Inside India (excerpts)

INSIDE INDIA ASSESSMENT OF CURRENT INDIA UN D E R

P R O D UC T I O N

W IT H

P UB L I S H A M E R I C A , M A R Y L A N D , US A

PRAVEEN KUMAR

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Praveen Kumar with his more than three decades of government service in senior levels and as a poet of five published collections and as an author of two volumes on matters of governance and public interests is a familiar face in Indian intellectual circuits. His contributions on these topics to prominent national dailies and periodicals of India and journals like The Indian Journal of Criminology And Criminalistics of MHA, GOI, Delhi were very popular and often sensational by their innovative unorthodox thoughts. Born in Mangalore as the eldest son of Shree R.D.Suvarna and B.Sarojini, Praveen Kumar graduated in Science from St. Aloysius College, Mangalore, going on to obtain a post-graduate degree in Literature from Mysore University. He also holds post-graduate diplomas in Business Management and Cooperation. In his student days he was also a prize-winning orator and writer. He lives in Bangalore with his wife, Smt. Jayashree and son Pratheek. He is a familiar face in national seminars and TV networks in India as a Poet and thinker. Stemming from his varied academic background, are the lively far-ranging interests that have impelled him to write on subjects as diverse as matters of public interest and poetry, striking the perfect balance between the pursuance of vocation and avocation. INSIDE INDIA is his new venture on matters of governance and public interests of India. This volume is a first hand account of the observations, impressions and experiences of the author as an insider of India and Indian bureaucracy.

PREFACE TO THE BOOK 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 country’s 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”. This content is also the theme of this volume, “Inside India”. The cause of the malady is analysed and remedies are suggested in the article, ‘The Crumbling Steelframe of Inda’ of this volume. The deterioration is a post-independence phenomenon. The once steelframe of Indian bureaucracy of the British vintage gradually crumbled to its extant putridity under the sad auspice of its corrupt and incompetent el patron, the 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. “Inside India” is the story of this fast rottening situation.

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The story in “Inside India” is by an insider, insider in India as wll as in Indian bureaucracy for more than thirty-one years at a senior position. 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 as a senior police officer for nearly three decades. However, this makes no difference to the over all picture of India as situation is not much different elsewhere. In spite of well-known notorieties of the degenerates like A.R.Nizamuddin, R.S.Chopra and other scoundrels of the similar ilk in Karnataka police, situation is better there than some of the more notorious state police organizations of India. Their core weakness there lies in sweepingly conforming to the rotten 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 rottening situation like India’s. 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. India’s 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. 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. This volume, “Inside India” is a small attempt towards this beginning. I acknowledge with deep humility that this work would not have been possible without the inspiration of my late father Shree R.D.Suvarna who instilled in me right values and a sense of dignity without which I would not have been what I am now. I would be failing in my duty if I fail to express my gratitude to late Shree A.R.Sridharan, IPS (rtd.), 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 Indian bureaucracy.

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EXCERPTS Praveen Kumar with his more than three decades of government service in senior levels and as a poet of five published collections and as an author of two volumes on matters of governance and public interests is a familiar face in Indian intellectual circuits. INSIDE INDIA is his new venture on matters of governance and public interests of India. This volume is a first hand account of the observations, impressions and experiences of the author as an insider of India and Indian bureaucracy. The deterioration is a post-independence phenomenon. The once steelframe of Indian bureaucracy of the British vintage gradually crumbled to its extant putridity under the sad auspice of its corrupt and incompetent el patron, the 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. “Inside India” is the story of this fast rottening situation. India is a civilization of diversities and a culture of contradictions. India’s 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. 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. 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.

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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.

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.

It is India”s 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.

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.

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.

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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.

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 country’s internal security raises them above political and leadership bickerings. Often, these aspects of the police are happily forgotten 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 disadvantage because the police, with its trained response, may find it difficult to isolate itself from the behests of its political masters.

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.

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.

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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.

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 of 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.

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 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.

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.

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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 d’etre 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.

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.

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 d’etre 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.

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?

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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.

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.

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.

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.

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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.

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 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.

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.

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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.

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.

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.

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Present India’s 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 India’s essence passim.

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.

Corruption is the product of man’s 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 post-independent 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.

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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 self-confidence ensues from it.

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.

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. In spite of well-known notorieties of the degenerates like A.R.Nizamuddin, R.S.Chopra and other scoundrels of the similar ilk in Karnataka police, situation is better there than some of the more notorious state police organizations of India. Their core weakness there lies in sweepingly conforming to the rotten 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.

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