The kind of responses we see from the police are mainly flaws in their orientation and training. It is worth looking at some ground realities. Getting a regular case registered without outside help or pressure is a challenge. The first response is invariably not to register and even if they are, most of them are forgotten or are on low priority.
Here orientation and intent is linked to capability. If you lack competence you tend to take shortcuts or somehow try to negate the problem itself. Brutalisation of the police today is not merely a consequence of the immense powers reposed in them. It is also a result of their latent frustration. You cannot expect humane behavior from policemen when they are treated like animals in their own departments. More than 80 percent of policemen do not have official housing. It is not within their means to live in posh areas and are mostly forced to rent houses in the suburbs. Also take a look at their duty hours and then add at least three hours of commuting time. Senior officers get their children admitted to good schools but not the constables who are the backbone of policing duty.
Add on the insecurity of their childrens’ future and you have a walking man but totally out of focus. One small step can work wonders. Open high quality schools for their children where senior officers are patrons. The force needs to be looked after.
Tragically the police has become a symbol against which peoples’ anger is directed. This is also alienating the police from society. As it is, police-people relationship is adversarial. It is the police’s job to act against or restrain people. Their training pattern and philosophy have not factored changes and nowhere does it prepare the policemen to be able to handle many types of situations confidently. A confident and well-trained man will never resort to misuse of power as he or she knows to handle a situation with restraint and skill. Working in an environment where crowds resort to provoking the police deliberately, that kind of training will help. The existing culture is such that the police force is led by officers who do not stand by them. No sooner that a senior police officer lands in controversy that he looks for scapegoats – often he will pull strings to get himself out and let the lowest rung of the constabulary take the rap. Thus, the culture of self-serving prevails. Corruption starts at the top. It does not start from a constable. Senior officers work with impunity and clearly, rules of law are not equal. The attitude is wrong. So while some may sing paeans to police reform, I am of the firm opinion that it is not going to change operational character and efficiency.
We require more and more proliferation of technology which will make breach of law impossible. Uttar Pradesh has minimised the interface between humans by introducing technology in the recruitment of policemen and this has helped.Similarly states like Andhra Pradesh have made it possible to register online First Information Reports (FIR). A response time has been indicated. Then comes the Investigation Officer (IO) who is not well trained and is burdened with hundreds of cases. In case if one IO is required to go to court for 10 days in a year in connection with one case, then he needs to be in court for 1,000 days in a year!
Add to it the extreme scarcity. The number of policemen per 100,000 people in India is 134. The minimum United Nations (UN) norm is 220. At 220, we are approximately 600,000 policemen short. It is no man’s guess that how well the cases can be investigated if things go on the way they do. Even the present incidents of rape would have been brushed under the carpet but for the outcry.
Then comes data base. Forget about a national database, there is no state government with any data base. The irony is that we are talking of Crime and Criminal Tracking Network and Systems (CCTNS) while the ambitious Police Net Project (Polnet), is in shambles. Polnet, started in 1988, was to connect all the 14,000 police stations in India with the help of cutting edge communication. On completion, Polnet would have enabled higher data carrying capabilities, fax, store-and-forward messaging and audio and video-conferencing. The same things will happen under CCTNS.
Police stations in the country today are virtually unconnected islands. There is no system of data storage, sharing and access. There is no direct link between two police stations. There is no record of crimes or criminals that can be accessed by a SHO. Polnet was to be commissioned in 1998.
Media also has a role to play. Both police and politicians realise that they need to manage things for the first seven to eight days after the incident after which the media will move on. This is their survival strategy now. The media lacks in-depth knowledge so nothing really changes.
