed to
development-orientation in 1950s and to a facilitator's role in the 1990s to meet the
challenges of the democratic needs of the teeming millions. The point here is that the civil
services is and has to be a nebulous body sans its own agenda, commitments and ideologies
in a democracy and function subordinate to the national needs and policy prioritized by the
political leaders. Indian civil services of the British vintage worked so and the civil services
of the democratic vintage nolens volens must follow tout de suite. That is the democracy
India consciously opted for and obliged to follow.
In his letter dated October 15, 1948 to the Constituent Assembly, Vallabhbhai Patel,
the then Prime Minister opined, an efficient, disciplined and contented service assured of
its prospects as a result of diligent and honest work is a sine qua non of sound administration
under a democratic regime even more than under an authoritarian rule. The service must be
above party and we should ensure that political considerations either in its recruitment or in
its discipline and control are reduced to the minimum, if not eliminated altogether. These are
truly prophetic words relevant to the present India that penetrate the conundrums of its civil
service issues. The emphasis is on an efficient and neutral civil service. However, the
problem here is the undue extension of the concept to conceive two power-centers between
political policy-makers and civil service executives. Justice M.P.Thakkar while hearing a
Special Leave Petition of a senior civil servant, Jagdish Chander Jetli in Supreme Court in
1988 observed inter alia, The appointment of the Secretary to Government of India is not on
the basis of a competitive examination where a candidate who secures 99 per cent of marks
has to be appointed. Even when a person appoints a cook or a watchman, he looks for a
person in whom he has faith. How can Government of India appoint any person as Secretary
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in whom it has no faith? and the SLP was dismissed by the Supreme Court. The two
contrarious observations sum up the ground realities and the predicament of the civil services
of India in a democratic milieu. It must maintain its integrity and independence, and en
attendant earn acceptability and faith of the political leadership. This calls for a tact and skill
kat exochem. A civil service sans that cadeau crumbles to be the handmaid of the political
leadership for survival and sycophancy reaches new heights every passing day to the level of
suspending an acolyte from service for spelling wrongly the name of the daughter of the
materfamilias of the party in power while sending an invitation.
Struggle between survival and dignity is as old as human history is. Going for dignity and
right values ignoring survival factors is not everybodys staple. It takes tremendous inner
strength and resolve. It is this rare calibre that is the indigence of the extant civil services of
India. It is this rara avis that must constitute the pillars on which the plexus of the civil
services must rest. These powerful pillars perforce must be limited in number to avoid
degradation by mass mlange and absorption of anyone of some pull and money power and
safeguard standards in excelsis. Indeed the best does not come for peanuts. Whatever goes for
is far more worth of it. Secondly, a perficient, resourceful and workaholic lean civil services
replacing extant sedent and inefficient bulk of workforce certainly provide a solution to the
evils of the administrative overhead apportioning the major part of the public expenditures of
the Government.
Efficient and small is always effective. Right selection and steadfast upkeep of high
standards are easier while size is small. A plexus of civil services built on this bedrock can do
wonders to the country. What India needs now is a lean and mean civil services imbued with
industry, talent, honesty and commitment extraordinaire to its responsibilities. A beginning
can be made in creation of a new lean and mean superior service above the present Indian
Administrative Service with liberal perks and service benefits even after retirement to attract
the crme de la crme. A specially constituted board of professionals and experts free from
political obligations must handle selection and the management of the new Service. Its
selection and recruitment must be a multi-polar strategy devised with a passion to enroll the
best from whatever source, field or age group sans extraneous obligations like reservations in
this nonesuch Service. The guiding principle here is maximum yield out of maximal talent,
integrity, commitment, industry, and responsibilities en revanche of extraordinary benefits in
service and outside. Such a top-brass guiding administration by personal example at the helm
provides a new job culture down the stream and helps trimming the civil services as a body to
be a lean and mean force, again well compensated, running the administration of the country,
ipso facto drastically cutting down administrative and establishment expenditures on account
of the lean workforce while tremendously increasing its efficiency and perficient output. A
conventional assessment is that an efficient and hardworking workforce of 10% of the present
size in India should conveniently be able to handle the affairs of the country better and more
effectively at a farthing of the present administrative overhead. This is what India needs now.
Insulation of the civil services from the temptations of money and power is a major
challenge. Making its members free from all major needs of life once they joined the service
would be the cheapest strategy open to achieve this telos. The lean civil services instituted for
the country should be made a highly contented and respected entity while its job and
responsibilities are made equally challenging and trying. This is a give and take policy with
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provisions for ruthless extraction of those who fail to stand up to the challenges in hand. A
major need of such a civil services is absolutely professional recruitment and management of
the services at all levels under the close purview of a professional body responsible to the
Chief Justice of the country. Even indirect political pull even from the highest levels in
recruitment or management perforce pollutes the civil services tout a fait. A clear bifurcation
of the responsibilities of the political and administrative wings of the Government as policy
and decision makers and as advisors and executives is sine qua non for the advent of such a
refrain in running the Government. Any attempt at overstepping the other should be viewed
as a serious violation of the code of Governmental procedures.
The suggestions made here are easier said than done. For one, it needs amendments to
the Constitution. For the other, politics being the art of possible, the political leadership
would never compromise with any effort to make away flaccid civil services that has come to
its prise from a hard struggle that is half-a-century long. Yet, this is the besoin India now
cries avec acharnement for.
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HOME GUARDS TRAINING

I am asked to write this article on a specific subject, Home Guards Training. Rather than
resorting to repetitions of what is already known and codified in Home Guards Manuals, I
venture here to touch upon the place of a holistic training programme in Home Guards setup.
The backdrop of the voluntary nature and uncertain tenure of service in the Home
Guards necessiates its training programmes to be capsuled in short-term courses, ranging
from five days to a month to avoid long absences of the volunteers from their homes. The
short-term nature of the training underlines the need of repeated training courses in Home
Guards as a device of a stratified and stepped-up training plan. A holistic training scheme
needs to be programmed to these short-term courses. I do not go here to the brasstacks of a
training programme in Home Guards for obvious reasons, and restrict myself to the scope of
the training programmes to make it holistic and complete.
The two facts of a holistic training programme are internal and external orientations,
which in final analysis, complement each other to creat a complete training programme.
INTERNAL ORIENTATION
Internal Orientation is the most neglected facet of a training programme in the present
world. The basic configuration of internal orientation is founded on right motivation,
professional attitude and creation of a truly committed persona. The voluntary nature of
Home Guards services renders the internal orientation more basic to Home Guards Training
rather than the other way round. The ephemeral nature and uncertain tenure of the Home
Guards service necessiate a strong foundation of the internal orientation to sustain interest in
the service. Its absence manifests in low turnout of volunteers when called for service and
poor performance. Unlike career services, there is no adhesive of financial guarantee and
perks, and job security in Home Guards service to bind the volunteers irrevocably to the
Home Guards Service. The absence renders the need of internal orientation all the more
important in Home Guards organisation. The need of internal!sat ion of Maslows need
hierarchy comes to play here as the internal orientation spurs the need of internal!sat ion.
Sans internal orientation. Home Guards service is hollow, and Home Guards service sans
internal orientation is directionless, Human nature being what it is, the spark of voluntary
service, once ignited, needs to be consistently stoked and sustained to harness the maximum
out of it. This need can be met only by liberal dose of internal orientation in the training
programme. Home Guards can ignore the need only at its own peril. The fact is that extant
Home Guards training programmes nowhere in India have internal orientation incorporated in
its agenda. This shortfall has arrested the growth of Home Guards movement in India.
EXTERNAL ORIENTATION
Present Home Guards braining basically is external orientation programmes. External
Orientation is constituted. of Knowledge Orientation and skill orientation. Present training
programmes identify knowledge orientation with indoor classes and skill orientation with
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outdoor classes. Here also training contents in both programmes in extant Home Guards
training are rather passe and do not meet the operational needs in the field. The need of
updating training contents is largely forgotten. I round off this discussion with the observation
that the knowledge orientation programmes in a purposeful training plan should include
topics like history of Home Guards, its organizational structures, case studies of model
operations, principles of time and space management, basics of inter-person relationship and
courteous conduct in addition to what is already there. And skill orientation programme in a
utility based training plan should cover latest researches and tools of rescue operations
including medical aid, handling of computers and information technology gadgets, driving,
methods of identififation and defusing of sophisticated bombs, basics of electric wirings in
addition to present topics. The skill oriented training programme must create real skills unlike
being an eye-wash as at present, as the skill is meant to save lives and bring order.Further, the
skill oriented training programme in Home Guards can be either physical or strategic in
nature. Physical skill needs are addressed by parade and physical training. Strategic skills
useful in Home Guards operations, are addressed by outdoor demonstrations and rehearsals.
The strategic skills can be either managerial or operational in nature. The managerial skill is
required to address organisational matters including planning, communication transportation
and control that are central to Home Guards operations whij^e operational skill comes to
force and useful during actual operations.
INTERLINKED
The two facets of Home Guards Training, namely internal and external orientations are not
distinct and independent entities, removed from each other. They are interlinked and
constitute a holistic training programme. An external orientation like physical skill harnessed
in the parade ground positively contributes to reinforce the internal orientation of a
professional attitude like discipline. Acquiring stratigic skills contribute to strengthen right
professional attitude and motivation. Similarly, the knowledge of Home Guards history, its
objectives and case studies add to motivation towards Home Guards service.
Home Guards being an organisation of voluntary service, there is a need of making its
training programme a pleasure-event to attract more and more volunteers to partake in the
programme. It is training that differentiates a Home Guard from who is not. Therefore, the
success of Home Guard setup depends on the success-story of its training programmes.
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CORE ISSUE AND THE CORE OF INDIAS

NATIONHOOD
The achilles heel of the present day politics is its unwillingness to comprehend reality in
full force and devise strategies ex consequenti. It may often be an intentional demarche en
face an impossible situation to defer impending disasters or etourderie tout court in
comprehending the intricacies of the reality. In either case, the dimensions of an issue further
entoil to an issue of higher complexities. It is what happened about Kashmir in the last fiftyfive years and continues to happen now.
IRRELEVANT ISSUES
The reality is that neither the history nor the religion nor the constitutional provisions nor
the will of the majority constitute a right to a region to be a part of this or that country in
politics either now or at any time in the past in any part of the world. Neither it can be now
for obvious reasons. History is a matter of flux en train. No point of time can be selected as a
reference point in the continuum of the sempiternal timeframe to decide the future of that
significance. Religion never gained currency anywhere in the world as a factor of nationhood.
It is more so in the present enlightened world where religion as a factional entity is dmod in
public life. Constitutional provisions are temporal and subject to amendments. The will of the
people of a region in the vast tapestry of the nation is just irrelevant even in a democracy as
far as deciding the nationhood is concerned as otherwise every village in a country will turn
to an independent nation and sink the human race in a maelstrom of disorganisation.
KASHMIR AND THE PAST
India as a nation is a new concept. The concept has no root in history. Maurya, Gupta and
Moghal emperors inter alios ruled vast parts of the present India and regions outstretching up
to Central Asia and present day Iran at various times before the advent of the British.
Kashmir was part of the empires and of smaller kingdoms under Punjab rulers at different
times. Pakistan was carved out of India as a political compulsion. The history does not
support either the claim of India or of Pakistan on Kashmir or the claim of some for the
independence of Kashmir.
RELIGION IS PASSE
India as a secular country is daccord with the zeitgeist of the present enlightened world
with the people of all religions in symbiosis here. Seeing any issue through the glass of
religion is tout au contraire to the very spirit India stands for. Islam being the raison detre of
Pakistan is its own albatross and does not give it any special claim on regions anywhere in the
world eo nomine. Further, religion being a factor of politics goes e contrario to the extant
international spirit and rationale. It is so also about Kashmir.
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NATIONHOOD
Nor Kashmir being incorporated in Indian constitution as a part of India gives India any
special claim on Kashmir for the simple reason that any constitution is the product of the
nationhood and not vice versa. India basing its claims on Kashmir on its constitutional
provisions is misleading. On the other hand, if the will of the people of a region is given
liberty in deciding the nationality, neither India nor Pakistan nor any other country in the
world survive as a nation for long. Such a will has no sanctity in a nationhood. Ergo, it is
neither the cover of the constitutional provisions nor the ruse of the will of the people that
provide the justification for the claims on Kashmir with certitude.
NATIONAL INTERESTS
There are myriad talks about the Maharaja of Kashmir signing the instrumentation of
annexation with India with a provision for plebiscite while invaded by the Pakistan army a la
derobee as tribals in 1947 and India under Jawaharlal Nehru referring Kashmir dispute to the
UNO and the consectaneous UNO resolution going against the interests of India. Real polity
has no place for idealism. Idealism goes idle en face national interests. The instrumentation of
annexation or plebiscite or UNO resolution has relevance in real polity only until they serve
national objectives. It is true of both India and Pakistan. They truly are meant to serve only as
tools to score points in official talks en pure perte and as propaganda means. There is no way
these factors ectogenous to the national interests have any say in determining the future of
Kashmir.
REALITY OF KASHMIR
It is an established fact that India was not really interested about Kashmir in the initial
stages. Recorded history shows how India a travers its iron man and the then Union Home
Minister Sardar Vallabhai Patel offered to Pakistan bartering Kashmir for Hyderabad. India
thought that Kashmir was expendable to its interests. India ignored Kashmir altogether until
the Maharaja of Kashmir signed the instrumentation of annexation with India and Kashmir
became an integral part of India. In real polity stripped of all clichs and polished phrases,
plebiscite or no plebiscite, the only reality in the process is that Kashmir had become a part of
India and the only factor acceptable to the real polity that can reverse the process is use of
force. Real polity nowhere in the world understands any other language even in a civilised
world. The process of annexation alone made Indias claim on Kashmir absolute and res
judicata. It is a fait accompli in real polity until it is forced away from the Indian Union.
THE GLITCHES GALORE
The cause of the failure of India in Kashmir non obstante the annexation lies in its
glitches galore en suite in the last fifty five years en face the commitment of Pakistan and its
immaculate works to the cause beyond its abilities and resources that brought it almost on par
with India as far as Kashmir and military might are concerned. Indias glitches galore begin
with the greed of its aging political leaders agreeing in hurry to divide the country on
communal basis lest they may lose the opportunity of ruling the country in their lifetime. The
ceasefire in Kashmir on the call of the UNO while the Indian army was on a winning spree
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PRAVEEN KUMAR
patently betrays the inexperience and lack of toughness in our political leadership of the time
and all of Indias troubles in Kashmir can be traced to this single bevue. Indias response to
Pakistans challenges in Kashmir throughout sinsyne was casual and disorganised and
diplomatic a fond unlike Pakistans concerted efforts beyond its means covering all strategic
needs required to stand up to India about Kashmir. Even its Afghan policy was Kashmir and
India-centric. Its prime intelligence behemoth, the ISI with its committed cadres, was created
basically to counter India. Indias response to the ISI in form of the RAW with much larger
resources at disposal is yet to stand up to its counterpart in Pakistan either in efficiency,
commitment or sheer performance. Kargil intrusion of 1999 is a clear indicator of the
strengths and efficiency of the ISI. The extent of the penetration of the ISI in India is yet to be
matched by the RAW in Pakistan. The single target of the Pakistan military build-up
including nuclear arsenal and missile technology is India. The commitment and spirit of the
Pakistan army against India is in no way amated by the fighting spirit of the Indian army.
This is how Pakistan prepared itself against India in the last fifty-five years for the cause of
Kashmir. It left nothing to chance and succeeded in breeding and feeding anti-India campaign
in the valley of Kashmir. The repeated military takeovers in Pakistan represent the passion of
the Pakistan army to stall any compromise by its political leadership with India on the
Kashmir issue. It is how Pakistan prepared itself for the cause of Kashmir.
CORE OF NATIONHOOD
Pakistan believes that the agenda of the birth of its nationhood is incomplete without
Kashmir. Its military forces are fully en arriere of the cause. Unless Pakistans military might
is brought to the knees a toute force, its Kashmir adventures are unlikely to abate. Pakistan by
no stretch of imagination will settle for anything less than Kashmir tout a fait at its control as
it has become a matter of national pride to the country en face Indias superior prowess. India
in its part condescend to anything less than as of now only at its own peril as yielding to
Pakistan in anyway about Kashmir now is nothing short of surrender in real polity. It will be
nothing short of the surrender of Pakistan in Bangladesh war. In this sense, Kashmir has
become the core of Indias nationhood while it certainly is a core issue to Pakistan.
CAUGHT IN A LOGJAM
With the ultimate positions of both India and Pakistan being defined with perspicacity and
certitude, what latitude can there be for any rapprochement between the two warring
neighbours? All the talks of settlements and summits are mere diplomatic platitudes meant to
satisfy the inner and outer constituencies of the respective countries. Both the countries know
fully well that nothing other than the present situation is possible except for minor
adjustments along the line of control as in Siachin glacier and such strategic points. In the
circumstances, Pakistan is trying its luck by appealing to the religious sentiments of the
Kashmiris to lure them away from India in one hand and resorting to terrorism in Kashmir by
supporting jehadi groups on the other hand in the hope that one day Kashmir perchance may
fall on its lap. It perforce will continue with the strategy unless it is mortally brought to its
knees and good senses.
The only solution to a problem of the nature of Kashmirs in real polity is the use of force.
Pakistan knows it. India knows it. Pakistan also knows that it can never subdue India
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militarily. India knows that a nuclear Pakistan is a dangerous adversary and it is now too late
to bring the country to its knees. India has to choose between tolerating its mischief in
Kashmir and inducing mortal fear of India pro rata to its size and resources a tout prix. There
is no third option open. This is the hard truth. India cant afford the luxury of the wishful
thinking that it can fool Pakistan from its stance and bring it around to the fact that Kashmir
from the day of its annexation to India is the core of its nationhood or economic and other
compulsions ab intra or foreign pressures force Pakistan to shy away from its commitment to
the Kashmir issue. No talks and summits can really make any difference to the issue in the
circumstances. It is true until Pakistan learns by hard way to recognise the reality that
Kashmir is an Indian territory and it can do nothing about it until the unlikely event of it
outgrowing India in military might and physically snatching Kashmir out of India. The army
and fundamentalists are too pollent a force in Pakistan to let sensible voices surface. This is
the single most damaging factor in the life of Pakistan.
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PRAVEEN KUMAR
RELIGION IN POLITICS
The introduction of religious passion into politics is the end of honest politics, and the
introduction of politics into religion is the prostitution of true religion. said Lord Quintin
McGarel Hogg Hallsham. According to Benjamin Disraeli there is no act of treachery or
meanness of which a political party is not capable; for in politics there is no honour; in
politics nothing is contemptible. It is in this context Mahatma Gandhi said that religion and
politics are inextricably blended and their separation tantamounts to the separation of blood
and body and called politics without religion a dirty game. For, he also said in another
occasion, Most religious men Ive met are politicians in disguise, I however wear the guise
of a politician but am at heart a religious man. He clearly contrasts here two facets of the
religion, religion as politics in disguise per contra religion at heart in politics. His contempt
for the former is obvious. He sees the latter face of the religion having ethical and spiritual
nuances a la religion of Emperor Ashoka in the state affairs as inexorably blended to a
healthy politics.
Poles Apart
According to Otto Von Bismarck, politics is the art of the possible. It imprimis is
opportunism and deception. It is hic et nunc and ergo ephemeral unlike religion which seeks
divinity and eternity through the principles of Rhadamanthine sittlichkeit and truth. Politics is
selfish au fond while religion is love and sacrifice. Politics seeks power and excitement while
religion seeks peace and salvation. They are poles apart in their means and ends and therefore
can not bodily blend. However, they can certainly complement each other as the two faces of
basic human activities and enrich human life.
Worldwide Phenomenon
Jay Demerath, professor of sociology at University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and Karen
Straight, doing research there, in A Bridging of Faiths, co-authored by them in 1992
(Princeton University Press), opine that about 1979 things began to change and religion took
on a new political importance. Since then, worldwide, the volatile-and often violentcombination of a religious state with religious politics is on the rise. The period in India saw
the rise of violent Sikh nationalist sentiments and later Hindu fundamentalism.
Deception and destruction are the two trusted hands of the body of the politics all along
its long history. It was politics at its best at deception that created Israel and politics at its
horrid at destruction that is devastating en revanche peace and security of the Middle East in
the last six decades. Israel like Pakistan came to existence from the emotional shemozzle of
the religion.
Religion Divides
The machtpolitik between the Western world represented by the USA and Britain and
the Muslim world epitomized by the Afghan war and the aggression on Iraq in 2003 deep
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down symbolizes the clash of Christian and Islam civilizations. Islam inherently is a fiery and
aggressive religion with a political agenda imbued in its soul. It is an abnormal conflict
wherein the political leaders of the West took on the extremist religious elements of the
Islam. Iraq is only an accidental mactation in the process. However, it is to the credit of the
top Christian religious leaders world over that they refused to involve themselves in the
political conflict and went to the extent of condemning the American brutality and initiatives.
It reflects their maturity and true religiosity.
Religion as politics is a world phenomenon these days. Buddhism is deeply rooted in the
politics of Sri Lanka. The demand for a homeland in Ireland was based on the rift between
Protestants and Catholics in the Christianity. Muslim countries are deeply divided world over
on lines of their Sunni and Shia affiliations.
Religion in India
The love and hate relationship between religion and politics is not new to India. Vedas
and Puranas have references to the corso in oodles. The mythological references to the
conflict between Brahmanism and Kshatriyas as symbolized by the annihilation of the
Kshatriyas by Parasurama indubitably throw light on the age long struggle for supremacy
between religion represented by the Brahmanism and politics represented by the Kshatriyas
of the ancient India. Ultimately, religion accepted its limitations in the temporal world of
power and deceptions and yielded the field to politics while retaining its divine supremacy in
human affairs and activities. The concept of Raja Guru and Raja Rshis and the respect they
commanded from the king and the royalty spawned from this ausgleich.
Both Gouthama Buddha and Mahavir are rare cases of political personalities from the
royal family finding their solace in religion daccord with the spiritual disposition of India.
Emperor Asoka was a rara avis of another kind who brought the soul of religion to the
governance. The concept of Rama Rajya of Mahatma Gandhi is an extension of what
Emperor Asoka brought to bear on the administration.
Religion as Politics in India
Religion as politics in India began to take shape in a big way during the Muslim rule with
Jazia and other religious taxes, forcible conversions and other types of persecutions of nonMuslims under the state patronage. The Maratha and Vijayanagar empires are considered as
the Hindu reactions to the persecutions. Muslim zealots like Aurangzeb made his rule a
religious cause. Portuguese in Goa followed the suit.
Serious political disturbances in Kashmir have religious emotions working en arriere. So
were whilom Punjab and the Operation Bluestar that led to the killing of Prime Minister
Indira Gandhi. India has political parties wedded to the cause of important religions of the
country. There is nothing wrong in that and the Indian Constitution no way bars them from
politicking. What is reprehensible is the misuse of religion and religious passions to political
ends and the misuse of politics and political deceptions for selfish and nonreligious ends of
the religion.
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PRAVEEN KUMAR
Anti-religious Politicking
Protection of ones religion and culture is a sacred duty and a serious need of the hour.
But, God by whatever name belongs to all and His abode in whatever form is sacred to all.
Dividing people and bloodletting in the name of religion is the worst form of anti-religious
politicking. Ignoring the soul of a religion to protect its criminal elements for political ends is
tantamount to violating and annihilating the religion. Pseudo-secularism is anther shape of the
misuse of religion in politics to gain power from the other extremity. Healthy politics should
keep both forms at arms-length. And religion should keep its sanctity by keeping away from
the unholy politics.
Swami Vivekananda considered religion as the core of politics. American President,
George Washington in his Farewell Address of September 17, 1796 said, reason and
experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious
principle. The religion and politics relationship poses no threat to a countrys polity as long
as politics does not use religion and vice versa. Unfortunately this is not the case anywhere.
This wisdom compelled the First Amendment of The Constitution of the United States of
America to lay down, Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or
prohibiting the free exercise thereof. Separating religion from politics and state affairs is not
tantamount to going anti-religious; it only means preventing the use of religious passions to
political ends and preventing the use of political deceptions to misuse the institutions of the
religion. The moral and spiritual face of the religion has nothing to do with the division.
Indeed, ideally, as Mahatma Gandhi said, that face should be the blood of the body of the
politics; but religion not as politics in disguise, for it terminally poisons both the body of the
politics and the blood of the religion. Both do well to limit to their own realms and contribute
to each others enrichment - politics wedded to the moral and spiritual views of the religion
and religion wedded to give emotional support to politics in its rightful process.
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CRISIS OF RIGHT LEADERSHIP IN INDIA
If leadership is the soul of democracy, right leadership is the soul of right democracy.
Leadership is adjectives to the language of the democracy. It decides the nature and the
quality of the democracy. There can be right or wrong democracy depending on the nature
and content of the leadership to carry the democracy forward. None can doubt the success of
the experiment of democracy in India. However, none can swear on the quality of the
democracy India has grown in its backyard. The problem lies in the quality of its leadership.
Leadership Culture
It is rather facile to contend that people in a democracy get the leadership they deserve.
It is specious in theory, but need not be necessarily true. Leadership of a country sorienter
distinct from its people and perforce creates the leadership culture. It is true about the USA, it
is true about the success stories of democracy in European countries and it is true about India.
Though sittlichkeit, patriotism and intellectual calibre of the people do have a bearing on such
matters, it is the leadership culture that mostly decides the nature of the leadership that
emerges. People are just prisoners of this pernicious limitation. Their will makes little
difference in a preordained setup and given system. India sadly lost in this vital department
while building the edifice of its democracy.
Multidimensional Leadership
Leadership in a social milieu is necessarily multitudinous and multidimensional.

Political leadership is its only one dimension though most important one and in that
statutorily incorporated to the body of a democratic institution. Six most important leadership
segments of a democratic milieu come from political, media, nongovernmental organisations,
and popular, intellectual and administrative fields in that order of effectiveness. Popular
segment covers miscellaneous fields including films, cricket, other sports, industries, science
and research and similar professions. Leadership basically functions as creators of the public
opinion and ideally expected to lead from the front. These segments in a healthy democracy
spawn a mechanism of checks and counter-balances. USA showed it; major European
countries lived it. An egregious Watergate scandal pulling down the flamboyant presidency of
Richard Nixon can happen only in the USA. An organised evolution of a written constitution
leading to the establishment of a democratic institution under the very nose of the royalty can
take place only in a European country like Britain. These are examples of right leadership
evolving right democracy.
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India of the first half of the 20th century too showed right leadership in liberating the
country from the foreign rule. It was the combined thrust of the Indian leadership in different
segments like political, local media, nongovernmental organisations, popular fields,
intellectuals and patriotic elements in the administration working in tandem made
independence to India possible earlier than otherwise.
Leadership in Independent India
Independence made Indian leadership taste money, power and the luxuries of serving the
people and the endless possibilities its diverse permutations and combinations provide.
Nothing is like a mammoth lure and nothing is like a gargantuan greed. Leadership in India
appeared like an endless foison of opportunities to rob and grab. Those who had the sinew
and mental sturdiness to exploit jumped to the wagon in streams and created a new set of
leadership for India at the cost of the ancien regime inspired by lofty ideals and guided by the
motto of service. Corrupt and ruthless to the core, the new leadership easily cornered the
scrupulous old order in opportunistic political games of money, power and muscle gained in
the process. Leadership in the milieu became nothing more than a daring massive investment
for multifold returns, a pure commercial venture. Crime paid. Deception and flamboyancy
became sine qua non for leadership. That is why leadership became a dirty word in India.
And Indians as they are, accepted the reality to the extent that they now think twice before
accepting anybody without the merit of a criminal past as their leader. It is more so in the
leader of the leaders segment of the politics. That is how Phoolan Devi or Pappu Yadav
succeed as leaders and Veerappans dream their glory in political leadership. Criminals
constitute the spine of the political leadership in states like Bihar and Uttara Pradesh.
The quality of a leader is reflected in the standards he sets for himself. Integrity is the
most valuable and respected quality of leadership says Brian Tracey. The prime role of a
leader is to offer an example of courage and sacrifice says Regis Debray. This is rarely to be
a case in the Indian leadership in whatever field. The reason is that the fall in the political
leadership perforce percolated into lesser fields and binged their leaderships with similar
mesquinerie and base pursuits. It is true of media, non-governmental bodies, intellectuals,
popular figures or administrators. Greed and pressures both worked in the process. Though
sparks of freedom and true leadership surfaced from time to time in all these fields in the last
six decades, they are far in-between to a country of Indias size and diversity and mere
isolated initiatives like fishes out of water and soon died down literally and figuratively. The
fallacy lies in apostasy, either for greed, or poor leadership material going for sensationalism
in selfish or commercial pursuit, or more accurately both reinforcing each other as models
from one generation to the other. However, true attempts at right leadership do exist here and
there in all fields and they are succeeding. This is important. This gives the hope of
regeneration in the future.
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Right Leadership
According to Dr.John C.Maxwell, a leader is one who knows the way, goes the way and
shows the way. He is the guide and philosopher to those below him. A leader is the
personification of trust to his followers. He is their hope and future. It is sin to let them down
to seek own ends. A leader is a dealer in hope said Napoleon Bonaparte. W.H.Auden says,
No person can be a great leader unless he takes genuine joy in the success of those under
him. Right leadership is integrity, conviction, sacrifice, commitment to people and values,
and ability to blend with their dreams. Right leadership is ability to guide and lead people in
right path. Leaders are models to others. Self-seekers and criminals have no place in its
scheme. Commercial angle has nothing to do with it. Sensationalism, claptrap and partisan
approach never feed leadership qualities. Leadership qualities flourish in right values, right
decisions and right actions. Concern to those below is its main mantra. All these key factors
of the right leadership are thrown to winds in India after independence.
The celebrated Chinese Philosopher of the 6th century BC, Lao Tzu opines, A leader is
best when people barely know he exists, not so good when people obey and acclaim him,
worse when they despise him. Leadership is service au fond and exposure comes only as a
derivative. It is just the opposite in the extant Indian leadership where service is a front and
tool for exposures, self-aggrandizement, further boost upwards and attainment of selfish ends.
It is neither right leadership nor is it even leadership. It is a travesty of leadership. It is
making fun of leadership. Indian leadership has degenerated to that at all fronts. It no way fit
in to the frame laid down by Harold J.Seymour for a true leader when he says, Leaders are
the ones who keep faith with the past, keep step with the present, and keep the promise to
prosperity. Extant variety of Indian leadership has neither a past nor a future and only has a
greedy present. Ca ira. No aberrations last in perpetuum. India eagerly awaits to prepon.
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PRAVEEN KUMAR
RECONSTRUCTION OF INDIA
India is the land of spirituality. Love and pursuit of knowledge and higher values are
the essence of its nature. This foundation gives India a unique character and inner strength
unseen in the community of nations of the world and makes it a world leader in spiritual life.
The depth gained by this commands other nations of the world to see India with awe and
respect even in the extant commercial ambience of the present world. Its great sons like
Gauthama Buddha, Mahavir, Ashoka and Mohandas Gandhi are unique gifts of India to the
world of sublime thoughts in practice. India could spawn such gems because the mien of life
here supported them and their ideals. This was true upto the first half of the 20th century.
What followed was an apostasy from the radicate path.
The second half of the 20th century saw the caduac of gross commercialization of the
Indian mindset and consectaneous degringolade of its ingenerate higher values. The
contabescence is so endemic in its spread that all walks and strata of life in the country saw
the sweeping metabasis and the concomitant atrophy. Indian politics, bureaucracy, business,
professions, intellectuals, literature, media, art and cultural movements, and you name the
field, that saw the fall. A pusillanimous India at the aurora of its independence like fish out of
water lost its soul in pursuit of the material carrion that was inebriating the world in the midst
of the prolate commercialization. It was a triste trade-off. It was a distressing relegation of
higher values and inner strength to oblivion. Developed countries became its ideal. Japan and
USA became its models. Wealth and power became its Gods. Rich and powerful became its
heartthrobs. India began to see the dream of becoming a world power. Multi-nationals and
stock exchanges became its peremptory saviors. Nothing is wrong in that per se. But at what
cost and for what end? A dead India was too occupied with the glorification of its carcass to
think of it.
The fall was ominous. It was of the people and their spirit. It was their ideals and their
values. It was their attitude and the focus of life. They forgot their legacy and its strengths
that sustained them through all the convolutions of the history. They lost the pristine
adaptability that saw them move pari passu with the changing time while retaining the core
of their higher values. The Indian National Congress that held high the spiritual flambeau of
the nation for nearly a century turned a corrupt and power-hungry body and swept away
principles that sustained it till then under the carpet of political expediency. Jana Sangh and
its later avatar that came to existence to preserve Indian values and culture turned the most
visible icon of the Indian values and the leitmotiv of its spiritual lumiere, Shree Rama, into a
most hated name by its inhuman and unprincipled political misadventures.
India always stood for the cardinal values of truth, simplicity and a value based
system of life and always absorbed the zeitgeist within these parameters to enrich itself. The
hallmark of India is its confidence in itself and its values and it sustained it through all the
travails of its long history. It never lost its soul and never found the need to blindly mimic the
specious coups of the world around. It algate stood on its own feet and proved the strengths of
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its fundamentals even in worst scenarios. Extant India looks far from that proud and confident
India.
Present Indias democracy is a misnomer. It is a soulless process in the body of a
democratic form, or better, a feudal rule bought over by money, muscle and deceit. India is
deluding itself by calling itself as a great democracy of the world and dreaming to be a world
power. Compages do not make vibrating structures inter se. They require inner strengths as
their spine to stand erect to stand out in the world. Present India lacks that little potion that in
the past was Indias essence passim.
The malady is prolate. From politics to familial relationships, from bureaucratic
attitudes to intellectual manoeuvres and from commercial world to cultural fields, its
footprints are deeply etched to emaciate the country ab intra. All higher values are thrown to
winds in pursuit of specious material bonanza and the life has become a no-holds-barred utter
trade-off. The environment is poisoned, and isolated struggles to inhere to time-tested pristine
values are stifled to evanescence in midst of the reign of mesquinerie. The claves of the
changed attitude are shortcuts and reaching desired end by any means. This with the
concomitant degringolade of the leadership qualities of the democratic vintage spawned a
dangerous broth of fawn, deceit and muscle power. The pristine values like excellence,
patience, pride, grace and dignity are relegated as impotent to the dustbin of the history. Hero
worship and opportunism became the ticket to clamber the ladder of the self-promotion in the
mien of the undermined merit. Money and power built a mutually serving vicious circle and
became inviolable ends and means of any meaningful life. Quantity overtook quality. Respect
lost its halo. Crime paid. Corruption, protests and violence gained currency as the only tools
of success. Grab and rob became the mantra of survival. Who could not rise to the levels
became misfits. This is extant India.
Ex-Prime Minister Charan Singh as the Chief Executive of the country once rightly
claimed that corruption imbues from above. It is true of all modes of corruption and decay of
standards. Its manifestation in the fall of higher values in governance of India of the
democratic vintage shook the very foundation of the highly developed value system of the
country existing till then. Both ruling party and opposition parties found their salvation in
winning the next election non obstante means and found money, muscle power and garish
display of strength pay in the process. Indian public life restructured itself to these needs
sinsyne. Everything is forgotten in the pursuit of power, and governance became subservient
to this end. With the fall in the ideals of the governance and the Government system, that in
the people was not far away. Instinct for survival preceded everything else. The trend
corroded confidence in higher nuances of the value system. Greedy politicians, self-seeking
media, demoralized bureaucracy and hapless hoi polloi, all added to the mux. And India
prepared a poisonous broth in which it boils jusqu au bout unless it reverses the process by
sheer deux ex machina.
Indian culture is a sublime edifice of the best absorbed from all sources it came in contact
with and built on the foundation of the pollent values of simple, honest and healthy practices.
India always went for sound practices with both material and spiritual dimensions to it. The
tragedy of the present India is that it continued the process of the adoption sans the ingredient
of the adaptation to its rich heritage of spiritual and enduring values and practices. It has
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become just a copycat of whatever appeals to its senses and fancy. The need of appeal to
deeper realms like reason and insight is tout a fait forgotten. Often, mere compages are gone
for without as much as thoughts for its inherent soul or underlying foundation. A striking
instance is Indias version of the democracy where deception and criminal record constitute
the provenance of political leadership en face that practiced in the USA and other western
countries where merit and personal probity constitute the bedrock of the successful public
life. It is this sheer perversion of the democratic ideals and the concomitant deception and
criminality that India calls as the greatest democratic experiment in the world.
Nothing that is not honest and truly sincere ever succeeds. Indian democracy just is
not that. Compare extant democratic India with the present China or the resilience shown by
Japan and Germany after the Second World War or the progress seen in countries like
Singapore. Honesty and true sincerity in the political leadership is the only allee that leads to
the true bonanza of a nation. Indian democracy as practised today is an antithesis a toute force
of this cardinal need.
Another striking manifestation of present India is its narrow vision. Indian
intellectuals and Indian media lead the field stripped of independent and original thinking.
Rather than leading the country from the front in the restricted couloir of right thinking and
higher values, they fish in popular trends and perceptions to boost their commercial gains.
Often, popular catchwords like socialism and economic reforms or nationalism and
globalisation become claves of attitudes without as much as going to the depths of the social
dynamics and relevance to India. This again is an expression of the prevailing contumely to
excellence and creative originality apart from the prevailing commercialization of the
intellectual and media fields. Accrescently Indian media now relies on sexual appeal on its
pages to catch readership or viewership. It is absurd to expect high public sittlichkeit or high
ideals from such a provenance. Lack of true commitment or pride for the own ab intra is
another serious Achilles heel.
Fall of individual pride ironically is another depravity of the Indian version of the
democracy and its political stirrings. Apotheosis of political figures for self-promotion is the
order of the day. Character and merit are relegated to oblivion in this mad rush. Sycophancy
and glorification of dynastic rule are its inevitable offshoots. Personalities gained currency
over values and principles and personality-cult gained tremendous boost. Recent event is
attempts to protect a religious leader from criminal charges at the cost of the values of a
sacred religious seat he holds. This trend expresses itself in sprouting of myriad statues of
political leaders often of dubious repute at public places a grands frais. Those with money
and power have become virtual Gods even for intellectuals and media in this whilom land of
spirituality. High character and true merit have become grossly irrelevant. Contrast this with
the USA where key Government posts go to those from the academic field and even a minor
strain on character or private life is enough to bar a candidate from winning the Presidential
election.
Violence truly pays in Indian democracy. Reasons, fairness, honesty, law or gentle
persuasion has no place here. That is why protests and violence have become the order of the
day. People cannot be blamed for that. Those in politics and bureaucracy in India sit so high
in their ivory towers of insensitive power and exclusiveness that nothing reach and move
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them unless a message is packed with blood and violence to comminate their secure power
base. Otherwise their responses to the plight of the nation and the common man is Neronian
or lukewarm al piu. Contrast this with the USA Governments mammoth response in creating
a new Homeland Security Department after the 11/9/2001 militant attack on its land and its
concern for the security of its citizens. Everything of the public domain in present maledict
India is acted only on political compulsions or lobbying of the rich and powerful. This is
democracy for India.
Every country has its own tournure along the corso of its life. India sine dubio finds
itself at its cafard in its post-independent days. A half century is too short a period in the life
of a country to resile to its pristine soul and India may need to boil in its own ephemeral
materialistic broth before it begins de noueveau in right course. India did see umpteen ups
and downs along the course of its long history and algate resiled to its pristine soul amain.
The present one perhaps is one of such an aberration and has no encheason to be different
from that.
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PRAVEEN KUMAR
DEMOCRACY FOR WHOM?
Democracy in puris naturalibus is the rule of the powerful, by the powerful, for the
powerful. It is a concept popularised by the powerful of the West for their own advantages all
over the world though the concept as a a priori theory as the rule by the people is based on
sound principles and noble intentions. The second chapter of the democracy namely
liberalisation is another instance of a noble concept based on the sound principle of free
dynamics of human forces going awry as a policy of the powerful, by the powerful, for the
powerful. Again, the powerful of the West are found pushing through the agenda of
popularising the concept a toute force as a state policy all over the world for their own
advantages. The result is that the world is increasingly becoming a haven for the rich and
powerful at the cost of the hoi polloi.
FAILED HOPE
India valiantly fought against foreign rule for more than a century with the hope of
bringing deliverance to the country and eutaxy for its people. The half-century of the
democracy sinsyne proved the mendacity of the hope and enthusiasm. The situation can be
described in following two stanzas of the poem, To A Conscript Of 1940 by Herbert Read:
We think we gave in vain. The world was not renewed.
There was hope in the homestead and anger in the streets
But the old world was restored and we returned
To the dreary field and workshop, and the immemorial feud
Of rich and poor. Our victory was our defeat.
Power was retained where power had been misused
And youth was left to sweep away
The ashes that the fire had strewn beneath our feet.
EXPLOITERS
The only difference India saw in democracy is the shift in exploiters from the foreign
rulers to the rich and powerful among the natives. While the foreign exploiters were
circumspect and scrupulous in their exploitations for the fear of the world opinion and their
native moral scruples, the native exploiters threw their conscia mens recti to the wind and
turned
ruthless in their greed and heartless in their exploitations of the poor and
unenlightened mass of the co-patriots. They have neither the moral scruples nor the fear of
the world opinion. Nor the supremacy of the hoi polloi in a democracy fluster them. For, their
native intelligence is too pollent to be caught by such foolish concepts. They learnt the tricks
of the trade assez bien early. They know how their side of the bread can be buttered and why
there is nothing on the face of the Earth including votes and status that they cant purchase
with their money and power. That was the doom of Indias democracy and its people.
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BRITISH RULE
India under the British was not worse than the present India if not better. Those who lived
in both the ages speak una voce and hold testimonies for the irrefutable fact as far as common
man is concerned. Life was easy and quiet. There was a feeling of security everywhere. The
air was pregnant with a sense of morality and respect for higher values. The public life was
clean. There was no violence around except for the oragious political struggle. There was no
tourbillion of corruption as it is now. Merit always counted. Not every thing was venal as of
now. Life always moved on expected lines and people could plan their life and future.
AN EVIL PROP
The degringolade of India subsequent to its democracy is often blamed on its population
explosion in geometric progression and the accrescent complexity of the life pattern of the
present world. It is partially true. The complete truth lies in the plurisie of the evils of the
democracy that contributed to the descent as an evil prop to the rich and powerful.
UNFAIR JUDGEMENT
Elders who lived in both the era and independent and sagacious enough not to be clouded
by pseudo-idealism and concepts of foreign origin swear that the British really ruled India
well non obstante tremendous odds of the freedom struggle and the alien nature of their rule.
The progress India saw during the period was immense and the country could move pari
passu with the world in the matter of progress and modernity. India saw large-scale
developments during the period in all fields including social, cultural and administrative
spheres courtesy the initiatives and the active encouragement of the British rulers.
Disparaging the measures as moves of administrative convenience or as moves to strengthen
their prise over the country is a malengine tout court on the plebeian and a mal-propaganda
natural to our native evil ingine to cover up our mal-administration in the democratic
ambience. Administrative convenience begetting precedence in the unending schedule of
priorities is a common administrative practice anywhere in the world. A major move like
introduction of the railways in India in the 19th century was misprised as a move to help
British entrepreneurs in India. Such an unfair reclame goes against the spirit of a balanced
view and betrays our flair for tilted judgements. The priorities of the British administrators
certainly were more objective and accountable in administration en face what we encounter
by our own rulers now around: selfish to the core a fond.
DEMOCRATIC INDIA
India under democracy has become a playground of the rich and powerful and a field of
their unethical manoeuvres and consectaneous mega scams. Yet, they are not satisfied with
the opportunities a la main. They found their opportunity in an extension of democracy
namely liberalisation which is vigorously marketed these days by the Western powers to meet
their own interests. Thus, the powers of the West and the powerful of the country are now
joining hands to further undermine the interests of the poor, weak and the ordinary. It will
lead to a situation where only strong become stronger and perforce weak, weaker. Democracy
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PRAVEEN KUMAR
is not just freedom. It is the rule of the people comprising rich and poor, weak and strong,
powerful and powerless, competent and incompetent, able and unable, hopeful and hopeless
and the ordinary people. Democracy in its extant gestalt and liberalisation by its very concept
promote the interests of only the rich, strong, powerful, competent, able and hopeful few. It is
not democracy at all in true sense of the noble concept.
DEMOCRATIC RULERS
India of the democratic vintage has its rich and powerful either indulging in criminal acts
or being in nexus with criminals to further promote their personal agenda of becoming richer
and more powerful. In the process, criminals are becoming real power-centres and criminality
is gaining in respectability in the country. This made life in the country unsafe and violence, a
daily matter. Merit lost its primus. Personal competence has become secondary or tertiary to
money and power in its ability to boost fortunes. Status and social position have become the
custodies of the rich and the powerful. Election as a democratic apparatus being moneycentric rendered money the centre for power. This brought money and power closer. Big
money being less than a dream sans resorting to illegal activities in the circumstances of
extant rules and laws rendered criminality prolate and commonplace in India and an
ineluctable ladder to gain power and position in the democratic government. This led to a
strange situation of lawmakers leading the gang of law-breakers to ensure power and position
in the next election. Can these rulers who perforce break their own laws provide honest
governance to the country? How can the country and its people depend on such democratic
rulers for their security and welfare? India is facing such a conundrum now.
FEUDAL NATURE
Democracy made India a feudal nation with innumerable political parties swearing against
each other for the sake of political power. It made the country a divided house with each
faction going for the blood of the others and turning the country ensemble to a huge factious
village. Hatred and opposition have become the leitmotiv of the public life. Violence and
intrigues have become the accepted means of ascendancy. Democratic practices undermined
the foundation of peace, harmony and unity of the nation and weakened the fabric of the
moral values and ethical practices in the public life of the nation. The crme de la crme of
the country opted out of the endless strife for power and position and politics became the
dernier ressort of scoundrels in India as popular saying goes. What can be the character and
merits of the rule provided by such people at the helm? It is where democracy brought India
to.
REAL TRAGEDY
Democracy in India brought real changes to the rich, powerful and the political class at
the cost of its infima species. It removed all the hurdles from their path to become richer,
more powerful and establish political dynasties. British were too moral conscious to allow
such things to happen during their rule. They maintained certain minimal values in public life
that ensured some degree of equal opportunity in all fields depending on merit. Democracy
removed the hurdle for the native rich and powerful and they found their deliverance in
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symbiosis and synergy. That is the tragedy of the democracy for the weak and the ordinary of
the country.
SPECIAL PREMIUM
The advent of democracy is marked by accrescent tax burden on the people in the name of
developmental and welfare activities. The wealth so extracted was frittered away by
inefficiency, corruption or sheer wastage. The benefits meant for the people seldom reached
them thanks to inefficiency, corruption and the pestilent middlemen who act as the conduits
of democracy. The toil of the people was looted as taxes to provide for the security and
luxuries of the soi disant aristocracy of the democratic vtntage who assumed special premium
for their own lives.
UNEQUAL COMPETITION
More and more prop of liberalisation is provided to democracy these days to make the
latter further pro-rich and powerful. That provides the upper strata of the society more elbowspace for manoeuvres and deceptions to put their money and power to better use and renders
the poor and weak hors concours. Scams of the dimension of US-64 in the UTI are possible
only in such an ambience. Competition is the clavis of the concept of liberalisation.
Competition among the unequal in a nation where nearly half of the population lives below
the poverty line and less than 1% can be credited to be rich and powerful is nothing more than
a mockery of the principle of an equitable society as well as of the vaulting intentions of
democratic principles like the rule of the common man and welfare of all.
DEMOCRATIC FOCUS
Liberalisation per se is not bad as is democracy. It is its concept of suum cuique as
opposed to the concept of social responsibility and the unjust practices that poison the
atmosphere. It is a matter of focus of the democratic leadership at the helm of the governance.
Liberalisation as a policy is discussed in India for more than a decade now in the ambience of
protecting the interests of the lesser rich of the country from the competition of the more rich
of the world. The plebeian has no place in the scheme of things of a policy of that dimension.
This cant happen in a true rule of the people, by the people, for the people where poor and
weak constitute more than 95% of the people.
A CONSCIOUS POLICY
An ideal rule in quiddity is a rule pro bono publico that protects the interests of all
sections of the people including rich, poor and weak. But the policy initiatives for the
purposes have to be pro rata to the numerical strengths of the respective sections. It is not the
case in Indias democratic environment. Here, the rich and powerful rule the roost and the
state policy au mieux is directed to their protection as a conscious policy while the poor and
powerless are left to their own fate to meet both the ends. Because, it is the rich and powerful
who count in the democratic schemes of the country to keep power while the hapless poor
and the weak can wait endlessly in the state priorities. This is Indian democracy.
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PRAVEEN KUMAR
HUMAN NATURE
The achilles heel lies in the human nature of seeking power, wealth and opportunities
and those who possess it. Present Indian rulers are not a rebours to this nature nor those
others manning the peripherals of a democratic institution in India like the media and the
intellectuals as opinion makers of the country. They save some exceptions tend to be
sensational-centric and prefer to move with the lee tide in lieu of going to the stark truths.
They are proved more prone to be affected by concerted propaganda and twisted rationale
than the ordinary man. That is why an evil like unrestrained liberalisation is accepted as a
deliverance by them una voce; that is why political leaders in India are glorified in magazines
and newspapers as great heroes sans consideration to their values, merit, performance and
ethical standing in public life. It is their power and status ex consequenti that count over the
merits of great performers who are relegated to the inconspicuous corners of the pages. The
common man himself gives precedence to power and mammon over merit at his own cost.
That is the prise of money and power on the human kind tout a fait.
ELEMENTARY NEEDS
Democracy, sine dubio, is an ideal concept. The concept presupposes certain
elementary needs essential for the success of the concept in practice. Equality among the
majority of the population leading to equal opportunities en principe is centric to the concept.
This is not the case in India. Ergo, the failure. Winston Churchill once said that democracy is
a bad form of government, but it is the best among the available. Coming from a politician of
the democratic dispensation, the faire bonne mine should be taken with a pinch of salt. Is
there no deliverance to a poor nation like India and other nations of its ilk in Asia, Africa and
South America apart from democracy that does not behove to the diversities of their
populations?
What is the besoin of these nations is a system of government wherein around forty
select people of sound attributes of heart and head as a team rule the country a la present day
cabinet and general assembly in one with another team of around forty responsible people
functioning as an accountability team to keep pernoctation over the governance with the
present institution of the President mutatis mutandis responsible for both the teams. Both
teams function as permanent bodies with 25% of the teams retiring once in every three years
without an opportunity for reappointment and together on their own wisdom decide the
replacements ex quocunque capite for both the teams from the people of proven abilities,
integrity and character. The teams together structure the new teams ex mero motu once every
three years after each replacement of the 25% of the teams. The clavis of the new gestalt is
selection of the right people of proven attributes of heart and head ex professo. The teams
together can remove a member of the either team ex concessis when proved indign for the
position and task. Indeed, the ebauche needs myriad details of immense intricacies to be
efficacious. The effort is worth a try in the interests of a billion Indians.
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INFRASTRUCTURE DEVELOPMENT
Infrastructure is a network of facilitating structures for a process, be it poverty eradication

programmes, economic growth process or any other programme of human endeavour. It is a
labyrinth of relevant and useful facilities created to enable human endeavour realize a
process. Infrastructure is process relevant. The infrastructure needed in a rural area is
different from that needed in an urban area. They are different things crying for different
means. A Government is meant to go for general infrastructures required for all sectors and
ensure on priority benefits for maximum numbers. After all, salus populi suprema lex est.
Industrial Sector in deliciis
Democracy is feudal in reality involving stiff competitions between diverse sectors and
interest groups to gobble the res gestae available from the State. Power begets power and
money begets money. So, it is powerful sectors that succeed and corner infrastructure
development programmes of the State to their advantage when the State sleeps and forgets its
responsibilities. It is what is happening in recent India about the powerful industrial sector in
deliciis. Slogan oriented Indian media and pneumatic Indian economists are devoted tout a
fait to its shallow cause. The devotion has gone to the extent of a few publications recently
warning some Indian cities to develop infrastructures to the satisfaction of the IT and other
industries, or else .
Priorities in Infrastructure
Women in villages in India die during delivery for lack of motorable roads to take
them in time to taluq hospitals and women here walk miles for a pot of water. This is the
extent of the lack of infrastructure in India. Infrastructure is essential. Basic needs and
amenities of the plebeian should be its priority. Next in order come the needs of decent living
like good roads, bridges, effective communication system, uninterrupted power supply,
decent health and education system and so on. Major projects like dams and irrigation
systems, mining and steel plants, railways and highways networks are also required to bring
about the general economic growth of the country. Commune bonum is its litmus test. The
desirability of an infrastructure depends on who are its focus and how desperately is it
needed. A country has no right to waste its exiguous fund on exclusive prodigal schemes to
benefit a narrow sector like the industry under the fig leaf of the economic growth. The
perverted argument provided in support of the industry is that Indian industrial products
should be made competitive in the world market and that economic growth itself functions as
an infrastructure for the well being of the common man and therefore all public expenditures
for the industry is justified as a vehicle of the economic growth. The argument is perforce
distal from the field reality in the ambience of the homo homini lupus. Industry is commerce
au fond. And therefore profit and self-indulgence is its ultimate stimuli. State protection to an
uncompetitive industry at the cost of poor mans advantages is a misplaced priority. Any
benefit accrues to the public from this is minor and irrelevant to the quantum of the public
expenditure.
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PRAVEEN KUMAR
Pampering the Industrial Sector
Often, exports and foreign exchanges, and employment opportunities are advanced as
reasons for pampering the industrial sector at the cost of the common man. Foreign
exchanges basically serve big industries for imports and foreign tours and those who have
excess money to indulge in. India can earn more than adequate foreign exchanges to meet its
essential needs including in defence and science and research without pampering big
industries and without undercutting the minimum needs of the plebian. And creating
eurhythmic employment opportunities by flooding the industrial sector with huge public
funds and special and costly favours is a myth created by intelligent industrialists, and naive
economists and media lacking in depth and blinded by serious myopia.
Economic Growth
Economic growth is necessary. It is basically future looking. Making India an
economic super power in 25 years is a noble dream. But, people come first and reality of
today is more important than the dream of 25 years sinsyne. Tomorrow can wait, but not
today. Only those who suffer it can know the pain of poverty and want. It is sheer sin to
ignore their sufferings and divest funds that rightfully belong to their welfare to the accounts
of the well-to-do industrialists behind the deceptive and elusive slogans of economic super
power and the future prosperity. No Singapore, South Korea or China of the 21st century
vintage can be built on the carcass of the suffering common man. Ameliorate his life
standards to a reasonable level and bring the economic growth through him. That is true
economic growth of a democratic milieu. That should be the policy of a democratic State.
Otherwise, it would not be different from that of the egregious Khmer Rogue regime of Pol
Pot in1970s in Cambodia that tried to bring forcible Communist glory to that country over the
carcass of the Phnom Penh citizenry.
Taste of the Free Spoils
The argument is not at all against industries, economic growth or even infrastructures,
but about emphasis and priority. All those are necessary for the balanced growth and survival
of the country. The issue here is undue zeal and unintelligent championing of the cause of the
rich industries at the cost of the hoi polloi as India witnesses today.
Broad concrete roads, flyovers, uninterrupted power supply, efficient energy network, and
excellent communication systems are welcome as pro bono publico initiatives. But, when
they come as facilitators of rich industries, parameters of the projects are adapted to the needs
of the latter at prohibitive costs to the public exchequer. The infrastructures, industries
demand and got include acres of prime lands in and around metropolitan cities at ludicrously
low throw away prices for non-operational and often ostentatious purposes, special tax
exemptions running for multiple crores of rupees, exclusive cyber or electronic or similar
industry oriented parks with ultra modern facilities, concessional bank loans, specially
constructed access roads to their headquarters and so runs the endless list. Some state Chief
Ministers easily obliged them in oodles for their own personal, party and political reasons and
lost next elections. L appetit vient en mangeant. As the industries got the taste of the free
spoils from the Government, their greed grew and recently went to the extent of threatening
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the Governments of shifting to other states if their further demands were not met. Bonded
media also added its mite to this silly threat. So goes the game in this maledict India.
What India needs are a holistic approach to its infrastructure developments rather than
lopsided favours to the powerful and their cronies who cry wolf under misleading claims and
slogans. A nation belongs to all and must serve the interests of all sections of the people
including the rich and the poor, and the industrialists and the farmers and protect who are
weak and powerless. In the circumstances of exiguous resources crunch, a fair policy of
eurhythmic division of what is available is called for. This cardinal need is algate forgotten in
India, and Palman qui meruit ferat with the active support of influential cronies in right
places - politicians, bureaucrats, economists and media here. And the common man is a tragic
loser in this triste game. The State policy should be people oriented in a democracy and it
must endeavour to enrich their life. All growths including economic growth must emanate
from this foundation. Only such growths endure and make the country prosperous. No foreign
exchanges and exports, no palatial glass edifices of industrial houses, no seven-figure salaries
for a few, no wanton gambling in shares and stocks inter se really make India an economic
giant. Singapore, South Korea, Japan and China from Asia and European countries and the
USA built their economic edifices on the bedrock of its peoples general prosperity and
strengths. A few Everests do not make India a highland. Going for flowers at the cost of roots
is a negative trend fuelled by shallow understanding of the issues. Infrastructure being the
soul of any development, right focus on its priorities is what India needs now and sine qua
non for its onward march.
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PRAVEEN KUMAR
IN PURSUT OF EXCELLENCE
Excellence stands for quality in excelsis unlike the quantity of the commercial and the
material morass though excellence in no way represents the antithesis of the mass commercial
ventures. It basically is an attitude reinforced with focused and dedicated strivings for
perfection. It is the katabasis of this attitude and passion in everyday life en face the race with
time in the milieu of manipulative competitions of commercial edge that makes life less
dignus in the world we live in. Excellence gives value to life.
Excellence is a measure of the height scaled in achievement. Only the bests can reach that
height. Excellence signifies a superior human worth. Its disappearance suggests mediocrity
encompassing all walks of life and complacency engrossing it.
WHAT IS EXCELLENCE?
According to Booker T. Washington, Excellence is to do a common thing in an
uncommon way. Perry Paxton says, Existence is in the details. Give attention to the details
and excellence will come. But, the credit of the most promising peroration on the nature of
excellence must go to Sun-Tzu (Wu), a Chinese military strategist (535 BC 228 BC) when
he figuratively declares in his celebrated book, der Unsterbliche, The Art of War, supreme
excellence consists in breaking the enemys resistance without fighting. Excellence is an
edge over and something extra in value addition. It is the positive outcome of persistent and
relentless focus of talent over time to rise above the mediocrity and make a rare break in
standards. It is not easy to come. Focused talent, persistent hard work, infrangible spirit,
endless patience and consistent passion for excellence as the inviolable hallmarks constitute
the bedrock of the process of excellence. Excellence is an outcome of superior spirit.
Every job is a self-portrait of the person who did it. Superior spirits autograph their works
with excellence. It takes a long time to bring excellence to maturity. Excellence is the gradual
result of always striving to do better. Vera incessu patuit dea. Excellence is the outer dazzle
of the inner lumiere. It needs to be cultivated; it needs to be imbued and perfected by endless
endeavour. It is not for feeble minded and broken spirits. Excellence comes only out of
excellence.
MOTHER OF ALL BREAKTHROUGHS
Excellence is the mother of all breakthroughs. It is the tool that takes life to its limits to
open up a new vista of possibilities and constitutes the building blocks of the history of the
human evolution, it be in science, technology, research, politics, governance, professions,
arts, trade, commerce, industry, war strategies or big or small performances of individuals or
groups or nations. It is the abracadabra of the forward thrust of the human evolution. The
present technological advancements of the West, the past philosophical supremacy of the East
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and India, the present competitive edge of Japan, South Korea and China in industrial output
and Singapore in public administration in the East, stunning achievements of the USA in the
field of space research, the superb works of the Harvard, Oxford and Cambridge Universities
in the field of education and research, the watch industry of Switzerland, each is nonasuch
paragon of supreme excellence in human endeavour and accomplishment.
India too had and has its share of excellence. Its Vedas and Sanskrit language, its
Buddhism as a religion, its Nalanda University as a centre of learning, its progress in
astronomy, mathematics and other fields of science are classical examples of supreme
excellence of the ancien regime. It can boast attempts at excellence in certain fields even in
this dark age of moral degradation and pure commercialization of the human spirit; Indian
Institutes of Technology, a few institutions like the Missionaries of Charity, a handful of
national and regional newspapers and journals inter alia showed commendable commitment
towards excellence contranatant to the reigning zeitgeist namely commercialism and
sensational moorings and withstood its temptations.
PASSION FOR EXCELLENCE
Excellence is not easy to come. It is limited by umpteen obstacles immanent to human
nature like greed, complacency, and commercial tendencies, manipulative competition,
corrupt practices, parochial indulgences, lure of quick returns and primarily, the chaltha hai
mindset that distract focus away from excellence. Lack of passion for excellence is the
underlying cause. Also, the ambience of poverty and survival instinct, the pulls and pressures
of the democratic politics and the race with time of the extant commercial world add to the
problem. After all, necessitas non habet legem. Survival is the foremost instinct. It is true for
all, it be artists, politicians, professionals, industrialists or a plebeian. In a commercial world
where time is money, the brooding leisure needed for the pursuit and appreciation of
excellence and perfection is hard to come and perforce seen in a milieu lacking in passion for
excellence as a waste of precious time and opportunity. It is true of India and most of the
developing countries of the world.
Indeed, wider competitions ensued from the liberalisation and globalization do render
excellence sine qua non for survival in the open market. The need of competing in the
ambience of the welt geist of excellence is bound to have salubrious impact on the passion for
excellence in the Indian mindset. It is a saving grace of the globalization in disguise.
THREE DIMENSIONAL
Excellence is three-dimensional; while ultimate performance is its exoteric face, it is
the value system and the thoughts and the planning that go for the chevisance that really lay
the foundation for the excellence. A performance, however brilliant be, does not constitute
excellence per se. Right sittlichkeit holds its own place in the scheme. Coming to the national
scene, committed economic reforms covering liberalisation, privatization and globalization
for the economic growth of the country are great. But, the efforts with all its intellectual
content en arriere can never apportion the title of excellence until the measure takes the
hardships of the hoi polloi in the process and the needs of the time in to account and decide.
After all, it is salus populi suprema lex est. It is so also with the Hindutva and the need of
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PRAVEEN KUMAR
protecting the religion and its culture from the onslaught of the time. Any thoughtless
measure at the cost of the humanity at large and the rightful processes of other institutions is
bound to be counterproductive. Such things have nothing to do with excellence. In history,
brilliant military strategy and organizational skills and superb leadership qualities of Adolph
Hitler only led him to doom because his historic accomplishments for Germany had perverted
values of revenge, aggression and spine-chilling holocaust as its bedrock and he lost a rare
historical opportunity of bringing about unparalleled organizational and leadership excellence
into being, because of his tragically negative objects and emotions. So also the extant USA by
its aggression on Iraq. India relegated excellence to oblivion under its self-rule. Even
constitutional bodies created to promote excellence in government services have become rule
and procedure enforcing bodies in native hands rather than going proactive to promote
excellence. It is a triste affaire.
The noblest search is the search for excellence. Laborare est orare wherever there is
search for excellence. Charles C.Krulack says, Excellence just doesnt happen; it must be
forged, tested and used it must be woven in to the very fabric of our soul until it becomes
our nature. Excellence is the gradual result of always striving to do better. Samuel Johnson
(1709 1784) preconises, Excellence in any department can be attained only by the labour
of a life time; it is not to be purchased at a lesser price. Excellence is in brass tacks;
excellence is in wholeness; excellence is there in the interdependence between the brass tacks
and the wholeness. Excellence is in cause and excellence is in accomplishment; excellence is
there in the values those inspire the acts. Excellence is a life long mission of a committed soul
and an attainment of a steadfast spirit. Perhaps keeping this truth in mind, John W. Gardner
(1912 2002), a US official and a writer proclaimed in his work on Excellence, Some people
have greatness thrust upon them. Very few have excellence thrust upon them. Such a rara
avis is excellence to pursue and achieve.
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RECENT TRENDS IN ECONOMIC CRIMES
I begin this paper with the exordium of the article, Investigation of Economic
Crimes from my recent book on policing, Policing the Police published in 2000 (NPA
Library 001 Accession No. 65724 & 65725) wherein discussing the impact of liberalisation
on Indian economy and economic crimes, I said, With the liberalisation, the aboideau of
scams and financial irregularities is thrown open and the Indian financial market is flooded
with all conceivable kinds of frauds, shady transactions and corrupt practices. As long
shadows of mixed economy receded from the four-decade-old sky of the Indian republic in
1990s, the Indian economy is sweltering under the heat of economic crimes. Not that
economic crimes are new to human generation or India; small fraudulent dealings were born
with man and bound to continue as part of his nature till the imbalance of supply and
consumption haunts his existence. What manifested are organised frauds to loot the public its
money by clever use of the financial environment and the innocence of the hoi polloi; illconceived financial rules and laws and slack financial practices and procedures evidently
failed to carry the weight of the liberalised economy. The people who were inured to
protected economy and state control cannot easily adapt to liberalised economy where all
sorts of worms and creatures creep, waiting to make best use of the laissez-faire. Rules and
laws being not tightened to meet the challenges of the liberal atmosphere, unscrupulous
elements have a field day in playing with the public money either to intentionally defraud or
experiment in risky projects. The plans are always mega-schemes running for hundreds or
thousands of crores of rupees of the gullible public. Corruption in government and public life
ease the process. Bribes play key roles in keeping rules, laws and regulatory authorities
shut.
Edwin H. Sutherland, renowned American criminologist in his propaedeutic of whitecollar crimes in his celebrated ouvrage Crime and Business preconises the special nature of
the crimes when he says, Since the crimes are generally violations of trust, they create and
extend feelings of distrust. Leadership against white-collar crime is generally lacking, since
most leaders come from the upper socioeconomic class and since the persons in this class
who do not participate in white-collar crimes are generally reluctant to attack other members
of their own class. Economic crimes as another facet of the white-collar crimes with its
nonasuch etat in the caste hierarchy of crimes transcend the lesser crimes in gestalt and
content as its raison detre in the tapestry of the civil society and ipso facto grow ectogenesis
to the normal reach of the societal leadership including the law-enforcing agencies. It is a
tragedy of the criminal justice system.
DEFINITION AND SCOPE OF ECONOMIC CRIMES
For E.H.Sutherland, white-collar crime is a violation of trust. His view emerges from
his definition of the white-collar crime as a violation of criminal law by a person of the upper
socioeconomic class in the course of his occupational activities. The trend of economic
crimes has seen sea-change since the ancien regime with more and more such violations
being committed for the res gestae by individuals or organized groups with or without inside
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cooperation and raisonne exploitation of the weaknesses of the extant financial laws and
procedures, the financial institutions and the people who man them. In the maelstrom,
economic crimes can be defined simply as fraudulent financial transactions for financial gain.
Popular realms of economic crimes these days include political and policy-making
sector, government sector, financial sector, commerce and industry sector and individual
entrepreneurs and cover events and activities like deposits fraud, shares and securities fraud,
company regulations violation, fraud concerning government funds, counterfeit, import and
export fraud, foreign exchange violation, telemarketing fraud, patent infringement, copyright
violation and piracy, tax evasion, smuggling, hoarding and black-marketing, adulteration,
drug-trafficking, insurance fraud, money laundering, high-sea fraud, telecom and electricity
fraud, computer manipulation, internet fraud, land deals fraud, bribery, cheating, breach of
trust and unauthorized commission to name just a farthing of what actually exist and
accrescently expand with the ingenuity of the persons involved. Some of them like deposits
fraud, company regulations violation, fraud concerning government funds, import and export
fraud, foreign exchange violation, tax evasion, smuggling, hoarding and black-marketing,
adulteration, drug-trafficking, insurance fraud, high-sea fraud, bribery, breach of trust and
unauthorized commission are d accord with the definition by Sutherland as committed in the
course of occupational activities, while others like telecom and electricity fraud, cheating,
patent infringements, copyright violations and piracy and counterfeit are ectogenesis.
Commission of these crimes in gargantuan scale sponte sua by individuals and organised
groups extra-muros to the occupational activities with or without the cooperation of the
invisus insiders constitutes the recent trend in economic crimes. Shares and securities fraud,
counterfeit cheques, telemarketing fraud, software piracy and patent infringement, software
copyright violation, computer manipulation, Internet fraud and land deals fraud in mammoth
scale are relatively recent trend in the field. High sea fraud, insurance fraud and money
laundering also continue to be periculous threats to the economic security of the country.
RECENT TRENDS
The flagitious security scam of 1992 involving Rs 8000 crores as the avant coureur
stirred the national conscience to the issue of the economic security and showed how facilely
it can be periclitated by the unscrupulous large-scale inside trading and fraudulent stock
manipulation. The supercherie run the corso from the late Harshad Mehta case of 1992 to the
ban on the high-profile fund manager, Samir Arora from the capital markets by the SEBI in
2003 on the charge of inside trading in securities. Why the security scam of 1992 failed to
shut the aboideau in the Indian security market in the last eleven years and why even
successful and high profile fund managers like Samir Arora prefer to resign their lucrative
jobs in companies like Alliance Capital Mutual Fund and resort to such violations? The
obvious answer is that the exposures are just the prevarications from the zeitgeist and neither
the concerned regulations are stringent enough nor the regulating agencies like the Securities
and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) and the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) and the people
manning them in their aidos are competent to cleanse the capital market and protect the
interests of the investors. Jucta est alea. The occasional exposures are just eyewashes. Such
frauds are bound to squeeze Indian economy in years ahead.
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Another facet of the incompetence of the regulating agencies in the capital market is
the malengine of floating apocryphal companies to fleece the public in crores by offering
shares and disappearing after defrauding the public. There are hundreds of such flagrant cases
reported in1990s with almost none booked for the falsi crimen.
Another serious fraud of recent origin is the use of counterfeit cheques. The use of
stolen cheques and writing cheques on accounts either closed or having insufficient fund to
defraud is a vieux jeu in the business world. The computer revolution has added a new
dimension to it. Often software that can produce legitimate checks is used to generate
counterfeit checks with fictitious names and account numbers to defraud in business dealings.
Counterfeit is anadyomene in a different sancy these days in the shape of fake stamps scam of
mammoth scale run in interstate level with a highly organized plexus. Telemarketing is
another genre of fraud that is in rise that involves the so called boiler rooms or the
telemarketing company promoting sales of worthless goods through phone solicitation by
promising customers riches and gifts that never come. This form of fraud is already having
pollent foothold in big cities of India. Another fraud is floating teakwood or such plantation
companies those mobilize funds from the public with the pollicitation of distribution of the
gain pro rata only to disappear before the climacteric approaches. However, prompt response
from the law-enforcing agencies perficiently controlled the menace and the defalcation of this
shape is in degringolade sinsyne. The episode marks that prompt response from the lawenforcing agencies do have desired effect on the spread of the economic crimes.
Copyright violations and piracy are major threats to the book publishing, cinema and
audio and videocassette industries. Patent infringements are the crimes those threaten new
products. The computer revolution has brought software to the ambit of such threats apart
from functioning as a facilitator of fraud and economic crimes by other means also.
Fraudulent interference with the software or programmes used for financial transactions is a
convenient tool to defraud companies and establishments in crores in a single stretch or di
grado in grado and do away with all evidence to the act. Lack of proper understanding of the
intricacies of the computer and its software and absence of due pernoctation at higher levels
contribute for such frauds being ascensive. A byproduct of the computer revolution is the
Internet fraud that has diverse gestalt and international ramifications. Innovative Internet
solicitation to part with money for goods, schemes or services of fraudulent edge is the staple
of such frauds. Another aspect of the Internet fraud involves tampering with others financial
or establishment accounts by breaking into their passwords and copying digital signatures to
illegally siphon funds or other valuables to own account. Innovative works of the hackers
help the process.
A very disturbing fraud these days, concerns prime government or private lands in the
heart of big cities left unattended for various reasons. The quiddity of the rite de passage here
is the study of the system for weaknesses. Innovative tregetours expiscate in poor laws,
procedural loopholes, lack of coordination among and incompetence of concerned
government departments like the city development authority, the city corporation, electricity
and water supply bodies and the land registration office, and the greed or indifference of the
people who man the government bodies an opportunity to gobble prime lands worth of
several crores of rupees. The ichnography involves obtaining false power of attorney of the
true owner of the land by impersonation from an unvigilant or greedy notary and selling the
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land using it. In some other cases, the tricksters raise buildings on such unattended lands after
paying land taxes for those lands and obtaining sanction for the building plan from the
engineering wing of the city corporation with the help of the tax records as proof of their
ownership of the lands. Such gross anomalies are possible only because of the lack of
coordination, defective procedures and sheer lethargy, incompetence and greed in the
government bodies. The swindlers here secundum artem exploit the gross weaknesses and
failures of the government bodies to make colossal gains for themselves. The res gestae
involved in such frauds and the ease of the method render it a potential mode of the economic
crime of the future.
High-sea fraud involving disappearance of the whole ship or its cargo or carrying false
cargo and financial or insurance claims on the basis of mendacious documents may become
assez bien a popular means in days ahead to become rich a pas de geant because such crimes
seldom draw the avizefull attention of the public and the fraud is limited to the concerned
cloistered circles. Insurance fraud on the other hand will re-emerge to the center-stage in the
ambience of the privatization of the insurance sector and its consequent proliferation. Money
laundering is the cleanser of all economic crimes and the means of salvation to economic
criminals; ergo, it is jus naturale that it re-emerges in various avatars from time to time.
Hawala transactions will continue to exist in different shapes and forms. The secrecy code of
the Swiss banks provides the requisite refuge to the ill-gotten money of the swindlers among
politicians, senior government officials, industrialists, businessmen and enterprising
individuals.
Export and import fraud of the recent origin involves false declaration of the country
of the origin to evade anti-dumping duties in addition to over-invoicing of exports to
fraudulently avail export incentives.
Cheating, breach of trust and embezzlement are common economic crimes all over the
world. A survey conducted by Pricewaterhouse Coopers, an accounting firm and Wilmer
Cutler & Pickering, a law firm as reported in the New York Times of July 13, 2003 states that
more than a third of the American firms surveyed in the last two years were found to be the
victims of one or the other kind of economic crimes like asset misappropriation and
embezzlement. The survey also suspected doubtful financial disclosures by more than half of
the companies surveyed. It is the case in India too. The external auditors tend to take refuge
under the plea that they audit only the documents provided to them by the companies and
sweep inconvenient facts under the carpet for quid pro quo. The dictum, fraus est celare
fraudem, is conveniently forgotten. It is on record that almost no auditor is dealt till now for
professional apostasy in independent India and the organization responsible to oversee the
auditors condones the professional betrayal and becomes a partaker in the irregularity as per
the dictum, chi tace confessa.
NATURE OF RECENT TRENDS
A careful study of the recent trends in the economic crimes brings out interesting
factors common to most of them. The most striking of them is the growth of the economic
crimes usaque ad nauseam to the status of an entrepreneurship both in terms of respectability
a la its description by Sutherland and concomitant responsibility, its sheer volume, interstate
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or international spread, highly organized operational plexus, hi-tech tools employed, highly
efficient division of labour with minions at the cutting-edge level as front operators far
removed from the main characters and the brain behind the operation at concentric circles,
resourceful big actors en arriere, detailed planning, study and probouleusis prior to the
operation, professional touch to the whole operation and high risks and high profits involved.
The recent economic frauds are high-money soign scams running to multiple crores.
The materfamilias of all the scams of modern India namely the security scam of 1992
involved Rs 8000 crores while the recent fake stamp scam allegedly involves Rs 80,000
crores. The Indian Bank scam of the 1990s involved Rs 1300 crores while the fodder scam of
Bihar ran to Rs 1500 crores. Other major scams of lesser volume are the Bihar bitumen
scandal of Rs 350 crores, Bofors scandal of Rs 64 crores, HDW submarine scandal of Rs 64
crores, Bihar medical bills scandal of Rs 60 crores, ayurved scam of Rs 32 crores, telecom
scam of Rs 6 crores inter alia. However, the leading role in such embezzlements must go to
the banking sector that gobbled public money to the tune of Rs 1,20,000 crores in three years
with the euphemism of non-performing assets or bad loans that in most cases are advances
paid to well-to-do favourites for consideration with the understanding that the clause of the
non-performing assets take care of that.
An important aspect of the modern economic frauds is that the brain behind the
operation who normally are the people of procerity remains incognito and far removed from
the cutting-edge operations by several levels and ensures that the law-enforcing agencies
never reach him under any circumstance and there remains no evidence against him a la mode
the Mafia and its leader, Al Capone. This holds good for all recent major scams and the
veracity of the person identified in them as the el patron should be taken cum grano salis.
These crimes au fond are well-plexured conspiracies.
These economic crimes are marked by callida junctura. The cooperation of right
people inside and outside the target institution is bought a grands frais for use at right time.
This brings much needed aex triplex to the process and adds to the plexus of the operation
and brings the elements of corruption to the process. Extra muros entrepreneurs mastermind
these frauds as opus reticulatum after detailed study of the weaknesses and failures of the
laws, procedures, institutions and the men concerned and right and adequate preparations.
Free market economy in a poor, unenlightened and developing country like India is
like spreading delicious foods around a person dying of hunger with injunctions to open the
dishes only after performing an impossible feat. Imagine the consequences. In a country like
India where easy life and chaltha hai mindset are the bedrock of life and hard work and
commitment are anathema, where merit and brilliance are looked down upon, where
character, discipline and integrity are belittled as the dernier ressort of weaklings, where
criminals, swindlers and murderers become popular political leaders, where democratic votes
are hostages to the riches you throw away, where the hapless hoi polloi is the prisoner of the
vagaries of the arriviste along the ladder across the political spectrum, where imported isms
rule the mindset in lieu of the genuine and holistic welfare-interests to meet the besoin of the
plebeian and the country, where mediocrity and dishonesty reign supreme and the
administration and the law-enforcing agencies crawl before the criminal political masters and
the mesquin and lowly higherups lest their career interests are harmed, the free market
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economy turns an apollyon like a pachyderm allowed a free-run in a plantain plantation. Free
market economy per se is not bad. It is best suited to the countries where it is born in the
ambience of enlightenment, civility and respect to law and societal mores where apolaustic
deviants are only exceptions. Otherwhere, economic crimes are bound to grow exponently
with the disillusioned cleverer elements as the provenance resorting to exploit the weaknesses
of the financial laws, procedures and the institutions and the niaiserie, greed and the lethargy
of the people around them. In the ambience of the survival of the fittest, it is hard to find fault
with such criminals. Necessitas non habet legem. It is the inadequate laws, nonpareil
institutions and the mediocre or greedy attercops in charge who inadvertently lure the
desperate people to intelligently exploit them for survival. For, survival is the prime principle
of life. And everything else is secondary to it. Exitus acta probat. Add to it the fact that
money is the blut und ehre that can buy anything from respectability to the friendship of the
people who matter, you have the right recipe for the wild choresis of the economic crimes
limited only by the limits of the creativity of an original mind thrown to infinite possibilities
provided by the inferior laws, procedures and the institutions created by the lesser minds of
the post-independent genre and equally poor manning of them. The trend for the future can
only be defined as unspeakable varieties of every conceivable hue that is allowed by the
financial laws and procedures, financial institutions and their practices.
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CORRUPTION IN INDIA
The size of Indias parallel economy at 40% of GDP does provide fertile ground for
corruption. Lack of deterrence against corruption and importance to wealth begotten by
whatever means enormously promoted corruption in India. More important, corruption in
India flows from above from the political class under covers like party and election funds,
and senior bureaucrats who are seld investigated or punished, either through conspiratorial
silence or through conspiratorial legislative manipulations. Further, political patronage gave
an aura of invincibility and respectability to corruption and deprived it of all moral and legal
fears. The Central Bureau of Investigation in the Centre and Criminal Investigation
Departments in the states and Union Territories have become political tools in the hands of
the ruling party and grossly politicised the criminal investigation process in the country.
What is worse, the conviction rate is hardly 6% in criminal cases.
India was placed 73rd in corruption among the 99 countries rated In the Transparency
International rankings for 1999. Corruption flourishes in India because it is perceived to be a
low risk and high profit business. Lack of transparency in administration provides an
opportunity for public servants to mislead citizens and extract bribes.
The Central Vigilance Commission which was set up in the Centre in 1964 and
Vigilance Commissions and institutions like Lok Ayukta which were set up in some states as
Government agencies and headed by retired public servants or High Court or Supreme Court
judges are proved too inadequate to meet the challenges in hand because of again the
conspiratorial refusal of the political and bureaucratic leaderships to invest them with
necessary powers and organizational strength.
It is only the Supreme Court in India seems waging a war against corruption. The
Government of India converted the Central Vigilance Commission into a statutory body
through an executive order in 1998 on the directive of the Supreme Court. It rendered the
CVC at least statutorily independent of the political and bureaucratic set-ups.
Although everybody in every nook and corner of the country knows who are corrupt
in the Government set-up and knows every details of their mode of operations, Indias
administrative machinery is so devised to ensure that corruption never comes to its official
cognisance even while taking place en plein jour in its own corridors and antechambers to the
benefits of the key politicians and senior bureaucrats. Power corridors and ministerial
antechambers are rendered protected places from anti-corruption moves and converted to safe
havens for corruption at high places.
Ill-gotten wealth is generally stashed away in the form of black money in foreign accounts
and benami bank accounts, property, jewellery and other valuables.
It is a common principle in government world-over that if a person is facing a
vigilance inquiry, he should not be placed in a sensitive post. However, this practice was not
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being followed in India. Actually, exactly the opposite is true in India. Only those politicians
and bureaucrats who have disposable black money a gogo can afford to buy high public
positions in India. Others are mercilessly sidelined as nonconformists or even discredited or
destroyed as dangerous outsiders in the big business of bribery. Media and its lack of depth
and insight add to the maelstrom while it presumes and glorifies those in key posts as the rare
personification of noble virtues and merit while truth is that those posts are invariably
cornered these days by those who can afford to illegally pay for that either by kind or other
means and therefore grossly corrupt in the world of transfer business. It is not uncommon to
media to add its mite to the charges of the vested interests against and question appointment
of the senior most officer to the top post of a Government department on the ground that the
officer never held charge of a key executive post till then. Media in India is yet to grow to
appreciate the point that the denial of venal key posts in spite of seniority in the extant milieu
of transfer business per se vouches to the probity and noncorruptibility of the concerned
officer. That is how corruption has flourished in the system.
Endless delays common in India in the conduct of departmental inquiry, investigation
and prosecution help corruption to flourish. Delay provides a cover of respectability for the
guilty.
The significance of corruption as a factor that adversely affects the growth of a
country is being increasingly recognized. Corruption, in the words of Indira Gandhi, is a
world phenomenon. It exists in developed countries too. Corruption is institutionalised as a
part of the democratic process in the USA as lobbying and public relations activities and the
country prides in its mushrooming lobbying and public relations firms with major foreign
governments inter alios as its clients. The firms are nothing but mammoth business houses
indulging in legal corruption. This nohow justifies corruption otherwhere. Indian corruption
has special characteristics that make it far more damaging than corruption in other parts of the
world.
First, people in India being poor and largely dependent on the Government for decent
living and even survival, and limited by its excessive laws, rules, regulations and largess in
almost all activities of life with high rates of taxation on every conceivable items and
services, corruption literally sucks life out of their existence unlike those in developed
countries whose dependence on the Government is relatively not so deep and prolate. This
renders corruption in India an extremely dangerous phenomenon with terminal consequences
on the culture, value system and the quality and the content of the life of the people.
Second, corruption in India flows down from above. Corruption at the top affects key
decisions and policies with sweeping implications while core decisions in developed
countries are taken on merit through transparent competition.
Third, the wealth accumulated by corrupt means in India as black money of the
parallel economy has the habit of disappearing out to safe havens abroad unlike western
countries where capital made out of corruption is generally ploughed back into domestic
production and investment. Thus, the proceeds of corruption while help to finance business in
developed countries, it just adds to foreign accounts in India.
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Fourth, corruption in India as a general rule leads to promotion and not to prison. It is
particularly so about powerful officials hand in glove with the ruling party and those who
have money and influence to buy justice and ruling party stalwarts in contrast to developed
countries where in a system and process of accountability even top leaders are investigated
and prosecuted. The most frustrating aspect of corruption in India is that the corrupt are too
powerful to go through such an honest process of accountability as causa sine qua non of
their ill-gotten wealth and power.
Fifth, corruption in India is a process against some of the poorest in the world and
against half a billion poor people who are below the poverty line while that in developed
countries it is mostly against people with per capita incomes above twenty thousands dollars.
While corruption anywhere is reprehensible, it is a political dynamite when the majority of
the population cannot meet their basic needs and a few make fortunes through corruption as
in India and other poor countries of Asia, Africa and Latin America. Corruption there leads to
massive deprivation of basic needs and extreme income inequalities. Ergo, combating
corruption in the milieu of poverty is not only punishing corrupt politicians and bureaucrats,
but more important, saving human lives.
Corruption was born with the human being and its history is as long and as varied as
the history of the mankind itself. Kautilya refers to the invincibility of corruption in public
life and the Government of the time in his magnum opus Arthashaastra. Corruption is a
shortcut to wealth and ones goals and relegation of rightful means to oblivion in preference
to ends at the earliest. It is a problem of attitude that highlights selfish ends in preference to
higher values and ideals that define noble and dignified life, and pollutes the environment.
Corruption is potent of growing exponently by poisoning the environment to the extent of
forcing the noncorruptible to fall in line to survive. The milieu compels the society to accept
corruption as a means of livelihood imprimis and as a means of accomplishments later. The
situation reaches a climacteric while governing system of the country accepts corruption as a
way of public life and its leading lights pollute the public life by openly resorting it for short
time gains. India has already reached the stage and nothing can save a country from the
atrophy save a complete overhaul by the forces of probity, perhaps vi et armis.
Corruption is the product of mans natural greed and contempt for rightful means and
constitutes the bedrock of his natural disposition. Therefore, any dream to wipe off corruption
from the face of the Earth is too idealistic to be realistic. Corruption perforce dies only with
the humankind. What can be done and attempted to is its suppression and creating an
environment wherein it becomes less lucrative and more dangerous than it is now. The deed
warrants mobilisation of the increasingly depleting forces of integrity and probity in high
places in Government and public life to fight the environment favourable to corruption. It is
easier said than done. The temptation of the easy money is too pollent to breakthrough its
plexure. Indian political system being what it has grown to be in licentious India of the postindependent vintage does not easily let the easy provenance of ill-gotten wealth to slip from
its proprietorial grip. So also is the demoralised and easy-laid bureaucracy of the free India.
The evil nexus of the two forces need to be breached to loosen the taut prise of corruption on
the public life of India. Till then, meaningful amendments to the Constitution, criminal Acts
and Rules to make corruption dangerous and less lucrative like decheance of the wealth
gained through corruption, institution of Lok Pal machinery to try corruption at highest
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levels, making such anti-corruption bodies really powerful bodies with extra-ordinary powers
and unperstringed independence to tackle corruption cases of any kind and doing away with
notorious provisions like Single Directives to protect higher echelons of the administration
from the corruption charges while it is people in those positions itself are the true
springboards of corruption in India are bound to remain empty slogans for the public platform
to fool the public and resisted by those who count a tout prix while it comes to the crunch. It
is left to those outside the circle to mobilise forces and fight the evils that one day definitely
destroy India.
If kingship is a single-point exploitation, democracy is a licence for countless
exploitations of who are weaker and more helpless and corruption is the engine that runs the
process of the exploitation. The extent of corruption is a clear indicium of the degree of
exploitation afoot in a given democracy. A democracy is meaningful only when it is
expropriated from the evil of exploitation. In other words, corruption as an indicator of
exploitation in a country stands for negation of the democratic values of a democracy. Until
corruption is extirpated from the face of the democracy of a country and unless India does it
piu mosso brilliant and enlightened youngsters like Saket Rajan falling out of the mainstream
of the national life to join rebellious anti-exploitation organisations like the Naxal Movement
and sacrificing their precious life to police bullets as occurred in Chikmagalur district of
Karnataka on 6th of February is unavoidable. India can be a true democracy only when it
succeeds in bringing corruption in its public life under control.
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INNOVATIVE TECHNIQUES IN POLICING

Indian Police of the post-independent vintage is deeply mired in the maelstrom of
inaptitude and unprofessional indulgences non obstinate rare exceptions. It is impaled in the
skein of self-seeking objectives and amblyopia. Motivation is the first disaster in the process.
Excellence suffers in the ambience. Those in police in India are familiar with this mephitis.
But, sadly as unenlightened as they are, they think that they are doing a service to the police
by denying the reality. Such people have not realized the fact that a sound reconstruction
presupposes demolition. Unfortunately, these people are perpetuating the glissade of the
Indian police.
Talks of innovative techniques presupposes a sound foundation. In the situation of a
crumbling foundation as in India Police, talks of innovative techniques appear rather
cosmetic. The singular panpharmacon convenance for the malady of the India Police is
packed in just two words: MOTIVATION and PROFESSIONALISM. Bring it, all other matters
including organizational restructuring, administrative skills, control mechanisms, long term
perspectives, accountability, efficiency, innovative techniques, cost effectiveness, creative
input, response time etc inter se fall in line. Anything done sans the two attributes as the
backbones of the gestalt is an operose labour of carrying to a bottomless avernus. As
motivation and professionalism constitute independent subjects for exhaustive deliberations
inter se and beyond the scope of the extant paper, I attempt a brachypterous propaedeutic on
what innovative techniques are en regle for the India Police within the given limitations.
1) CREATION OF A DISTINCT DETECTIVE CADRE :
Policing of the ancien regime was basically identified with crime investigations. Even
now, popular perception of the Police is associated with CRIME INVESTIGATION. The image of
the Police is largely dependent on the standard of the performance of its investigators. The
pandemic tragedy of the present Indian Police is that the investigation ingredient of the
policing is accrescently palliated by apparently more important policing pressures. The
prevarication is a major factor in the degringolade of the police and policing standards in
India postliminary to independence.
Indian police can cover the achilles heel by carrying out a separate detective cadre
upto the rank of Inspectors with recruitment and training processes more suo conforming to
the needs of the detective cadre. The cadre should be treated as a distinct entity for the
purpose of seniority and promotions. Inspectors from the detective and general streams have
to be absorbed to higher ranks on the basis of seniority cum merit with a clear advantage of
one or two years to the detective cadre so that the best brains are illaqueated to the fold.
Periodical in-service training and tests in investigation skills have to be an essential
ingredient of the cadre management and conditional to gain eligibility for promotion at every
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level. The demarche may revert Indian police to its pristine gloria in the vital expanse of the
crime investigation.
Creation of the distinct detective cadre ncessiates perforce the creation of investigation
centres parallel to the police stations in the process of the division of policing responsibilities
at the grassroot levels.
2) POLICE STATIONS AS GRASSROOT POLICE SYSTEM:
A system is a functionally independent unit of mutually dependent entities that

constitute the whole with or without an amblical chord connecting to the materfamilias for
sustenance. Extant police stations can hardly be a system as per this definition. Police
stations as of now are dependent on ectogenous factors for its functions leading to dilation of
effectiveness and professionalism. On the other hand, police stations as an ideal system must
infuse credibility and compel public co-operation.
The police Inspector in charge of a police station in the new system must have a legal
Inspector trained in law and a panel of local representatives as statutory aides. For this, the
police department must create a new cadre of legal officers trained in law to staff the police
stations and senior police offices. On the other hand, the district police superintendents must
prepare a panel of two or three law-abiding and distinguished nonpolitical locals of his choice
for each police station under him as democratic representatives. All major decisions and
actions of a police station must originate only after formal discussion between the police
inspector, the legal Inspector and any one from the statutory panel of the locals and on
majority decision among the three in writing as a statutory requirement. The process helps
the democratisation of the policing at the grassroot level consectary to the zeitgeist sans the
negative aspects of the democratic process. The opus musivum brings the advantage of a
collective decision and a touch of legal expertise and local-sense to the policing decisions and
actions. The systemic change may take away the apollyon of corruption immanent in the
ancien regime and also oppilate it too. Indeed, much depends upon the avizefull selection of
the locals by the district police superintendent. After all, he is responsible au fond for the
perficient policing in his district.
Two techniques that constitute the bedrock for transforming Indian police to an efficient
outfit in the absence of motivation and professionalism at higher levels are touched upon
here. The Indian police must learn to live with the cul de sac of such an absence and
consectaneous maelstrom and adapt as it is well-nigh impossibel to breach complacency.
Ergo, if anything, it must be at lower levels. And the grassroot level is the most ideal
candidate to take something pro bono publico. Hence, a couple of isagogic techniques that I
think innovative to restructure policing and police administration at the grassroot level are
dealt in brachys here. If the new fangled techniques are imprimis incorpsed assez bien in
Indian police system, I obsign that that contabescent Indian police is bound to experience
considerable face-lift.
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REVAMPING THE INVESTIGATION MACHINERY
Indian Constitution makes Criminal Justice System a Rhadamanthine steelframe of the

rule of law when it preconises in Article 20(1), No person shall be convicted of any offence
except for violation of a law in force at the time of the commission of the act charged as an
offence, nor be subjected to a penalty greater than that which might have been inflicted under
the law in force at the time of the commission of the offence. A common place looking but
potent instrument in theory that keeps out faith, public opinion or even sittlichkeit beyond the
purview of the nations Criminal Justice System and proclaims the rule of law as its sole life
and blood and making all equal before the law irrespective of ones status, standing and rank
in the society. However, the realities in the field as it developed today are entirely different
from what was perceived then by the fathers of the Indian Constitution at a milieu of different
value system. The democratic political dynamics of India since independence took a direction
entirely different from the popular expectations and thus the need of corrections perforce.
POLITICAL LEADERSHIP
Amod Kanth, DGP, who was sacked by the Government from the post of the Police Chief
of Goa on 25 November on the ground that the DGP did not obey the Governments written
orders reacted by stating that the police are the agents of law and he did not believe in loyalty
to anyone, but strongly believed in the performance of duties in terms of constitutional, legal
and people-oriented parameters. Kudos to his noble ideas and values. I too had championed
that cause of the profession and perhaps the first to bring out the ideal in concrete ideas in
1990s. However, the conundrum lies in the lengths to which the Indian Constitution moves
and prepares for those paradigmatic roles for its police in its body and gestalt.
Police and policing for the Indian Constitution are nothing more than the subject matters
of Legislative Powers as enshrined in the Lists of its Seventh Schedule under Article 246,
ipso facto rendering it within the constitutional limits subordinate to the control and
supervision of the political bosses in power and their policies and programmes. Sadly, Indian
Constitution does not recognise their professional ideals, values and conscience, and their
singular role as the custodians of the rule of law. They are circumscribed by the political will
to which they are subordinate. All the extant ills of this maledict country emanate from this
sole provenance. This is a serious matter as far as investigation of crimes is concerned.
CRIMINAL INVESTIGATION
Criminal investigation as the bedrock of the prosecution, judicial proceedings and

postliminary penal servitude forms the seed of the criminal justice system. Crime prevention
activities being pneumatic and nebulous as what it is, it is criminal investigation that
constitutes the spine of the crime administration anywhere in the world. Right investigation of
crimes is the soul of fair societal living and the foundation of the fair and secure living.
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PRAVEEN KUMAR
The Indian Constitution rests the control and supervision of the premiere investigation
agency of the country, the Central Bureau of Investigation, in the hands of the political
leadership of the Union Government and the police and the offences against the State Laws in
the hands of the political leadership of the State Government by keeping the subject matters
in respective Lists of the Seventh Schedule under Article246. This sine dubio provides a key
and decisive role to the political leadership in power in the investigation of crimes and
renders the police mere professional tools of the political decision makers. Considering the
growth of the political culture of the country in the last six decades and the need of absolute
fairness and objectivity in the process of the criminal investigation, better deal for criminal
investigation in the gestalt of the Indian Constitution is certainly called for. This is sine qua
non for the survival of the nation as well as for the health of its political and public life.
POLITICAL COMPULSIONS
Shibu Soren, the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha chief, who was the Coal and Mines minister in
the UPA government quit the Cabinet on July 24 in face of vociferous demand by the BJP
and its NDA allies for his resignation after a Jharkhand court issued a non-bailable warrant
against him in a 20-year-old case relating to the 1975 Chirudih massacre during the agitation
for a separate Jharkhand state, only to be reinducted to the Union Cabinet on November27 as
the minister of Coal after the Opposition was cornered by its own act of going all out in
support of the Kanchi Shankaracharya, Shri Jayendra Saraswati while the latter was arrested
by the Tamilnad police on November 11 on the charges of conspiracy for the murder of a
whilom devotee of the Kanchi Mutt, Shankararaman. The episode makes it crystal clear how
political parties treat investigation of even serious cases of murder as their political pawns to
checkmate the opponents. Criminality is a non-issue in Indian political parlance and criminals
accrescently proved to be the pillars of Indias democracy. They constitute the spine of the
Indian politics. No Government is possible and complete without their participation. Criminal
investigation becomes a farce if left to the mercy of these people, which it has already
become in the last half century in India.
POLITICS IS FOR POWER
Politics is for power. Power in democracy does not come for free. Il faut de l argent in
politics. No sensible person can squander his hard earned money in political gambles. That is
how corruption enters politics a la derobee. Peter Ustinov said, Corruption is natures way
of restoring our faith in democracy. It is dangerously radicated in the extant political system
of India so much that politics sans corruption has become unimaginable. As back as in 1971,
when the then Union Finance Minister, Y.B.Chavan approached the then Prime Minister
Indira Gandhi with a proposal for demonetisations to curb corruption, the only curt response
from the Prime Minister was a question, Chavanji, are no more elections to be fought by the
Congress Party? That reveals the political compulsions within which a politician must
operate.
The grab is more serious lower down the level. Every MLA or MP counts in the survival
game of the politics. The choice is between power interests and national interests. Almost
always it is the survival instinct and the lure of power that prevails true to the very definition
of the politics. Peoples representatives are allowed to auction postings within their
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constituencies to influence the administration in their favour or to enable them to pool the
fund to face the next election as a quid pro quo for their continued support to the Chief
Executive of the Government and his survival. This is a vicious circle of political
compulsions outgrown in the Indian variety of the democracy. No investigation machinery
can remain fair and objective in such an ambience. Political system in India has just not
matured for the enlightened leadership of the criminal justice system.
POLITICAL EXPEDIENCY
Criminal investigation in India has become a matter of political expediency. State

political leadership decides about the permission to the CBI to investigate a case depending
on its own vulnerability and interests in the case. Whether it is in states or in the Centre,
criminal cases are taken for investigation, the pace of the investigation is decided, arrests are
made, bails and post-arrest treatments are decided, and even the quality of the investigation
are regulated according to the needs of the politicians in power. Important investigations
continuing for decades and even dying in rerum natura following political needs are no more
exceptions in India.
The way out to resile the criminal investigation machinery to its normal fairness,
objectivity and the framework of the rule of law is to institute a constitutional body for
criminal investigation called the Indian Investigation Authority in the Centre and subordinate
Authorities in the states by due constitutional amendments a la the judiciary with autarchy to
guide the process of the investigations from the scratch to the end sans immunity to any
except perhaps to the President of the country. Indeed the process necessitates a specialised
cadre of investigators responsible only to the Investigation Authority with a senior Supreme
Court judge as its constitutional head and senior police and civil service officers of proven
integrity selected by the Authority in consultation with the Chief Justice of the Supreme
Court as members in constitutional posts and responsible only to the Chief Justice of the
Supreme Court and the President of the country. This may considerably relieve the
investigation machinery of the country from the epinosic political compulsions and bring
fairness, objectivity and the framework of the rule of law so essential for the rightful process
of any investigation back to its frame.
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PRAVEEN KUMAR
COORDINATED APPROACH TO
CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM
Justice begotten at a cost is justice lost. Justice is a natural right. It is the sine qua non
and the raison detre of the social grouping. Justice in a social environment has to be as
natural as sleep or oxygen to a living being. Free and fair justice is the leges legum of the
human rights. The proficiency of the judicial administration system has to be assayed with
this litmus test and its role in the system has to be judged by its contributions to this goal of
the judicial administration system.
Justice in its basic sense necessitates an integral vision. Justice abstracted from its
environment, past, present, future, diverse issues, dramatis personae and related events
cannot be justice in the true sense of the word. Justice in parts is no justice that lasts. Justice
involves delving deep down to the heart of an issue and delivering justice in reference to all
related issues and matters to the rightful entitlement of all. This presupposes a passion for
objectivity and justness and above all, selflessness in the arbitrators of justice as well as in
those who are in the service of the administration of justice.
JUDICIARY AND THE POLICE
Effectiveness of police lies in its ability in making justice an easily and cheaply
dispensable commodity. Police are the first line of the means of dispensing justice. Courts
come to the scene only in far later stage for restricted number of cases. For the hoi polloi,
police is the first and the only easy defence against injustices. Most cases of disputes never
cross the thresholds of the police stations. Police do act as arbitrators of justice in criminal
as well as civil cases in exercise of the wide spectrum of responsibilities of crime
investigations, investigations, maintenance of law, enforcement of order, preventive measures
and security duties. They enjoy a key position in the administration of justice. A good police
certainly symbolise effective administration of justice more than courts and prosecution
department together do. That is why a sound police system is conditio sine qua non for the
health and progress of the country and its tenuous social fabric.
The position of the police as the enforcer of the laws of the country gives it an edge in the
judicial system of the country in enforcement of laws, preventive measures and investigation
of crimes and provides it a strategic relationship with the dispenser of laws namely the
judiciary. Though the judiciary has absolutely no say in the organisational matters of the
police force, it, if it so desires and have adequate resources to do it, can have absolute control
over the police functions as the police au fond is the enforcer of laws and the judiciary is the
interpreter and dispenser of the laws and the synergy between the two functions perforce
implies absolute subordination of the police functions to the judicial review. However, this
may not be the case in practice for several reasons. One is the concept of judicial restraint.
Another is the constraints within which the judiciary functions. The other is the
disinclination of the judiciary to interfere with the executive functions of the police unless
330
circumstances compel it to do so to discharge its cardinal responsibility of upholding the rule

of law and justice in the country.
In the spectrum of the state administration, the police enjoys or suffers a rather polemic
position defying many principles of the statecraft like the insulation of legislature, executive
and judiciary in the machinery of the state governance or the compatibility between the
constitutional rights invested with the importance enjoyed by a government organisation in
the state administration. The police organisation on the other hand is the best example of the
unity of state administration, of the synergy of various organs of the state governance. It, as
an enforcer of laws, investigator of crimes and an apparatus of state security, share a lever
with all the pockets of the statecraft and acts as the spinal chord of the government by
coordinating the functions of the legislature, the executive and the judiciary in establishing
the rule of law. Its bonds with the executive and the judiciary are equally strong and act as a
powerful link between the two powerful wings of the government. It is a string that binds
disparate wings and organs of the government together and gives it a sense of oneness and
belonging while itself remains en arriere. This explains the sine qua non of the police in
state administration while denying it a ranking place, as a governing body sui juris like many
other organs of the state administration. The police as a government agency represent the
driving force of the executive and the controlling device of the judiciary. It is the working
muscle of the government. It represents the law of the country and therefore ultimately
responsible to the laws of the country. While it is a part of the executive, its subordination to
the judiciary and responsibility towards the law of the country raise it above the scope of the
executive functions. While it is a part of the judiciary, its position as a handmaid of the
executive, spreads its role above the scope of the judiciary. Ergo, the police is a government
agency that performs functions both within and above the scope of the executive and
judiciary as well as the legislature. The police is a part of all these wings of the government
and subordinate of each to them while outgrow each of them in professional discharge of its
responsibilities au reste. What is required is the realisation of this sui generis position of the
police and preparing itself mentally to discharge these cardinal responsibilities in
compatibility with the professional requirements.
UNITY OF PURPOSE IN INDIAN POLICE
In the current system of policing in India, police stations and district police units form
clavis of the administration. Some of the functions discharged at these levels have concurrent
jurisdiction with some special units at state and national levels. Crime investigation in
special circumstances can be taken over from the district police administration by the state
CID or the CBI at the national level. The police in the state are devised as an independent
unit. In a vast country like India, policing being shared between myraid independent units
with no perspicaciously defined mechanism of concinnity, the problem occurs of coordination
and the unity of purpose in tackling crimes. Except for the sense of national unity there is
nothing common among these units to appropinquate the gauntlets with a common cause.
Even the common Indian Police Service is unable to bring about a unit of purpose to policing
throughout India. This gives an impression of fragmentation in the Indian police. A
fragmented police cannot turn out work in full-stream owing to the waste by leakage in the
process of co-ordination between the fragmented parts. India must
consider devising a
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PRAVEEN KUMAR
pollent unitary police administration at the centre with full control over subordinate state and
union terrotory police setups. This would avoid coordination problems and help policing by
allogamy to be more purposeful in tackling challenges from the national perspective. It also
makes available larger resources from the national level for policing apart from strengthening
the sense of belonging to one police. This is the conditio sine qua non for the perficient
policing of the future.
CRIMINAL LAWS
A few glaring anomalies and some erroneous provisions more suo in the extant criminal
laws of India improvise for the easy escapades of criminals from the clutches of law and the
harassment of innocent persons by the law enforcing authorities. The psellisms of the
criminal law have to be plugged imprimis if crime administration has to be effective in India
and command a semblance of respect and confidence of the public.
The police or judicial officer under whose custody a person is kept under detention should
be made responsible by name for the latters timely release with a provision that if detention
exceeds the period provided by law, it will make the concerned officer liable for proceedings
for unlawful detention sans the privilege of exemptions ingenerate to the actions performed in
official colour.
CRIMINAL LAW BOARD
India requires the constitution of a statutory Criminal Law Board as an advisory body to
liaise between the criminal justice setup and the union law ministry regarding criminal laws
to facilitate glib process of the criminal justice system. The board, as a permanent body, may
have senior most officers of the central government from home and law ministries, police and
prosecution departments, distinguished humanists and senior advocates of the Supreme Court
as members with the union home minister as its chairman. It must undertake propaedeutic of
the need of changes in criminal laws from time to time. The board may meet every quarter or
a year and discuss extant criminal laws and their shortcomings in the light of representations
received from officers in the field from the police and prosecution departments and make
proposals for requisite changes in criminal laws e ra nata.
HUMAN RIGHTS CELLS
Institution of human rights cells in each district and metropolitan city as advisory
conseil to the police of the region with local human rights champions as its members to draw
attention to specific instances of inhuman conduct by subordinate officers would meet the
needs to keep the police on pernoctation against excesses. The human rights cells should be a
dynamic part of the police administration in the regions and its observations should set in
motion a process of verification and peremptory action. Though subjecting police to the
scrutiny of an outside setup may appear a retrograde measure, it may help the assuefaction of
the policing methods to human comports and saves the establishment from the charges of
violation of human rights
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STRUCTUAL CHANGES
The first and foremost job to do to bring back the police on rails as a fair dealer in the
process of the criminal justice system is to extricate the police from the epinosic influence of
all hues by making it responsible to an independent Authority with absolute powers to take
decisions on matters of policing and criminal investigation. The Authority should be a
professional body of men and women of proven probity and competence as members, who
reached a stage from where they need not sacrifice their convictions to appease those in
power and standout in foro conscientiae. A working arrangement is to be devised by which
the Authority becomes responsible directly to the legislature and functions independently a la
the judiciary, the Central Vigilance Commission, the Comptroller and Auditor General or the
Chief Election Commissioner.
Creation of a Core Group of people adept in assessing men and character within the
aforesaid Police Authority helps to create a feeling of confidence and job security in police
and prod to discharge the duties of crime investigation fearlessly. This Group that oversees
the work of police personnel from a distance should be ultimately responsible for all career
decisions in the police force. The responsibility of senior officers in assessing the work of the
subordinates that forms the major embarrassment of the present Indian police dispensation as
the infima species of the kind in the world must be limited to giving opinion about the
performance of their subordinates to the Core Group; the expert Core Group must process the
opinion by its own research, expertise and discretion and take responsible decision on its own
research, expertise and discretion and take responsible decision on its own. The Group must
be made responsible for all development plans of the police, work assessment, job analyses,
recruitment and management of human resources etc. Institution of such a Core Group to
oversee the career development of police personnel without personal bias may bring
revolutionary changes in the police by committing it to its work ethics and professional telos
with single mindedness to bring in objectivity and fairness to the process of the crime
investigation from the vile prise of those in power and rich and powerful enough to dictate
terms to the police.
PROSECUTION
The weakest link in the chain of the criminal justice system in India ironically is the
cardinal factor of the system namely the prosecution that actually heads and guides the
criminal justice process in countries like the United States of America. The prosecution as the
interface between the investigating agency and the judiciary and between the investigation
and the law is run in India by minor government departments with all the malaises and
malfeasances common to such setups like indifference, inefficiency, complacency,
casualness, corruption and lack of professionalism and competitive edge. Prosecution is
cardinal to criminal justice process and professionalism and competitive edge constitute the
summum bonum of the process as it makes investigation relevant to the judiciary and
judiciary meaningful to the investigation to emphasise that crime never pays and criminality
never succeeds. While investigation involves indagation of facts and adjudication involves
interpretation of laws, prosecution is involved in the hard creativity and commitment of
rendering the facts d accord with the right interpretation as facilitator of the criminal justice
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PRAVEEN KUMAR
system. In this sense, prosecution is the syndesis of the process and needs really high-calibre
performance to make the criminal justice system a success. It needs social sensitivity and
commitment of the highest order and competitive edge to fight out the rich and powerful
criminals with the best defence lawyers and creative edge in the service of the truth and
justice. It is easier said than possible in a government setup of the Indian mindset.
An efficacious criminal justice system calls for a sound prosecution mechanism that is
flexible enough to draw the best talents from the open market and reward strictly by
chevisance. The investigating agencies at various levels should have the liberty to pick the
best legal talents in the field as prosecutors for a fixed tenure like five years on a contract to
try their cases at attractive emoluments. The fear of outsiders on contract in government
setups is meaningless in the triste ambience of the profligate insiders of the independent
India. The selection of the right prosecutor cannot be left to any individual at any rank
because of the prolate fall in moral standards of the country. Each district police unit and state
and central investigating agencies must have a statutory prosecutor selection committee
constituted of the principal district Judge or his representative as the chairman, the Deputy
Commissioner of the district, the president of the district Bar Council and a representative
formally appointed by the Deputy Commissioner from the local Human Rights organization
or any public service organization as the members and the district police chief as the membersecretary for each district, High Court or Supreme Court Chief Justice or his representative as
the chairman, Chief Secretary of the state or the Cabinet Secretary, the president of the High
Court or the Supreme Court Bar Council and the head of the Human Rights Commission as
the members and the chief of the investigating agency as the secretary-member for the state
and the central investigating agencies for the selection of right prosecutors from the best legal
talents in the field for quantum meruit based on performance for fixed tenures on contract as
deemed fit from time to time. The high nature of the selection committee behoves to the high
importance of the right prosecutors at all levels for the success en semble of the criminal
justice system and the concomitant peace, security and prosperity of the country and its
people.
PRISONS
The place of prisons in the plexus of the criminal justice system is sine qua non in that it
is the guardian of all the condemned persons and the fate of their families and dependants.
Their responsibilities therefore are unenviable. This is especially so in the circumstances that
criminals are not born, but made by the circumstances and the insensitivities of the society
and the society that has spawned criminals out of them because of its failures has a
responsibility towards them to reform and accommodate them. Sadly, extant prison setups in
India as government departments as hubs of inefficiency, indifference and corruption largely
lack sensitivity to the gargantuan task. The sensitivity of the task as the custodians of the
periculous criminals including security threats further escalates the problem. Powerful and
rich criminals of whatever category living in prisons en prince is common knowledge in this
deus avertat country. There are myriad cases of dangerous criminals running their criminal
gangs extra muros from the precincts of the prisons and even committing murders and
sabotages with the patronage of the corrupt prison officials. Such a prison administration
undermines the very purpose of the criminal justice system.
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Indian prison administration needs overhauling a fond without the edifice of its structure
being disturbed. How about a Prisons Management Board for each prison with the head of the
prison as its member-secretary and the head of the prisons department as the chairman with
the Deputy Commissioner of the concerned district, the district police chief and the district
medical officer and two representatives from the local human rights and social service
organizations appointed by the Deputy Commissioner as members running the administration
and statutorily being responsible for the performance of the prison? It shall deracinate all
extant evils of the prison administration and free the hapless prisoners from all their
gratuitous inhuman sufferings and the rich and powerful among them from being a princely
retreat and a haven of safety and security to hide from the revenge of the opposite groups.
The heart of the responsibilities of the criminal justice system is cleansing the society
by bringing criminals to book. Investigation is the prime tool available for this end. Human
rights, justice and equitability before the law make up the essence of the privileges man
enjoys in the social setup. The organisations entrusted with the responsibility of protecting
the rights and doing justice to all with the equitable process of the criminal justice system en
semble are doing a disservice to the professions and humanity if failed in their cardinal
responsibility for want of coordination and synergy in approach.
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PRAVEEN KUMAR
THE CORE OF POLICE PROBLEMS

A Country begets the Police it deserves. The Police is the creation of the society it
polices. It inherits its values, culture, practices and aspirations from the society to which it
belongs. The ambience defines the nature of the Police, the country begets. In this sense,
India got a Police system it deserves with all its perversions like corruption, brutality,
criminality, inefficiency, and indeed mediocrity. Nothing more can be expected from the fall
of value system India suffered after independence. The prime attributes of the Indian Police
system of the post-independent vintage are lack of motivation, lack of professional
commitment, devastating job culture and the ineffective training system. With the lure of
money and the abuse of power as the center of the Indian psyche and appointments and
promotions even at highest levels turning to be arbitrary after independence, both talent and
government institutions withered in the heath. Indian Police system is one of the major
casualties of the apollyon. Right people are crucial for police and policing. Character
constitutes the spine of a Police setup. Police is the real power in the field and constitutes the
strength of both the executive and the political system. As an instrument of power, it can be a
double-edged weapon; a cornucopia of safety, security and peace while good, and absolutely
demoniac while bad. This festinated the aggravation of the situation. All problems of the
extant Police system in India flow from this single fact; all talks other than these basic causes
like inadequate resources, unscrupulous politicians, legal and political constraints, growing
crime rate, inadequate manpower, fractured organisation etc are either sheer
misrepresentations to evade responsibility or just manifestations of the basic causes projected
above.
The lever de rideau here is the issue why and who. It is easy to blame unscrupulous
politicians, the hors la lai, powerful and rich criminals, the lure of money , the constraints of
democracy, legal hurdles, fragile system, fractured organisation, professional constraints,
accrescently complex and violent society, rise in crime rate, increasing work pressure and hitech crimes. These factors represent the circumstances in which Police is called to work on
and show results. They constitute the raison detre of the Police and do not constitute
execuses for inefficiency, nonperformance and failures. The challenge is to accept the reality
and show results. The burden is on those at the top-wrung of the Police. It is their failures to
adequately plan, organise, execute and control that toppled the Indian Police of the
democratic vintage from its high pedastal. Their lack of foresight and vision, lack of
brilliance and foremost of all, the love of the UPSC of the mediocrity and its certain
degringolade from seventies as a responsible public institution committed to merit and
character, combined with the unsavoury rat-race among officials to reach the top-wrung, and
consequent race to double-bend before the politcal bosses and the rich and the powerful who
count, tore the fabric of the Indian Police to shreds after independence.
It is a rebours for the political bosses and the rich and the powerful to turn blind
eye to the willing devotion and race of the Police top-brass to please and gratify. After-all,
Gandhis and Buddhas are not born everyday. They perforce take the advantage of the
situation and help their acolytes out of turn as a quid pro quo. The blame for this sorry state
of affair squarely lies on the Police and those who select and recruit such less than sound
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character to the Police. The nexus extends even to the rich and powerful and the hors la lai
who count. How the criminals as el patron can be policed by these weaklings and law and
order maintained?
It is preposterous to lay the blame on lack of resources or neglect of the Police by the
executive or the paucity of manpower. The truth is that the Police is over-indulged in India
by the Law-and-Order-sensitive political and bureaucratic machinery as far as sparse
resources of this poor country is concerned. Our Police leaders conduct like spoilt children.
Most of the resources made available are squandered and siphoned away to non-operational
and non-professional extravaganza or just wasted on unrealistic and foolhardy programmes a
grands frais, resulting in no or miniscule returns.
Another mendacity of the stock is the clamour about shortage of manpower en face
ascensive crime rate and policing responsibilities. Again, it is an attitudinal problem.
Effective policing never depends on numbers, more so in extant hi-tech age. It is quality,
planning, secrecy and surprise that really constitute the bedrock of effective policing. Show
of strength is never a forte of good and perficient policing. The truth is that the wastage of
human resources and man-power is phenomenal in Indian Police and criminal in proportion.
Police leadership is meant to face the reality, assess it, plan with foresight and vision and
accordingly remould the system and the organisation. It must set the lead by right job culture.
It is here that Police leadership failed. No political boss or executive head from outside can
do the job for him for the simple reason that policing is an extremely specialised job and no
outsider can have a keek to the intricacies of the Police and policing job.
Problems and challenges are natural in any setup. It is left to the Police leadership to
address them. The problems au fond in Police are lack of motivation, wrong job culture,
absence of professional commitment and poor training en arriere of every other problem and
issue. While this achilles heel is prevalent in Indian Police cap-a-pie, naturally the issue to
be addressed is who to bell the cat. Only public opinion and public pressures can bring about
the apotropaic change. But, Police is too a thick-skinned beast to respond to such opinions
and pressures. This is the crux of the problem. Right recruitment and sound training alone
can save Indian Police from its avernus by fine turning a healthy job culture.
The extant police ensemble is marked by lack of human concerns and empathy for the
fellow men. This has deprived the elements of heart and compassion from the body of the
bureaucracy. Initiatives, novel ideas and creative pursuits are seen as the antithesis of the
police. This has deprived the elements of brain and intellect from the corpus of the police
system. The result is a deadweight-police weighing down on the live India and sucking it dry
with evils and misuse of the powers invested on it for governing and steering the country
ahead.
India is an egregious forerunner in the world among countries most corrupt in public life.
The root cause of this grave malady is Indias corrupt governance pregnant with inefficiency,
indifference and gross temulence of power devoid of human elements. Police measures have
become synonymous in popular parlance and perception in India with foolhardy decisions
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and actions far removed from reality. Lack of accountability is the leitmotiv of governance in
India. This is a malengine consciously evolved ab intra to safeguard self-interests. Power
sans accountability rendered police in India an evil per se.
The evils of policing need not always be directed only against outsiders. Inscience knows
no boundaries. Even those within may become cruel victims of its grossly unrealistic and
farcical decisions as in the case of a highly talented and multifaceted genius who joined
service in a Southern Indian state in 1978. He was soon recognized for sheer brilliance and
purity of character as a diamond that can fit anywhere and as a peacock among the fowls.
Soon the recognition itself turned a noose on his neck. It was assessed by the inscient
bureaucracy that his outstanding attributes might prevent him from becoming popular
among the seniors and prevent him from reaching higher levels. A two-pronged strategy was
devised. He was to be roughed-up and denied promotions to rub-off his superior qualities and
the intimidating aura till the detrition by the sufferings forces him down to the ordinary level.
Once the job is accomplished, his lost seniority was to be restored a few years before
retirement.
He was denied promotions with the connivance of the UPSC following the meretricious
career plan year after year till his junior colleagues became senior to him by two ranks. He
was posted to most humiliating posts and harassed endlessly. However, the process got
caught in a skein as the infaust officer refused to come down from his immanent and really
superior qualities even after two decades of immanity and sufferings while the bureaucracy
refused to yield and give up its illegal and unconstitutional stance until the officer
condescends to the mediocre levels. The refusal of the officer to approach judiciary against
the ill treatment for redressal and his resolve to depend solely on his talents and character
helped the establishment to persist with the preposterous process. His morale remained high
throughout non obstante serious humiliations and endless grief. He sought refuge in other
fields and won nonpareil accolades from everybody by sheer talents. His tormentors followed
him there too. The head of the State Intelligence who himself a small-time writer and
published a few books in a regional language used esoteric threats in 2000 on the publishers
of the accurst officer to discourage them from publishing his books. The publishers who
already had published half a score books of the officer returned two manuscripts of the officer
in sheer desperation expressing helplessness en face the police interferences. The release of
one of his books of academic interests by the State Governor in 2000 was ensured stalled in
the last minute.
Fanciful premises bordering madness tout court leading to irresponsible and eristic career
plans of that dimensions are possible only in governance utterly lacking in accountability and
only a sacred country like India can produce such gross grief, sufferings and humiliations eo
nomine noble intensions. Lack of transparency makes such atrocities possible and permits its
practice for decades as in the case study.
used to be or meant to be. In no way, under the present circumstances, does an ACR reflect
an officers qualities or capabilities. It is believed that the department would be far better off
without this pernicious evaluation process that breeds corruption and bias. What
characterises the ACR today is a distinct lack of objectivity; it has become a means to
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personal ends, a medium for the advancement of individual interests and even settlement of
personal scores. Servility is its inevitable consequence and it would not be immoderate to say
that eliminating the ACR altogether would be certainly a step forward.
If policing is to be effective in the years ahead, specialisation is crucial. I suggest three
distinct police services with separate recruitment and training: (1) Regulatory police or
uniformed police in charge of law and order and other regulatory duties; (2) Mainstay police
in charge of crime investigation and prevention and security and intelligence operation; (3)
Social police in charge of prevention and investigation of all social offences and
implementation of social legislation. All three wings should have their own individual
organisations up to the district level with independent Superintendents and staff as required,
functioning in tandem in much the same way as the Army, Navy and Air Force. At the apex,
could be a specially constituted body called the State Police Authority with the chiefs of all
three wings as members and the Chief Secretary as chairman.
All the present maladies emanate from the politicians who are only concerned with
winning the next elections. Until the organisation is extricated from the grip of politicians, it
cannot hope to rise above the mediocre level, either in proficiency or in character. Such
mediocrity is wont to percolate downwards in a democratic setup.
An All India Police Authority accountable only to the President of India at the national
level with the regional Police Boards in States as independent bodies should be created. The
Authority must be headed by a Supreme Court Judge with the Union Home Secretary and the
Cabinet Secretary as members and the senior most police officer of the country as the
member-secretary. The regional Police Boards must have a High Court Judge at the helm
with the Home Secretary and the Chief Secretary as members and the State Police Chief as
member-secretary. The arrangement will bring to an end interference of any kind in police
affairs, thus enabling the personnel to function in an independent atmosphere. These
measures complete with the overhaul of the UPSC to bring back all the former gloria of
commitment to merit and character may dawn a new era in Indian public life.
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TRAINING STRATEGY TO AFFECT BEHAVIOURAL

AND
ATTITUDINAL CHANGE IN THE POLICE PERSONNEL
I begin the paper with the first paragraph of the article, NEED OF ATTITUDINAL
CHANGE IN INDIAN POLICE from my book POLICING THE POLICE, published in
2000. There I said, The major problem that confronts extant police is its attitude to work,
responsibilities, profession, organization, government and the public. It is confounded about
its goals, objectives, loyalties, professional ethos, job culture, procedures and practices that
carry it forward in the field in attending professional duties. In the wilderness of undefined
roads, Indian police grope for perspicacious directions to reach professional ends. Popular
phrases like maintenance of order, enforcement of law, prevention of crime, investigation of
offences, protection of security interests etc are too generic terms to carry any meaning and
significance during the process of actual policing. Perficient policing is possible only in the
ambience of well-rounded and clearly defined specific guidelines for action that help
moulding professional attitude in the organization. Police develop wrong attitudes in its
absence by erroneous interpretation of the situation around. This is what happens to Indian
police now: wrong attitudes and concomitant confusion about performing legitimate duties.
Professional ideals of police are rooted in the terra firma of the rule of law, justice,
order and the security of the country and its citizens. Police organization is basically
responsible to the constitution of the country and the government constituted and the laws
enacted in accordance with the constitution. Police lose its relevance to the country when its
professional attitude goes against the cardinal ideals of the profession. The challenge of a
police organization lies in moulding professional attitude as required by the ideals of the
profession. Wrong attitudes inveterate in extant practices and procedures of policing are
shaped by self-interests, misconceptions, ignorance and tendency to pursue easy and shortcut
methods: they are hard to be broken and survive under most odds. Only efficient, honest and
highly motivated leadership alone can crack the etui encompassing it. Once it is done,
building a new set of right professional attitudes is relatively a simpler job to a committed
leadership. Basic to these efforts is a realization among the top brass about what constitute
right and wrong attitudes. The crux of the problem of Indian police lies here. It is distressing
to note that the top leadership of post-independent Indian police is responsible for the
prevarication of the organization from its professional attitude of absolute commitment to
public order and safety, justice and rule of law to easy and shortcut avenues of selfish
interests. The change percolated downwards. In the rush of Indians replacing the British to
sensitive government positions on the eve of independence, men of inadequate caliber and
merit occupied key government posts. This happened in police as in other government
departments. The result was corrosion in leadership qualities, traits of excellence and high
personal merits, so essential to run public and national affairs at the top. It was during this
period that Indian police lost its track in professional policing and exposed itself to the luxury
of dancing to the easy and soft tunes of convenience by yielding to pressures of political and
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other vested interests. Policing powers served as a tool of maximizing self-interests and
personal comforts at the cost of professional policing. In the process, the country suffered
and police lost its face.
WRONG ATTITUDES APLENTY
A profession like police naturally has its own goals, objectives and ideals to pursue.
They get clouded in the smog of practical turn-arounds in the field and ultimately lose their
edge in the spin of attitudinal aberrations. The consequence is clashes of loyalties, adoption
of immodest vectors in policing, the issue of excesses and inactions, tendency to bend rules
and laws to achieve perceived ends in the hour of need of upholding the rule of law, urge to
cash-in on the ignorance and weaknesses of the ignorant people around and indulgences in
unprofessional works in the name of discharging legitimate police duties. Performance of
any profession depends upon three factors: professional ideals, job culture and actual
practices and procedures. Job culture is spawned of constant interaction of professional
ideals and actual practices and procedures in the field. Though basically is a product of the
past, it considerably affects the future performance of an organization. Practices and
procedures being the primary vehicle of attitude, they help moulding job culture a la
immanent attitude in the job. The result is a pollent hold of attitude in deciding the direction
of an organisation. A profession loses its raison detre while attitude in the job prevaricates
from professional ideals.
People caught in the web of criminal laws deserve sympathy and kindness until they
are proved guilty beyond doubts. They need to be treated with gentleness and courtesy that
behoves to interpersonal relationship in a civilised society while the process of investigation
continues with all efficiency and ruthless exactitude. Police as investigator is not invested
with powers to punish for the crimes committed. Fair chance to persons under investigation
to prove their innocence goes a long way in unearthing truth and solving crimes justly. This
has to be the attitude of the police during crime investigation. Truth and justice have to be
their goal. Indian police lack the maturity and poise.
A serious Achilles heel of Indian police is its perverted attitude towards rules and laws.
Bending rules and laws to suit self-interests is one dimension of the spiel. Another dimension
is its blind application sans sense of proportion and discreetness while self-interest is not an
issue. It is seen in enforcing laws and maintaining order. Police forget that rules and laws are
just tools in the larger cause of peace and order of the society and sadly handle laws for laws
sake. Rules and laws are invested on police like weapons as the dernier ressort while all
other avenues are shut. Discreetness is their constraint. Objectives are primary. Rules and
laws must follow them only as tools to that end. The realisation is rarely found in the present
police. It operates laws for laws sake by relegating organisational objectives to oblivion.
Professional objectives suffer and police become an object of detestation consequential to this
perverted attitude. Mechanical enforcement of gratuitous rules and laws constrict the
freedom of people for no specific purpose and weaves an unnecessary web of constraints
around them for nobodys good. The attitude is fatal to fair and professional policing
practices and needs to be corrected on priority to make application of rules and laws needbased in reaching professional targets.
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Another field where police need to change its attitude is its contempt for human values.
Policing is just an instrument to the cause of protecting human values. Police oblivious to
this fact, subject human values to immane policing methods in the name of policing. Third
degree methods are the point. Malfeasances do not behove to the cause of human values.
Means are as important as ends in policing. Pursuing unjust means for the cause of justice is
the spiel of the Frankenstein, the story of an offspring eating its creator. Inviolable
commitment to human values and rights is the foundation of good policing. Human touch is
sine qua non for professional policing. Human concern is the raison detre of good policing.
The shift in attitude needs to be from blind and blanket policing for the policings sake to
discreet and enlightened policing to reach professional objectives. The shift has to be from the
use of policing powers to maximise professional goals. The shift must see police taking risks
in the interests of the profession and doing intelligent policing rather than indulging in
manoeuvres of personal security. The process warrants massive exercise in attitudinal
change.
AFFECTING ATTITUDINAL CHANGE

Forcing police away from vicious practices and procedures and undesirable job
culture through the attitudinal change is an arduous and time-consuming exercise even for
experts in the field. The exercise has to be a multi-pronged attack on inveterate
misconceptions and wrong notions in extant policing by extensive exposures to talks,
discussions, seminars, briefings, studies, researches and in-service training involving analyses
of policing, its ideals, objectives, methods, means and ends, social relevances, pressures,
policing environment, psychological aspects of policing etc. The exercise has to be intended
to provoke police personnel to think about their profession without dogma and arrive at
desirable conclusions about professional policing and impress them on the ingredients of
good policing by constant exposure. A few ideal cases as models have tremendous impact on
the cause of creating right attitudes. Studies and researches on policing and policing methods
provide a sound foundation to these exercises. A police organisation interested in improving
its quality and performance cannot go without sound study centres and research projects on
the issues of policing. These attempts provide both inputs and insight to the behavioural
pattern of the police in field under different situations and stress patterns as differentiated
from what are desired. They bring both gestalts to contrast in terms of their perficiency,
professional needs and relevance to the environment of policing to affect attitudinal change in
right direction by way of conviction. The immediate need is inducing doubts about the
soundness of existing attitudes to encourage discussion on the topic. Deliberate guiding
through structured mental exercises to desirable end forms the latter part of the task. Indeed,
the whole exercise has to be planned and executed in detail by highly efficient leadership in
the police. The conundrum is who behoves to handle the highly responsible job while the
leadership of the police itself is mired in wrong attitudes to the job of policing.
RIGHT RECRUITMENT
Character is nascitur, non fit. Sound character is the materfamilias of right attitudes.
The principium of right training strategy is the realization that character and attitudes cannot
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be created. Character is an immanent element. Any discussion on right training strategy sans
discussion on right recruitment is like building an edifice on sand-bed, like watering a dead
plant, an exercise in futility, an intellectual wanze. Right training is nothing more than
perficient seedling of a seed or precocious flowering of a blossom. It is more so in issues of
character, attitude and behavior, the three being entwined into one with character spawning
attitude and attitude in its turn defining the behavior. This brings us to the intricate issues of
character and character building. The triste state d affaire of the Indian police of the postindependent vintage and its degringolade after independence can be attributed tout a fait to
this single factor: lack of character. That is recruitment of wrong people, recruitment of
people lacking in character, integrity, honesty, human sensibilities, service motive and
Rhadamanthine attributes.
The corner stone of any perficient training strategy is right recruitment. The emphasis
should be on sound character reflecting on integrity, human sensibilities and service motive.
This necessitates creation of a character profile of each applicant imprimis in the process of
selection and recruitment. Once character is in place, other needs follow by the fundamentum
relationis and secondary to the need hierarchy enface crucial character in professional
policing. Ability to envision and see things in broader perspective also needs to be tested for
final selection.
Indeed, practical problems are mind-boggling if not impossible to manage. First of all,
drawing the character profile of eligible applicants is easier said than done. It calls for
complete overhauling of the extant selection procedures and evolution of psychological
processes as the prime mechanism of the selection in place of present highlight on answering
abilities. Competence of the present psychological processes in drawing right character
profile is another issue. And the ever-presence interference of political and influential lobbies
and the greed of the selectors at all levels are the grave hurdles for this process to be
feracious.
WARMING-UP PROCESS
The period of initiation is the most important and impressionable period in the careerlife of fresh recruits to the police department. The process of warming-up is based on the
psychological needs of human nature. New entrants must be handled with utmost care to give
them confidence and a feeling of belonging at the incipient stage itself. A sense of
confidence and belonging to the organisation and an ingenerate love and respect for the
higherups are the substruction on which discipline grows. Efforts to inculcate disicipline in
a void are like waiting for rain from the autumn sky. Indian police impresarios failed to
understand such finer nuances of administration when they copied the system of the British
Indian police. And so we now have a police system where discipline is insisted on
subordinates sans the conditions requisite for the discipline. The recruits, who enter the fold
with open sensibilities and high expectations, wither after braving for a while the brusque and
insensitive conduct of their higher ranks. These recruits continue thereafter to be constant
enemies of the higher ranks and the department for which they must continue to work for the
next three to four decades. A police department constituted of such members, thanks to the
shabby approach of the insensitive higher ranks in this most impressioanble period of the
formers carrier-life cannot turn out eximious work. It is a tragedy that India neither spawned
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a police force of its ain superior values nor copied the police force of the British vintage in its
entirety with its finer points, but cultivated instead a burlesque of the rough and mediocre
aspects of both.
ACADEMIC TRAINING
It is euphemistic to nuncupate extant Indian police training cap-a-pie as a maelstrom. It is
in utter disarray and directionless. Emphasis is on information, which is not a big deal in this
age of Internet and competitive marketing of all kinds of information. What is required is
blossoming the potential right character, attitudes and requisite skills. This is the field where
complete overhauling of the training system is called for. Save the constabulary for which
spoon-feeding of the rudimentary criminal laws are must, otherwhere wanze the precious
training period on basics while prime issues like character building and behavioral and
attitudinal evolutions remain untouched is criminal offence per se. What is required is laying
a sound foundation for character building as a powerful base for passions for righteous
policing, and motivating the young recruits in that direction. This aspect is completely
forgotten in Indian police training now.
Basic police training course at all levels should begin with exclusive exposure in the first
month to the sine qua non of sound character, integrity, honesty, humility, human sensibilities
and the Rhadamanthine attributes as the springboard of the right attitudes in policing.
Policemen as the custodians of the rules and laws of the country and the agents of the public
sittlichkeit in uniform how stand out from the public must be deeply etched on the young
minds to guide them all through their career and light their path with the flambeau of
righteousness thus lighted. The need of right public relations and image building in perficient
policing cannot be over-emphasised at this stage of the adsorption of the young recruit to the
fold of the police setup. The young recruits should be impressed on the importance of means
in achieving targets and how malfeasance leads to utter disaster in the end. And also how
right policing stands on the bedrock of the human rights.
The subjects to be covered during this period of one month at all levels should cover indepth study of human values and their philosophic foundations, policing philosophy,
objectives and ideals of right policing, the locus standi of the police and policing in a
democratic setup and the requisites of adjustments with the political and other leaderships and
the degrees to which the police should maintain its own space and balance, the place of rules
and laws in the overall scheme of the criminal justice system of the country and the shortfalls,
the supremacy of the constitution of the country, the true meaning of the loyalty and its
extensions in a democratic setup, the field realities of the less than perfect society with which
police constantly remains engaged in performing its duties and how to maintain an
adjustment mechanism in diverse situations in the overall interests of the peace and security
of the society. The period must cover also diverse case studies from the field about the
success stories of right character and attitudes in policing and analyses of the inner dynamics
therein. Indeed, these are intangible topics lacking suitable textbooks for police studies at all
levels now. It means earnest measures towards writing of suitable textbooks to this end for
various levels must find priority.
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While the first month of the academic training exclusively covered the character and
attitudinal issues, the remaining period of nine months too should have the subject covered in
addition to conventional police subjects. The telos is to build characters that approach
policing nec cupias, nec metuas. Here too, case studies from the field about success stories of
right character and attitudes must find priority.
Other measures during the academic training at all levels must cover recognition and
ample rewards for development of right character and attitudes even to the exclusion of talent
and technical skills in the training scheme, and right people as the models in the training staff
unlike now when it is only unwanted mediocre stuffs are fed to the police training institutions
at all levels. Excellent initiatives can do the tricks. There is an instant of a police officer in a
police training academy whilom a few years since for a batch of PSI recruit trainees
rubbishing his allotted law classes and in place briefing on practical tricks from his field
experience about making maximum at the earliest to recoup the bribe paid for obtaining their
recruitments. This is ovem lupo committere.
FIELD TRAINING
Field training is the phase at which an entrant truly comes in contact with the true policing
and begins to form his own impression about police and policing in the field. There are any
number of instances in police department senior police officers at the eve of their retirement
recalling with fondness the contribution of a PC or HC they came in contact at this phase of
their career and actually trained them in the intricacies of policing in the field in drawing the
road map of their whole career. This is just to map out the significance of this phase of ones
career in policing. A wrong trainer at this stage, and a career wanze. Ergo, it is of paramount
importance that only right people in the field should be carefully selected and nominated to
assist and train probationers. Any wrong choice will result in irreparable casualties and
should be avoided with maximum caution. This principle should be applied to trainers even at
higher levels including the district Superintendents.
In addition, the district Superintendent should be made statutorily responsible for
imparting right and effective training particularly forming right attitudes in those under his
charge with mandatory provision for his performance in this regard figuring in his Annual
Performance Reports. There should be provisions for removal from service at this stage of the
probationary period for failing to develop right attitudes and character even after repeated
detailed warnings, indeed with checks and counterchecks in place to avoid misuses.
INSERVICE TRAINING
Repeated exposures to the need of sound character and right attitudes do help in instilling
the qualities. A refresher course of five days on character building and right attitudes in police
training institutes should be made statutorily mandatory once in every five years at all levels
up to the ranks of IGPs. In addition, every promotion up to this rank should be provisional
until the concerned official passes a written test on character building and right attitudes
conducted by the concerned police training institute.
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RESEARCH ON RIGHT POLICE ATTITUDES

Higher police training institutes should take up research projects on right police attitudes
on priority on a continuous basis by partaking the services of both eligible police officers and
nonpolice academics from the relevant fields. Every higher police training institute of the
country should have an exclusive department for research and producing text books on
character and attitudes in relevance to police and policing.
JOB CULTURE
Learning is a continuous process. It is so in police and policing also. All advantages of the
right recruitment, right academic training in police training institutes and right field training
face serious reif if field realities become inconducive to the ideals. Field realities with their
positive and negative elements truly constitute the nidus of the attitudes one is compelled to
adopt and adapt. Therefore, field realities of the policing warrant utmost attention in the
process of breeding right attitudes in the service. It is only through the right job culture that
the police environment in the tide of high morale turns the leaf and policing sorienter to
build up a set of right attitudes among its personnel.
It is the sacred responsibility of the top brass of the police to ensure that right means gets
precedence over achieving targets somehow. Shortcut methods at the cost of right means
should be discouraged. Exitus acta probat should not be the only and ultimate motto of the
policing. Right attitude should be amply rewarded in the usual course of the policing. Further,
a culture of senior officers briefing their juniors on the need of right character and attitudes in
every possible opportunity should be created in the organisation. Repeated stresses do have
their own impact particularly in a disciplined organisation like the police.
It is just the opposite of what is prolate in Indian police these days. Wrong values are
encouraged. Corrupt and caste-ridden elements see vaulting spots. Yes, Minister tregetours
win the rat-race. Corruption is swept under the carpet on the specious claim that there is a
separate organisation to deal with the matter and it is none of the responsibility of the
organisation to keep itself clean. For, if one resorts to the cleansing process, he is certain to be
unceremoniously kicked out by the political leadership. The situation has reached such a rien
ne va plus pass in India that it is often visioned that if an fonctionnaire is overlooked for
promotion or transferred to an undesirable post, more than often he is surmised and hailed as
a four-square and outstanding person and those who corner desirable posts are looked down
upon as part of the coprophagous rot. It is a grave vicious circle. There is no point in
discussing right attitude unless this pythogenic vicious circle is broken.
Problem of attitude basically is a problem felt at higher wrung in top brass of the force. The
stiff hierarchical order and command-obedience pattern of functioning make the lower wrung
irrelevant in matters of job attitude. Those down the ladder are loyal followers and obedient
operators in the path and policy laid above them. Their attitudes change shape from case to
case to meet the demands trickle from above. When the demand is to let out a rich and
powerful criminal with royal honours, those down the level do just that with vengeance; when
the demand from above is to frame an innocent man and obtain his confession by subjecting
to torture, they just do that with dedication for the sake of a well-earned pat of their
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omniscient superiors. It is again a question of ill-conceived job culture and attitudes, which
need to be corrected, as it is tangible to the standards of policing as all organisational matters
are. The primary target of attitudinal change is the higher wrung and the top brass. Others
follow and fall to place. The key lies in the realisation that something is wrong in the present
mode of policing. Demolition is the beginning of the construction. Once the realisation of
wrong dawns upon, reconstruction becomes possible. Police being an extrovert and actionoriented outfit, self-analyses and inward-looking tendencies do not come easily. While things
go wrong, introversion becomes sine qua non for healthy growth. This is what is required in
Indian police now.
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EVOLUTION OF NORMS
FOR MANPOWER AND LOGISTICS REQUIREMENTS
AT POLICE STATION, SUB-DIVISION AND DISTRICT
LEVELS
Greek verb logistikos meaning compute or calculate, and French verb loger meaning
lodge are the roots of the English noun logistics, meaning supply of supportive attributes
like manpower, transport, communication reticulation, weapons systems and other facilitators
in any operation as planned in advance, and accurately trace the true nature of an effective
logistics in terms of computed and calculated planning, and lodging or infixing the supportive
tools as calculated and planned in advance to be lodged at right time, place and occasion to
meet the needs of the operation for efficient performance and results, ipso facto investing
logistics and its execution a managerial edge. Logistics and logistics support imprimis are
managerial tools built on the bedrock of the management techniques. Logistics au fond is
perficient material management run with an edge of precise time management and efficient
space management, made possible with right foresight, creative vision, incisive planning and
accurate execution. Evolution of norms for logistics in police organisations is byword for the
desire for the application of management principles to policing and police organisations. It
represents induction of the faculty of ratiocination to the field of policing and police
organisations. It is a visionary step and prognosticates the aurora of the scientific age in
police organisations. Logistics norms differ only in details from the Police Station level to the
sub-division level to district level while rest on the same bedrock of broad managerial
techniques.
PRIME VECTORS
Both Police Station and District Police Administration are the pillars of the policing
structure of India with sub-divisions providing the links between the two. Sub-divisions
derive their sustenance and draw manpower and logistics from the Police Stations, ergo
strong and efficient Police Stations mean strong sub-divisions. In exceptional cases, subdivisions can always depend upon the strength of the district police force. Sub-divisions as
such do not have independent existence apart from the Police Stations under them and the
district police administration that guides and controls them. Therefore, discussion on the
logistics requirements of the Police Stations and the district police administration inter se
covers sub-divisions too.
Police Stations and district police administrations as the basic structures of the policing,
need to be pollent units capable of independently tackling crimes, security and law and order
issues from their own provenances, so that higher units are free to focus on larger issues of
countrywide dimensions sans distractions. For this to happen, the Police Stations have to be
full-fledged units as far as their manpower and logistics requirements are concerned without
the need of asking and waiting for the help extra muros. A sense of autarchy and autarky is
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basic here. The change brings pride to the unit and boosts morale bringing in high motivation
and inculcating lofty purpose to the job of policing. The end result will be quality and often
competitive performance of very high order in policing which sadly is a mere dream in the
extant policing structure of India.
Police Station setup of present India grievously falls short in logistics and infrastructure
support whether it is in manpower, transport, communication network, weapon systems or
financial powers. Though district police administrations are in far better position than the
Police Stations in all compartments en face respective requirements, they too are far from an
ideal position in respect of their requirements. While Police Stations must look to the district
police administration for help for manpower and logistics support for every uncommon
situation, the district police administration in turn looks to the state headquarters for elbow
space. Even begging other government departments for transport and other infrastructure
facilities is not unheard of. This is not an ideal situation by any stretch of imagination to any
police setup and should stop.
ARMED POLICE UNITS
Both Police Stations and district police administrations should become self-contained
units in respect of manpower, transport facilities, communication reticulatum, weaponry and
other logistics requirements. Every Police Station should convert into a nidus of police
functions under an officer of the rank of Police Inspector assisted by scores of Sub-Inspectors
in charge of different policing functions like crime, traffic, headquarters, intelligence, law and
order and armed police. Every Police Station must have a unit of its own armed reserve under
a PSI that provides men also for extraneous duties like guards, courts, summons, orderly
services apart from being the striking force. The armed police units of the district police
administration need to be strengthened in most districts and properly trained.
INTELLIGENCE GATHERING
Both Police Station and district police administration setups as far as intelligence
gathering is concerned is in extremely poor shape uniformly in most states of India, save a
few like Jammu and Kashmir where the need of self-preservation perforce dictated terms to
strengthen the intelligence apparatus. Intelligence is the bedrock of effective policing and sine
qua non for professional policing. Intelligence gathering and analyses apparatchik is the
principium among the core logistics supports that makes difference to the quality of the
policing process in both the Police Station and district police administration levels. Districts
do have structures to handle both the crime and law and order intelligence, though poorly
equipped and seldom made use of, while the same in the Police Station levels is almost
nonexistent. Intelligence gathering apparatchik needs to be strengthened at both the levels to
enrich policing process with relevant intelligence. An officer of the rank of PSI with adequate
staff in a Police Station should be in exclusive charge of collecting both the crime and law
and order intelligence to strengthen the hands of the officer heading the Police Station.
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MINI POLICE COMMISSIONERATES

Police Stations as centres of policing functions must work as mini police
commissionerates sans magisterial powers and treated as such in importance and powers.
Trust begets trust and trust sprouts responsibility. Once Police Stations revive respectability
and importance on par with that of the British vintage, they may regain their whilom aureole
at no time. This is so also with the district police administrations. Indeed, there are the issues
of corruption and misuse of powers that are beyond the scope of this discussion and it suffices
to state that appropriate checks and counterchecks should be in place to counter such
eventualities.
NIDUS OF POLICE FUNCTIONS
Pollent Police Stations as the centers of police functions justifies fewer police stations
around and irrationalise the present donnert trend among the top-brass of crying wolf for
creating more and more police stations at every possible opportunity and howling hoarse for
many more to create gulli-gulli police station situation with most of them weak and
incapable of independent existence and just meant as mere show-pieces for the public
consumption and adding to the welter in jurisdictional and other complications. The epinosic
response is owing to the copycat mindset so prolate among the Indian police leadership of the
post-independent vintage. Quantity is an irrelevant concept in the extant age of hi-tech world,
and transport and communication explosions render the world increasingly smaller every
passing day. What is required is quality. The stress must be on resourcefulness and response
time. Fewer Police Stations, each a nidus of the police functions at strategic locations and
self-dependent in its manpower and other logistic requirements of transport, communication,
weaponry and related facilitators is the need of the hour. Control room oriented policing with
shortened response time are capable to tackle any kind of police emergencies and
contingencies within a given area. District police administrations must function as the
custodian and provider of special techniques, high-tech gadgets and higher counseling and
guidance to the benefits of the Police Stations apart from its extant conventional duties.
CONTROL ROOMS
This brings the issue of control room oriented policing that suits best in urban areas to
the fore. Shift systems round the clock and response time are the key factors in such a
policing system. Logistics support becomes the crucial issue in the control room oriented
policing system as the effectiveness of the system depends tout a fait on effective logistics
designs, planning and management in place. Police Stations fully self-dependent in
manpower and other logistics supports like transport, communication, weaponry and other
facilitators alone can handle control rooms successfully for perficient policing. Such a system
presupposes committed manpower working on round the clock shifts and requiring high
morale. High morale in turn depends on job satisfaction and right job culture that are built on
perfect man management practices. All these issues need to be tackled one after the other for
efficient policing. Indian police of present days is a far cry from those objectives.
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MANPOWER
In a country bogged down with endemic unemployment, and steeped in cheap labour,
manpower should not be a problem though eurhythmic quality production may often become
an issue. No discussion on manpower is complete without the factors of morale, motivation,
competence, discipline and commitment are taken into account. No analysis on logistics is
complete without the production factor of the manpower is assessed.
SHIFT SYSTEM
Policing being a round the clock responsibility, a three-shift system is sine qua non in a grassroot policing unit like the Police Station. And unlike now, the system must be statutorily
defined and duly moulded and rounded off for effective functioning with clear-cut division of
labour in place. Lack of this clarity and arbitrary day-to-day allotment of duties on ones own
fancies by lower ranks in the Police Stations is the radicis of all the maelstrom in man
management noticed in police stations these days resulting in low and inefficient turn-out of
work. A well-defined shift system and purposeful man management policy directed towards
high motivation and morale should work as the nostrum to the malady.
EFFICIENT MAN MANAGEMENT
Sound incentive schemes based on the innards of the human psyche and latest
managerial techniques and committed leadership models can do the tricks to maximize the
output with the minimum input and save the criminal wastages in manpower that are common
features of the present man management in Indian police, where a few islands of manpower
are over-worked while most wanze precious man-hours without productive output. Any step
to break this epinosic trend will save Indian police from gargantuan manpower wastages. This
aspect needs priority.
An important feature of the efficient man management is best utilization of the available
manpower talents. Indian police of the post-independent vintage is notoriously profligate in
frittering away and even curbing precious human talents that land on its lap by its good
fortune. An example is that of a brilliant police officer from an Indian state who made name
as a poet, an intellectual and an original thinker on police and policing subjects with scores of
published books on poetry and policing subjects to his credit and a popular writer on police
subjects on all major English newspapers, and well-known for his immaculate conduct and
foursquare character, being persistently and consistently harassed gratuitously for decades,
denied promotion for more than twenty-one years without offering a reason in the ambience
of no reasons existing, often denied facilities normal even for his posts and repeatedly forced
to work in the rank of Superintendent of Police under his far less talented and far less upright
juniors from his own batch now in the rank of IGPs. Such atrocities are possible in Indian
police these days. Reason for the reductio ad absurdum of the man management in Indian
police of the present vintage to this scale is just jealousy and fear among the higher-ups of
being overshadowed by his superior talents. His fault lies in the denial to approach the court
of law in propugnation of own interests in spite of promptings from well-meaning seniors and
his preposterous pride in deciding that what are his, must come by themselves sans
promptings from any quarters and philosophizing che sara, sara. He continues in the plight
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even now without promotions. This is an example of the criminal wastage of human talents
apart from cruelty and crimes involved. Just thinking how best and to what advantages an
efficient organisation would have made use of his talents by providing right incentives rather
than curbing and crushing his normal opportunities makes this example of negative norms of
the Indian police an eye opener. Such perversions and prevarications of the man management
norms of epinosic dimensions must stop. It is a different story that he did not wither away like
most in similar situations and made big name and brilliantly succeeded in other avenues. It is
true that true talents cannot be hidden and even villainy of the top brass of the police has
limits in curbing and crushing the talents of the fonctionnaire lower down. This is the brighter
side of the spiel.
PRECIOUS MAN POWER
Every employee in any efficient organisation is a precious asset. This is not because
labour comes at enormous cost, but because of the presence of innate potentialities in every
person and its mammoth utility were they are adequately tapped. The problem lies in the need
and competence to extract the potentialities and talents. Police organisation has a long tail of
hierarchy of seniors after seniors. The billion-dollar question is whether this long tail of
seniority of the police department has any relevance as far as leadership and leadership
qualities are concerned. The answer is a big no. Present Indian police is least bothered
about the need of sound leadership and leadership qualities in its body as far as seniority goes
and sadly leadership and seniority are synonymous in its diction. That must stop and the
organisation must constitute per se a climacteric norm to enable the resorgimento of the
Indian police to draw it out of its present chilling hiems.
None realises the importance of every single human hand available as the USA does,
and the care taken and the investment made on each hand in American armed forces are
legendary. India and Indian police though cannot fully follow the American ideal because of
its financial constraints and other reasons, the model sine dubio deserves avizefull
consideration to aemule as a vaulting norm adapted to Indian milieu. Human being a natura
rei is potential of extending and shrinking to any scope created for him. This is so also in
work environment. A man or woman treated as lowly and dispensable as it is in the
constabulary and other lowly ranks of the Indian police, shrinks au naturel to adjust to the
space created for him, and expands and extends to be der Unsterbliche ubermensch if he or
she is provided for and treated as such. Indian police lacks this insight to the human psyche
and pays heavily in terms of human cost for the grave incompetence. How fast Indian police
realises this fault, so good it is pour-soi.
Maximum output out of minimum resources is the motto here. Maximum output
should be the norms of manpower management in Indian police at all levels rather than going
for blind increase in manpower strength at every possible occasion. High morale, high
motivation and job contentment, high professional pride, adequate rights and responsibilities,
reasonably sound infrastructure and logistics support are the claves for productive and
perficient policing and make difference to the quality of the policing whether it is in Police
Station levels or district police administration levels. This brings the issue of logistics support
to the fore.
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LOGISTICS SUPPORT
Logistics and infrastructure supports are the core of effective policing and also serve
as the multiplier of manpower. Transport and communication logistics are the eyes and ears
of the perficient policing. In the age of hi-tech crimes and criminals, high-level logistics
support is sine qua non for the policing to be successful. Right logistics support has four
dimensions or factors to be useful and effective in policing: quantity factor, quality factor,
relevancy factor and time factor. Quantity factor covers availability of adequate logistics
support; quality factor covers availability of latest and hi-tech logistics support; relevancy
factor covers the need of logistics support being relevant to the needs of the policing; and
time factor refers to the availability of the logistics support at right occasion and time.
Inadequacy in any of these factors certain to affect the quality of the policing and needs
foremost attention of the police leadership to keep the police and policing in top gear.
In Indian situation, the principium of the four factors namely the quantity factor itself
often is a major hurdle because of financial constraints and other problems though recent rise
in terrorism alerted the bureaucratic and political leadership to awaken to this problem and
make more and more logistics support available to police de grado in grado. But, the quality
factor continues to be a major pain in the spine. Criminals are often found in India better
equipped than the police as far as hi-tech gadgets and even crucial intelligence are concerned.
Indian police lacks adequate organizational strength and expertise to keep up dated to the
research explosions in the world market in hi-tech gadgets in transport, communication,
information and weaponry systems. This shortfall needs to be attended on priority if Police
Stations and district police administrations to be effective in defeating crime and criminals in
their own games. Whatever done at present in this field are sporadic attempts sans systemic
efforts. This lacuna needs to be rectified.
Relevance and time factors are logistic maneuvers tout court involving human
assessments and decision making in the process of the policing and depends assez bien on
human excellence involved and requires improved human qualities. That comes by practice,
skill, training, commitment and mature leadership. These factors also need close attention in
efforts to give quality policing to the country.
MAINTENANCE
Any talk on logistics is incomplete without a discussion on maintenance, which is the
weakest link in the mindset of the Indian psyche. Maintenance inherently is the byproduct of
a disciplined mind that is anathema to the Indian psyche. Naturally Indian police is
pathetically poor in maintenance aspect of whatever it does. One factor responsible for this
perilous assuetude is the cost factor involved. The second factor that brings about this neglect
of the maintenance structure in the organisation is the lack of appreciation of the need of the
maintenance in running an organisation and carrying out its operations. This achilles heel of
the Indian psyche holds its sway in police organisations also. Sound maintenance of the
logistics infrastructures and other assets is sine qua non for sound policing and perhaps gets
precedence in importance over acquiring new gadgets and assets. A sound police organisation
just ne obliviscaris this crucial need that considerably contributes to the success of police
operations.
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FINANCIAL POWERS
Police Stations as the nidus of police functions with considerable manpower and huge
logistics support means in its possession and responsible for their maintenance perforce need
considerable financial powers for themselves so that they can look after themselves without
waiting for sanctions from above. This investment also boosts the confidence and selfreliance of the Police Stations as independent units apart from bringing respectability and
accountability to them unlike now. The advantage here is both physical and psychological
and needs priority attention.
STRATEGIC LOCATION
It be a Police Station, district police administration or any other police unit, its
effective functioning depends very much on small details like its location and building also.
They have to be located at a place decided upon after careful study of the issues involved and
operational facility and convenience considered not only for the easy access to the public, but
also for more crucial strategic reasons of operational considerations like facile movements,
easy logistics support, access to hi-tech equipments, easy access to key manpower assets,
convenience for secret operations et cetera. This important factor is often ignored in Indian
police and it is common to find a Police Station situated in a locality outside its jurisdiction in
urban areas and district police administration being located in an unplanned shabby rented
building in a busy and strategically unsound locality. Easy availability often guides such
decisions in Indian police. Such casual approaches in such key decisions should stop and
proper norms should be laid to bring order in such key decisions and avoid concomitant
mishaps.
Norms are mere standards, or more precisely, standard customs to be set or evolved.
Indian police as defined and structured by the British administration more than a century back
served the British administration and its objectives in a far less complex milieu appreciably
for nearly a century and later. But, in a situation of panta rhei, the antianus reticulation is
ascensively becoming unfit and incompetent to the changing trends of the crime and
criminality and may become entirely irrelevant to the changed complexities of crime and
criminality if immediate corrective steps are not taken and new norms are evolved and set for
the posterity. In a donnert police structure steeped in blinkers and mental inaction, the very
idea of evolving fresh norms for manpower and logistics is a highly welcome initiative and
deserves hearty plaudite.
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VISION FOR POLICE 2010 AND POLICE 2020
The most basic requirement of any good governance is a vision, an ability to look ahead
to the future of the country with great expectations and endless possibilities in sidelines. This
is potential of evolving the governance to greater heights to herald an era of successes and
prosperity. Visions carve paths to the future and prod the governance to navigate along the
couloir. It provides a break from the quotidian plod in preference to innovative strides to
fulfill the vision. Governance sans vision is like building an edifice a tatons without a plan or
blueprint. It at best is a random erection. Vision gives direction and purpose to the
governance. It gives grandeur and a proportion to the process. No governance can be good
and complete without a vision to steer ahead, and true governance can be built only on the
terra firma of a vision. The old concept of a prosperous India is based on the vision of
Rama-Rajya. The new concept of India coming of age is based on the vision of a world
power or a regional power in Asia. Once a vision of that dimension is contrived to back, it is
easy to put the pluses and minuses to conceive a strategy towards the end. Otherwise,
governance is nothing more than a mechanical motion.
Shree A. P. J. Abdul Kalam, the honble President of India is quoted in Introduction to
the Report of the Committee on India Vision prepared by the Planning Commission in
December 2002 as saying, A vision is not a project report or a plan target. It is an
articulation of the desired end results in broader terms. The same report in Conclusion
enumerates Nine Nodal points of Indian Prosperity, which as adapted and edited to the police
and policing of the 2020 vintage, can be summed up ut infra:
1. PEACE, SECURITY & NATIONAL UNITY Physical security both from external and
internal threatsstrong national defence, domestic law enforcement and social harmony.
2. PRODUCTIVITY SECURITY A vibrant and highly productive policing sector that can
ensure national security, generate stability, stimulate peace, and produce a safe and
confident social fabric.
3.
JOBS FOR ALL A departmental commitment to ensure the right of all police
personnel to be employed round the year in policing according to his merit
competence and skill.
4.
KNOWLEDGE An environment of cent per cent expertise in policing activities all

over the world including latest policing techniques, latest police technologies,
organizational and administrative updates from all over the world, law reforms and
related matters by training and exposures to maximum police personnel.
5.
HEALTH Care towards physical well-being of all citizens.
6. TECHNOLOGY & INFRASTRUCTURE Continuous expansion of the physical

infrastructure for rapid low-cost transportation and communication that is required for
effective policing competitiveness and policing aides. Application of computers to
improve access to knowledge and information, and increase in the speed, efficiency and
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convenience of activities in all fields of policing.

7.
GLOBALISATION Successful integration of Indian police with the policing

activities world over.
8.
GOOD GOVERNANCE Farsighted and dynamic leadership to maximize

effective policing, security and social justice through responsive, transparent
and accountable administration that removes all the bottlenecks to successful
policing.
9. WORK VALUES - Activation of all these nodal points requires firm and
determined adherence to high values, including prompt decision-making,
disciplined execution, systematic implementation, finely tuned co-ordination,
unceasing effort and endurance.
The report also says that the future depends not on what will happen, but on what is
decided to become, and on the will to create it. The vision of 2010 or 2020 must be one in
which all levels and sections of the police and all of its parts march forward together into a
more productive and prosperous future. The vision of police 2010 and police 2020 is
discussed under these parameters provided in the report as a national perspective with the
purpose of bringing about uniformity of approach and identification with the national
thought process.
PARAMETERS OF CHANGE
Panta rhei. Change is a universal phenomenon and the proof of life. Change is
the manifestation of adoption and adaptation and a carrier of the process of the evolution.
No living organism or organisation can remain unchanged between 2006 and 2010 or
2020. Necessitas non habet legem. Necessities of the environment dictate terms for
changes and changes occur inter se. That is a sign of growth. This is so for the police
also. Police being an essential service, it can never remain a deadwood, ergo, must show
signs of life and concomitant propensity for change. But the clavis here is that natura
non facit saltum. Change is a gradual process running on the bedrock of certain definite
parameters. Understanding here is prognostication. Assessing the parameters of the
change in this perspective gives clues to the dynamics that shape the police of 2010 or
2020. A vision is possible and shapes on the determinants decided upon on the terra
firma of these parameters. Vision gives direction to the flow of the dynamics of the
change, and determination to pad-up and execute the vision provides fuel for realizing
the vision.
POPULATION GROWTH
Increase in population does have significant impact on the challenges and the
performances of the police, and inevitably on the direction it takes for its growth. Ability
to assess the challenge provides an allee to decide upon how disadvantages can be
converted into advantage to envision the police of the 2010 or 2020 vintage in an
advantageous mould corresponding to the overall national interests.
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Corresponding to the increase in the global population from 6.3 billion in 2006 to
estimated 6.7 billion in 2010 and 7.5 billion in 2020, India which is home to 1/6 of the
humanity is expected to have its population rise from 1.1 billion in 2006 to 1.18 billion in
2010 and 1.35 billion in 2020 ipso facto figuring to 1.6% population growth per annum.
Police being the custodian of peace, security and national unity in the environment will
have larger challenges and responsibilities to shoulder and endure, necessitating
appropriate measures to stand up to the problems and do better.
GLOBALISATION
With further shrinking and diminishing of the globe to a global hamlet in the next fifteen
years thanks to advancements in the fields of transport and communication, the magnitude of
policing also becomes globalised with its own advantages and disadvantages. The shift
certainly renders policing a trans-border phenomenon touching humanity tout ensemble.
With crimes and criminality essorant and accrescently transcending national borders, policing
no more will remain an intra-border affair by 2020 and cooperation between the police in the
international arena in the common interests of the rule of law and justice will become the
condition sine qua non by then. Extradition and exchange of criminal intelligence will
become centric to effective policing processes.
It is not only transport and communication that render the globe smaller to an aldea and
contributes to bring global dimension to the criminality. Computer and Internet revolution
added another dimension to the issue along with global economic enterprises and their global
reticulations adding their own contributions to the ascensive criminal tendencies and their
global spread. Cyber crime is gaining its own currency in the police parlance with its
reverberations felt in countries across the world. It will be trans-border cooperation or perish
for the profession of policing in the milieu of the globalisation. Terrorism as an international
phenomenon against humanity will bring the need of watching and addressing trans-border
crimes into sharp focus even to the exclusion of common intra-border crimes in priorities.
TECHNOLOGY EXPLOSIONS
Technology is a powerful vehicle of the successful policing and constitutes the spine of
effective policing. This is one factor that renders change inevitable for policing to update
itself to keep au courant with the latest technological developments affecting police and
policing as aides either in criminal or policing activities. Technology explosions touching
policing activities either as carriers of the policing activities or as policing techniques
occurred in recent past are bound to continue with accrescent pace in coming years and the
technology advancements in related fields in the next five or fifteen years will be
considerable, calling for suitable updating by the police. Again it is remain fit or perish for
the police. Au reste, it is left to the vision of the top brass how to meet the gauntlets and make
best out of the vicissitudes. If police fails here, criminals, anti-social elements and the hors la
loi will take advantage of the situation and gain upper hand in this field to be the ultimate
apollyon of the policing concept as the saviour of the innocent and law-abiding citizens. It is
an issue of whom among the police and criminals take better advantage of the open market of
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the technology explosions for survival and bring the other to its knee. Police ignore this bitter
concours at its own peril.
Technology advancements in the fields of transport and communication do have pollent
impact on the policing methods as they serve as the harbinger of faster response time and
provide access to areas unthought otherwise as possible. Communication technology is in
excelsis these days and bound to make further progress in coming five or fifteen years.
Computer and Internet technologies are the other fields to be watched as a pollent tool of the
information technology. E-governance is a by-word now. It will be an omnipresent reality in
2020 with 2010 forming a part of the transition period. It will be particularly so in a key
sector like policing with e-policing through computer and Internet technologies in policing
methods and techniques going hi-tech apart from police administration and organizational
activities being fully computerised. Computer and Internet technologies by 2020 may change
the very face of the policing all over the world so much that the present police systems will
remain by that time only as a matter of archival interests. Policing techniques too may find
revolutionary changes if extant technological advancements are any indications. Latest
technologies like DNA profiling for identification and related activities will find universal
acceptance as popular as fingerprints and footprints now. Even the researches on stem cells
coming with solutions to decide and perhaps cure criminal tendencies cannot be ruled out.
Also, feracious researches and discoveries on super conductivity, solid fuel and liquid
nitrogen and allied subjects may find some relevance to the process of the policing and
policing techniques by the year 2020 if not earlier in 2010. What is called for is a vision and
vigilance in part of the police leaders to make use of the breakthroughs at the advent of the
right time to overtake the visionary and vigilant criminals in the concours for the superiority.
ECONOMIC GROWTH
Economics and crimes algate go pari passu. They are the two faces of the same coin
in any society, more so in a democracy, and economic growth perforce affect crime and
criminal fields, ipso facto police orientations in a major way. Indias increasingly dynamic
and vibrant economic base lend credence to the view that India can achieve and sustain
higher than historical rates of economic growth in the coming decades. The compounded
effect of achieving the targeted annual GDP growth rate of 8.5 to 9 per cent over the next 20
years would result in a quadrupling of the real per capita income and almost eliminating
the percentage of Indians living below the poverty line. This will raise India's rank from
around 11th today to 4th from the top in 2020 among 207 countries given in the World
Development Report in terms of GDP. Further, in terms of per capita GDP measured in ppp
India's rank will rise by a minimum of 53 ranks from the present 153 to 100. This will mean,
India will move from a low i n c o m e country to an upper middle income country. It will be a
major accomplishment indeed that is certain to make major impact on the crime scenario of the
country.
Human greed is the main culprit. Inequality and disparities of the economic growth,
particularly in an open market milieu is the second Momus. It is dumb to presume that
economic growth brings peace and stability. The truth is other way round. Statistics have
proved that economic growth in the form of unequal distribution of the national wealth
always increased the propensity towards violence, crime and instability in the country. This
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will be the major concern of the police in 2020.

SOCIAL AND POLITICAL DYNAMICS
Factors like social inequities, conflicts arising out of the conversion of the traditional
stratified society to egalitarian society, religious extremism, interstate territorial disputes,
racial and linguistic violence and radical politics of the Maoist Communist Party variety will
continue to plague the police of both 2010 and 2020 and keep them on their toes if not
further add to their problems. India-Pakistan conflict may also continue to plague the
country in form of internal instability prompted by ISI and such external agencies. In spite of
terrorism prompted by external elements and extremist activities from disgruntled internal
elements, police is expected to maintain the Indian social fabric intact, and this will be a
major challenge to the police by 2020.
TARGETS FOR THE POLICE
Peace, security and national unity are the pillars on which the edifice of the police is
constructed. Social justice and removal of the injustices from the face of the society are its
prime objectives. Crime prevention measures, crime investigation, enforcement of the laws of
the country, security measures, regulating and establishing order in the public life for the
commune bonum are the tools of the police to accomplish these objectives. Police is dutybound to perform these objectives and bring about a sense of safety and security among the
people, and a sense of unity without disturbing the social fabric of the country and without
offending basic human rights. People look to the police for their safety and security. The
country looks to the police as an esemplastic factor in the process of the nationhood. And the
society looks to the police for protecting their interests and basic human rights from vested
interests. In the accrescently complex society of the 2020, these cardinal contraplex
objectives of the police will continue to eat up to its vitals unless sound police alferez finds a
balance and guides policing in aurea mediocritas.
Indian police of the 2020 vintage with that of 2010 in a transition to the end will come on
par with the police of the advanced western countries and the weltgeist in schemes for the
protection and safety of the weak, feeble and exploited sections of the society. Novel and
revolutionary schemes for the protection of children, women, elderly citizens, weaker
sections and helpless foreigners from the exploitation will find favour with the Indian police
in the next five to fifteen years.
ELDERLY CITIZENS
Elderly citizens of the age 65 years or more will rise to 76 millions strength in 2020 from
58 millions in 2010 and 51 millions in 2006. This section of the society that is weak and
incapable of looking after itself needs priority attention to averruncate exploitations of their
age-related infirmities in a society in which their children because of prolate migrations to
foreign countries or other parts of the country for job-related or other encheasons assurgently
leave them to their own fate unattended. The elder citizens are found targets of specific
crimes and exploitations by unscrupulous elements, and police worth the name should have
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special programmes for their safety and well-being. Police of advanced countries including
the United States of America have special schemes and programmes for the safety and
protection of this section of the society. Indian police is yet to catch up with the zeitgeist
though scattered attempts are felt here and there. But, concrete measures in this direction are
yet to shape up. Indian police must see awakening itself to this aspect of its responsibility by
the year 2020.
CHILDREN, WOMEN, FOREIGNERS
All weaker sections of the society need special attention of the police with specific
schemes for protection after avizefull study of crimes and criminal tendencies in the field and
adoption of a protection machinery most suited to the situation. Just having schemes do not
make any difference. There should be will to earnestly execute them and bring safety and
protection from exploitation to all the sections of the society to bring in overall atmosphere of
peace, security and freedom from exploitation in the country in cause of its policing
objectives. Indian police certainly will rise to this professional commitment by 2020.
Child labour is a crime as well as a social dilemma in a country where for many a square
meal is a luxury. Though India has myriad Acts meant for the protection of the weaker
sections of the society like children, women, SCs & STs, and bonded labourers, often their
enforcements are found lacking in will to execute and sometimes steeped in social problems.
The confusions and incertitudes in enforcing social legislations are likely to be overcome
with the coming of age by the police by 2020 to meet the overall objectives to bring about an
atmosphere of peace, security, stability and national unity to the country without disturbing
the social fabric of the country.
In the ambience of globalization, safety and security needs of the foreigners also warrant
priority attention. Incidence of rape and extortion of foreigners is increasingly becoming a
common phenomenon in India these days. Indian police leaders will find themselves handtied by 2020 to attend this menace in the interests of their own country.
VISION FOR THE INDIAN POLICE
CRIME INVESTIGATION
Investigation is an area Indian police needs to improve considerably. Key to public

confidence in police investigation is a conviction rate of a minimum of 51% so that there can
be a claim that majority of the hors la loi goes behind the bar. But, it is a far cry from the
reality in any police organisation including the Central Police Organisations in India for any
category of crime. That means conviction for a crime is an exception rather than a rule in
India and crime goes unpunished. This reality must change if police is to be relevant to the
future crime situation of the country in 2020.
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Another important field where Indian police needs change of its image is completing
investigation within a time-bound frame of three months, or better, less. Justice delayed is
justice denied. Time is a crucial factor in bringing a culprit to the justice. Period that goes
unpunished after a crime a la money borrowed incrementally adds to the free life of the
criminal at others expenses. It is not seldom in Indian situation to see convictions coming
after the death of the criminal, or after the criminal fully made use of the res gestae, thereby
rendering Indian criminal justice system and its conviction an ironical farce. This should stop
if Indian police has any passion and commitment for justice and crime investigation process.
It is another vision of the police 2020.
These are not something impossible objectives to be achieved in the next five or fifteen
years. Political will and committed police leadership at the helm can easily achieve these
targets. And fifteen years is not too short a period to accomplish these crucial feats. After all,
vision of India in 2020 is predicated on the belief that human resources are the most
important determinants of overall development, and it is here that the Indian police needs to
focus to achieve these targets. Indeed minor amendments to the criminal laws of the country after
convincing the political leadership and procedural updates with an iron hand should be able to
bring about these changes. It is a vision a portee for accomplishment by 2010, if not by 2010 or
earlier.
COMMUNITY POLICING
Policing ideally is a job performed for the people, through the people, with police acting
just as catalysts in the process. Police as the specialists in the field initiate and guide the
volunteers from the public pro bono publico. They provide information and expertise input
in the process. The function of the police in policing in a democratic milieu is just that of an
alferez; a friend, guide and philosopher. Secondly, the crucible of policing in precipitating
justice needs to be transparent, and accountable to the public. This need can be met only by
involving the public in the process of the policing. Thirdly, no police organisation however
mammoth and powerful it be, can do full justice to its work without the cooperation of the
public. Ergo, true policing needs to be community policing-centric. This aspect also covers
counseling and consultation aspects at crucial levels. Community policing lightens the
quotidian burden of the policing to the police, so that the latter can focus on macro aspects of
the policing touching national interests and international angle.
PROFESSIONALISM
A major handicap of the extant Indian police is the infusion of nonprofessional decisions
to the mould of professional decisions of the policing whether it is in service matters like
postings and transfers or policing processes like investigations and enforcement of rules and
laws. All the present maladies emanate from the politicians who are only concerned with
winning of the next elections. The paramount need of the future police is a professional image
tout au contraire to present image as a handmaid of rich and powerful. What is required is a
perspicacious definition of police duties and responsibilities and entrusting the force to
perform the duties under the avizefull eyes of the constitution without the distractions of
interferences ab extra. The police should have free hand to tackle and solve issues cropping
361
PRAVEEN KUMAR
up during the process of policing with concomitant responsibility for any failures squarely
lying on its shoulders.
Until the organisation is extricated from the grip of politicians practicing machtpolitic, it
cannot hope to rise above mediocrity either in proficiency or in character. Such mediocrity is
wont to percolate downwards in a democratic setup. Lack of character among the noumenal
police leadership actually brought the police forces in India to its knees before the political
leadership of the democratic vintage where more often than not, politicians bear the major
share of the criminal activities of the country. This is a triste affaire for both the country and
its police. The situation is slipping from bad to worse ad nauseum. Indeed these are mauvais
moment for the Indian police. But, no bad days are a jamais and the tide should change. After
all, post tenebris spero lucem. It is a desperate vision that the bad days in the annals of the
Indian police will be over by 2020 and Indian police will come clean under sound police
leadership and right political leadership by that time. This can be achieved by the creation of
the Policing Authority at the helm of the policing affairs of the country.
An All India Police Authority accountable only to the President of India at the national
level with the regional Police Boards in States as independent bodies need to be created to
oversee and take major decisions pertaining to policing and service matters including
assessment of performances and transfers more suo. A Supreme Court Judge must head the
Authority with the Union Home Secretary and the Cabinet Secretary as members and the
senior most police officer of the country as the member-secretary. The regional Police
Boards must have a High Court Judge at the helm with the Home Secretary and the Chief
Secretary as members and the State Police Chief as member-secretary. The facticite will
bring to an end interference of any kind in police affairs, thus enabling the personnel to
function in an independent atmosphere. These measures complete with the overhaul of the
UPSC will oppilate the glissade and bring back all the former gloria of commitment to merit
and character to the police. This vision though appears a dreamers dream because of the
exercise of machtpolitic and political unwillingness to give up its extant prise on the police,
2020 is far away to dismiss such a miracle outright as apocryphal. No labefactation in a
national life continues in perpetuum. This vision as the enfants perdus of resurgence and the
pollicitation of the revival of the Indian police is must for all those who have police interests
in their hearts.
SPECCIALISATIONS
If policing is to be effective in the years ahead, specialisation is crucial. The year 2020
must see three distinct police services with separate recruitment and training: (1) Regulatory
police or uniformed police in charge of law and order and other regulatory duties; (2)
Mainstay police in charge of crime investigation and prevention and security and intelligence
operation; (3) Social police in charge of prevention and investigation of all social offences
and implementation of social legislation. All three wings should have their own individual
organisations up to the district level with independent Superintendents and staff as required,
functioning in tandem in much the same way as the Army, Navy and the Air Force. The
vision can be brought to reality by committed police leadership to bring true professionalism
362
in discharge of the policing responsibilities and enhance the public confidence in the
competence of the force by 2020 or earlier.
POLICE RUN ON MANAGEMENT PRINCIPLES
Police will do well to formulate actions and operations in line with the latest management
principles and practices following the welt geist. The force by 2020 should be able either to
constitute an efficient gestalt of management experts to advice or hire a management
consultation firm for guidance. At any rate, the police organisation of the 2020 should be a
far smaller unit than now, manned by highly committed and capable officers who are paid
and looked after well by the government.
The last three decades have seen tremendous expansion in the police force. For lack of an
organisational plan and the foresight to assess future demands, haphazard growth has
resulted. Organisational sensibilities such as workload, unit of control, accountability
functional conveniences, span of control and information flow are never given the attention
they need building an organisation. As a result, while a few posts in the police are
overburdened with work, there are many which have no work or accountability. The lopsided
growth of the organisation has spawned acute likes and dislikes for various positions.
Naturally, probity and objectivity are sacrificed in favour of survival and protection of career
interests. Corruption is rampant. This may not be the sole reason for the falling standards of
policing. Yet, it is a major cause. By 2020, police administration should be able to see the
vestigial retrorsum from the prolate conspurcation.
Rationalisation of the police structure to bring about a balance among the various posts in
the same rank would certainly help to ameliorate the situation. It would also help to eliminate
the wastage of government funds on unnecessary posts. Creation of such posts to
accommodate unwanted elements cannot be tolerated in a serious department like the police.
A systemic growth plan for balanced expansion is what is called for, if the department is to
meet the tasks ahead.
LEAN AND MEAN FORCE
The piece de resistance of the policing by 2020 will be perficient performance with
minimal visible presence. This means a far more professional organisation than now. This
means far more skilled policing than now. This means better management of the police
organisation, better equipped force, men of higher calibre and devotion to work and more
contented people manning the police hierarchy.
The police of the 2020 will be required to shed its ide fixe for the show of strength in
place of efficient policing. The stress in future will be on lean and fit policing. The structural
deformity of the chorisis and overweight caused by redundant posts, undefined jobs, lack of
accountability, epinosic equation of rights and responsibilities, top-heavy structure, erratic
span of control, demotivating factors, nonprofessional ambience and uninspiring leadership
must become a matter of the past by the year 2020 with the police going perforce competitive
363
PRAVEEN KUMAR
en face gargantuan challenges from criminals posing threat to the raison detre of the police
and its relevance to the extant society.
RESPONSE TIME
The key to the success of the police is its response time, the speed with which it responds
to the gauntlets of the crime. Where time is a precious commodity and a difference of a
couple of seconds make the difference of success and failure of a police operation, persistent
efforts to shorten response time will get the priority in excelsis. The thrust of the police
administration of the next fifteen years must be directed to bettering the response time as
speed will be the mainstay of crimes and criminals of the coming age. Short response time
implies improved communication and transport network and highly motivated human
resources, ever ready to handle challenges. Outmoded communication and transport facilities
in disrepair conditions most of the time have no relevance there and casual manpower is
rather passe in that ambience. Coming years must see the police force in the finest fettle in
terms of orgtanisation, manpower and equipments and the force becoming a highly organised
and efficient limb of the state apparatus.
GOOD GOVERNANCE
India in its long history saw governance of all kinds, proportions and dimensions and
survived through them. It saw the worst and the best in its 2500 years of recorded history. It,
like other old civilizations of the world, has worked as the crucible of various experiments in
governance. The governance and policing in India now is based on this long experience. It is
the collective will for good governance that is lacking in India. The consequence is that the
hoi polloi suffer and the country fails to reach the height it is potential of. The besoin of the
extant India is the evolution of a collective will to have good governance. People must pool
their energies to force good governance for the country. Indeed the job is not easy and the
resistance from those in charge of the governance whose interests lie in the status quo is
bound to be hard. But, this cannot be an encheason to leave the matter of this dimension
unattended as the fate of one billion people depends on this development. Only such a
collective will can devolve truly good governance and policing for the country.
Creation of a self-contained police machinery in place of the present mere nuts and bolts
of the administration is the cardinal need ahead. The nasty political and bureaucratic
interferences in professional policing have done no good to the country and its police in the
last six decades. Insulating the police from the vice prise of the ectogenetic pressures and
influences needs to become a reality in fifteen years since, should the police have relevance in
the governance of the country. This is possible only by the metamorphosis of the police to an
independent body with goals and objectives perspicuously defined and laid down. The new
police have to be responsible only to the constitution through a suitable machinery of checks
and counterchecks exercised by constitutional bodies manned by people of proven trackrecord in matters of integrity, competence and other mental attributes and chosen from
academic, bureaucratic and political fields as well as public life. The change may bring a
semblance of justice and fairplay to administration and ipso facto infuse a value system to
the Indian public life and bring the fear of god to force strict adherence to probity and the rule
of law in public life. India has no alternative to this metamorphosis should the country
364
survive the moral crisis and degringolade of the national spirit, it witnessed since
independence.
365
INDEX
A
Abduction 115, 209, 211, 251
Abdul 355
Academic 57, 190, 226, 302, 338, 344, 345,
346, 364
Administrations 348, 349, 350, 353
Africa 11, 37, 308, 323
African 199, 268
Agenda 156, 168, 173, 285, 288, 292, 295,
304, 306
Agra 275
Agricultural 120
Akali 10, 169
Allahabad 174
America 37, 296, 308, 323, 333, 360
American 156, 157, 295, 296, 315, 318, 352
Andhra 25, 251
Antemortal 116
Anti-corruption 321, 324
Anti-dumping 318
Anti-exploitation 324
Anti-hijack 183
Anti-india 292
Anti-insurgency 85, 86
Anti-sikh 25, 43, 85, 249
Anti-social 178, 179, 189, 239, 357
Anticipatory 204, 206
Antiinsurgency 85
Apocryphal 145, 158, 185, 216, 246, 249,
272, 317, 362
Apolitical 13, 47, 159, 261
Apoliticism 12, 261
Aptitude 32, 45, 110, 111, 157, 162
Aristocracy 198, 307
Arm-twisting 38
Arthashaastra 323
Arunachal 79, 119
Ashoka 294, 300
Asia 1, 11, 37, 280, 290, 308, 311, 323, 355
Asphyxia 116
Assam 95, 136, 219, 220, 251, 252
Assassination 8, 77, 84, 86
Atmosphere 3, 4, 5, 21, 32, 39, 44, 61, 62,
76, 82, 85, 92, 101, 103, 106, 146, 152,
179, 192, 213, 239, 240, 243, 247, 264,
283, 307, 315, 339, 360, 362
Atom 249
Atrocities 79, 115, 119, 209, 211, 278, 338,
351
Atrophy 26, 29, 45, 61, 67, 68, 125, 139,
157, 161, 174, 185, 192, 202, 261, 300,
323
Audit 193, 196, 247, 258, 318

Authorities 38, 46, 54, 84, 103, 142, 158,
192, 205, 258, 259, 315, 329, 332
Authority 5, 12, 15, 16, 21, 22, 28, 35, 36,
39, 41, 42, 56, 64, 69, 70, 71, 75, 81, 93,
103, 144, 173, 178, 190, 198, 205, 241,
254, 258, 259, 266, 317, 329, 333, 339,
362
Avatar 75, 105, 106, 123, 142, 156, 211, 268,
300
Avatars 187, 318
Ayurved 319
B
Babbar 84, 85
Balkanisation 250
Balkanise 120
Balzac 215
Bangalore 24, 34, 71, 169, 184, 216, 217,
221
Bangladesh 45, 157, 185, 292
Benami 321
Benjamin 294
Bhajan 85
Bharatiya 217, 243
Bhutan 45, 157
Bifocal 268
Bifurcation 258, 287
Bihar 125, 126, 161, 174, 184, 190, 197, 219,
221, 235, 252, 276, 298, 319
Birmingham 251
Bitumen 319
BJP 328
Black-marketing 30, 316
Blackmail 75, 90
Blanket-policing 140
Bloodhounds 12
Bluestar 295
Bofors 43, 230, 249, 276, 319
Bollywood 217
Bomb 84, 86, 216
Bombay 184, 196, 216, 217, 252
Bombs 85, 249, 289
Bonaparte 299
BPRD 167
Brahmanism 295
Brass 13, 37, 43, 50, 76, 92, 173, 265, 314,
340, 346, 347, 352, 357
Bribery 15, 43, 230, 231, 316, 322
Bribes 68, 192, 315, 321
Britain 45, 106, 156, 259, 274, 294, 297
British 1, 12, 13, 22, 23, 24, 57, 58, 62, 69,
104, 105, 106, 107, 138, 156, 178, 182,
199, 201, 261, 274, 281, 283, 284, 285,
290, 305, 306, 340, 343, 344, 350, 354

Bsf 167, 170
Buddha 295, 300
Buddhas 336
Buddhism 295, 313
Build-up 112, 113, 114, 132, 292
Buildup 8, 110, 224, 259
Bureaucracy 1, 2, 29, 138, 175, 245, 272,
273, 274, 275, 277, 278, 300, 301, 302,
323, 337, 338
Bureaucrats 25, 138, 215, 240, 284, 311,
321, 322, 323
Burma 45, 157
Businessmen 19, 216, 252, 318
C
Cabal 75, 77, 90, 99, 204, 261
Cabals 3, 63, 257
Calcutta 189, 252
Cambodia 310
Cambridge 313
Camorin 119
Canada 84, 85
Canards 274
Capabilities 20, 100, 111, 338
Capacities 172
Capital 53, 54, 130, 148, 196, 218, 244, 270,
316, 317, 322
Career-ladder 248
Career-life 178, 343
Career-promotion 90, 135
Caste 17, 106, 198, 200, 207, 208, 273, 274,
275, 315
Caste-ridden 346
Castes 200, 207, 208, 209
Cauvery 24
Cbi 41, 42, 43, 44, 69, 81, 82, 83, 123, 124,
125, 139, 167, 168, 197, 230, 243, 252,
267, 329, 331
Center-stage 318
Centre-stage 2, 42, 186, 212, 226, 228
Centrestage 182, 207, 246
Chaidambaram 192
Chambal 95, 96, 136, 190
Chandigarh 84
Chandraswamy 249
Charan 301
Chauvinism 212
Chavanji 328
Chawi 243
China 302, 310, 311, 313
Chinese 299, 312
Chopra 1
Christian 295
Christianity 295
Churchill 120, 281, 308
IA 45, 46, 156, 158, 170
CIB 43
CID 123, 125, 252, 331
CISF 167
Citizenry 93, 134, 136, 228, 310
Civilizations 280, 295, 364
Clandestine 45, 46, 156, 157, 158, 159, 183,
185
Climacteric 221, 317, 323, 352
Co-operation 162, 224, 326
Co-ordination 252, 331, 356
Cobwebs 5, 31, 264
Cohibition 153, 163
Cold-blooded 102, 219, 229, 251
Command-obedience 5, 13, 141, 346
Commercialisation 61
Commercialization 300, 302, 313
Communication 34, 37, 98, 112, 128, 145,
164, 183, 190, 215, 216, 221, 224, 225,
289, 309, 310, 348, 349, 350, 353, 355,
357, 358, 364
Compensation 79, 113, 124, 179, 201, 202,
203, 208
Compensations 120, 143, 204, 205
Competition 167, 307, 313, 322
Competitions 111, 177, 309, 312, 313
Complacency 1, 84, 85, 133, 150, 164, 265,
312, 313, 326, 333
Computerisation 34
Conceptualization 239
Consciousness 46, 157, 183
Constituencies 27, 292, 329
Constitution 4, 24, 41, 42, 44, 59, 81, 82,
100, 108, 109, 137, 182, 193, 195, 200,
201, 205, 207, 208, 224, 226, 231, 233,
234, 253, 283, 284, 287, 291, 295, 296,
297, 323, 327, 328, 332, 340, 344, 361,
364
Constitutional 79, 119, 200, 209, 226, 234,
235, 238, 250, 260, 284, 290, 291, 314,
327, 329, 331, 364
Construction 54, 141, 217, 347
Consumption 63, 192, 315, 350
Contradictions 1, 55, 56, 123, 143, 144, 156
Controversial 153, 163
Coordination 8, 55, 145, 167, 168, 169, 170,
171, 185, 194, 215, 252, 284, 317, 318,
331, 332, 335
Cooridnation 185
Copyright 316, 317
Cornucopia 200, 203, 336
Corrupt 1, 2, 20, 29, 30, 35, 37, 51, 64, 67,
68, 70, 76, 77, 97, 101, 111, 124, 132,
162, 174, 175, 185, 188, 190, 192, 196,
197, 228, 242, 266, 271, 277, 284, 298,
300, 313, 315, 321, 322, 323, 334, 337,

346
Cosmetic 325
Cosmopolitan 26
Counter-espionage 156
Counter-productive 80, 155
Counterchecks 226, 279, 345, 350, 364
Counterproductive 314
Courtesies 54, 127, 147, 148, 246
Crime-free 32, 221, 244
Crime-infested 221
Crime-prevention 49
Criminalisation 25, 74, 81, 96, 249
Criminality 73, 87, 93, 101, 102, 134, 190,
203, 302, 306, 328, 333, 336, 354, 357
Criminalization 240, 243
Criminologist 315
Crosspolitical 231
Crossroads 3, 14
CRPF 167
Crucible 11, 167, 223, 280, 361, 364
Cultural 61, 119, 300, 301, 305
Culture 1, 3, 12, 13, 33, 37, 38, 49, 51, 52,
55, 61, 85, 137, 140, 141, 143, 148, 167,
170, 172, 173, 182, 211, 213, 221, 228,
229, 249, 261, 265, 268, 269, 271, 274,
275, 286, 296, 297, 300, 301, 314, 322,
328, 336, 337, 340, 341, 342, 346, 347,
350
CVC 321
Cyber 310, 357
D
Dacoities 171
Dacoits 95, 136, 190
Dacoity 18, 101, 220, 244
Dacoity-infested 241
Dagdi 243
Dalits 184
Davangere 76
Dawood 216, 217, 243
Decentralise 194
Deception 294, 298, 302
Deceptions 295, 296, 307
Decision 16, 38, 43, 46, 59, 71, 74, 77, 82,
89, 138, 150, 195, 229, 242, 276, 287,
326, 328, 333, 353
Decision-making 276, 356
Decisions 11, 15, 16, 38, 42, 43, 54, 55, 71,
74, 80, 82, 89, 121, 124, 128, 142, 143,
145, 147, 149, 158, 185, 224, 229, 231,
239, 240, 245, 258, 259, 265, 266, 267,
274, 276, 277, 279, 299, 322, 326, 333,
337, 338, 354, 361, 362
Dehumanisation 154
Democracies 61
Democracy 2, 5, 11, 12, 18, 22, 26, 38, 45,
46, 61, 62, 69, 79, 80, 99, 104, 120, 121,
157, 158, 162, 182, 187, 192, 233, 234,
235, 239, 240, 241, 242, 243, 244, 250,
268, 269, 271, 276, 279, 285, 290, 297,
301, 302, 303, 304, 305, 306, 307, 308,
309, 311, 324, 328, 329, 336, 358
Demoralised 323
Demotivating 225, 363
Demotivation 177
Detection 13, 26, 172, 182, 183, 184, 220,
221, 224
Devaluation 263
Dharwad 101
Dholewas 84
Diginity 54, 191
Diplomacy 250, 251
Discipline 5, 11, 12, 13, 15, 23, 50, 65, 74,
80, 88, 110, 121, 138, 143, 146, 159, 165,
174, 178, 187, 193, 194, 195, 196, 197,
261, 272, 285, 289, 319, 343, 351
Discontentment 177
Discord 170
Discrimination 200, 202, 208, 209, 212
Discriminations 207, 208
Disicipline 178, 343
Disproportionate 230
DNA 358
Draupadi 211
Drug-trafficking 316
Duties 1, 15, 16, 20, 21, 26, 28, 35, 40, 41,
48, 51, 64, 65, 68, 71, 81, 100, 102, 123,
124, 125, 127, 130, 137, 143, 144, 146,
147, 152, 156, 175, 179, 182, 183, 188,
205, 208, 223, 224, 227, 232, 241, 245,
247, 249, 264, 266, 273, 318, 327, 330,
333, 339, 340, 341, 344, 349, 350, 351,
361, 362
Duty-bound 207, 209, 359
Dynasties 306
E
E-governance 358
E-policing 358
Economics 107, 358
Economies 1
Economy 30, 45, 67, 94, 135, 157, 192, 197,
275, 315, 316, 319, 320, 321, 322
Edgar 41, 81, 123
Effectiveness 32, 52, 96, 110, 150, 163, 172,
178, 202, 223, 232, 244, 245, 297, 325,
326, 330, 350
Efficacious 79, 120, 206, 219, 308, 334

Efficiency 5, 15, 23, 25, 46, 47, 50, 55, 57,
59, 62, 64, 104, 105, 106, 109, 110, 129,
130, 133, 139, 145, 146, 148, 149, 157,
159, 172, 179, 183, 215, 220, 224, 281,
282, 283, 286, 292, 325, 341, 355
Election 15, 28, 71, 74, 89, 91, 97, 99, 134,
250, 263, 266, 301, 302, 306, 321, 329,
333
Elections 21, 27, 74, 88, 89, 97, 126, 161,
239, 263, 267, 310, 328, 339, 361
Electorate 74, 75, 89, 90, 96, 190
England 62, 124, 240
English 145, 172, 348, 351
Ethic 69
Ethics 3, 12, 13, 69, 73, 87, 258, 262, 265,
333
Ethnical 61
Europe 85
European 297, 311
Evolution 183, 219, 241, 265, 274, 275, 280,
297, 312, 343, 348, 356, 364
Evolutions 344
Extra-judicial 216
Extremism 359
Extremist 255, 295, 359
Extremists 8, 9, 171
Far-East 216
FBI 41, 81, 123, 124
Federal 41, 123
Finance 58, 79, 85, 192, 193, 196, 322, 328
Financial 15, 79, 96, 120, 179, 192, 193, 194,
195, 196, 197, 263, 288, 315, 316, 317,
318, 320, 349, 352, 353, 354
Fingerprints 34, 358
Foreign 38, 45, 46, 57, 62, 80, 93, 105, 107,
113, 121, 128, 134, 145, 157, 158, 194,
216, 217, 250, 251, 281, 293, 298, 304,
305, 310, 311, 316, 321, 322, 359
Foreigners 359, 360
Forensic 116
Frauds 184, 192, 193, 194, 195, 196, 315,
316, 317, 318, 319
Fraudulent 50, 192, 193, 315, 316, 317
Frustration 12, 58, 108, 198, 199, 233
Frustrations 32, 152, 188, 198, 220
Fundamentalism 294
Fundamentals 301
G
Gadag 102
Gambling 19, 30, 49, 68, 91, 134, 215, 311
Gameplan 139, 231
Gameplans 72, 231
Gandhi 8, 9, 86, 123, 169, 212, 294, 295,

296, 300, 322, 328
Gandhian 45, 157
Gandhis 336
Gang-lords 189
Gang-wars 189
Gangsers 218
Gangster 217, 218
Gangsters 243
Gangwar 53, 148
Gangwars 217, 218
Gauthama 300
Gawli 217, 243
GDP 284, 321, 358
Geographical 61, 113, 119
Geometric 166, 305
Germany 45, 156, 302, 314
Glacier 292
Globalisation 302, 356, 357
Globalization 313, 360
Godfather 65, 131
Godfathers 175
Godman 249
Goldsmith 18, 19, 102
Gouthama 295
Gupta 79, 119, 290
H
Harassment 31, 43, 117, 147, 153, 154, 163,
203, 235, 252, 279, 332
Harbouring 43, 125, 216
Hardworking 286
Haryana 84
Hawala 25, 28, 43, 139, 215, 249, 318
HBT 220
HDW 319
Hi-tech 47, 159, 160, 163, 216, 220, 221,
224, 225, 239, 319, 336, 337, 350, 353,
354, 358
Hierarchy 20, 35, 38, 74, 88, 100, 128, 148,
152, 167, 223, 225, 226, 266, 288, 315,
343, 352, 363
High-money 220, 319
High-power 15, 35, 112
High-sea 316, 318
High-stake 187
High-tech 183, 350
Himalayas 119
Hindus 84
Hindutva 313
Holocaust 314
Homicide 102, 116, 118, 210, 213
Hoovers 81
Humanise 151, 152, 153, 179
Humiliation 59, 77, 101, 115, 152, 240

Humiliations 31, 53, 63, 77, 108, 127, 146,
211, 278, 338
Hyderabad 291
I
IAS 106
IB 167
Ichnography 317
IDBI 196
Idealism 291
Ill-conceived 141, 159, 192, 315, 347
Illegalities 38, 218, 263
Illegitimate 18, 67, 68, 101
Image-building 154
Immoral 37, 64, 77, 115, 175, 191, 210, 212,
245
Immunity 148, 150, 329
India-Pakistan 359
Indira 9, 86, 123, 212, 295, 322, 328
Indo-Pak 85
Indonesia 1
Industrialists 252, 310, 311, 313, 318
Industries 235, 297, 309, 310, 317
Industry 46, 93, 134, 286, 309, 310, 312,
313, 316
Influence-pedlars 27, 279
Infrastructure 33, 34, 185, 192, 215, 309,
311, 349, 352, 353, 355
Infrastructures 151, 164, 215, 309, 310, 353
Insubordination 181
Insurgency 85
Inter-organisational 168, 169
Inter-services 46, 85
Interdepartmental 224
Interdependance 173
Interference 11, 12, 15, 21, 27, 28, 45, 51,
53, 70, 92, 103, 125, 269, 317, 339, 343,
362
Interferences 59, 69, 109, 125, 127, 146,
148, 157, 224, 226, 245, 254, 259, 262,
278, 338, 361, 364
International 7, 34, 37, 45, 84, 85, 104, 156,
157, 183, 196, 219, 250, 251, 252, 253,
254, 290, 317, 319, 321, 357, 361
Interpersonal 187, 203, 341
Intra-organisational 168
Investigation 4, 19, 21, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 30,
32, 33, 35, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 49,
51, 52, 54, 62, 68, 69, 70, 75, 81, 82, 92,
102, 113, 115, 116, 117, 118, 123, 124,
125, 132, 137, 139, 143, 152, 161, 163,
164, 172, 182, 184, 185, 192, 193, 194,
195, 196, 197, 204, 209, 210, 213, 217,
220, 223, 224, 225, 227, 228, 229, 230,

231, 243, 246, 249, 252, 254, 259, 266,
315, 321, 322, 325, 326, 327, 328, 329,
330, 331, 333, 335, 339, 340, 341, 359,
360, 361, 362
Investigations 38, 42, 86, 117, 124, 125,
174, 184, 194, 230, 232, 246, 325, 329,
330, 361
Investment 96, 97, 217, 221, 298, 322, 352,
354
Investments 67, 195, 217
IPC 117
IPS 36, 54, 101
Iran 290
Iraq 294, 295, 314
Ireland 295
Irish 275
ISI 46, 85, 158, 216, 292, 359
Islam 290, 295
Israel 45, 46, 156, 158, 294
Italy 124
ITBP 167
ITC 196
J
Jadeja 243
Jagdish 285
Jain-hawala 230
Jaipur 243
Jaipuria 221
Japan 124, 300, 302, 311, 313
Jawaharlal 291
Jayalalitha 230, 276
Jayendra 328
Jean-paul 199
Jeevan 67
Jharkhand 328
JKLF 251
JMM 230
JNN 43
Job-culture 3, 61
Johan 199
Johnson 314
Journalists 67
Judgement 13, 20, 51, 59, 100, 131, 147,
227, 236, 281, 305
Judgements 31, 63, 77, 188, 235, 236, 237,
256, 305
Judical 70
Justfication 156
Justification 13, 30, 52, 68, 190, 224, 270,
291
Justifications 52, 229
K
Kalam 355
Kanchi 328
Kannada 7
Kanyakumari 79
Karachi 216
Karakoram 79
Kargil 292
Karmic 268
Karnataka 1, 7, 8, 18, 25, 49, 58, 68, 71, 76,
101, 102, 123, 169, 170, 188, 191, 220,
324
Karnataka-tamilnad 170
Karunanidhi 29, 276
Kashmir 37, 39, 45, 95, 96, 136, 138, 157,
167, 169, 171, 184, 219, 250, 253, 290,
291, 292, 293, 295, 349
Kautilya 323
KCF 85
Kennedy 158
Kerala 167
Khalistan 84, 85
Khalsa 84, 85
Khedda 229
Khmer 310
Kidnap 75, 220, 221, 251
Kidnap-drama 250, 251
Konanakunte 8
Koppal 102
Korea 124, 310, 311, 313
Krishnamachari 58
KRS 7
Kshatriyas 295
Kuppuswamy 198, 200
Kutch 79, 119
L
Labour 138, 177, 201, 202, 203, 209, 223,
243, 255, 314, 319, 325, 351, 352, 360
Labourer 198
Labourers 360
Laissez-faire 192, 315
Lakhubhai 43, 125, 230
Landlords 74, 89
Law-breakers 13, 56, 110, 144, 169, 175,
306
Law-enforcers 39, 40, 143, 173, 253
Lawbreakers 169, 228
Lawless 40, 174, 190, 262
Lawlessness 24, 40, 49, 50, 172, 173, 184,
190, 231
Legacy 57, 268, 281, 300

Legilsations 163, 201
Legilslature 233
Legislation 21, 67, 102, 115, 198, 199, 339,
362
Legislations 115, 118, 153, 154, 163, 199,
200, 201, 205, 211, 213, 224, 235, 253,
360
Legislature-executive 237
Legislatures 223, 224
Legitimacy 35, 152, 154, 163
Leitmotiv 205, 241, 277, 300, 306, 338
Liberalisation 61, 192, 285, 304, 305, 306,
307, 308, 313, 315
Life-style 145, 163
Line-system 151, 177
Loyal 12, 24, 27, 28, 46, 69, 73, 87, 141, 144,
158, 216, 262, 263, 346
Loyalties 26, 27, 28, 29, 47, 70, 125, 137,
160, 161, 215, 262, 263, 340, 341
Loyalty 12, 13, 17, 24, 26, 27, 28, 46, 51, 56,
69, 70, 144, 216, 227, 240, 262, 263, 284,
327, 344
Ludhiana 84, 85
M
Machtpolitik 294
Macro-plan 9
Madhavan 43
Mafia 25, 43, 53, 68, 125, 148, 190, 217, 218,
244, 251, 252, 269, 319
Mafioso 216, 217, 218, 219
Mahabharata 211
Maharaja 291
Maharastra 243
Mahatma 86, 294, 295, 296
Mahavir 295, 300
Maheshwara 233
Mal-administration 305
Mal-propaganda 305
Maladies 21, 77, 99, 103, 125, 161, 164, 207,
243, 339, 361
Maladjustment 74, 88, 189
Maladministration 127, 145, 146
Malady 1, 11, 26, 49, 50, 65, 95, 128, 136,
149, 155, 165, 184, 202, 203, 205, 207,
209, 244, 269, 277, 301, 325, 337, 351
Malaise 43, 96, 128, 143, 149, 248
Malaises 243, 333
Mammon 308
Mamools 49
Man-days 145
Man-hours 351
Man-management 148
Mangalasutra 101
Mankelkar 198
Manu 200
Maoist 359
Maratha 295
Martyrdom 85
Maslows 288
Massachusetts 294
Master-axle 62
Materfamilias 286, 319, 326, 342
Mathematics 269, 313
Maurya 79, 290
Maxwell 299
Mcgregor 179
McGregors 128, 148
Mechanism 2, 37, 51, 97, 105, 162, 168, 175,
176, 185, 199, 202, 204, 228, 230, 252,
279, 297, 331, 334, 343, 344
Mechanisms 7, 142, 152, 185, 202, 325
Media 43, 47, 85, 159, 184, 185, 194, 238,
239, 240, 242, 243, 244, 276, 297, 298,
300, 301, 302, 308, 309, 310, 311, 322
Mega-fraud 220
Mega-frauds 194
Mega-schemes 192, 315
Misappropriation 25, 147, 318
Misconception 270
Misconceptions 27, 137, 140, 340, 342
Misdemeanour 185
Misfit 74, 76
Mismanagement 281
Mob 110, 120, 186, 188
Modernisation 7, 17, 23, 33, 34, 185
Moghal 290
Money-centric 306
Money-power 29, 70
Monogamy 201
Motivation 15, 29, 47, 55, 70, 71, 113, 144,
145, 146, 152, 154, 159, 162, 174, 177,
215, 226, 246, 270, 288, 289, 325, 326,
336, 337, 349, 351, 352
Mourya 119
Mulla 174
Multi-nationals 300
Multi-polar 286
Muslim 96, 294, 295
Mysore 7
Mythology 233
N
Nagapur 243
Nalanda 313
Napoleon 299
Nation-building 281
Nationalism 302
Nationhood 290, 291, 292, 293, 359
Navy 21, 103, 339, 362
Naxalism 95, 136
Naxalites 10, 37, 169, 184
NCC 255
NCD 196
NDA 276, 328
Nepal 45, 157
Netherland 215
Newspaper 49, 145
Night-vision 225
Night-watch 34
Nitrogen 358
Nixon 297
Non-bailable 328
Non-cooperation 19
North-East 77, 171, 219
NPA 167, 315
NSA 46, 158, 159, 243
O
Odd-job 64, 97, 231
Odd-job-man 226
Opportunism 105, 294, 301
Orderly 26, 128, 145, 151, 152, 171, 177,
186, 349
Ossification 274
Ostracisation 152
Over-invoicing 318
Overhaul 110, 151, 165, 170, 224, 323, 339,
362
Oxford 313
Oxygen 145, 227, 330
P
Pakistan 37, 45, 46, 47, 84, 85, 157, 158,
159, 216, 290, 291, 292, 293, 294
Panjwar 85
Pappu 298
Paramilitary 62, 169
Parasurama 295
Parliament 59, 109, 190, 234, 235
Parmjit 85
Partition 233
Pathak 43, 125, 230
Patrimonial 284
Patriotic 97, 268, 298
Patronage 23, 30, 66, 73, 75, 90, 91, 97, 134,
136, 188, 189, 190, 231, 249, 274, 295,
321, 334
Patrons 72, 91, 134, 231

Pawns 328
Peace-keeper 150
Peacock 277, 338
Peanuts 286
Philippines 1
Philosophies 1
Philosophy 45, 157, 344
Phoolan 190, 298
Police-public 255
Policies 12, 46, 47, 58, 79, 80, 96, 98, 120,
121, 158, 159, 224, 276, 285, 322, 327
Polictical 139
Policy-makers 285
Politicial 162, 250
Politician-master 75, 92
Politicians 15, 17, 18, 19, 21, 23, 25, 27, 28,
41, 42, 43, 50, 65, 67, 72, 73, 74, 75, 76,
82, 87, 88, 90, 91, 92, 93, 94, 95, 96, 97,
99, 102, 103, 125, 134, 135, 136, 138,
139, 161, 168, 174, 175, 183, 215, 216,
230, 231, 240, 244, 249, 250, 252, 257,
261, 262, 263, 276, 277, 282, 284, 294,
301, 311, 313, 318, 321, 322, 323, 329,
336, 339, 361, 362
Politicisation 76, 90, 135, 249
Politicking 70, 233, 257, 295, 296
Politique 251
Polygamy 200
Popularity 8, 97
Population 32, 49, 85, 98, 165, 208, 209,
268, 305, 307, 308, 323, 356, 357
Portuguese 295
Power-brokers 13, 18, 29, 70, 75, 97, 261
Power-centers 285
Power-centre 7
Power-centres 188, 306
Power-game 233
Power-games 75, 90
Power-hungry 268, 300
Powerplay 37, 250
Pricewaterhouse 318
Proactive 81, 233, 314
Productivity 355
Professionalism 4, 30, 31, 41, 50, 57, 64, 65,
69, 81, 90, 105, 106, 132, 135, 138, 153,
163, 164, 165, 170, 239, 261, 266, 325,
326, 333, 361, 362
Prohibition 117, 201, 202, 210
Proliferation 93, 94, 134, 135, 136, 163, 249,
318
Protestants 295
Protocols 62
Prototypal 256
Pseudo-idealism 305
Pseudo-secularism 296
Punjab 37, 39, 84, 85, 95, 136, 138, 171,
174, 184, 219, 221, 229, 250, 252, 253,

290, 295
Puranas 295
Q
Quorum 44, 82
R
Racial 61, 359
Radicalism 234
Railways 305, 309
Rajasthan 84
Rajiv 8, 86, 169
Rama-rajya 355
Ramayana 211
Rat-race 67, 261, 336, 346
Raw 45, 112, 135, 157, 167, 279, 292
Rbi 193, 196, 316
Reactionaries 198, 200
Reconstruction 1, 22, 24, 62, 78, 141, 198,
300, 325, 347
Regulation 12, 182, 285
Regulations 62, 93, 134, 181, 182, 192, 193,
194, 195, 196, 316, 322
Rehabilitation 190, 203, 204, 208
Religion 9, 119, 207, 290, 294, 295, 296,
313, 314
Religions 61, 84, 207, 290, 295
Reorganisation 25, 109, 160
Research 8, 9, 27, 45, 59, 62, 71, 85, 112,
113, 141, 157, 165, 168, 185, 219, 267,
294, 297, 310, 312, 313, 333, 342, 346,
353
Reservation 57, 79, 80, 108, 120, 121, 122
Reservations 79, 106, 119, 120, 209, 212,
286
Resources 7, 8, 15, 30, 33, 45, 47, 55, 61, 62,
71, 73, 87, 88, 110, 113, 143, 145, 146,
147, 148, 150, 151, 152, 157, 158, 159,
162, 164, 165, 168, 177, 181, 185, 190,
221, 223, 225, 241, 246, 252, 256, 259,
267, 291, 292, 293, 311, 330, 332, 333,
336, 337, 352, 361, 364
Restoration 85
Restructure 326
Resurgence 362
Resurrection 171
Revolution 37, 198, 317, 357
Righteousness 4, 73, 87, 95, 136, 344
S
Sabotage 7, 8, 110, 156, 169, 170, 232, 254,
255
Sabotages 334
Safe-houses 221
Samir 316
Samuel 314
Sanskrit 274, 313
Saraswati 328
Satellite 47, 159
Satellites 183
Scam 43, 192, 193, 196, 197, 230, 235, 316,
317, 319
Scams 192, 193, 195, 197, 305, 307, 315,
319
Scandal 43, 65, 125, 131, 297, 319
Scandals 124, 125, 193, 217, 245
Scapegoat 11, 54
Schadenfreude 270
Sebi 193, 196, 316
Secularism 45, 157
Sekhar 28
Sekhon 85
Self-management 268
Self-policing 172, 173, 174, 176
Self-promotion 248, 263, 301, 302
Seniority 5, 59, 82, 262, 266, 269, 278, 322,
325, 338, 352
Sensationalism 298, 299
Sensibilities 33, 85, 127, 144, 147, 178, 239,
343, 344, 363
Sensitivities 112, 125, 144, 224, 243
Sensitization 205, 206, 212
Shankaracharya 328
Shankararaman 328
Shivani 243
Siachin 292
Sikhs 84, 85
Singapore 242, 302, 310, 311, 313
Socialism 302
Socioeconomic 285, 315
Sophocles 230
Southern 24, 63, 65, 77, 108, 130, 221, 247,
267, 338
Sovereign 45, 61, 156, 207
Sovereignty 26
Soviet 45, 156, 158
Specialisation 20, 35, 102, 154, 163, 206,
339, 362
Specialisiation 162
Srilanka 136
Statute 82, 187
Statutory 43, 44, 82, 208, 253, 321, 326, 332,
334
Steel-frame 119, 120, 121
Steel-nerves 252
Steelframe 104, 281, 283, 327
Streamline 99, 182, 204
Street-hoodlums 219
Strictures 230
Structure 3, 7, 31, 32, 33, 37, 54, 80, 106,
120, 121, 162, 167, 174, 177, 198, 225,
241, 272, 275, 281, 284, 308, 335, 348,
349, 353, 354, 363
Stuartpuram 101
Surgeon 151, 245, 246, 247
Surgeons 245, 246, 247, 248
Surgeries 246
Surgery 245, 273
Sutherland 315, 316, 318
Swami 296
Switzerland 313
Sycophancy 13, 265, 286, 302
Sycophants 3, 12
Symbion 68, 186, 259
Symbiosis 91, 134, 168, 173, 193, 202, 290,
307
Symptoms 49, 116, 118, 125, 161, 184, 202,
203, 205, 207, 213, 261
Syndicate 91, 134, 136, 189, 215, 224
Syndicates 17, 75, 91, 92, 98, 134, 136, 158,
189, 190, 215, 216, 243, 244
Syndrome 40, 138, 139
Synergy 94, 135, 164, 168, 193, 196, 245,
250, 254, 259, 260, 307, 330, 331, 335
Sysptomatic 69
Systemic 223, 326, 353, 363
T
Talents 4, 15, 57, 58, 80, 108, 121, 177, 278,
282, 334, 338, 351, 352
Tamilnad 170, 188, 191, 230, 328
Tanwar 230
Technique 216, 219, 249
Techniques 7, 16, 18, 20, 33, 34, 45, 100,
150, 153, 154, 156, 165, 184, 190, 325,
326, 348, 350, 351, 355, 357, 358
Technologies 355, 358
Technology 12, 46, 158, 162, 183, 225, 261,
289, 292, 312, 313, 355, 357, 358
Tehelka 276
Telecommunications 43
Tendencies 13, 49, 61, 76, 93, 132, 134, 141,
143, 147, 151, 173, 179, 186, 190, 221,
251, 264, 282, 313, 347, 357, 358, 360
Tendency 13, 20, 26, 38, 47, 94, 95, 100,
105, 116, 121, 131, 136, 137, 138, 160,
168, 195, 226, 259, 274, 275, 279, 340,
341
Thackeray 243
Thakkar 285
Theory 1, 199, 224, 297, 304, 327
Top-brass 137, 141, 185, 229, 286, 336, 350
Top-secret 254
Toynbee 199
Transformation 118, 150, 162, 213, 223,
226, 241, 285
Triplex 191, 273, 282, 319
Troika 18, 94, 97, 99, 135
Tyranny 3, 12, 69, 199, 204, 208, 270
Tzu 299
U
Unconstitutional 276, 278, 338
Undemocratic 276
Under-utilisation 256
Undercover 8, 9, 112, 113
Underground 90, 99, 135
Underprivileged 79
Unemployment 7, 128, 149, 351
Unethical 263, 305
Unlawful 153, 173, 175, 196, 253, 332
Unprofessional 49, 59, 137, 325, 341
Unresponsive 88, 284
Untouchability 79, 119, 200, 202, 203, 207
Uprightness 63, 188, 248, 261, 262
USA 84, 85, 294, 297, 300, 302, 303, 311,
313, 314, 322, 352
Ustinov 328
V
Vallabhbhai 285
Values 12, 23, 32, 45, 49, 51, 54, 62, 65, 68,
70, 73, 82, 87, 95, 104, 105, 107, 127,
130, 132, 136, 140, 147, 150, 157, 166,
172, 177, 178, 182, 184, 198, 200, 203,
210, 215, 228, 246, 247, 261, 262, 272,
273, 274, 275, 281, 282, 286, 299, 300,
301, 302, 305, 306, 308, 314, 323, 324,
327, 336, 342, 344, 346, 356
Veerappan 170, 191, 220
Venkatesh 24
Vice-dens 215
Vijayanagar 295
Vishnu 233
Vishnugupta 284
Vision 51, 74, 89, 183, 227, 280, 302, 330,
336, 337, 348, 355, 356, 357, 358, 360,
361, 362
Visionary 348, 358
Visions 277, 280, 355

Vivekananda 296
Vohra 25, 249
W
Wadhawa 85
Warming-up 178, 343
Wars 45, 67, 157
Wartime 255
Washington 296, 312
Wassam 85
Watchdog 22, 62, 64, 258
Watchdogs 22, 64, 73
Watchman 285
Watchmen 97
Watergate 297
Watermark 212
Wavelength 171
Weaponry 98, 112, 113, 221, 224, 349, 350,
353
Weapons 34, 40, 51, 111, 140, 183, 187,
188, 190, 208, 228, 246, 247, 341, 348
Weberian 284
Welfare 79, 97, 110, 119, 120, 121, 163, 180,
198, 205, 278, 279, 285, 306, 307, 310
Wherewithal 11, 150, 152, 154, 177, 254,
268
Wherewithals 153
White-collar 249, 315
Womanhood 212, 246
Womenfolk 246
Work-culture 3, 61
Work-ethic 61
Work-ethics 71, 267
Work-pressure 178, 184
Work-pressures 178, 224
Workforce 286
Workload 23, 33, 363
Workloads 20, 100
World-class 47, 159
X
X-ray 225
Xenophobia 274
Y
Yadav 298
Yardstick 64
Yardsticks 236
Youngsters 13, 324
Youths 85, 128, 149, 220, 221
Z
Zafarwal 85
Zealots 7, 295
Zeist 224
Zeitgeist 162, 290, 300, 313, 316, 326, 360
Zoetic 198

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POLICING THE

Published Works of Praveen Kumar

Policing for the New Age

Pratheek Praveen Kumar

1. Indian police at a crossroads: which way to take?,

3. Indian police: time to take tough decisions,

4. What ails professional policing in India,

5. Need to liberate law enforcers from unholy alliance,

8. Caught in the vicious circle of corruption,

9. Police structure needs the management touch,

10. Police & human rights does end justify means?,

15. Police morale eroded by poor administration,

18. Corruption Indian Police Scenario,

19. Policing under political patronage,

22. The gun still speaks,

20. Quota system can weaken civil service,

23. Crime, Politics and the Police,

25. The Indian police: maladies and remedies,

27. Indian internal security buildup,

28. Investigation of dowry death cases,

31. Professional pride of the police,

33. How crime affects national life,

34. Need of attitudinal change in police,

37. Indian police and sixty years of independence,

39. Challenges of coordination in Indian police,

41. Man management in police,

42. Where Indian police is heading?,

43. Law and order policing in India,

44. Investigation of economic crimes,

46. Enforcement of social justice,

47. Role of police in the cause of social justice,

51. Indian police: what course to pursue in the 21st century,

53. Where proactive judiciary leads India?,

54. In defence of judiciary,

55. The role of police in a democracy,

56. Police as social surgeons,

57. Political crimes and security,

59. Rat-race at the top affects policing,

60. Need of competent brass in police,

61. Right orientation in government service,

65. Need of lean and mean civil services,

67. Core issue and the core of Indias nationhood,

69. Crisis of right leadership in India,

71. Democracy for whom?,

72. Infrastructure development,

74. Recent trends in economic crimes,

76. Innovative techniques in policing,

77. Revamping the investigation machinery,

78. Coordinated approach to criminal justice system,

80. Training strategy to affect behavioral and attitudinal change in,

81. Evolution of norms for manpower and logistics requirements.,

82. Vision for Police 2010 and Police 2020,

POLICING THE POLICE 2 ED

POLICING THE POLICE 2 ED

INDIAN POLICE AT A CROSSROADS:

Policing, being a specialised job, remains an enigma to outsiders, including administrators

POLICING THE POLICE 2 ED

POLICING THE POLICE 2 ED

INTERNAL SECURITY CHALLENGES AND APPROACH

POLICING THE POLICE 2 ED

POLICING THE POLICE 2 ED

POLICING THE POLICE 2 ED

POLICING THE POLICE 2 ED