Improving India- Part 1: On the poor state of Indian Police
This is my first article on Improving India series.
Recently, there has been a lot of media frenzy on the actions of Indian police on citizens and criminals. In my home state of Tamil Nadu, there is case of police brutality, torture and murder of two civilians under custody.
There are also several instances when public outrage forces the police to avoid taking the legal course of action when a criminal is caught. The most recent example can be the case of the encounter of the gangster Vikas Dubey — in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh.
Last year, there was the encounter of the rapists in Hyderabad. The list goes on. Almost every month, we see a news item which is about a criminal escaping from police custody, or an encounter of a criminal.
This begs the larger question- Are our police forces that incompetent?.
While we can look at each of these cases in silos, one cannot fail to notice the larger picture- the one of incompetence and corruption in our police forces.
Why is the Indian Police so corrupt and incompetent?
Corruption in Police department is no different from corruption in any other government department. And just like its with corruption elsewhere, there is a strong link between corruption and poor economic development. Its not a switch which you can turn on and off with instant results.
There are multiple aspects to it. But I will just say the top three [from my experience with the police so far]
- Poor salaries- I have personal anecdotes from many of my police friends to it as well, but I will just give out the data for now on how much our policemen are paid. [Source — IPS Pay Grade Structure].
We dont pay our lower levels of police- Constables, Inspectors and Superintendents well. Most of the corruption you see in the Police department is from the lower levels. Typically- you wont see the DSPs, DGPs and the IGs collecting mamool from the offenders to cover up crimes.
When we dont compensate the police for the work they do, they would find a way to earn more money under the table.
2. Understaffed police force: India is one of the most underpoliced nations in the world- https://www.livemint.com/news/india/india-s-police-force-among-the-world-s-weakest-1560925355383.html. For every 100,000 Indians, there are only 144 policemen, when developed countries have over 300 for lesser population. We need more man-power.
3. Inadequate equipment: As an extension to the above point, our police force is over burdened. We don’t provide the modern weapons to our policemen. Most of the weapons and the communication equipment used are a relic of the colonial Era. This article explains it better-https://scroll.in/article/935008/why-indias-police-forces-lack-weapons-and-communications-equipment.
Adding to this the public outrage over crimes and the intense pressure to provide justice, this puts more stress on an already depleted and demoralized police force. They might resort to ‘encounters’ just so to finish the matter and relieve themselves of the pain of transporting the convicts , interrogating them and producing them in court.
While the Central Government takes a lot of care to modernize our Army and Defense Forces, our State Governments take the subject of law and order , and its enforcement in a very lax manner.
How can this be fixed?
This is pretty simple from an administrative standpoint.
The first thing is to compensate the lower levels. You cant expect a police constable earning only 30,000 per month living in a Metro city, with a family to take care of- to sincerely discharge his duties.
Personal Anecdote*- There is a traffic police friend of mine in Chennai. His duty is at the intersection in my area , where he regularly stands there at the last week of every month, trying to catch hold of rule breakers. He once said that his salary for that month depends on the number of tickets he issues to rule breakers. There is a set #target for each policeman , and if that target is not met, then the salary would be affected proportionately. He also says that salary processing takes a lot of time and comes to him only during the second week.
Imagine if you don’t get your salary on time. There are many stupid rules like these and honest people also don’t find any rationale in following them.
The second thing is to modernize our police force. Give the policemen more freedom to question suspects, make detainment and arrest. Reduce the paperwork and bring about process improvements. There is also the question of weapons we give them. Imagine just 100 policemen trying to control a mob of 100000 people staging a protest. At some point the shit will hit the fan and they might resort to extreme steps.
The third thing is to create clean zones. According to Broken_windows_theory, if a place is known for disorder and civil crimes, then its an environment for further disorder and crimes in the future. The reverse is also true- if a place has no history of crimes in the past, then there would be little chances of crimes happening in the future as well. Start off by creating a clean zone in smaller areas. Lets say you want to fine people who do not wear helmets. Pick up 5–6 places in a city and make sure the police fines every person who does not wear a helmet for the next one month. It would be guaranteed that there would be no case of flouting that rule in those places. We can extend this activity to all sorts of crimes- right from traffic crimes to riots in many places- create dozens of clean zones in the city and publicize them. Crime rates would drop significantly.
Fighting corruption is a long hard slog. Its like taking a bath. If you stop taking a bath for a couple of days, you would stink. The same goes for fighting corruption. Maintaining a corruption free environment involves a lot of things — incentives, compensations, process improvements and enforcement.
