India’s police forces are inadequate, under-equipped and ill-trained. They function on a shoe-string budget and are subject to political interference. law and order, therefore, becomes the main victim
A riot in Uttar Pradesh’s Muzaffarnagar on September 7 led to the killing of a television reporter and 50 others. The violence had its roots in an incident of eve-teasing that happened in August. Two Hindu brothers from another town had killed a Muslim boy who had molested their sister. This led to a violent backlash which claimed the lives of the brothers as well.
Ironically, the bloodshed began a day after the Union Government issued an alert to seven States, including Uttar Pradesh, over fears of communal polarisation and hostility ahead of the 2014 lok Sabha election. Uttar Pradesh had already seen a spike in communal violence since the Samajwadi Party returned to power in March 2012. At least 95 people have been killed in 50 (as per State record) to 110 (as per the Intelligence Bureau) clashes.
If a disease is not treated in time, it is bound to aggravate. The same is true of controlling riots. Security personnel on the spot have to be given a free hand and there can be no remote control which tells them from the shadows how to handle the situation. Having said this, I must hasten to add that one does not plead that the police be allowed to use indiscriminate force.
The standard response after the riot is over is to set up an inquiry committee which decides on the basis of affidavits filed before it. Sometimes, it takes decades for an inquiry to be completed — for example, the inquiry into the Babri structure demolition took 15 years. There is no time limit for a judicial inquiry, as the inquiry officer may take umbrage if he or she is told to complete the investigation within a given time-frame. Also, the result of all these inquiries, despite the visits of VIPs from Delhi, is often nothing at all.
Human nature is fragile. One cannot predict what will be the tinder fuse. The Government feels that the universal remedy to any law and order problem is the policeman, but he is told not to use force or open fire, especially on rioters in a communally-charged situation. This is because the ruling party fears that it will lose its vote-bank.
August Vollmer, who was the first police chief of Berkeley, California, and also a leading figure in the development of the field of criminal justice in the US, had rightly said in his book, The Police in Modern Society: “The citizen expects police officers to have the wisdom of Solomon, the courage of David, the strength of Samson, the patience of Job, the leadership of Moses, the kindness of the Good Samaritan, the faith of Daniel, the tolerance of the Carpenter of Nazareth (Jesus Christ), and, finally, an intimate knowledge of every branch of the natural, biological, and social sciences. If he had all of these, he might be a good policeman.”
But it is ultimately for the Government to decide what is in the best interests of the country. Communal riots in India are not an infrequent occurrence. Yet after six decades of Independence, the Government appears to be clueless about how best to handle such incidents. Serious ailments require intensive treatments and surgical operations — but the importance of these is forgotten in the quest for vote-banks.
The police force forms the first line of defence in any riot situation. But neither Uttar Pradesh nor any other State has examined if it has an adequate police force and good training facilities so as to ensure that security personnel are well-prepared to deal with the complex problem of communal violence. Uttar Pradesh, in fact, has one of the lowest police to population ratios — just 74 policemen for every 1,00,000 persons, as against the United Nations norms of 240 policemen for every 1,00,000 persons. And these figures refer to the total sanctioned strength of the police force. In other words, they include security personnel assigned to VIP duty. With police protection now being seen as a status symbol by many, the Uttar Pradesh Government is spending a whopping Rs 120crore of public money every year to provide security cover to around 1,500 VIPs, as per official records.
Former Union Minister for Home Affairs P Chidambaram had publicly admitted in no uncertain terms that the country’s police forces were “inadequate and ill-equipped”. He said, “We need to at least double the police strength and create necessary infrastructure to impart them quality training to improve the policing in the country. The police-population ratio for the country is about 130 per 1,00,000 persons, which is lower than the international norms”.
At a time when communal riots and even other crimes like murder and atrocities against lower castes are abnormally high in Uttar Pradesh — it often registers the highest number of criminal cases — the State’s police force has only 1,49,168 personnel out of the 3,68,260 sanctioned posts as of January 1, 2011. It means there is an overwhelming vacancy of 60 per cent in the police force. On that same date, the nationwide police vacancy rate was 25 per cent with 5,01,069 posts of the sanctioned strength of 20,64,370 lying empty.
Forget about additional personnel, the police forces do not even have the budgets to maintain the existing numbers. For instance, a senior police officer from Uttar Pradesh told me that when an honest station house officer pointed out that he had no money to get his police jeep repaired, tyres replaced and buy petrol, he was reprimanded by his seniors for not being able to manage such small matters.
Once, when I was a district police chief, I had taken up the matter of increasing the stationary grant and the prisoners’ diet allowance from two rupees per month and 75p daily respectively, I was curtly told that I had to manage with whatever money was available. I sent letters to the police chief that we needed stationary but there was no reply. Then I sent a stinker saying that the letter was being written on the last piece of paper in the office, and no correspondence should be expected from my station till we get the stationary. My demands were met eventually but my seniors gave me a lot of grief for my conduct.
Clearly, things have not changed since my time. There is a saying in Punjabi and Hindi that you get sweetness in proportion to the sugar you add. Similarly, you get the police force you deserve. The communal problem in India is becoming worse by the day, with the Government, both at the Central and State levels, only indulging in verbal diarrhoea. Transfers and suspensions of IPS or IAS officials are no solutions; they garble the issue and mislead the people. The unity of the country comes first and it cannot be sacrificed at the altar of vote-bank politics. The Government should know that its actions speak louder than words.