Strike while the iron is still hot...

For a nation that holds the separation of powers as sacred, supposedly to ensure the impartiality in making decisions, the continued insistence of political control over the police and other law and order machinery is perplexing. I mean, one can imagine it being justified if this were a gun-happy state where coups were as commonplace as the sun rising in the east, and hence it becomes necessary to maintain such a strong agency under the purview of the Executive.

But the Executive in India has a rather poor record of maintaining impartiality, especially when it comes to law and order. The handling of the many riots and conflicts that are so wont to happen in Indian civil society by the law and order machinery and implicitly by the political class leaves much to be desired. It is a given fact that the police are hampered in effectively doing their duties by the overreaching political atmosphere, wherein ministers are reluctant to prosecute offenders on the basis of the offender's communal identity or otherwise. Honest officers, the joke goes, can at best hope to retire alive, whereas a dishonest officer can, at most, fear for getting caught.
In such an environment, the fear of the law is bound to be absent, as the public will take it for granted that whilst the police are under the control of politicos, they are condemned to being incompetent and incapable of meting out justice. And this is where the recommendations of the Police Reforms Commission assumes particular importance.

The Commission has recommended that the police machinery be delinked from the Executive, and the police be granted functional autonomy to the highest degree possible. It has also recommended that there be a central agency, a sort of nodal body, which coordinates investigations being conducted across various state jurisdictions. And most importantly, it has urged for a speedy look at the pitiful living conditions of the police officers, who are expected to make a honest life whilst being giving a pittance. While it is true that being in the police means fulfilling an onerous social responsibility that being of being dedicated to the service of the people, it shouldn't mean that one be completely altruistic.

The political class, and to some extent even the bureaucracy, have characteristically objected on several trivial and technical points, bordering on regional autonomy and such. What rot! I mean, regional aspirations must always be subservient to the interests of the nation. And we aren't looting the states for God's sake; one is only suggesting a nodal body, which would facilitate their own functioning! Opponents of the reform scheme also oppose it, saying that by removing or even diluting Executive control over the police machinery, its accountability to the public would be reduced. I fail to see where it is accountable today. At most, it is accountable to the Executive, which may be accountable to the Legislature, which becomes accountable only every five years or during elections, and not otherwise.

The accountability issue could be resolved by setting up a State Police Commission, and district tribunals, which could entertain complaints made by citizens against police officers. The tribunals could investigate the matter independent of political considerations, and in turn, make the police truly responsive to the needs of the people, unlike now, when they have to dance to the tunes of elected representatives, who may not really represent the true face of the people.

The main grudge that the opponents of the proposals have against them is that they would ensure that they, the politicos, lose their hold over the police by way of the power to decide on transfers, postings and promotions. A suggested mandatory minimum tenure clause also puts paid to their plans, as it makes it impossible for them to shunt out inconvenient officers within two-three months of their being posted someplace.

True, law and order is a State subject as per the Constitution of India. But surely our founding fathers were such hopeless optimists, that they never thought that their successors would so wreck the system to the disadvantage of the nation as such. The Constitution must not be viewed as a static document; it is a living organ of the State, and should be treated as such. Its tenets need to be evaluated as per the process of time, and any redundancies treated in the best possible manner.

If this opportunity to wash away the Aegean Stables of the police machinery throughout the country is lost, I fear it would be a long time before we should ever get it again. A rotting machinery may just collapse, and God forbid such a day!

The Modern Thinking Indian (blog-link)