Policing The Police

POLICING THE POLICE Title of the Book: POLICING THE POLICE Name of the Author: PRAVEEN KUMAR Address: GB, HAYES HALL, HAYES ROAD, BANGALORE-560 025 (Karnataka, INDIA) E-Mail: [email protected] / [email protected] Year of Publication: 2000 Phone: 080-41125309 Mobiles: 9901979567 / 9945336849 Subject: INDIAN POLICE AFTER INDEPENDENCE Loving Dedication: PRATHEEK

BOOK REVIEWS (POLICING THE POLICE) A POLICE officer and a prolific writer, Praveen Kumar, has published another anthology ……….in the form of this book.……… "Policing the police" acquires more relevance today in the context of the criminalisation of not just politics, but of the services as well……….Coming as a sequel to

his earlier book Policing for the New Age, the author chooses to describe policemen as "social doctors" and policing as a "surgical operation to systematically remove cancerous growths from the body of society”. THE HINDU

Praveen Kumar is not only an upright police officer but also a poet and a prolific writer.……..Policing the Police—an analytical Study of the philosophy and field dynamics of the policing in practice highlight various problem areas including defective selection and recruitment,unsound training and unhealthy job culture and identifies likely solutions for its redemption. DECCAN HERALD

Praveen Kumar gives an insight into the Indian police set-up and analyses the problems of the department, with interesting illustrations from the field. Mr Kumar's book is a departure from the routine, where he not only analyses the problems, but also suggests solutions. THE ASIAN AGE

The author expresses concern over sycophants climbing the ladder and reaching the top to hold the reins and guide the destiny of the police. The result — a spiritless culture created by incompetent leaders…….Policing the police involves self-policing. Through the book, the author has made an honest effort to throw some light on the state of affairs of Indian police. THE TIMES OF INDIA

A police officer unravels his profession. INDIA TODAY

Policing with a cause. Policing The Police by Praveen Kumar.…….delves deeply on this core aspect of policing and lays bare the Indian Police setup, sheath by sheath………He interprets police and policing through the prism of a poet’s sensibilities. THE HINDUSTAN TIMES

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Praveen Kumar is a senior Police Officer with the Kamataka Police. Apart from Policing The Police, he has also authored and published five volumes of verse – Love And Pride, Unknown Horizons and Portraits Of Passion in English, Divya Belaku and Bhavana in Kannada, and Policing For TheNew Age, a treatise on the Police and Policing. Born in Mangalore, 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 and shares an active interest in interior decoration with his wife, Smt. Jayashree. He has also appeared on literary programmes on Doordarshan - Kavi Sammelana and Sanchaya and interviewed several times by different TV channels as a Poet and Police Officer. Stemming from his varied academic background, are the lively far-ranging Interests that have impelled him to write on subjects as diverse as police procedure and poetry, striking the perfect balance between the pursuance of vocation and avocation.

OTHER BOOKS BY PRAVEEN KUMAR BHAVANA (Poems In Kannada) THE WORK IS A BUNCH OF LILTING POEMS IN EASY, INTIMATE AND COSY KANNADA. THEY ARE THE REVERIES OF A TRAINED AND CRITICAL MIND OF A MATURE POET WITH AN OBSERVING AND PENETRATING EYE AND SHARP SENSITIVITY TO THE WORLD AROUND.......THE CANVAS FOR HIS 62 SHORT PIECES /OF POETRY IS THE WHOLE GAMUT OF HUMAN LIFE, ITS CHARMS AND BEAUTY..... AND IS HIGHLY ENJOYABLE..... THERE IS ALSO A BOUQUET OF THE ECSTATIC WORLD OF LOVERS AND ROMANCE. THE HINDU

DIVYA BELAKU (Poems In Kannada) METAPHORS AND WORLD IMAGERIES, REPLETE WITH RHYME AND RHYTHMIC FELICITY HERE FILL AND SPILL IN ALL DIRECTIONS; THEY FLY, FLOAT AND DANCE AND ULTIMATELY GO STILL TO ECHO WITHIN TIME AND AGAIN (Translated from Kannada). DR. SHIVARAMA KARANTHA

PORTRAITS OF PASSION (Poems In English) PRAVEEN KUMAR IS A POET, A PROLIFIC WRITER

AND A SENIOR POLICE OFFICER IN ONE.THE GENTLE PASSIONS OF A POET, INTELLECTUAL ATTRIBUTES OF A CREATIVE WRITER AND HARDIHOOD OF A POLICE ADMINISTRATOR HAVE SPLICED TOGETHER IN HIS LITERARY CREATIONS.

UNKNOWN HORIZONS (Poems In English) THERE IS AN ELEMENT OF DELIGHT AND SURPRISE THROUGHOUT. THE POET IS AWARE OF THE WONDERFUL WORLD OF NATURE AND OF MAN. SO HE IS ABLE TO EMPLOY TELLING IMAGES TO PORTRAY HIS INNER FEELINGS OF BEAUTY AND LOVE. DR. M. GOPALAKRISHNA ADIGA

POLICING FOR THE NEW AGE (Essays on Police) THE LANGUAGE IS FLOWERY.....THERE IS A NEED TO APPRECIATE HIS RUTHLESS EXPOSURE OF THE CRIMINALISATION OF POLITICS AND THE POLITICISATION OF THE POLICE... HIS TREATISES ON DOWRY DEATHS AND THEIR INVESTIGATION AND ON POLICE DOGS ARE CHARACTERISTICALLY THOROUGH AND SOUND MERITING UNIVERSAL ATTENTION.....THERE IS NO DOUBT THAT THE AUTHOR WHO HAS ALREADY ACQUIRED A REPUTATION AS A POET IS A HIGHLY SENSITIVE AND CULTURED PERSON. THE HINDU

PUBLISHED WORKS OF PRAVEEN KUMAR

Books a) English writings 1) POLICING FOR THE NEW AGE (MAY 1992) 2) POLICING THE POLICE (JANUARY 2000) b) English poems 1) UNKNOWN HORIZONS (JULY 1991) 2) PORTRAITS OF PASSION (MARCH 1997) 3) LOVE AND PRIDE (2002 IN WEB) c) Kannada poems 1) DIVYA BELAKU (JULY 1991) 2) BHAVANA (DECEMBER 1993) articles a) The Hindu (Open Page) 1) INDIAN POLICE AT A CROSSROADS (6-6-1995)* 2) INTERNAL SECURITY- CHALLENGES AND APPROACH (8-8-1995) 3) INDIAN POLICE: TIME TO TAKE TOUGH DECISIONS (19-9-1995)* 4) WHAT AILS PROFESSIONAL POLICING IN INDIA? (2-1-1996)

5) NEED TO LIBERATE LAW ENFORCERS FROM UNHOLY ALLIANCES (2-41996)* 6) ROLE OF POLICE IN THE RECONSTRUCTION OF INDIA (18-6-1996)* 7) WHERE THEIR LOYALTIES LIE… (27-8-1996) 8) CAUGHT IN THE VICIOUS CIRCLE OF CORRUPTION (15-10-1996) 9) POLICE STRUCTURE NEEDS THE MANAGEMENT TOUCH (31-12-1996) 10) POLICE & HUMAN RIGHTS – DOES END JUSTIFY MEANS? (18-3-1997) 11) RESTORING CREDIBILITY TO CRIME INVESTIGATION (24-6-1997) 12) WHAT AILS THE INDIAN SECRET POLICE (9-9-1997) 13) POLICE UNPROFESSIONAL (20-1-1998)* 14) LAW AND JUSTICE (23-6-1998)* 15) POLICE MORALE ERODED BY POOR ADMINISTRATION (8-9-1998)* 16) TIME TO IMPROVE THE QUALITY OF CIVIL SERVICE (2-3-1999)** QUALITY OF CIVIL SERVICE (19-3-1999) : letter to the Editor as answer to UPSC response in THE HINDU dated 16-3-1999. b) The Indian Express (Editorial Page) 1) QUOTA SYSTEM CAN WEAKEN CIVIL SERVICE (6-6-1995) 2) EMPOWERING THE CBI (10-7-1997)

c) Deccan Herald (Sunday Supplementary) 1) TOWARDS SANE SERVICE (2-7-1995)* 2) LACKING VIGOUR (6-7-1997) 3) PROFESSIONAL PRIDE OF THE POLICE (28-9-1997) 4) NEED TO REVITALISE THE POLICE (23-11-1997) 5) FOR GOOD GOVERNANCE (11-11-2001) d) The Times Of India 1) THE GUN STILL SPEAKS (21-10-1995) e) Alive (Focus) 1) CRIME, POLITICS AND POLICE (FEBRUARY 1996)* 2) CRIMINALISATION OF POLICE (JANUARY 1997)* 3) THE INDIAN POLICE : MALADIES AND REMEDIES (SEPTEMBER 1998)* 4) THE CRUMBLING STEELFRAME OF INDIA (NOVEMBER 1998) 5) KASHMIR: THE CORE ISSUE OF NATIONHOOD (FEBRUARY 2002) f) IJCC 1) INVESTIGATION OF DOWRY DEATH CASES (1996 – 3) 2) INDIAN INTERNAL SECURITY BUILDUP (1998 – 4)

TV appearances a) Interviewed 1) Sanchaya (Bangalore DD) on 8-6-1992 2) Sanchaya (Bangalore DD) on 22-8-1994 3) Parichaya (Udaya TV) on 16-3-2000 b) Presenting Poems 1) Sanchaya (Bangalore DD) on 12-9-1989 2) Kavi Sammelana (Bangalore DD) on 17-10-1990 National Events a) National Seminar 1) Political Reforms in India (centre for Policy Research & BU) on 20-3-2002

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 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. 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 polic 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, September 18, 1999

Pratheek Praveen Kumar

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS "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 (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 police and bureaucracy, inhabited by immoral hawks. I acknowledge with deep humility, the contribution of my father, Shree R.D.Suvarna in instilling in me the value and sense of delving deep into and doing my best with total commitment, whatever I take up in my life. Without that value and commitment to achieve higher in face of all odds, I would have been nowhere and certainly nowhere this work. October 29, 1999

- P.K.

Why This Book For the gargantuam size of the police organisation in India and the key-role of policing in governing the country, 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 to 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. “Policing The Police" is a departure from the worn path and tries to delve deep into every problem by analytical deductions interspersed with interesting illustrations from the field. Its bold approach is refreshing. This book is different and outstanding as is its author. This is a book with a difference; a rare genre of its kind. Makes compelling reading.

Policing The Police Problem areas • 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.

What is Policing The Police? • 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 the dull-writted peformance. • The author's close association with events in police and his close observations in the police world for nearly a quarter of a century bring authenticity to whatever he says or analyses.

Praveen Kumar is a police officer and a prolific writer on police and policing subjects. His articles on this and other subjects were published in prominent national dailies like The Hindu. The Indian Express, The Times of India and Deccan Herald and English periodicals like Alive and The Indian Journal of Criminology And Criminalistics of MHA, GOI, Delhi. Some of his articles on the sad state of affairs in and the need of restructuring of The Union | Public Service Commission I and the civil services have I become national sensations |and helped awakening from the deep slumber of complacency. Policing The Police is his second work on the subject postliminary to Policing For The New Age, published in 1992.

He has four books of verse to his credit, two in English and two in Kannada. He has given several programmes as poet in dooradarshan. Born in the port city of Mangalore as the eldest son of Shree R.D. Suvarna and Smt. B. Sarojini, he presently lives in Bangalore with wife Smt. Jayashree Praveenkumar, and son. Pratheek Praveenkumar.

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 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.

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 hi-tech crimes. These factors represent the circumstances in which Police is called to work on and show results. They constitute the raison d’etre 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 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 India’s 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 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. 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 officer’s 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 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.

INDIAN POLICE : TIME TO TAKE TOUGH DECISIONS 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. 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 far-reaching 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 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. 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, sharp-edged 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 façade 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 senior’s orders. Youngsters in the organisation who drop out weaken the organisation. 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.

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 wide-ranging 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 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 former’s 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 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 life-style, 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 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.

THE CRUMBLING STEELFRAME OF INDIA

The malleability of the Civil Services has been a cause for concern. Once considered the backbone of administration, the steel frame today is a pale shadow of its former self, needing urgent reorganisation 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 India’s 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 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 one’s 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 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. 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. 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 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.

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 money-power 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. 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 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 non-corrupt 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.

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 power-block, 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 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 protégé. 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-Inspector’s 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-Inspector’s 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. 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 officer’s 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 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.

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. It’s expression in crime management is too obvious a matter. 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.

WHAT AILS THE INDIAN SECRET POLICE India’s approach to national security is always piecemeal Incoherent and casual. Threats are countered with shortTerm responses which never fulfil the vital needs of the country. Espionage performance is below the international standard. The reasons are many but the important ones are lack of commitment and an approach that is far from professional. 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. LACK OF PERSPECTIVE Clandestine operations require highly specialised skills, Ignoring this need means compromising and betraying the organisation’s 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. India’s 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 India’s 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. 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 country’s 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. 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. posted by praveen kumar at 2:59 AM

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. 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. 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 Minister’s 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 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.

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 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 latter’s 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 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 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 d’etre, 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 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.

PROFESSIONAL PRIDE OF THE POLICE Better handling of the police administration will do away with the ills of the police force writes PRAVEEN KUMAR. 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 other’s 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, McGregor’s 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 self-grandiosity 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 administration with people of character, integrity, devotion, efficiency, ability and above all, deep insight to human nature and its problems.

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 officer’s 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 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 sub-inspectors 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 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.

POLICE MORALE ERODED BY POOR ADMINISTRATION The police is used as a tool to check the interference of the law. The administrators wield power which breeds arrogance. They do little to boost the morale of the personnel or motivate them. 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 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 chief’s 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. 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 well-being 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 policeman’s 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 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.

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. 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 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 well-being 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 policeman’s 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. 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 higher–ups 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 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 humiliations’s 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 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 latter’s 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 latter’s 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 other’s 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 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 McGregor’s need hierarchy and such man-management concepts are nonexistent in their vocabulary and thoughts. Efficient management of human resources is a fool’s 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 law–enforcers. 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 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.

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 nation’s 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 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 law–abiding 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 dim-witted 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 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. 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 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 President’s 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. 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 nation’s interest with impunity for mutual relief and benefits by subornation. posted by praveen kumar at 2:57 AM

CRIMINALISATION OF POLICE Politicians, criminals and the police-the troika that is taking the country towards total chaos and ruin. 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 today’s 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. 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 today’s 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. 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?. 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 country’s 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 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.

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; 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 country’s 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 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.

RESTORING CREDIBILITY TO CRIME INVESTIGATION It is the national character of the CBI that makes it stand head and shoulders above the myriad crime investigation departments. But does the CBI, in its present form, fully qualify to be a premier investigating authority? The answer is, no. A statutory panel comprising (retired) members of the judiciary may help restore the dignity of the institution. 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. 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.

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 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. 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, 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 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.

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 rat-race 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. 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 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 ½ 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. 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 crème de la crème 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 power-brokers 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 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 work-ethics and professional ends with single mindedness. 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.

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 self-seeking, 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 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 Sub-Inspectors 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 build- up 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 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 work-ethics 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 I’improviste 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.

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. 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 proved 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 d’etre 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 intra-organisational 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. 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 law-breakers 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 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 other’s 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 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. posted by praveen kumar at 2:55 AM

INVESTIGATION OF DOWRY DEATH CASES Nature created woman different from man to her disadvantage to bear male atrocities unless and until society in an enlightened mood comes to her rescue. Atrocities against women are covered under various sections of Indian Penal Code and a few special laws. Of these, dowry death cases have become sensational topical issues with public being highly sensitised to the menance. Investigation of dowry death cases has special links with the science of forensic medicine because of the special nature of the investigation taking place within the family circle without eye witnesses or even nonpartisan witnesses. Inexact definitions and certain anomalies of Acts and Rules concerning Dowry death investigation render investigation difficile. The loopholes Need to be corrected. Marriage as the second birth in a girl’s life brings Adaptation problems with it. An integrated approach to these problems Alone can bring deliverance to the fairer sex of the human genre. 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 women’s 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 death’s door. All institutions of society including the government, press, women’s organisations, judiciary and police handle dowry 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 girl’s death. There 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 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 girl’s 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.

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; ill-conceived 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 over-weighed 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 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 everybody’s satisfaction including the clever 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 mega-economic 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 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 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 IDBI’s subsidiary CARE gifted the company’s 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 company’s 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 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.

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 jobculture and vice versa. Even a degenerate character turns honest and efficient in an honest and efficient environment. The work-culture 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 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 other’s 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 self-motivated 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 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?.

CRIME, POLITICS AND THE POLICE The police, with their links with politicians on the one hand and With criminals on the other, have become the protectors of vested Interests with no more commitment and passion for law and justice. 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 to cast votes is steadily decreasing from election to election. 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 nation’s 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 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? 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. 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 god–sent 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. 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. 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 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 law-enforcing agents vis-à-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 cross-selection 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. 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. posted by praveen kumar at 2:53 AM

EMPOWERING THE CBI The appointment of the CBI chief has to be a professional, not political, decision. This power must be taken away from the Central Government. 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 Hoover’s 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 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 panel’s 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 in a position to dictate terms up political parties. The CBI is metamorphosing into a Frankenstein’s 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.

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 government’s 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. 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, 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 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.

POLICE AND ADMINISTRATION The police basically is a backup force of the state administration. Its primary functions are from 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 country’s 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 country’s reign came to people’s 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 country’s 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.

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 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. 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.

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 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 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 d’etre 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 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 self-confidence 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 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. 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 law’s 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 law’s 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 nobody’s 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 d’etre of good policing. The shift in attitude needs to be from blind and blanket-policing for the policing’s 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 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 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 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.

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 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 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 d’etre 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 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 track-record 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.

INDIAN POLICE AND FIFTY 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 1950”s 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 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 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 Pakistan’s 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 latter’s 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's’poor 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 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 1950’s . Its secret police is yet to make perficient use of the country’s 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 spade-works are initiated to institute a comprehensive agency in India for handling national security concerns. 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 country’s 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. 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 century-mark of India’s independence.

INDIAN INTERNAL SECURITY BUILDUP The article deals with the organisation, management and operations of intelligence network in reference to India and its significance in safeguarding the internal security of the country. Efforts are made to trace the Achilles’ heel in the organisation and functioning of the present intelligence build-up in India and how it has to be handled to strengthen the internal security machinery of the country is discussed in the article with emphasis on selection of right people, right training, right motivation, right planning and right preparations before each field action. The intricacies of intelligence operations are also discussed in three distinct levels namely intelligence gathering, research & planning and field operations with reference to their importance to the internal security.

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 déjà 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. 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 death-cum-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. 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. 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 organisation’s 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. 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.

TOWARDS SANE SERVICE Civil Service being the trunk of the tree of democratic Governance, Praveen Kumar wants it to be safeguarded From the axe of job reservation policy. 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 handicapped certain accurst social groups from breaking away from primitive way of life. 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 of atrocities, reservations, in jobs and educational opportunities to quote but a few. 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. 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 crème de la crème 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 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 India’s best interests.

NEED TO REVITALISE THE POLICE The stereotyped 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, says Praveen Kumar 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 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, 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 IGP’s 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 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.

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 ey 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 country’s 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 naïve 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 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 other’s 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 organisation’s 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 man’s aspirations and predicament. An independent India has added to the negative aspects. One 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 officer’s 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 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.

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 crème de la crème 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 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 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 room-centered 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 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 country’s limited

resources of food, shelter, water, clothing, electricity schooling, 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.

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 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 law–enforcing 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 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 self-policing. 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 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 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.

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 organisation’s 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. 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 former’s 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 nature’s bounty are kind and tender and elegant. The strains of the environment cause inquietude in nature’s 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, 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 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. 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.?

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. 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. 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. 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 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

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 of crime. The police ought to be concerned about the interests of the 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 0};3 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. 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. p73 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. 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.

THE INDIAN POLICE: MALADIES AND REMEDIES The nexus between criminals, politicians and policemen has made the police totally ineffectual when it comes to maintaining law and order. Only if this nexus is broken and the police force totally revamped, will Indians be able to life without fear. 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. 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. The annual assessment of men and officers in the police has become a travesty of what it was originally meant to be. In no way, under the present circumstances, does an ACR reflect an officer’s 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 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. 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 protégé 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 wife’s 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 cold-blooded 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. 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.

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 latter’s 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 other’s 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 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 d’etre 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 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. posted by praveen kumar at 2:47 AM

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 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. 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 man’s 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 wellversed with the LTTE objectives, expertise and method of operation would have dismissed the calls and the letters as a non-even. But the Karnataka police had to be prepared for an emergency because it was not equipped to handle internal security problems with courage and confidence. It is not 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 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 adversary’s 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. 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 India’s

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.

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 job–culture 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 need-oriented 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 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 post-independent 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 post–independent age because, independent India’s 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 India’s 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. India’s 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, India’s very own situations dictated terms to the shapes to be moulded specific to its values, needs and aspirations. The growth of India’s 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. 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 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 d’etre. 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 fact-finding 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 country’s 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. 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. 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.

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, 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 crème de la crème 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 façade 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 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 swink’t investigation weaken the image of the police already weighed under by pressures of work. 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 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 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.

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 counterpulls 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 conceptualisation to understand the fast changing dynamics neath the frontal layers of the society and an 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 fulfil 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 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 watch-word 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 paramound 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 criminalisation of politics and the politicisation 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 its is pulls and counterpulls. The contradictory pulls and pressures are the clamour 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 being to government is en regle. Their argument is based on the position that police form a part of the government. Men and officers of the police force are appointed by the government; 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 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 role 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 is 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 orgnaisation 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. 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 modelled 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 auxilliary police force enjoys police powers and protections provided by law on par with the regular police. It is a welcome experiment in India in democratising the police of a democracy, provided every act of the auxilliary 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 auxilliary police force behave within the parameters of the law. The same thing can be said about provisions in the Bill to punish uncivilised 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 unelightened 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 nonoptions. 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 lets 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 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 is helpless in containing his criminal activities. Large sections of the people in Dagdi Chawi, Mumbai and Maharastra idolise and support the criminal. Democracy dictates respect to the feelings and sensitivities of all sections of the society. Shiva Sena supremo 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, he fell foul with Shiva Sena and its supremo and political parties like congress tried to woo him and his muscle of labour orgnisations to their fold. Then Mubai police under Shiva Sena government realised 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 exttortion cases and harbouring 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 criminsalisation of politics, politicisation of police, lax judicia 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 centrestage 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 year-old 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 minister’s son in the offence. Even public protests and agitations by women’s 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 concious 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 manoeuvrability 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 realise that he has no alternative to keep the underworld on right side were he to save his professional reputation, 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 night-clubs. 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 unfavourable media throughout. The next Police Commissioner of the city was after stopping the menace

of cabaret, live bands and night clubs and containing organised crimes in the city. The immediate response to the new Police Commissioner was inordinate rise in crimes like chain-snatching , kidnapping, extoration, gang war, house-breaking 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 weilds 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 byadhering 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 democracy’s spine, its conditio sine qua non. It is an instrument of containment in the ambience of narrow interests trespassing on each other’s 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 nondemocracies. Indian police these days with its deep politicisation 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 manoeuvrings, 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 pra 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 realise their democratic responsibilities. Strengthening the police is the foremost need of firming up democratic traditions. How soon India realises this, so much good for the country.

THE GUN STILL SPEAKS Complacency and loopholes in the security system have contributed to giving terrorism in Punjab a fresh lease of of life, writes Praveen Kumar. 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 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. Pakistan’s 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 Pakistan’s government controlled electronic media on the Indian government’s 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 Pakistan’s 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. 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 constable’s 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.

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. India’s 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. 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 fear-struck 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 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. 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-cut-method.

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.

IN DEFENCE OF JUDICIARY Judiciary deals with and justice pertains to specifie cases and an individual’s 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 person’s 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 right’s 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 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 judiciary’s will on the basis of why today, why not yesterday and why not tomorrow, is rather preposterous, for such a change in the judiciary’s 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 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 judiciary’s 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 granny’s 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.

HOME GUARDS TRAINING I am asked to write this article on a specific subject, Home Guards Training. Rather than resorting to repititions 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 Maslow’s 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 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 organisational 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.

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. 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 system’s 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.

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 latter’s 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 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 latter’s 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 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 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 end–result 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 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 catch-words 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 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.

LACKING VIGOUR Crime investigations continue to be influenced by political decisions in spite of periodical judicial reviews of investigation process of important cases, says Praveen Kumar. 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 India’s 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. 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 hornet’s 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. 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 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 India’s independence.

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 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 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 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.

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 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. 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. Police as the cutting–edge of the governance, enjoy enormous powers. Bringing law-breakers 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. 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 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, 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 d’etre like sabotaging the course of justice will prove to be fatal to the relevance of the police for the society. 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

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 country’s 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 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.

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 d’etre 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 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 d’etre 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. 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 god-forsaken 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 naïve 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 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 idée 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.

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 d’etre. 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, Shakespeare’s 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 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 booth–capturing 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 1970’s. The Menace trickled onto the Indian scene though slowly, decisively in the 1980’s. 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 1980’s. The terrorists of Kashmir and Punjab set the tone in India which was picked up by the People’s 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 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-be-terrorists 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 excoriate criminals, politicians and the police to a war of nerves and those who have steel-nerves 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. The police or judicial officer under whose custody a person is kept

under detention should be made responsible by name for the latter’s 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 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 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 country’s 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 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.

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 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. 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 probed into and employed as extensively as possible to ensure the galvanic trial of social offences.

The raison d’etre 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-the–spot 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 women’s 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. 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.

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 can’t purchase with their money and power. That was the doom of India’s democracy and its people. 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 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 money-centric 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 crème de la crème 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 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 elbow-space 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 can’t 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 India’s 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. 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.

CORE ISSUE AND THE CORE OF INDIA’S 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 fifty-five 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 démodé 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 d’accord 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 d’etre 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. 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 clichés 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 India’s 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. India’s 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 patently betrays the inexperience and lack of toughness in our political leadership of the time and all of India’s troubles in Kashmir can be traced to this single bevue. India’s response to Pakistan’s challenges in Kashmir throughout sinsyne was casual and disorganised and diplomatic a fond unlike Pakistan’s 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. India’s 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 Pakistan’s 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 India’s 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 India’s 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 Kashmir’s in real polity is the use of force. Pakistan knows it. India knows it. Pakistan also knows that it can never subdue India 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 can’t 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.

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. Woman’s 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 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 in section 509 being offences. Section 314 makes causing miscarriage without women’s 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 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 death’s door. All institutions of society including the government, press, women’s 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 girl’s 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 woman’s 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 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.

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 non-privileged, 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 long-repressed 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 favourable to the aspirations of the infaust segments of its populace, non obstante the not-so-inopinate 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 society’s interests. 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 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 Workmen’s 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.

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 that…”it 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 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. Crack-forces 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 d’etre 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 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 d’etre. 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 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 bug…Inefficiency 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 India’s 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.

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 person’s locus standi in the affairs of his life is subject to his position in the mélange 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. 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 state’s 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 officer’s 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 one’s own values and convictions or quitting. Good jobs are difficult to come. Ergo, ordinary mortal’s 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. 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 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.

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 duty-bound 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 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. These characteristics 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 country’s 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. 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 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 death’s 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.

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 guest-component 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 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 India’s 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 self-interests. 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 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. 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 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.