India's police forces continue to be significantly hampered by deep-seated capacity deficits across personnel, training investment, and gender representation, raising questions about their ability to effectively meet modern policing challenges, according to the India Justice Report (IJR) 2025.

The report highlights a concerning trifecta: chronic vacancies hovering around 23%, a national average training budget share of just 1.25%, and zero states meeting their own reserved quotas for women in the police force.

Despite year-on-year tracking, the national police vacancy rate remains stubbornly high, stagnating at around 23% as of January 2023, consistent with levels seen previously. This signifies a persistent gap between the sanctioned strength and the actual number of personnel on the ground.

The shortfall is particularly acute at the officer level (ranks from Assistant Sub-Inspector upwards), where vacancies stand at 28% nationally, compared to 21% among constables (Figure 9). This gap at leadership and investigation levels can significantly impact supervision, investigation quality, and overall operational command. State variations are vast, with West Bengal reporting a 41% constable vacancy while Uttarakhand claims near-zero, though the latter achieved this partly by reducing sanctioned strength.

Figure 9: 

Compounding the personnel shortage is chronic underinvestment in training. The report reveals a national average share of just 1.25% of the total police budget allocated to training in 2021-22. This paltry sum suggests funding often covers little more than basic upkeep and salaries for training staff, leaving minimal scope for specialized skill development, modernization, or capacity building to tackle evolving crime patterns like cybercrime.

Furthermore, even these meagre allocations are often underutilised. Figure 21 shows that nationally, only 73% of the allocated training budget was spent in 2021-22, down from 84% the previous year. While a few states like Madhya Pradesh and Mizoram allocate slightly more (around 2.5%). Such inadequate investment raises serious questions about the preparedness and skill level of the police force.

Perhaps the most striking deficit highlighted is the complete failure of states to meet their own policy goals for women's representation. Despite a central advisory benchmark of 33% and numerous states setting their own quotas (often near 33%), the report found that zero states met their reserved quotas for women in the police force as of January 2023.

Nationally, women constitute only 12.3% of the total police force (Civil, DAR, SAP, IRB combined), and an even lower 8% at the officer level (Figure 5). The vast majority of policewomen – 80% of all women in civil police – are concentrated at the constable level, indicating a significant lack of representation in leadership roles.

The pace of change is glacial.

Figure 4 provides a stark projection: based on current trends, reaching even the 33% benchmark could take several decades, even generations, for many states like Jharkhand (175 years), Karnataka (116 years), or West Bengal (80 years). Only states like Bihar and Andhra Pradesh, with already higher representation, are projected to reach it within a few years. This systemic failure impacts everything from the handling of crimes against women to the force's ability to reflect the society it serves.

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