Praveen Kumar Police Policing > Praveen Kumar Indian Police Logistics > Logistics

Evolution of Norms for Manpower and Logistics Requirements at Police Station, Sub-division and District Levels Greek verb ‘logistikos’ meaning compute or calculate, and French verb ‘loger’ meaning lodge are the roots of the English noun ‘logistics’, meaning supply of supportive attributes like manpower, transport, communication reticulation, weapons systems and other facilitators in any operation as planned in advance, and accurately trace the true nature of an effective logistics in terms of computed and calculated planning, and lodging or infixing the supportive tools as calculated and planned in advance to be lodged at right time, place and occasion to meet the needs of the operation for efficient performance and results, ipso facto investing logistics and its execution a managerial edge. Logistics and logistics support imprimis are managerial tools built on the bedrock of the management techniques. Logistics au fond is perficient material management run with an edge of precise time management and efficient space management, made possible with right foresight, creative vision, incisive planning and accurate execution. Evolution of norms for logistics in police organisations is byword for the desire for the application of management principles to policing and police organisations. It represents induction of the faculty of ratiocination to the field of policing and police organisations. It is a visionary step and prognosticates the aurora of the scientific age in police organisations. Logistics norms differ only in details from the Police Station level to the sub-division level to district level while rest on the same bedrock of broad managerial techniques.

2 Prime Vectors Both Police Station and District Police Administration are the pillars of the policing structure of India with sub-divisions providing the links between the two. Sub-divisions derive their sustenance and draw manpower and logistics from the Police Stations, ergo strong and efficient Police Stations mean strong sub-divisions. In exceptional cases, subdivisions can always depend upon the strength of the district police force. Sub-divisions as such do not have independent existence apart from the Police Stations under them and the district police administration that guides and controls them. Therefore, discussion on the logistics requirements of the Police Stations and the district police administration inter se covers sub-divisions too.

Police Stations and district police administrations as the basic structures of the policing, need to be pollent units capable of independently tackling crimes, security and law and order issues from their own provenances, so that higher units are free to focus on larger issues of countrywide dimensions sans distractions. For this to happen, the Police Stations have to be full-fledged units as far as their manpower and logistics requirements are concerned without the need of asking and waiting for the help extra muros. A sense of autarchy and autarky is basic here. The change brings pride to the unit and boosts morale bringing in high motivation and inculcating lofty purpose to the job of policing. The end result will be quality and often competitive performance of very high order in policing which sadly is a mere dream in the extant policing structure of India.

3 Police Station setup of present India grievously falls short in logistics and infrastructure support whether it is in manpower, transport, communication network, weapon systems or financial powers. Though district police administrations are in far better position than the Police Stations in all compartments en face respective requirements, they too are far from an ideal position in respect of their requirements. While Police Stations must look to the district police administration for help for manpower and logistics support for every uncommon situation, the district police administration in turn looks to the state headquarters for elbow space. Even begging other government departments for transport and other infrastructure facilities is not unheard of. This is not an ideal situation by any stretch of imagination to any police setup and should stop.

Armed Police Units Both Police Stations and district police administrations should become self-contained units in respect of manpower, transport facilities, communication reticulatum, weaponry and other logistics requirements. Every Police Station should convert into a nidus of police functions under an officer of the rank of Police Inspector assisted by scores of SubInspectors in charge of different policing functions like crime, traffic, headquarters, intelligence, law and order and armed police. Every Police Station must have a unit of its own armed reserve under a PSI that provides men also for extraneous duties like guards, courts, summons, orderly services apart from being the striking force. The armed police units of the district police administration need to be strengthened in most districts and properly trained.

4 Intelligence Gathering Both Police Station and district police administration setups as far as intelligence gathering is concerned is in extremely poor shape uniformly in most states of India, save a few like Jammu and Kashmir where the need of self-preservation perforce dictated terms to strengthen the intelligence apparatus. Intelligence is the bedrock of effective policing and sine qua non for professional policing. Intelligence gathering and analyses apparatchik is the principium among the core logistics supports that makes difference to the quality of the policing process in both the Police Station and district police administration levels. Districts do have structures to handle both the crime and law and order intelligence, though poorly equipped and seldom made use of, while the same in the Police Station levels is almost nonexistent. Intelligence gathering apparatchik needs to be strengthened at both the levels to enrich policing process with relevant intelligence. An officer of the rank of PSI with adequate staff in a Police Station should be in exclusive charge of collecting both the crime and law and order intelligence to strengthen the hands of the officer heading the Police Station.

Mini Police Commissionerates Police Stations as centres of policing functions must work as mini police commissionerates sans magisterial powers and treated as such in importance and powers. Trust begets trust and trust sprouts responsibility. Once Police Stations revive respectability and importance on par with that of the British vintage, they may regain their whilom aureole at no time. This is so also with the district police administrations. Indeed, there are the issues of corruption and misuse of powers that are beyond the scope

5 of this discussion and it suffices to state that appropriate checks and counterchecks should be in place to counter such eventualities.

Nidus of Police Functions Pollent Police Stations as the centers of police functions justifies fewer police stations around and irrationalise the present donnert trend among the top-brass of crying wolf for creating more and more police stations at every possible opportunity and howling hoarse for many more to create ‘gulli-gulli police station’ situation with most of them weak and incapable of independent existence and just meant as mere show-pieces for the public consumption and adding to the welter in jurisdictional and other complications. The epinosic response is owing to the copycat mindset so prolate among the Indian police leadership of the post-independent vintage. Quantity is an irrelevant concept in the extant age of hi-tech world, and transport and communication explosions render the world increasingly smaller every passing day. What is required is quality. The stress must be on resourcefulness and response time. Fewer Police Stations, each a nidus of the police functions at strategic locations and self-dependent in its manpower and other logistic requirements of transport, communication, weaponry and related facilitators is the need of the hour. Control room oriented policing with shortened response time are capable to tackle any kind of police emergencies and contingencies within a given area. District police administrations must function as the custodian and provider of special techniques, high-tech gadgets and higher counseling and guidance to the benefits of the Police Stations apart from its extant conventional duties.

6 Control Rooms This brings the issue of control room oriented policing that suits best in urban areas to the fore. Shift systems round the clock and response time are the key factors in such a policing system. Logistics support becomes the crucial issue in the control room oriented policing system as the effectiveness of the system depends tout a fait on effective logistics designs, planning and management in place. Police Stations fully self-dependent in manpower and other logistics supports like transport, communication, weaponry and other facilitators alone can handle control rooms successfully for perficient policing. Such a system presupposes committed manpower working on round the clock shifts and requiring high morale. High morale in turn depends on job satisfaction and right job culture that are built on perfect man management practices. All these issues need to be tackled one after the other for efficient policing. Indian police of present days is a far cry from those objectives.

Manpower In a country bogged down with endemic unemployment, and steeped in cheap labour, manpower should not be a problem though eurhythmic quality production may often become an issue. No discussion on manpower is complete without the factors of morale, motivation, competence, discipline and commitment are taken into account. No analysis on logistics is complete without the production factor of the manpower is assessed.

7 Shift System Policing being a round the clock responsibility, a three-shift system is sine qua non in a grass-root policing unit like the Police Station. And unlike now, the system must be statutorily defined and duly moulded and rounded off for effective functioning with clearcut division of labour in place. Lack of this clarity and arbitrary day-to-day allotment of duties on one’s own fancies by lower ranks in the Police Stations is the radicis of all the maelstrom in man management noticed in police stations these days resulting in low and inefficient turn-out of work. A well-defined shift system and purposeful man management policy directed towards high motivation and morale should work as the nostrum to the malady.

Efficient Man Management Sound incentive schemes based on the innards of the human psyche and latest managerial techniques and committed leadership models can do the tricks to maximize the output with the minimum input and save the criminal wastages in manpower that are common features of the present man management in Indian police, where a few islands of manpower are over-worked while most wanze precious man-hours without productive output. Any step to break this epinosic trend will save Indian police from gargantuan manpower wastages. This aspect needs priority.

An important feature of the efficient man management is best utilization of the available manpower talents. Indian police of the post-independent vintage is notoriously profligate in frittering away and even curbing precious human talents that land on its lap by its good

8 fortune. An example is that of a brilliant police officer from an Indian state who made name as a poet, an intellectual and an original thinker on police and policing subjects with scores of published books on poetry and policing subjects to his credit and a popular writer on police subjects on all major English newspapers, and well-known for his immaculate conduct and foursquare character, being persistently and consistently harassed gratuitously for decades, denied promotion for more than twenty-one years without offering a reason in the ambience of no reasons existing, often denied facilities normal even for his posts and repeatedly forced to work in the rank of Superintendent of Police under his far less talented and far less upright juniors from his own batch now in the rank of IGPs. Such atrocities are possible in Indian police these days. Reason for the reductio ad absurdum of the man management in Indian police of the present vintage to this scale is just jealousy and fear among the higher-ups of being overshadowed by his superior talents. His fault lies in the denial to approach the court of law in propugnation of own interests in spite of promptings from well-meaning seniors and his preposterous pride in deciding that what are his, must come by themselves sans promptings from any quarters and philosophizing che sara, sara. He continues in the plight even now without promotions. This is an example of the criminal wastage of human talents apart from cruelty and crimes involved. Just thinking how best and to what advantages an efficient organisation would have made use of his talents by providing right incentives rather than curbing and crushing his normal opportunities makes this example of negative norms of the Indian police an eye opener. Such perversions and prevarications of the man management norms of epinosic dimensions must stop. It is a different story that he did not wither away like most in similar situations and made big name and brilliantly

9 succeeded in other avenues. It is true that true talents cannot be hidden and even villainy of the top brass of the police has limits in curbing and crushing the talents of the fonctionnaire lower down. This is the brighter side of the spiel.

Precious Man Power Every employee in any efficient organisation is a precious asset. This is not because labour comes at enormous cost, but because of the presence of innate potentialities in every person and its mammoth utility were they are adequately tapped. The problem lies in the need and competence to extract the potentialities and talents. Police organisation has a long tail of hierarchy of seniors after seniors. The billion-dollar question is whether this long tail of seniority of the police department has any relevance as far as leadership and leadership qualities are concerned. The answer is a big “no”. Present Indian police is least bothered about the need of sound leadership and leadership qualities in its body as far as seniority goes and sadly leadership and seniority are synonymous in its diction. That must stop and the organisation must constitute per se a climacteric norm to enable the resorgimento of the Indian police to draw it out of its present chilling hiems.

None realises the importance of every single human hand available as the USA does, and the care taken and the investment made on each hand in American armed forces are legendary. India and Indian police though cannot fully follow the American ideal because of its financial constraints and other reasons, the model sine dubio deserves avizefull consideration to aemule as a vaulting norm adapted to Indian milieu. Human being a natura rei is potential of extending and shrinking to any scope created for him. This is so

10 also in work environment. A man or woman treated as lowly and dispensable as it is in the constabulary and other lowly ranks of the Indian police, shrinks au naturel to adjust to the space created for him, and expands and extends to be der Unsterbliche ubermensch if he or she is provided for and treated as such. Indian police lacks this insight to the human psyche and pays heavily in terms of human cost for the grave incompetence. How fast Indian police realises this fault, so good it is pour-soi.

Maximum output out of minimum resources is the motto here. Maximum output should be the norms of manpower management in Indian police at all levels rather than going for blind increase in manpower strength at every possible occasion. High morale, high motivation and job contentment, high professional pride, adequate rights and responsibilities, reasonably sound infrastructure and logistics support are the claves for productive and perficient policing and make difference to the quality of the policing whether it is in Police Station levels or district police administration levels. This brings the issue of logistics support to the fore.

Logistics Support Logistics and infrastructure supports are the core of effective policing and also serve as the multiplier of manpower. Transport and communication logistics are the eyes and ears of the perficient policing. In the age of hi-tech crimes and criminals, high-level logistics support is sine qua non for the policing to be successful. Right logistics support has four dimensions or factors to be useful and effective in policing: quantity factor, quality factor, relevancy factor and time factor. Quantity factor covers availability of adequate logistics

11 support; quality factor covers availability of latest and hi-tech logistics support; relevancy factor covers the need of logistics support being relevant to the needs of the policing; and time factor refers to the availability of the logistics support at right occasion and time. Inadequacy in any of these factors certain to affect the quality of the policing and needs foremost attention of the police leadership to keep the police and policing in top gear.

In Indian situation, the principium of the four factors namely the quantity factor itself often is a major hurdle because of financial constraints and other problems though recent rise in terrorism alerted the bureaucratic and political leadership to awaken to this problem and make more and more logistics support available to police de grado in grado. But, the quality factor continues to be a major pain in the spine. Criminals are often found in India better equipped than the police as far as hi-tech gadgets and even crucial intelligence are concerned. Indian police lacks adequate organizational strength and expertise to keep up dated to the research explosions in the world market in hi-tech gadgets in transport, communication, information and weaponry systems. This shortfall needs to be attended on priority if Police Stations and district police administrations to be effective in defeating crime and criminals in their own games. Whatever done at present in this field are sporadic attempts sans systemic efforts. This lacuna needs to be rectified.

Relevance and time factors are logistic maneuvers tout court involving human assessments and decision making in the process of the policing and depends assez bien on human excellence involved and requires improved human qualities. That comes by

12 practice, skill, training, commitment and mature leadership. These factors also need close attention in efforts to give quality policing to the country.

Maintenance Any talk on logistics is incomplete without a discussion on maintenance, which is the weakest link in the mindset of the Indian psyche. Maintenance inherently is the byproduct of a disciplined mind that is anathema to the Indian psyche. Naturally Indian police is pathetically poor in maintenance aspect of whatever it does. One factor responsible for this perilous assuetude is the cost factor involved. The second factor that brings about this neglect of the maintenance structure in the organisation is the lack of appreciation of the need of the maintenance in running an organisation and carrying out its operations. This achilles’ heel of the Indian psyche holds its sway in police organisations also. Sound maintenance of the logistics infrastructures and other assets is sine qua non for sound policing and perhaps gets precedence in importance over acquiring new gadgets and assets. A sound police organisation just ne obliviscaris this crucial need that considerably contributes to the success of police operations.

Financial Powers Police Stations as the nidus of police functions with considerable manpower and huge logistics support means in its possession and responsible for their maintenance perforce need considerable financial powers for themselves so that they can look after themselves without waiting for sanctions from above. This investment also boosts the confidence and self-reliance of the Police Stations as independent units apart from bringing respectability

13 and accountability to them unlike now. The advantage here is both physical and psychological and needs priority attention.

Strategic Location It be a Police Station, district police administration or any other police unit, its effective functioning depends very much on small details like its location and building also. They have to be located at a place decided upon after careful study of the issues involved and operational facility and convenience considered not only for the easy access to the public, but also for more crucial strategic reasons of operational considerations like facile movements, easy logistics support, access to hi-tech equipments, easy access to key manpower assets, convenience for secret operations et cetera. This important factor is often ignored in Indian police and it is common to find a Police Station situated in a locality outside its jurisdiction in urban areas and district police administration being located in an unplanned shabby rented building in a busy and strategically unsound locality. Easy availability often guides such decisions in Indian police. Such casual approaches in such key decisions should stop and proper norms should be laid to bring order in such key decisions and avoid concomitant mishaps.

Norms are mere standards, or more precisely, standard customs to be set or evolved. Indian police as defined and structured by the British administration more than a century back served the British administration and its objectives in a far less complex milieu appreciably for nearly a century and later. But, in a situation of panta rhei, the antianus reticulation is ascensively becoming unfit and incompetent to the changing trends of the

14 crime and criminality and may become entirely irrelevant to the changed complexities of crime and criminality if immediate corrective steps are not taken and new norms are evolved and set for the posterity. In a donnert police structure steeped in blinkers and mental inaction, the very idea of evolving fresh norms for manpower and logistics is a highly welcome initiative and deserves hearty plaudite.

P.K.Urva Superintendent of Police COD, Bangalore