Police Reforms

India is an emerging superpower. It is expected to be the third largest economy in 2030 after China and US. It's definitely something to feel proud of. But will that pride be accompanied by true happiness. In 2030, India is expected to be the most populous country in the world. More than 6 decades after independence, we are still fighting the same problems of poverty, illiteracy, unemployment, malnutrition and corruption. We are the world's largest democracy and have set examples for the world to emulate. We have also in turn been good at absorbing and assimilating ideas, practices and technology from the world, from the people we have come in contact. While it is quite debatable to comment on whether we have imbibed more good things than bad, it is certainly true that we have not been smart enough to solve our problems effectively either through indigenous ideas or best of the world techniques.

The reasons are many. Some blame it on the huge population which nullifies whatever advances are made on the economic front, some on the lack of education which has prevented rural people to compete with their urban counterparts, some on the policies we adopted after independence and some on the system we inherited from the British. A lot of us credulously believe that we included the best laws and practices from different countries while framing our own constitution. But it would be a surprise that a lot of laws belonging to the archaic British era still remain enshrined in our constitution. While some of them like widow remarriage act, etc. definitely are good enough to retain, a number of laws pertaining to governance are obsolete in the present context. Remember the recent noise on Article 377 about rights of LGBT community.

I agree that the example considered may be controversial and debatable but there are laws like the Police Act of 1861 which definitely require a change in keeping with the current times when terrorism, insurgency, cyber crimes have emerged as new demons hurting the society. India appears 84 on the Corruption Perception Index, 2009 indicating that it is far away from being called 'least corrupt' as corruption-free nation would be a utopia ...

Police Reforms hence could help us solve a number of our problems. In 2006, Supreme Court issued some directives to the Centre on Police Reforms :-

• Separate law and order from investigation
• Set up Police Establishment Board for postings, transfers
• Two-year tenure for DGP, SP, SHO
• Set up National Security Commission for posting of Police chiefs
• Set up Police complaints authority to look into public complaints against police officers in cases of serious misconduct
• Set up state security commissions for laying down broad policies and evaluating the performance of the cops

Following this, the centre had decided to implement them in Union Territories. The states too were asked to implement them. But as usually happens, with some moments of media hype and public talk, the matter is now gathering dust. As I read from Kiran Bedi's interview, more than 4 lakh vacancies are existing in the system and as compared to UN standards of 222 policemen per one lakh people, India just has 120-130. How many of them serve the common man is again a question considering their large deployment for the VIPs. It is necessary to ponder over these issues if we are to prevent incidents like 26/11 from happening. Effective policing can prevent a lot of such events from happening.

With P Chidambaram at the helm of the affairs and his pro-reforms image, it needs to be seen if the government takes a stride in this direction. With none of the parties' electoral fate depending on it, it would be greatly dependent on political will and the vociferousness of the people on this issue. Until then, we would continue to be at the mercy of our leaders who believe in talks rather than 'karma' and availability of all resources including the homegrown ICT would continue to remain futile and unused ...