This article was first published on The India Cable – a premium newsletter from The Wire & Galileo Ideas – and has been republished here. To subscribe to The India Cable, click here.
On Sunday, at the first convocation ceremony of the Rashtriya Raksha University in Gujarat, Prime Minister Narendra Modi recommended several progressive steps towards better policing, including the need for a psychological approach for improvements in jail conditions, for personnel to study mob psychology, negotiation and the profiling of the criminal mind (though it is not an exact science), for the police to keep up with the use of technology by the criminal world and the need to de-stress security forces.
Since the prime minister is obsessively image-conscious, he dwelt extensively on the depiction of the police by cartoonists, in popular cinema and in the popular imagination ― a figure in khaki who is ideally kept at a distance, whose antecedents are traced to the colonial era, when the police was a punitive force for subduing a subject nation. He warned students that in the future, the uniform and the danda would not make them masters of the universe.
True, their real masters remain politicians, despite decades of concern about police reform, which resulted in the formation of the National Police Commission in 1977 ― the first national commission. Not acknowledging that history, Modi said that reform should have been initiated after Independence, but nothing was done until its 75th anniversary, which is now. He also made no reference to the recommendations of the Supreme Court in Prakash Singh vs Union of India (2006), which was filed by the former BSF chief primarily to insulate the police forces from political interference.
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In its second report, the court observed, the National Police Commission had “noticed that the crux of the police reform is to secure professional independence for the police to function truly and efficiently as an impartial agent of the law of the land and, at the same time, to enable the Government to oversee the police performance to ensure its conformity to the law. A supervisory mechanism without scope for illegal, irregular or mala fide interference with police functions has to be devised.”
Contrary to the spirit of reform, Modi’s government has sought to arrogate to itself the power to transfer IAS and IPS officers at will, without the concurrence of state governments, which was the norm. Its proposal last month to amend the IAS (Cadre) Rules of 1954 brought Centre-state relations to a new low. Opposition-governed states have dug in against it, and retired civil servants and police officers wrote critically to the prime minister.
Police reform is necessarily against all odds because governments enjoy using the police as their private armies. Almost 45 years after the Commission was established, encounter raj has ruled UP, mandated by the chief minister. Earlier, student protests in Delhi and Hyderabad were put down by the excessive use of police force. And the performance of the Delhi Police under home minister Amit Shah (who also spoke at the Gujarat event) was abominable during the Northeast Delhi riots in 2020.
Which brings us to another point that the PM made, when he looked forward to grand unification in a “silo” of the police, the forensic sciences and the judiciary, to deliver justice more competently to wrongdoers (the recipient of justice is specific and the fundamental role of justice in protecting the innocent is not mentioned). The phrasing is a little vague. The proposal initially seems to refer to training, but then also to the functioning of officers. However, the Delhi riots showed why these services should not be clubbed together ― repeatedly, the courts have pulled up the Delhi Police for poor prosecution. In these matters, the judiciary has protected the citizen from arbitrary police action, a role which would be compromised if it were not at arm’s length from the police.
The prime minister has urged the police to be soft on citizens, but harsh on people “instigating” them. Sounds like the Bhima Koregaon formula: all the people who were picked up had spoken against Big Capital. Be the friendly neighbourhood Bobby with the compliant, foster “mitrata” (friendship) and “vishwas” (trust) with them, and be a ferocious Mr Goon with everyone who questions the system? Doesn’t sound like democracy.
Also problematic is Modi’s attempt to equalise the fabled soldier patrolling the border with the police officer patrolling a mohalla or gali (neighbourhood or alley). Defence and internal security have been separated, and are defined by separate laws and protocols, for good reason. The separation of powers, domains and functions should be maintained for the very same reason. It has been agreed for decades that police reform is essential, but the focus of reform should be to make the force independent and professional, which is not exactly what Modi’s speech to aspiring police personnel was about.
