POLICE REFORM- NEED OF THE HOUR
The recent attack on the army
base in Uri has caused widespread public rage.
While the army and the NIA will be investigating the failures that
allowed the terrorists to infiltrate
into the camp, it is important to reflect on our vulnerabilities that make it
possible for such incidents to occur again and again. It is obvious that we do not learn from our
weaknesses and fail to take corrective measures in time.
The main responsibility of
controlling terrorism in the country is of the police force and it is here that
our failures are so strikingly noticeable.
We did inherit a bad system of policing from the British, but over a
period of time, we have made it worse.
The need for police reform has been realised in many
countries. In some, important police reform initiatives have been born either
out of conflict situations, like those that occurred in South Africa, Northern
Ireland, Eastern Timor, or out of major
corruption scandals, like the appointment of the Royal Commission on Policing
in the UK, Fitzerald Commission in Queensland in Australia and Knapp Commission
in the USA. Even an incident of murder,
like that of Stephen Lawrence in London in April 1993, gave a big jolt to the
collective conscience of people in the United Kingdom, leading to major reforms
in the laws, structure and functioning of the police in that country..
In this background, it is remarkable that a major event like
the violent terrorist attack on Mumbai
in 2008 did not give rise to major police reforms. No other incident in post independent India
exposed the glaring deficiencies in the functioning of police in this country
as this incident. It created furore inside
and outside Parliament. About eight
years have passed, but there has been no perceptible improvement in terror
fighting capability of the police force.
Since the Mumbai incident, numerous terror related incidents in
different parts of the country have taken place and the police forces’ response
has been as good or as bad as it was during the Mumbai terror attack.
After the Mumbai massacre, steps
taken by the central government included the setting up of a new agency like
the NIA, establishing new hubs of NSG, making the provisions of anti terror law
more stringent and setting up of counter insurgency and anti terrorism training
schools. However, the central and state governments forgot that there was a
huge existing police force waiting to be reformed. It was not realised it would
not be possible for the police forces to deal with such incidents in future
unless the police were depoliticised and professionalised and their
requirements met without delay. In 2002, the Department related Parliamentary
Standing Committee of Home Affairs in its Eighty Eight Report on The Demand for
Grants of the Ministry of Home Affairs
advised the government to “make earnest efforts to depoliticise the institution
of police before it becomes too late to retrieve it from the morass of
degeneration. It must be ensured that
the police remain accountable only to the law of the land.” The advice fell on deaf
ears of the government of the day and of the subsequent governments.
Preventing and fighting terrorism requires a police force
that is foundationally strong to function in an efficient and effective but
also unbiased manner. What will really win the war against terror is public
faith and confidence in the efficiency and integrity of the police agencies- a
faith that leads to increasing inflow of intelligence and a willing cooperation
being provided to the security forces. The police therefore have to make a
conscious effort to win the hearts and minds of the citizens of all
communities. This can happen only when they start doing their basic job in a
professionally efficient, honest and impartial manner and the government
provides the police the environment and the enabling capacity to do so.
We are about to complete the ten years of the Supreme Court’s
verdict on police reforms on September 22.
It was on this day in 2006 that
the Supreme Court delivered its long pending judgment in Prakash Singh’s
case. The judgement
directed the state governments to comply with a set of six directives to
kick-start police reform.
Most state governments have not shown any inclination
to implement the judgement They have
found numerous methods to thwart its implementation. One can understand
the unwillingness of the governments not to implement the directives that
impinge on their powers to control the police, but even some innocuous
directives have not been acted upon.
Adding salt to police wounds, the central government in
the last budget decided to reduce the funds for the modernisation of the police
forces. The Police Modernisation Scheme has been in existence for more than four
and a half decades now. It has
definitely succeeded in improving the mobility, communication and other
facilities available to the police, but it has yet to succeed in giving a
comprehensive modern look to the police forces. This is the time the government
must take all steps to enhance the capability of the police to deal with the
problem of terrorism in a professional manner.
The Police Modernisation Scheme can play an important role in augmenting
the police ability to handle the problem of terrorism effectively.
The country cannot afford to keep on neglecting the
police. On this anniversary of the
Supreme Court’s judgment, the governments need to be reminded that the need for
police reform in the country is too important to neglect and too urgent to
delay.
