Random Reflections

RANDOM REFLECTIONS
PRAVEEN KUMAR
GB, HAYES HALL, HAYES ROAD,
BANGALORE-560 025. (Karnataka, INDIA)
pryveen@yahoo.com / pryveen@gmail.com
Phone: 080-41125309
Mobiles: 9901979567 / 9945336849
PRAVEEN KUMAR
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RANDOM REFLECTIONS
PRAVEEN KUMAR
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PUBLISHED WORKS OF PRAVEENKUMAR
English writings
POLICING FOR THE NEW AGE

POLICING THE POLICE
English poems
UNKNOWN HORIZONS
PORTRAITS OF PASSION
Kannada poems
DIVYA BELAKU
BHAVANA
PRIYA CHAITRA TAPASVINI
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COMMENTS
BHAVANA
(Poems In Kannada)
The work is a bunch of lilting poems in easy, intimate

and cosy kannada. They are the reveries of a trained
and critical mind of a mature poet with an observing
and penetrating eye and sharp sensitivity to the
world around.......the canvas for his 62 short pieces
of poetry is the whole gamut of human life, its
charms and beauty..... And is highly enjoyable.....
There is also a bouquet of the ecstatic world of
lovers and romance.
THE HINDU
DIVYA BELAKU
(Poems In Kannada)
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DR. SHIVARAMA KARANTHA
in introduction to the book
UNKNOWN HORIZONS
(Poems In English)
There is an element of delight and surprise

throughout. The poet is aware of the wonderful
world of nature and of man. So he is able to employ
telling images to portray his inner feelings of
beauty and love.
DR. M. GOPALAKRISHNA ADIGA
POLICING FOR THE NEW AGE
(Essays on Police)
Mr. Praveen kumar in this treatise has exhaustively

dealt with various aspects of policing with
reference to the new challenges.....his approach
to the various topics is refreshingly sound. He has
dealt with each subject in a thorough -and
thoughtful manner.
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CHIEF JUSTICE HON'BLE S. MOHAN
(SUPREME COURT JUDGE)

in introduction to the book
The language is flowery.....there is a need to

appreciate his ruthless exposure of the
criminalisation of politics and the politicisation of
the police... His treatises on dowry deaths and
their investigation and on police dogs are
characteristically thorough and sound meriting
universal attention.....there is no doubt that the
author who has already acquired a reputation as
a poet is a highly sensitive and cultured person.
THE HINDU
POLICING THE POLICE
(Essays On Police)
A Police officer and a prolific writer, Praveen Kumar, has published

another anthology ……….in the form of this book.……… "Policing the police"
acquires more relevance today in the context of the criminalisation of not
just politics, but of the services as well……….Coming as a sequel to his
earlier book Policing for the New Age, the author chooses to describe
policemen as "social doctors" and policing as a "surgical operation to
systematically remove cancerous growths from the body of society”.
THE HINDU
Praveen Kumar is not only an upright police officer but also a poet and a
prolific writer.……..Policing the Police—an analytical Study of the
philosophy and field dynamics of the policing in practice highlight
various problem areas including defective selection and
recruitment,unsound training and unhealthy job culture and identifies
likely solutions for its redemption.
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DECCAN HERALD
Praveen Kumar gives an insight into the Indian police set-up and analyses
the problems of the department, with interesting illustrations from the
field. Mr Kumar's book is a departure from the routine, where he not only
analyses the problems, but also suggests solutions.
THE ASIAN AGE
The author expresses concern over sycophants climbing the ladder and
reaching the top to hold the reins and guide the destiny of the police.
The result — a spiritless culture created by incompetent
leaders…….Policing the police involves self-policing. Through the book,
the author has made an honest effort to throw some light on the state of
affairs of Indian police.
THE TIMES OF INDIA
A police officer unravels his profession.
INDIA TODAY
Policing with a cause. Policing The Police by Praveen Kumar.…….delves

deeply on this core aspect of policing and lays bare the Indian Police
setup, sheath by sheath………He interprets police and policing through the
prism of a poet’s sensibilities.
THE HINDUSTAN TIMES
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CONTENTS
1. IN PURSUT OF EXCELLENCE
2. CRISIS OF RIGHT LEADERSHIP IN INDIA
3. RECONSTRUCTION OF INDIA
4. RIGHT ORIENTATION IN GOVERNMENT SERVICE
5. VALUE SYSTEM IN INDIAN BUREAUCRACY
6. REQUISITES OF GOOD GOVERNANCE
7. INDIA AND ALL INDIA SERVICES
8. NEED OF LEAN AND MEAN CIVIL SERVICES
9. CORRUPTION IN INDIA
10. RECENT TRENDS IN ECONOMIC CRIMES
11. INFRASTRUCTURE DEVELOPMENT
12. DEMOCRACY FOR WHOM?
13. REVAMPING THE INVESTIGATION MACHINERY
14. COORDINATED APPROACH TO CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM
15. INNOVATIVE TECHNIQUES IN POLICING
16. THE CORE OF POLICE PROBLEMS
17. VISION FOR ‘POLICE 2010’ AND ‘POLICE 2020’
18. EVOLUTION OF NORMS FOR MANPOWER AND LOGISTICS REQUIREMENTS AT
POLICE STATION, SUB-DIVISION AND DISTRICT LEVELS
19. TRAINING STRATEGY TO AFFECT BEHAVIOURAL AND ATTITUDINAL CHANGE IN
THE POLICE PERSONNEL
20. HOME GUARDS TRAINING
21. RELIGION IN POLITICS
22. CORE ISSUE AND THE CORE OF INDIA’S NATIONHOOD
23. INDIAN POLICE AT A CROSSROADS: WHICH WAY TO TAKE?
24. INDIAN POLICE : TIME TO TAKE TOUGH DECISIONS
25. NEED TO LIBERATE LAW ENFORCERS FROM UNHOLY ALLIANCES
26. ROLE OF POLICE IN THE RECONSTRUCTION OF INDIA
27. POLICE UNPROFESSIONAL
28. WHAT AILS PROFESSIONAL POLICING IN INDIA?
29. NEED OF COMPETENT BRASS IN POLICE
30. RAT-RACE AT TOP AFFECTS POLICING
31. WHERE THEIR LOYALTIES LIE…..
32. INDIAN POLICE NEEDS HEALTHY JOB CULTURE
33. POLICE AS SOCIAL SURGEONS
34. LAW AND JUSTICE
35. POLICE MORALE ERODED BY POOR ADMINISTRATION
36. THE INDIAN POLICE: MALADIES AND REMEDIES
37. CRIME, POLITICS AND THE POLICE
38. CRIMINALISATION OF POLICE
39. TIME TO IMPROVE THE QUALITY OF CIVIL SERVICE
40. TOWARDS SANE SERVICE
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IN PURSUT OF EXCELLENCE
Excellence stands for quality in excelsis unlike the quantity of the commercial and
the material morass though excellence in no way represents the antithesis of the mass
commercial ventures. It basically is an attitude reinforced with focused and dedicated
strivings for perfection. It is the katabasis of this attitude and passion in everyday life en
face the race with time in the milieu of manipulative competitions of commercial edge
that makes life less dignified in the world we live in. Excellence gives value to life.
Excellence is a measure of the height scaled in achievement. Only the bests can
reach that height. Excellence signifies a superior human worth. Its disappearance
suggests mediocrity encompassing all walks of life and complacency engrossing it.
What is Excellence?
According to Booker T. Washington, “Excellence is to do a common thing in an

uncommon way”. Perry Paxton says, “Existence is in the details. Give attention to the
details and excellence will come”. But, the credit of the most promising peroration on the
nature of excellence must go to Sun-Tzu (Wu), a Chinese military strategist (535 BC –
228 BC) when he figuratively declares in his celebrated book, der Unsterbliche, The Art
of War, “supreme excellence consists in breaking the enemy’s resistance without
fighting.” Excellence is an edge over and something extra in value addition. It is the
positive outcome of persistent and relentless focus of talent over time to rise above the
mediocrity and make a rare break in standards. It is not easy to come. Focused talent,
persistent hard work, infrangible spirit, endless patience and consistent passion for
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excellence as the inviolable hallmarks constitute the bedrock of the process of excellence.
Excellence is an outcome of superior spirit.
Every job is a self-portrait of the person who did it. Superior spirits autograph
their works with excellence. It takes a long time to bring excellence to maturity.
Excellence is the gradual result of always striving to do better. Vera incessu patuit dea.
Excellence is the outer dazzle of the inner lumiere. It needs to be cultivated; it needs to be
imbued and perfected by endless endeavour. It is not for feeble minded and broken
spirits. Excellence comes only out of excellence.
Mother of All Breakthroughs
Excellence is the mother of all breakthroughs. It is the tool that takes life to its
limits to open up a new vista of possibilities and constitutes the building blocks of the
history of the human evolution, it be in science, technology, research, politics,
governance, professions, arts, trade, commerce, industry, war strategies or big or small
performances of individuals or groups or nations. It is the abracadabra of the forward
thrust of the human evolution. The present technological advancements of the West, the
past philosophical supremacy of the East and India, the present competitive edge of
Japan, South Korea and China in industrial output and Singapore in public administration
in the East, stunning achievements of the USA in the field of space research, the superb
works of the Harvard, Oxford and Cambridge Universities in the field of education and
research, the watch industry of Switzerland, each is nonasuch paragon of supreme
excellence in human endeavour and accomplishment.
India too had and has its share of excellence. It’s Vedas and Sanskrit language, its
Buddhism as a religion, its Nalanda University as a centre of learning, its progress in
astronomy, mathematics and other fields of science are classical examples of supreme
excellence of the ancien regime. It can boast attempts at excellence in certain fields even
in this dark age of moral degradation and pure commercialization of the human spirit;
Indian Institutes of Technology, a few institutions like the Missionaries of Charity, a
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handful of national and regional newspapers and journals inter alia showed commendable
commitment towards excellence contranatant to the reigning zeitgeist namely
commercialism and sensational moorings and withstood its temptations.
Passion for Excellence
Excellence is not easy to come. It is limited by umpteen obstacles immanent to

human nature like greed, complacency, and commercial tendencies, manipulative
competition, corrupt practices, parochial indulgences, lure of quick returns and primarily,
the chaltha hai mindset that distract focus away from excellence. Lack of passion for
excellence is the underlying cause. Also, the ambience of poverty and survival instinct,
the pulls and pressures of the democratic politics and the race with time of the extant
commercial world add to the problem. After all, necessitas non habet legem. Survival is
the foremost instinct. It is true for all, it be artists, politicians, professionals, industrialists
or a plebeian. In a commercial world where time is money, the brooding leisure needed
for the pursuit and appreciation of excellence and perfection is hard to come and perforce
seen in a milieu lacking in passion for excellence as a waste of precious time and
opportunity. It is true of India and most of the developing countries of the world.
Indeed, wider competitions ensued from the liberalisation and globalization do

render excellence sine qua non for survival in the open market. The need of competing in
the ambience of the welt geist of excellence is bound to have salubrious impact on the
passion for excellence in the Indian mindset. It is a saving grace of the globalization in
disguise.
Three Dimensional
Excellence is three-dimensional; while ultimate performance is its exoteric face, it

is the value system and the thoughts and the planning that go for the chevisance that
really lay the foundation for the excellence. A performance, however brilliant be, does
not constitute excellence per se. Right sittlichkeit holds its own place in the scheme.
Coming to the national scene, committed economic reforms covering liberalisation,
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privatization and globalization for the economic growth of the country are great. But, the
efforts with all its intellectual content en arriere can never apportion the title of
excellence until the measure takes the hardships of the hoi polloi in the process and the
needs of the time in to account and decide. After all, it is salus populi suprema lex est. It
is so also with the Hindutva and the need of protecting the religion and its culture from
the onslaught of the time. Any thoughtless measure at the cost of the humanity at large
and the rightful processes of other institutions is bound to be counterproductive. Such
things have nothing to do with excellence. In history, brilliant military strategy and
organizational skills and superb leadership qualities of Adolph Hitler only led him to
doom because his historic accomplishments for Germany had perverted values of
revenge, aggression and spine-chilling holocaust as its bedrock and he lost a rare
historical opportunity of bringing about unparalleled organizational and leadership
excellence into being, because of his tragically negative objects and emotions. So also the
extant USA by its aggression on Iraq. India relegated excellence to oblivion under its
self-rule. Even constitutional bodies created to promote excellence in government
services have become rule and procedure enforcing bodies in native hands rather than
going proactive to promote excellence. It is a triste affaire.
The noblest search is the search for excellence. Laborare est orare wherever there
is search for excellence. Charles C.Krulack says, “Excellence just doesn’t happen; it must
be forged, tested and used – it must be woven in to the very fabric of our soul until it
becomes our nature”. Excellence is the gradual result of always striving to do better.
Samuel Johnson (1709 – 1784) preconises, “Excellence in any department can be attained
only by the labour of a life time; it is not to be purchased at a lesser price”. Excellence is
in brass tacks; excellence is in wholeness; excellence is there in the interdependence
between the brass tacks and the wholeness. Excellence is in cause and excellence is in
accomplishment; excellence is there in the values those inspire the acts. Excellence is a
life long mission of a committed soul and an attainment of a steadfast spirit. Perhaps
keeping this truth in mind, John W. Gardner (1912 –2002), a US official and a writer
proclaimed in his work on Excellence, “Some people have greatness thrust upon them.
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Very few have excellence thrust upon them”. Such a rara avis is excellence to pursue and
achieve.
CRISIS OF RIGHT LEADERSHIP IN INDIA
If leadership is the soul of democracy, right leadership is the soul of right

democracy. Leadership is adjectives to the language of the democracy. It decides the
nature and the quality of the democracy. There can be right or wrong democracy
depending on the nature and content of the leadership to carry the democracy
forward. None can doubt the success of the experiment of democracy in India.
However, none can swear on the quality of the democracy India has grown in its
backyard. The problem lies in the quality of its leadership.
Leadership Culture
It is rather facile to contend that people in a democracy get the leadership they
deserve. It is specious in theory, but need not be necessarily true. Leadership of a
country s’orienter distinct from its people and perforce creates the leadership culture.
It is true about the USA, it is true about the success stories of democracy in European
countries and it is true about India. Though sittlichkeit, patriotism and intellectual
calibre of the people do have a bearing on such matters, it is the leadership culture
that mostly decides the nature of the leadership that emerges. People are just prisoners
of this pernicious limitation. Their will makes little difference in a preordained setup
and given system. India sadly lost in this vital department while building the edifice
of its democracy.
Multidimensional Leadership
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Leadership in a social milieu is necessarily multitudinous and multidimensional.
Political leadership is its only one dimension though most important one and in that
statutorily incorporated to the body of a democratic institution. Six most important
leadership segments of a democratic milieu come from political, media,
nongovernmental organisations, and popular, intellectual and administrative fields in
that order of effectiveness. Popular segment covers miscellaneous fields including
films, cricket, other sports, industries, science and research and similar professions.
Leadership basically functions as creators of the public opinion and ideally expected
to lead from the front. These segments in a healthy democracy spawn a mechanism of
checks and counter-balances. USA showed it; major European countries lived it. An
egregious Watergate scandal pulling down the flamboyant presidency of Richard
Nixon can happen only in the USA. An organised evolution of a written constitution
leading to the establishment of a democratic institution under the very nose of the
royalty can take place only in a European country like Britain. These are examples of
right leadership evolving right democracy.
India of the first half of the 20 th century too showed right leadership in liberating
the country from the foreign rule. It was the combined thrust of the Indian leadership
in different segments like political, local media, nongovernmental organisations,
popular fields, intellectuals and patriotic elements in the administration working in
tandem made independence to India possible earlier than otherwise.
Leadership in Independent India
Independence made Indian leadership taste money, power and the luxuries of
serving the people and the endless possibilities its diverse permutations and
combinations provide. Nothing is like a mammoth lure and nothing is like a
gargantuan greed. Leadership in India appeared like an endless foison of
opportunities to rob and grab. Those who had the sinew and mental sturdiness to
exploit jumped to the wagon in streams and created a new set of leadership for India
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at the cost of the ancien regime inspired by lofty ideals and guided by the motto of
service. Corrupt and ruthless to the core, the new leadership easily cornered the
scrupulous old order in opportunistic political games of money, power and muscle
gained in the process. Leadership in the milieu became nothing more than a daring
massive investment for multifold returns, a pure commercial venture. Crime paid.
Deception and flamboyancy became sine qua non for leadership. That is why
leadership became a dirty word in India. And Indians as they are, accepted the reality
to the extent that they now think twice before accepting anybody without the merit of
a criminal past as their leader. It is more so in the leader of the leaders segment of the
politics. That is how Phoolan Devi or Pappu Yadav succeed as leaders and
Veerappans dream their glory in political leadership. Criminals constitute the spine of
the political leadership in states like Bihar and Uttara Pradesh.
The quality of a leader is reflected in the standards he sets for himself. “Integrity
is the most valuable and respected quality of leadership” says Brian Tracey. “The
prime role of a leader is to offer an example of courage and sacrifice” says Regis
Debray. This is rarely to be a case in the Indian leadership in whatever field. The
reason is that the fall in the political leadership perforce percolated into lesser fields
and binged their leaderships with similar mesquinerie and base pursuits. It is true of
media, non-governmental bodies, intellectuals, popular figures or administrators.
Greed and pressures both worked in the process. Though sparks of freedom and true
leadership surfaced from time to time in all these fields in the last six decades, they
are far in-between to a country of India’s size and diversity and mere isolated
initiatives like fishes out of water and soon died down literally and figuratively. The
fallacy lies in apostasy, either for greed, or poor leadership material going for
sensationalism in selfish or commercial pursuit, or more accurately both reinforcing
each other as models from one generation to the other. However, true attempts at right
leadership do exist here and there in all fields and they are succeeding. This is
important. This gives the hope of regeneration in the future.
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Right Leadership
According to Dr.John C.Maxwell, a leader is one who knows the way, goes the
way and shows the way. He is the guide and philosopher to those below him. A leader
is the personification of trust to his followers. He is their hope and future. It is sin to
let them down to seek own ends. “A leader is a dealer in hope” said Napoleon
Bonaparte. W.H.Auden says, “No person can be a great leader unless he takes
genuine joy in the success of those under him.” Right leadership is integrity,
conviction, sacrifice, commitment to people and values, and ability to blend with their
dreams. Right leadership is ability to guide and lead people in right path. Leaders are
models to others. Self-seekers and criminals have no place in its scheme. Commercial
angle has nothing to do with it. Sensationalism, claptrap and partisan approach never
feed leadership qualities. Leadership qualities flourish in right values, right decisions
and right actions. Concern to those below is its main mantra. All these key factors of
the right leadership are thrown to winds in India after independence.
The celebrated Chinese Philosopher of the 6th century BC, Lao Tzu opines, “A
leader is best when people barely know he exists, not so good when people obey and
acclaim him, worse when they despise him”. Leadership is service au fond and
exposure comes only as a derivative. It is just the opposite in the extant Indian
leadership where service is a front and tool for exposures, self-aggrandizement,
further boost upwards and attainment of selfish ends. It is neither right leadership nor
is it even leadership. It is a travesty of leadership. It is making fun of leadership.
Indian leadership has degenerated to that at all fronts. It no way fit in to the frame laid
down by Harold J.Seymour for a true leader when he says, “Leaders are the ones who
keep faith with the past, keep step with the present, and keep the promise to
prosperity.” Extant variety of Indian leadership has neither a past nor a future and
only has a greedy present. Ca ira. No aberrations last in perpetuum. India eagerly
awaits to prepon.
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RECONSTRUCTION OF INDIA
India is the land of spirituality. Love and pursuit of knowledge and higher values
are the essence of its nature. This foundation gives India a unique character and inner
strength unseen in the community of nations of the world and makes it a world leader in
spiritual life. The depth gained by this commands other nations of the world to see India
with awe and respect even in the extant commercial ambience of the present world. Its
great sons like Gauthama Buddha, Mahavir, Ashoka and Mohandas Gandhi are unique
gifts of India to the world of sublime thoughts in practice. India could spawn such gems
because the mien of life here supported them and their ideals. This was true upto the first
half of the 20th century. What followed was an apostasy from the radicate path.
The second half of the 20th century saw the caduac of gross commercialization of
the Indian mindset and consectaneous degringolade of its ingenerate higher values. The
contabescence is so endemic in its spread that all walks and strata of life in the country
saw the sweeping metabasis and the concomitant atrophy. Indian politics, bureaucracy,
business, professions, intellectuals, literature, media, art and cultural movements, and you
name the field, that saw the fall. A pusillanimous India at the aurora of its independence
like fish out of water lost its soul in pursuit of the material carrion that was inebriating the
world in the midst of the prolate commercialization. It was a triste trade-off. It was a
distressing relegation of higher values and inner strength to oblivion. Developed
countries became its ideal. Japan and USA became its models. Wealth and power became
its Gods. Rich and powerful became its heartthrobs. India began to see the dream of
becoming a world power. Multi-nationals and stock exchanges became its peremptory
saviors. Nothing is wrong in that per se. But at what cost and for what end? A dead India
was too occupied with the glorification of its carcass to think of it.
The fall was ominous. It was of the people and their spirit. It was their ideals and
their values. It was their attitude and the focus of life. They forgot their legacy and its
17
strengths that sustained them through all the convolutions of the history. They lost the
pristine adaptability that saw them move pari passu with the changing time while
retaining the core of their higher values. The Indian National Congress that held high the
spiritual flambeau of the nation for nearly a century turned a corrupt and power-hungry
body and swept away principles that sustained it till then under the carpet of political
expediency. Jana Sangh and its later avatar that came to existence to preserve Indian
values and culture turned the most visible icon of the Indian values and the leitmotiv of
its spiritual lumiere, Shree Rama, into a most hated name by its inhuman and
unprincipled political misadventures.
India always stood for the cardinal values of truth, simplicity and a value based
system of life and always absorbed the zeitgeist within these parameters to enrich itself.
The hallmark of India is its confidence in itself and its values and it sustained it through
all the travails of its long history. It never lost its soul and never found the need to blindly
mimic the specious coups of the world around. It algate stood on its own feet and proved
the strengths of its fundamentals even in worst scenarios. Extant India looks far from that
proud and confident India.
Present India’s democracy is a misnomer. It is a soulless process in the body of a

democratic form, or better, a feudal rule bought over by money, muscle and deceit. India
is deluding itself by calling itself as a great democracy of the world and dreaming to be a
world power. Compages do not make vibrating structures inter se. They require inner
strengths as their spine to stand erect to stand out in the world. Present India lacks that
little potion that in the past was India’s essence passim.
The malady is prolate. From politics to familial relationships, from bureaucratic

attitudes to intellectual manoeuvres and from commercial world to cultural fields, its
footprints are deeply etched to emaciate the country ab intra. All higher values are thrown
to winds in pursuit of specious material bonanza and the life has become a no-holds-
barred utter trade-off. The environment is poisoned, and isolated struggles to inhere to
time-tested pristine values are stifled to evanescence in midst of the reign of mesquinerie.
18
The claves of the changed attitude are shortcuts and reaching desired end by any means.
This with the concomitant degringolade of the leadership qualities of the democratic
vintage spawned a dangerous broth of fawn, deceit and muscle power. The pristine values
like excellence, patience, pride, grace and dignity are relegated as impotent to the dustbin
of the history. Hero worship and opportunism became the ticket to clamber the ladder of
the self-promotion in the mien of the undermined merit. Money and power built a
mutually serving vicious circle and became inviolable ends and means of any meaningful
life. Quantity overtook quality. Respect lost its halo. Crime paid. Corruption, protests and
violence gained currency as the only tools of success. ‘Grab and rob’ became the mantra
of survival. Who could not rise to the levels became misfits. This is extant India.
Ex-Prime Minister Charan Singh as the Chief Executive of the country once
rightly claimed that corruption imbues from above. It is true of all modes of corruption
and decay of standards. Its manifestation in the fall of higher values in governance of
India of the democratic vintage shook the very foundation of the highly developed value
system of the country existing till then. Both ruling party and opposition parties found
their salvation in winning the next election non obstante means and found money, muscle
power and garish display of strength pay in the process. Indian public life restructured
itself to these needs sinsyne. Everything is forgotten in the pursuit of power, and
governance became subservient to this end. With the fall in the ideals of the governance
and the Government system, that in the people was not far away. Instinct for survival
preceded everything else. The trend corroded confidence in higher nuances of the value
system. Greedy politicians, self-seeking media, demoralized bureaucracy and hapless hoi
polloi, all added to the mux. And India prepared a poisonous broth in which it boils
jusqu au bout unless it reverses the process by sheer deux ex machina.
Indian culture is a sublime edifice of the best absorbed from all sources it came in
contact with and built on the foundation of the pollent values of simple, honest and
healthy practices. India always went for sound practices with both material and spiritual
dimensions to it. The tragedy of the present India is that it continued the process of the
adoption sans the ingredient of the adaptation to its rich heritage of spiritual and enduring
19
values and practices. It has become just a copycat of whatever appeals to its senses and
fancy. The need of appeal to deeper realms like reason and insight is tout a fait forgotten.
Often, mere compages are gone for without as much as thoughts for its inherent soul or
underlying foundation. A striking instance is India’s version of the democracy where
deception and criminal record constitute the provenance of political leadership en face
that practiced in the USA and other western countries where merit and personal probity
constitute the bedrock of the successful public life. It is this sheer perversion of the
democratic ideals and the concomitant deception and criminality that India calls as the
greatest democratic experiment in the world.
Nothing that is not honest and truly sincere ever succeeds. Indian democracy just
is not that. Compare extant democratic India with the present China or the resilience
shown by Japan and Germany after the Second World War or the progress seen in
countries like Singapore. Honesty and true sincerity in the political leadership is the only
allee that leads to the true bonanza of a nation. Indian democracy as practised today is an
antithesis a toute force of this cardinal need.
Another striking manifestation of present India is its narrow vision. Indian

intellectuals and Indian media lead the field stripped of independent and original
thinking. Rather than leading the country from the front in the restricted couloir of right
thinking and higher values, they fish in popular trends and perceptions to boost their
commercial gains. Often, popular catchwords like socialism and economic reforms or
nationalism and globalisation become claves of attitudes without as much as going to the
depths of the social dynamics and relevance to India. This again is an expression of the
prevailing contumely to excellence and creative originality apart from the prevailing
commercialization of the intellectual and media fields. Accrescently Indian media now
relies on sexual appeal on its pages to catch readership or viewership. It is absurd to
expect high public sittlichkeit or high ideals from such a provenance. Lack of true
commitment or pride for the own ab intra is another serious Achilles’ heel.
20
Fall of individual pride ironically is another depravity of the Indian version of the
democracy and its political stirrings. Apotheosis of political figures for self-promotion is
the order of the day. Character and merit are relegated to oblivion in this mad rush.
Sycophancy and glorification of dynastic rule are its inevitable offshoots. Personalities
gained currency over values and principles and personality-cult gained tremendous boost.
Recent event is attempts to protect a religious leader from criminal charges at the cost of
the values of a sacred religious seat he holds. This trend expresses itself in sprouting of
myriad statues of political leaders often of dubious repute at public places a grands frais.
Those with money and power have become virtual Gods even for intellectuals and media
in this whilom land of spirituality. High character and true merit have become grossly
irrelevant. Contrast this with the USA where key Government posts go to those from the
academic field and even a minor strain on character or private life is enough to bar a
candidate from winning the Presidential election.
Violence truly pays in Indian democracy. Reasons, fairness, honesty, law or

gentle persuasion has no place here. That is why protests and violence have become the
order of the day. People cannot be blamed for that. Those in politics and bureaucracy in
India sit so high in their ivory towers of insensitive power and exclusiveness that nothing
reach and move them unless a message is packed with blood and violence to comminate
their secure power base. Otherwise their responses to the plight of the nation and the
common man is Neronian or lukewarm al piu. Contrast this with the USA Government’s
mammoth response in creating a new Homeland Security Department after the 11/9/2001
militant attack on its land and its concern for the security of its citizens. Everything of the
public domain in present maledict India is acted only on political compulsions or
lobbying of the rich and powerful. This is democracy for India.
Every country has its own tournure along the corso of its life. India sine dubio
finds itself at its cafard in its post-independent days. A half century is too short a period
in the life of a country to resile to its pristine soul and India may need to boil in its own
ephemeral materialistic broth before it begins de noueveau in right course. India did see
umpteen ups and downs along the course of its long history and algate resiled to its
21
pristine soul amain. The present one perhaps is one of such an aberration and has no
encheason to be different from that.
RIGHT ORIENTATION IN GOVERNMENT

SERVICE
Government service in a democracy is the service of the people by the people for
the people within the reticulation of the rules and procedures in force. It is the core
service of the governance and implements the will of the people expressed through the
collective political leadership. It is the tool that really manages the country on the
tapestry of the adopted policy by exercising all the wherewithal of a management tool-
box like planning, organizing, execution and control by its ubiquitous presence. Right
orientation is sine qua non for the self-management through own representatives under
the political leadership in the government. People au naturel are unifocal in self-interests
au fond. An orientation of the right kind to lift them in the direction of the larger
interests of the largest part of the population is the raison d’etre of any government
service. It is this higher direction that ideally differentiates those in government service
from the hoi polloi. Reality is different in the field. The reasons for that are as diverse as
wrong orientation and wrong people in the service.
OPTIONS:
The choice is bifocal to redeem the situation: either select only the people of right
orientation of larger interests in heart or inculcate the right orientation by right training,
right practices and right job culture on those who are selected. The process of selecting
the people of right orientation to the behemoth of government service of Indian
dimension is easier said than done. The Indian institutions constituted for the purpose are
too ill-equipped for the job and too steeped in inefficiency, corruption and lack of
positive approach for any perficient performance even in responsibilities of far lesser
22
magnitude. India has no alternative but to go for the latter option of inculcating the right
orientation.
The second option at best is a weak shadow of the first. Its tools are directed
towards attitudinal change. The tools are too weak for the immanent changes warranted
even if presumed that right training, right practices and right job culture to bring about
the new avatar exist at all. Human nature is too complex for such an easy metabasis.
Right tools are becoming ascensively far afar to find in the extant power-hungry milieu of
the present government service. The legacy of the colonial rule in power-centric
governance continues even after more than five decades of the independence. The prise
of the power-orientation in preference to service-orientation is accrescently going
tenacious in government service. Combined with the fact that lesser mortals are now
joining the fray of the government service courtesy selection institutions nonpareil to the
job, the situation can only be imagined. People of all kinds join the service and indulge in
all kinds of loots and sins. People accustomed to long colonial rule are taking umbrage
under the Karmic Law as the misdeeds in name of governance by their own people are
found to be the ineluctable reality of life. They take epinosic satisfaction by the facts that
the situation is worse in neighbouring and African countries. We are taught to be patriotic
and committed to the country and the government which sins against us. We are
perorated with such inutile plangent phrases as ours is the biggest democracy in the world
and we are a nuclear power ad manum to be a super power of the world that signify
nothing to most Indians weighed down with misrule. Only right orientation in
government service can save the country from the entoilment and spread a new
entrainement in the people.
LARGER INTERESTS:
The raison d’etre of the government service is its orientation towards larger
interests en face the extant tournure of the narrow interests critical to human nature.
Larger interests imply a sense of right and wrong, sensitivity to others’ sufferings and a
genuine love for the human kind. Even after presuming the exiguity of such noble
23
qualities in the ambience around, the standards existing in the extant Indian government
service is far from satisfactory and horrific tout court by any standards. It is just
perversion drunk by the temulence of power. It is erratic to say the least. It is insulsity at
best and perversion at the worst. It is twisting rules and procedures to meet self-interests
al piu. What is striking is the fact that it has become the culture of the governance of free
India. India has become free perchance to let its government service to have a dissolute
culture of its own choice sans interference ab extra. This seems the ground reality of the
last five decades of the Indian independence. An example illustrates assez bien the
degringolade of the government service and those who man it.
WRONG MODEL:
A Mathematics lecturer from a college joined government service four decades

back. His fastus from the sudden rise perforce cost him his seniority in preference to a
junior during the training. His unpopularity among the public got him an entry as
“immature” in ACR. He got an important posting on promotion where he betrayed
gratuitous harshness that cost him the post in less than a year to be posted to head a
training institute.
This is where the crunch of running the government service comes to the fore and
exposes itself in puris naturalibus. A training institute is the first point of tryst of a recruit
with his future service and its head his true model to become. Hundreds of young recruits
passed out as officers in the next three years from the institute with its head as a model
binged in them. Later, many a precious careers withered under the peise of the wrong
model. The wrong orientations received during the training make inveterate and lasting
impact that cannot be easily deracinated. Wrong models unwanted other-where heading
training institutions is the first symptom of a grave malady the government service is
suffering with.
The officer was denied decent postings promotion after promotion. He was sent
on deputation to head a middle sized state undertaking. His misconduct there led to a
24
state-wide agitation of its staff in 1985. Later, he was deputed to head the state prisons
department. His stewardship there witnessed an unprecedented mafia gang war within the
four walls of a prison resulting in murder of an egregious inmate in 1995. An enquiry by
the Home Secretary arraigned the officer for serious lapses.
MISCONCEPTION:
The officer headed his department for five months before retirement. This is
another post where the fonctionnaire serves as a model to the subordinates. His
appointment to the post was opposed by some on the grounds of merit. This gave rise to
two groups in his favour and against in the department. The new chief in excelsis in his
career acted avec acharnement against those belonging to the opposite camp by sending
them to insignificant posts in god-forsaken corners of the state. He, drunk in the fulgour
of his new status, unreasonably acted on some others assuming the role of a soi disant
motivation specialist and brought gratuitous sufferings to them. A naïve officer with
complete fide et fiducia on the new chief sought transfer back to the state capital to any
of the umpteen vacant posts existing. The new chief promised an immediate posting and
consented for the subordinate going on leave pending the transfer. Thereafter, the chief
went on delaying the transfer by encouraging the pianissimo subordinate to extend the
leave for the next four months until himself retired. The subordinate au desespoir
approached the State Chief Secretary only to find that the latter was advised by the chief
not to meet the subordinate. The Chief Secretary did just that. This speaks volumes about
present administration. The achilles’ heel lies in the mediocrity and the inability of those
in higher levels of the government service in this star-stricken land to comprehend what
really constitute administration and misconceive it as a show of ruthlessness and cruelty.
The justification of the chief for his queer and perverted conduct oblivious of the
sufferings and agony caused was that he was doing all those things as a motivation
specialist to help the subordinate in his career! His preposterous motivation skills ens
rationis was really a cloak to his native sadism that cost the enfested subordinate his
faculty of trusting anybody. This is a case of pure schadenfreude en pure perte.
25
SERVICE:
The core of right orientation in government service is an understanding of the

sufferings of others and willingness to mitigate it through the accepted means of rules,
laws and procedures. Power is only the subsidiary of the process and comes to play as a
tool in aid of making service to the people possible. There is no place for fastus, show of
power, schadenfreude and playing with the lives of others in the scheme. It is humility
and a gemutlich sense of service to others that is fundamental to it. Any government
manned by the people without these essential ingredients is bound to be a heath of
tyranny and face the wrath of the plebeian in rerum natura. That is why the manning of
the government service warrants utmost care and expertise in running the government.
The edifice of the right governance stands on the terra firma of the right orientation. The
governance is just nonexistent or leads to a welter of tyranny of the people in the skein of
wrong orientations.
RIGHT PLACES:
The right orientation can be either inborn or acquired. In absence of appropriate

tools to trace inborn orientations with certitude, only the process of acquiring the right
orientations can be depended upon. Right models have tremendous impact on the process
as do wrong models. It is the models and the precedents that determine and festinate the
orientation of the future. Models in right places have tremendous impacts in enracing
right orientations in the body of the government service. Head of an institution that trains
recruits exercises powerful influence on the recruits. So also the head of the department.
Right orientation in government service can be made a reality by manning these key posts
with right persons.
Another tool towards this end is encouraging right orientation by the reguerdon of
good postings. The objective is bifarious: it inspires the adoption of the right course; also,
rewards to the right people a natura rei act as a stimulant to create the right job culture.
26
Such a stimulant is briller par son absence in Indian ambience. It is the reason why
government service now is not what it should be in a democracy.
POWER:
The nature of the government service now is power-oriented; that is, the exercise
of power for the sake of power. It has become an idée fixe. There is not even a tinge of
service orientation in the extant government service. Even the pretence is left to the care
of the political leadership that must depend on the hoi polloi for survival. Those in
government service need not even pretend to that as they have a secure tenure of service
and go impervious to the plebeian. The accrescent falsidical sense in government service
now is that they are meant to implement the wishes of the political leadership without any
commitment to the ordinary people. The falsetto must be replaced with a sense of service
to the people. There is no deliverance to the country without it.
The power-orientation of the government service is the seed of all ills of the
country. Power corrupts. So, any government service erected on the pillars of power
cannot be anything but corrupt. A corrupt government corrupts the country and a country
under seize and caught in the tourbillon of corruption cannot be anything but tyrannic.
This is the maelstrom India finds itself with now. The country can be saved from the
avernus and a stage for the risorgimento can be set only by giving right orientation to its
government service. It is a gargantuan task. The path of corruption is easy, but retracting
the course back is difficile and almost impossible. But it is a job that has to be attended to
on priority in national interests. If not a pas de geant, the problem has to be approached
in farthing-steps. Relief from the temulence of power cries for the priority attention. Once
the cobweb is removed, the space will be free for the inculcation of service-orientation
within the limits of the policy and the rules and procedures in force. Right placement of
the right models is crucial to the process. That brings the apollyon of the government
service to heels to ultimately wipe out of the system and dawn a new era of a healthy
government service in the country.
27
VALUE SYSTEM IN INDIAN BUREAUCRACY
The word ‘value’ from the French root valoir suggests a sense of worth as rising
from the innards of the conscience. The perception of a given value varies with the variae
lectiones of the amoebic milieu. The dependence of the value structure on milieu is the
source of all the corrida de toros of the human world. The value system of an individual
and an organization of which he consciously or by compulsion is a part are rarely
identical. This basically is the source of all human conflicts. This is more so in the
present age of accrescent entoilment of human activities. Nowhere in the extant world,
the conflict of value systems is found as obvious as in the behemoth of the Indian
bureaucracy. That is why people with a strong conscience find themselves in cul-de-sac
in government service unless they adapt personal value structures to the needs of the
bureaucracy that is mediocre at the best and criminal at the worst.
CONTRARIOUS VALUES:
The value system in bureaucracy is bifarious: inherent values and survival-

oriented values. The two facets of the same value system further metagrobolise the
complexity of the value system of the bureaucracy ab intra. Add apocryphal elements in
the garb of values natural to the Indian bureaucracy to the broth, the field is ready for all
the dramas of this world.
A person’s locus standi in the affairs of his life is subject to his position in the
mélange of these often contrarious values at diverse ambiences. Adamantine commitment
to a value has no place here. Skeely manoeuvring of positions from time to time,
unfortunately, decides the success in life. If value is understood by its true definition, the
extant formula of flexibility for success is nothing but refutation of the concept of values
28
per se. This is the ineluctable fact of life to which human activities have devolved
themselves. An illustration suffices to make the point clear.
A young officer in 1960s began his career in a South Indian state with
commitment to the high values of public service laced with strictness and discipline of
very high order au naturel to his age and the nascent stage of his career. He was a terror
to wrong-doers in 1970s as a district level executive officer and proved very successful in
his work. His unimpeachable integrity as also no-nonsense mien rendered him unpopular
among both subordinates and superiors. He was removed from his district posting in less
than a year on the pressures of the vested interests and never found a responsible posting
sinsyne with a profile in official records as immature inter alia. His failure lay in his
individual value system not being attuned to what the bureaucracy expected of him.
SURVIVAL INSTINCT:
Being enervated by the developments and angst-ridden, he realized that he has no

future in the career with his own convictions and values. This turned him so much inward
that he became proficient in psychology and soon got doctorate in the subject. He did
everything to reconcile his traits and nature to the imperatives of the bureaucratic values.
He went out of his way to please everybody and made it his habit. The changes found
favour with none with the aura popularis yet defying him and he went on losing
mainstream postings as rose in rank and even remained without posting for nearly a year
in 1990s at a very high rank on the suspicion of gross negligence in discharge of duties
leading to a serious disaster as a consequence of his newly acquired traits of casualness.
With the ablet, his nature saw the affret of enthusiasm to please the political leadership of
the state a toute force as he approached the benchmark of the selection to the post of the
head of the department. As the popular perception continued to be against him as a
candidate for the coveted post, the energumen began to play the caste card with the
political leadership a corps perdu. His efforts to undermine the chances of a senior
backfired as the latter after retirement as the head of the department filed cases against
the former succeeding him as the departmental chief. The point is that the officer
29
succeeded in heading the department as the altaltissimo of his career though for a short
period by the surgery he performed on his persona, convictions and innate values.
Though flexibility paid, one wonders whether the quid pro quo was worth the surgery and
could not he be a person more in harmony with himself if he had continued with his
pristine value system avec acharnement. His predecessor is another example of the same
process but for that that after finding failures of the new values to provide the aex triplex
he needed, he took recourse back to his innate values and won court battles to head the
department.
CRISIS OF VALUES:
The tragedy of the officer was that the process of the changes found him shedding
away truly noble values innate to him. His integrity became a disaster in the process. His
name as the Managing Director of the state’s Tourist Development Corporation in 1980s
was linked to his young PA after he was noticed spending long hours with her under
locked doors and irregularly elevating her to officer’s rank to the consternation of the
entire staff that went on state-wide strike against the Managing Director. He was also
suspected of wrong-doings in purchase of hundreds of cars by the Tourist Development
Corporation to run as tourist cars.
It clearly is a case of honest besoin to adapt to the imperatives of the bureaucracy

for survival going awry. The attempts are justifiable on the grounds of the survival
instinct basic to human nature, because the bureaucracy as it is has no value for anything
extra muros. It recognizes only its values and remains adamantine to anything
ectogenesis. Therefore, the choice for a principled officer is between an unsuccessful
career for adhering to one’s own values and convictions or quitting. Good jobs are
difficult to come. Ergo, ordinary mortal’s survival instincts lead to sacrifice his values
and principles to adapt to the requirements of the bureaucracy at any cost to the self and
its convictions. Everybody cannot be a saint. Thus the need to adapt own values to the
bureaucratic imperatives is ineluctable until Indian bureaucracy grows to be mature
enough to accept and absorb higher values ab extra.
30
XENOPHOBIA:
A process of ossification has set-in in Indian bureaucracy in absence of real

growth and evolution after independence. The political leadership find the development
to its advantage. The bureaucracy found itself as fish out of water when its leading guides
returned to Britain after independence. Those who handled the higher bureaucracy
sinsyne followed from where the British left with their own mediocre interpretations of
an ideal bureaucratic setup. The result is the extant bureaucracy of India devoid of
creativity, initiative, understanding and a sense of public service. This reduced the
definition of the public administration to mean use of rules and procedures to delay or
obstruct decisions or actions just for the purpose of proving existence. The new setup
developed a queer xenophobia towards deviations from the set patterns as a threat to the
very existence of the bureaucracy. The mindset evolved to a pernoctation against any
fresh breeze ab extra and a tendency to deracinate any move to that end in the bud itself.
Nothing fresh can leak-in to such a bureaucracy a huis clos.
BUREAUCRATIC CULTURE:
The indifference is limited to the values ectogenesis to the home-grown value

system. The three factors that exercise true prise on Indian bureaucracy beyond the limits
are caste affiliations, political patronage and money power. They have become pollent
values inter se. You can buy practically anything from the present Indian bureaucracy
with them en arriere. And you find what virtually is hell on the Earth without these
factors to back you.
The bureaucracy of India in the last five decades has become a law to itself with
an opus musivum of a ribald culture spreading tentacles of a reticulation of rights and
wrongs beyond the reach of any known precepts of decent human conduct. Here, power
is the supreme deity that absterges all sins, reasons and feelings. That naturally renders
31
the rank in bureaucracy the highest virtue and age, merit, character and human dignity eat
dust in the milieu. Such a bureaucracy is a perfect ground for the growth of all types of
evils and human weaknesses. There was a Sanskrit scholar with moderate successes as a
writer in a provincial language holding a very senior post in the bureaucracy of a South
Indian state. He held huge functions for the release of his books by dignitaries including
the state Chief Minister. A junior who became distinguished as a poet and as a writer
decided to release his book through the Governor of the state. The senior in the
bureaucracy out of sheer jealousy spread canards and exercised his personal weight to
ensure that the function was cancelled just twenty-four hours before the release of the
book by the Governor of the state. This is Indian bureaucracy after independence in puris
naturalibus.
POLITICAL LEADERSHIP:
The cardinal question is why the Indian political leadership tolerated such an
obstructionist bureaucracy for all these years. The reason is that the political leadership
finds itself comfortable with the ossified and unenlightened bureaucracy. There is no
danger of an enlightened bureaucracy overshadowing it and taking all the limelight for
positive performances. On the other hand, an inert and unenlightened bureaucracy is a
handy tool to bear the burdens of all failures. An ineffectual bureaucracy naturally brings
higher stature to the political leadership in public perception. It has become a fashion in
India to blame the political leadership for all evils of the country. The true blame for the
maelstrom the country finds itself with, must lay on the threshold of the crippled
bureaucracy and its blotched value system. Sine dubio, Indian political leadership now is
more enlightened than its bureaucracy. The edge of the bureaucracy seen in pre-
independent era is no more evident now. The reason is that the political leadership kept
its doors open for fresh air and updated its value system from time to time unlike the
bureaucracy. While the bureaucracy rarely looks beyond the edges of its desk and never
outside the window, it is the political leadership that navigated India through diverse
innovative phases like NAM, mixed economy, socialistic pattern of society, social control
32
and now economic reforms. Even the recent Agra Summit to bring peace to the South-
Asia region is a fine example of an innovative political leadership.
An enlightened bureaucracy with a noble value structure is a great blessing to any

country. Unfortunately, Indian bureaucracy at all levels flourish on the ruses like falling
on each other to lick the boots of the rich and powerful and bending double over to please
the political leadership or play the caste card. These ruses always payed a natura rei in
the ambience of the Indian bureaucracy after independence courtesy the tendency of the
political leadership to play the bureaucratic minions against each other. This prevented
the evolution of higher value system in Indian bureaucracy.
Every setup strictly has its own culture and value system. An individual perforce
reconciles his personal values with that of an organization when he chooses to be its part.
He is required to sacrifice his own convictions and values in the service of the larger
interests of the organization. The predicament is perficiently brought out by William
Butler Yeats in two lines of the poem, “An Irish Airman Foresees His Death” when the
airman sings,
“ Those that I fight I do not hate,

Those that I guard I do not love;”
Such a situation is common while organizational objectives and values take precedence
over individual objectives and values. The conundrum of such a reconciliation lies in
resorting to the adaptations while the organization as in Indian bureaucracy suffered
degringolade in its value structure en face the higher value structure of the individual.
The ambience necessitates the individual lower himself to the lower world to fit-in for
survival with the full knowledge that he is becoming a lesser human being in the process.
That is the true challenge on the fresh recruits to the government service in India who
enter the services with starry eyes and true commitment to the public service inspired ab
imo pectore and soon end-up perforce in the quagmire of conflicting values.
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REQUISITES OF GOOD GOVERNANCE
Governance is steering and guiding the country in its course by right policies,
decisions and actions and the apparatus invested with the responsibility is government. A
government may have different gestalts, colours and priorities depending on the needs
and circumstances of the country at the time. Steering the rudder in proper direction
through all weathers constitutes the core of the governance. Those holding and attending
the rudder decide the destiny of the country. Their character, attitudes and competence
determine the tournure of the future of the country and its people.
TWO TIERS:
Governance in a democracy is a bifarious exercise with the political rung

controlling the policy and decision-making apparatus while the administrative rung
handling the decision and action apparatus of the governance. The political and
administrative faces are the two sides of the same coin of the governance. The political
rung represents the will and aspirations of the people. People get the politicians they
deserve. Any expectations and manipulations about the will of the people are
undemocratic au fond and unconstitutional even. The case is tout a fait different with the
administrative rung which functions as an interface between the policies and its
implementation and between the political rulers and the hoi polloi in the matter of
governance. While political leadership is ephemeral VVIP guest-component in the arena,
the civil servants are the abiding framework of rules and procedures within which the
minutiae of the governance are conceived and built brick by brick. It is these civil
servants at diverse ranks, levels and fields that really hold the rudder of the governance to
steer the country in whatever course their composite character and competence permit.
The true governance depends on their abilities and attitudes.
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CIVIL SERVANTS:
They are professionals in the field of governance unlike the political leaders who
handle governance ens per accidens. They are career administrators and specialists eo
nomine by choice all their lives and constitute more than 99% of the manpower in the
field of governance. It is they who by their conduct and attributes decide the nature of the
governance in the country and constitute the mainstay of the government irrespective of
what party comes to power and who control the reigns of power. Karunanidhi as CM
heaping corruption cases against and putting former CM Jayalalitha behind bars and
Jayalalitha reciprocating by the same coin when she comes to power or Bofors gun case
of the Congress and Tehelka tape case of the NDA in the centre are all dramas of
gratuitous media hype of little significance to the future of the country until the character
of the administrative rung remains unchanged. The political face can make really little
change to the country. It makes little difference to Bihar who heads the government until
the civil servants there change their character and mindset. It is unrealistic and too
simplistic to presume that the political leadership provides model to the administration
down the line. The bureaucracy of India is too hardboiled a unit for such a quick change
of colours. The reality is the other way round. The political leaders who come to power
have no alternative but go d’ accord with the demands of the bureaucracy or perish.
Politicians as they are, do adapt to their survival instincts and barter their visions for
possible quid pro quo in power. The bureaucracy in India really enjoys a commanding
position in the governance of the country.
WRONG ATTITUDES:
The tragedy of India is that their position and importance is not amated by
requisite qualities, merit, passion and commitment for effective and good governance.
The Indian bureaucracy is seized with wrong attitudes and evils that waste it away ab
intra. Competence has become a disaster. Wrong people in wrong jobs is a serious
malady enervating the public administration of the day. Political heads are wrongly
blamed for the havoc. It is the bureaucracy for its own parochial ends at the cost of the
35
bureaucratic integrity and ideals that invite the trouble and guide the political leadership
in the evil path.
HUMAN ELEMENTS:
The extant bureaucracy ensemble is marked by lack of human concerns and

empathy for the fellow men. Being as rigid as rules and procedures of which those in the
bureaucracy are custodians of is wrongly accepted as en regle for those in the
bureaucracy. This has deprived the elements of heart and compassion from the body of
the bureaucracy. Initiatives, novel ideas and creative pursuits are seen as the antithesis of
the governance. This has deprived the elements of brain and intellect from the corpus of
the public administrative system. The result is a deadweight-bureaucracy weighing down
on the live India and sucking it dry with evils and misuse of the powers invested on it for
governing and steering the country ahead.
INTEGRITY:
India is an egregious forerunner in the world among countries most corrupt in public
life. The root cause of this grave malady is India’s corrupt governance pregnant with
inefficiency, indifference and gross temulence of power devoid of human elements.
Bureaucratic measures have become synonymous in popular parlance and perception in
India with foolhardy decisions and actions far removed from reality. Lack of
accountability is the leitmotiv of governance in India. This is a malengine consciously
evolved ab intra to safeguard self-interests. Power sans accountability rendered
governance in India an evil per se.
INSENSITIVITY:
The evils of governance need not always be directed only against outsiders.
Inscience knows no boundaries. Even those within may become cruel victims of its
grossly unrealistic and farcical decisions as in the case of a highly talented and
multifaceted genius who joined government service in 1978. He was soon recognized for
36
sheer brilliance and purity of character as a diamond that can fit anywhere and as a
peacock among the fowls. Soon the recognition itself turned a noose on his neck. It was
assessed by the inscient bureaucracy that his outstanding attributes might prevent him
from becoming popular among the seniors and prevent him from reaching higher levels.
A two-pronged strategy was devised. He was to be roughed-up and denied promotions to
rub-off his superior qualities and the intimidating aura till the detrition by the sufferings
forces him down to the ordinary level. Once the job is accomplished, his lost seniority
was to be restored a few years before retirement.
ATROCITIES:
He was denied promotions following the meretricious career plan year after year
till his junior colleagues became senior to him by two ranks. He was posted to most
humiliating posts and harassed endlessly. However, the process got caught in a skein as
the infaust officer refused to come down from his immanent and really superior qualities
even after two decades of immanity and sufferings while the bureaucracy refused to yield
and give up its illegal and unconstitutional stance until the officer condescends to the
mediocre levels. The refusal of the officer to approach judiciary against the ill treatment
for redressal and his resolve to depend solely on his talents and character helped the
establishment to persist with the preposterous process a corps perdu. His morale
remained en bon point and high throughout non obstante serious humiliations and endless
grief. He aequo animo sought refuge in other fields and won nonpareil accolades from
everybody by sheer talents. His tormentors tout de suite followed him there too. The head
of the State Intelligence who himself a small-time writer and published a few books in a
regional language used esoteric threats in 2000 on the publishers of the accurst officer to
discourage them from publishing his books. The publishers who already had published
half a score books of the officer returned a contre coeur two manuscripts of the officer in
sheer desperation a natura rei expressing helplessness en face the police interferences.
TRANSPARENCY:
37
Fanciful premises bordering madness tout court leading to irresponsible and
eristic career plans of that dimensions are possible only in governance utterly lacking in
accountability and only a sacred country like India can produce such gross grief,
sufferings and humiliations eo nomine noble intensions en pure perte. Lack of
transparency makes such etourdi atrocities possible and permits its practice for decades
en pantoufles as in the case study.
PUBLIC CAUSE:
The case is an eye-opener to how merit, talent and character of very high order
meted out by the mediocrity of the governance in the Indian milieu. Jealousy is common.
Anybody junior receiving limelight is seen with resentment and suspicion. The major
achilles’ heel of the governance in India is its inability to understand others’
predicaments. Governance in quiddity is safeguarding national interests and the welfare
of the people. These factors perforce involve empathy with the people and sensitivity to
their interests. These are the springboards of good governance. No governance worth the
name can render meaningful public service sans the spirit of building bridges to the hoi
polloi in whose service it draws sustenance and what constitutes its raison d’ etre. Good
governance must be built on the terra firma of human concerns and sensitivity to others’
predicaments.
ACCOUNTABILITY:
Another requisite of good governance is accountability. It gives sanctity to power

and makes it meaningful and relevant in the scheme of governance. Power is a raw
energy. Accountability gives it sophistication and purpose. Governance sans
accountability has the tendency of hijacking the country to the pit of evils that power
breeds. Checks and counterchecks serve the purpose of good governance by rendering
itself to the litmus test of accountability, ipso facto bringing in the elements of
responsibility to the field of governance. In the ambience of civil servants functioning in
the shadow of the political leadership, the former mastered the art of evading
38
accountability and responsibility. The successes boldened them to the derring-does of
larger dimensions. The recent US-64 debacle is the point. India can ill-afford repeat
performances of that dimension and must save from such disasters in future through an
uneluctable parameter of accountability that alone can dawn an era of responsible
governance in the country.
OBJECTIVITY:
A cardinal principle of good governance is objectivity and fair play. The

governance as public administration is inevitably circumvented by pulls and counter-pulls
of diverse kinds to influence decisions and actions. The compulsions for yielding to either
side are enormous and it reduce the governance to a mere play or dynamics of lobbyists
and influence-pedlars. A good governance must stand up to the pressures. This requires
tremendous inner strength and singular commitment to the public cause. It is easier said
than done. However, this commitment is sine qua non for good governance. While
accountability is an apparatus to protect the governance from the indulgences of the
fonctionnaire ab intra like greed, irresponsibility and love for easy life, the shield of
objectivity protects it from the ectogenous onslaughts of pressures, temptations and
threats. While accountability must evolve as an external mechanism ingrained in the body
of the governance, objectivity is an inner faculty either inborn or acquired as the fond of
good governance.
IMBALANCES:
Good governance should have its powers and responsibilities amated and evenly
distributed in the fabric of the governance. This ensures smooth governance d’ accord
with the principles of democracy. Another factor core to good governance is a balance of
powers and responsibilities propped up with transparency in state affairs. Responsibilities
sans powers end up with failures in performance and powers non compris responsibilities
breed undue morgue and lead to harassment of the public. Governance sans transparency
39
is at the root of all evils and goes tout au contraire to the very rationale of the democracy.
It can neither be fair nor earn the trust of the people.
OPEN MIND:
No governance is worth the salt without a passion for developmental and welfare
activities in national interests. The passion widens the horizons of the mind as against
that circummured by isms of theoretical hang that can never provide a good and open
governance. A passion pure and clear for the welfare and development of the nation and
its people by any means is a prerequisite for good governance. Only that keeps mind open
for all developments worldwide and absorb really the best for the country.
VISION:
The most basic requirement of any good governance is a vision, an ability to look
ahead to the future of the country with great expectations and endless possibilities in
sidelines. This is potential of evolving the governance to greater heights to herald an era
of successes and prosperity. Visions carve paths to the future and prod the governance to
navigate along the course. It provides a break from the quotidian plod in preference to
innovative strides to fulfil the vision. Governance sans vision is like building an edifice a
tatons without a plan or blueprint. It at best is a random erection. Vision gives direction
and purpose to the governance. It gives a grandeur and a proportion to the process. No
governance can be good and complete without a vision to steer ahead and a true
governance can be built only on the terra firma of a vision. The old concept of a
prosperous India is based on the vision of “Rama Rajya”. The new concept of India
coming of age is based on the vision of a world power or a regional power in Asia. Once
a vision of that dimension is en arriere to back, it is easy to put the pluses and minuses to
conceive a strategy towards the end. Otherwise, governance is nothing more than
mechanical motions.
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India in its long history saw governance of all kinds, proportions and dimensions
and survived through them. It saw the worst and the best in its 2500 years of recorded
history. It, like other old civilizations of the world, has worked as the crucible of various
experiments in governance. The governance in India now is based on this long
experience. It is the collective will for good governance that is lacking in India. The
consequence is that the hoi polloi suffer and the country fails to reach the height it is
potential of. The besoin of the extant India is the evolution of a collective will to have a
good governance. People must pool their energies to force a good governance for the
country. Indeed the job is not easy and the resistance from those in charge of the
governance whose interests lie in the status quo is bound to be hard. But, this cannot be a
reason to leave the matter of this dimension unattended as the fate of one billion people
depends on this development. Only such a collective will can devolve truly good
governance for the country.
INDIA AND ALL INDIA SERVICES
Aux grands maux, les grands remedes. Timely remedy is best. But, belated
remedy is better than no remedy at all. Perhaps the greatest among the legacies of the
British rule that caught with free-India was its steelframe of the All India Services.
Fortunate to India, the Indian political leaders of that vintage in their best wisdom in an
age of honesty, humility, integrity and other higher values decided to continue with the
All India Services legacy of the British with minor adaptations in spite of the inchoate
mad rave to indigenise everything and obliterate all traces of the foreign rule. Kudos to
the leaders for their wisdom in keeping an efficient tool of administration intact. But,
alas, the euphoria proved to be ephemeral. The rapid degringolade of values and passion
for excellence and efficiency in India of the post-independent vintage was to
progressively obliterate all the advantages of the sound judgement of the whilom leaders.
The deterioration was to be complete in the next five decades and we now stand exactly
in that compita. The situation calls for les grands remedes.
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Dispensability
The fall was ominous. Every system is bifacial; external structure and internal
character d’accord constitute a true system. The advantages of the gestalt of the All India
Services of the British vintage was to be bientot frittered away by the falling values and
rising material aspirations of India of the sixties and sinsyne. The All India Services of
the post-independent vintage dearly lost in the battle for internal character. Negative
selections and recruitment, deviant values and aspirations of its members thus selected
and recruited and mismanagement of the All India Services in governmental realms
because of its obvious dispensability in terms of excellence and strength of character – all
badly contributed for the extant triste state of affairs in the realms of the All India
Services.
A major advantage of the All India Services is its all India nature; its members as
a plexus from all over India carrying out administrative functions at senior levels
throughout the length and breadth of the country give it a sense of oneness and belonging.
Another advantage inhere in the concept is the belief that the best minds chosen from all
over the country are entrusted with the prime function of the nation-building through the
structure of the All India Services. They are commendable concepts indeed and worked
to perfection during the British era and perhaps for a decade thereafter. It is distressing to
note that the same advantages turned to acute disadvantages in the last five decades in our
own hands proving what Churchill said about natives ruling India.
Survival of the Fittest
If a single reason for the steep fall is to be accounted, the albatross can be found
squarely fitting in on the lap of the fast disappearance of the ancien regime of pristine
values and the accrescently valid concept of the survival of the fittest gaining ground at
all levels in the last half century, it be in politics, administration, professions and even
social service. Pristine values of grace, integrity, humility, fairness and humane approach
are increasingly at a premium. Reaching top by any means is the motto. The gestalt of the
42
All India Services was conceived and designed to overcome exactly this milieu. But, alas,
it proved no match to the sweeping sleight of the Indian talent.
Crisis of Material
The primacy of the katabasis necessarily goes to the crisis of material, it be in the
members of the All India Services or the selecting and recruiting agency for the services
or the governments that manage the services. Right people are not in right positions.
None can contend that a vast country like India does not have people of right fortitude,
strength of character and creative talent who can withstand the lure of survival instinct at
the cost of their conscience, however bad be the milieu around. India does have people of
such calibre in its fold even now as it was always. The tragedy is that the agency charged
with the sacred responsibility of identifying such talents and selecting, in the deviant
intelligence of its equally mediocre human material that lacks creative depth, is failing
the country by doing just the opposite by filtering such talents away as incompatible with
the present political dynamics and thereby perpetuating the rotten state of affairs in the
country. What India needs at this juncture are men and women who can stand for their
conscience nec cupias nec metuas.
Vicious Circle
Politics being the art of possible, it is to the credit of the Indian politicians that
they did job extraordinaire in taking full advantage of the pusillanimous All India
Services of the post-independent vintage in the last half century to promote the interests
of their own, their political parties and the political field in general though at mammoth
cost to the interests of the country, its public morale and its people. The situation has
spawned a vicious circle to the advantage of the political masters wherein the All India
Services are seized with a crisis of confidence in the popular mind as far as its superior
merit, integrity and competence are concerned and in that further helped the politicians to
corner the whilom superior services. No state or union territory now needs them. They
prefer local talents. Those forced on them by the Central government are sidelined to
insignificant jobs unless there are special reasons involving quid pro quo. The situation
43
only can add to the parochial and regional sentiments in the country and boost divisive
tendencies rather than working as a unifying factor.
The All India Services are fast losing the sheen of their all India nature because of
the inadequacies of the agency that makes selections to the services; there is undoubtedly
wild demand for superior merit, integrity, efficiency and excellence in running the
country and the rare virtues do prove the aex triplex of the services. No sane political
leader can ignore the need of such rare talents helping in running the country. Sadly, the
All India Services not to be that in free India.
Strength of Character
Excellence and courage to stand up to conscience go together. It is these that

made the All India Services of the British vintage the steelframe of India. If anything, the
extant All India Services lack both. There is nothing like a steep fall. None know it better
now than the members of the All India Services. They must double bend to the dictates of
criminal nuances of their political masters for survival or face sidelining. Most
condescend and rise to glory while a handful resist and perish. The situation needs
strength of character kat’ exochem to stand up and cleanse the system and can be met
only by diligent selections and support by men of true calibre. Sadly India is dearly
lacking in this department.
Virtus post Numnos
Situation is extremely bad in public administration even in best of the states of

India. A cut of 10% to the concerned minister from every fund released, it be for
developmental works or a special law and order programme, is a normal affair and
treated as a legitimate cut. It would be followed with other cuts down the line. Any
resistance is invitation to be shunted out and sidelined as an inconvenient and
problematic candidate. Either you connive in the crime or perish. There is no third
choice. It is the case with plump postings also. It is virtus post numnos. Either you bribe
and connive in criminal activities with those who count or waste your entire career in
44
insignificant posts. There is no other choice. Most in the extant All India Services
willingly oblige and see the glory of their career. They are in majority and call
themselves practical. But, practical at what cost? The trend grievously belies the very
raison d’etre of the All India Services.
How the situation can be saved and the tide reversed? The only way out is
restoring the All India Services to its whilom glory of excellence and strength of
character. This involves right selection. Excellence and strength of character once around,
naturally rally efficiency and integrity around and perforce compel political bosses to see
reason and follow the rule of law. Political leaders as zoon politikon, what really they are,
are nothing if not chameleonic to the milieu around as a professional compulsion. It is left
to the senior civil servants at the All India Services rank as a group to create right
atmosphere as a model of the public service. Political leaders have no option but to fit in
to the frame. This is why once the All India Services was called the steelframe of India.
Indian constitution makers did provide a right gestalt for that. It is left to us to infuse right
character to the system before it is too late.
NEED OF LEAN AND MEAN CIVIL SERVICES
Civil services are the pillars on which the gestalt of a nation stands and structure
is built. Pillars need strength and height to make an edifice stable and meaningful. So also
are civil services. Civil service is a mammoth plexus of complex interfaces spliced
together to facilitate the governance of the country pro bono publico. It is not a decorative
piece of the public administration. It has to be purposive and focused and deliver goods
efficiently without proving a burden to the structure. It should be lean and mean and
feracious. Inefficient and bloated civil service only tends to be furacious.
Indian national leaders by 1947 had come to appreciate the advantages of having
a highly qualified and institutionalized administration in place a la the elite Indian Civil
45
Service and allied services of the colonial British Raj especially at a time when social
tensions threatened national unity and public order. Indian Constitution established the
Indian Administrative Service and other civil services to replace the colonial Indian Civil
Service and allied services and ensure uniform and impartial standards of administration
and promote effective coordination in social and economic development.
Although the elite public services continue to command great prestige, their social
status declined in the decades after independence. India's crème de la crème are
increasingly attracted to private-sector employment where salaries are substantially
higher. Public opinion of civil servants has also been lowered by popular perceptions that
bureaucrats are unresponsive to public needs and corrupt. Corruption has become a
growing problem as civil servants have become subject to intense political pressures.
The Indian civil service system has followed the classical Weberian model and
tends to be conformist in the process of cooperating with the politicians. The public
perceives the Indian civil service system as the no-change agents. It lacks innovativeness,
initiative, empathy, and drive for change. The Government of India and its 25 provincial
governments spend about 3.5% of the GDP on its civil servants. They employ about eight
million in the civil service, which is 50% of the employment provided in the organised
sector.
The Fifth Pay Commission in its report submitted in January 1997 had suggested
a 30% downsizing of the civil service across the board. According to the Ferrel Heady
configuration, the Indian civil service system has a majority-party responsiveness. The
sense of mission held by it is a mixed bag of compliance, cooperation, policy-
responsiveness, constitutional responsiveness, and guidance. Though the configuration of
Philip Morgan identifies the Indian civil service system as the principal agent of the state,
some of the characteristics of the patrimonial state still pervade the country and to that
extent its civil service system.
Vishnugupta of the Mauryan period authored a treatise known as Kautilya's

Arthashastra around 313 BC wherein he laid down the qualifications of the civil servants
46
for appointment to the court. He opined therein that loyalty and sincerity should be the
main qualifications in a person to be appointed as a civil servant and recommended a
system of checks and balances in the appointment of civil servants covering clearance by
the vigilance department, a continuous watch on their performances and quotidian
performance report to the king on each key civil servant. The recommendations hold
relevance even today after 23 centuries in a democratic setup. The civil service contrived
by Akbar, the Great had welfare and a regulatory-orientation. The British model of the
civil service in the earlier stage were far away from the common people and never tried to
mix with and impress upon the people. They had least interest in the transformation of the
Indian society. The British government set up the Indian civil service in 1911 to
strengthen the British administration and its colonial base in India. The independence of
the country posed new challenges to the civil servants. Welfare of the people and the
internal peace and security became the prime tasks of the civil services.
The onset of economic planning in India in 1951 with the First Five-Year Plan
enjoined on the Indian civil services the role of development administration covering the
administration of public enterprises, regulation of the private sector, formulation of socio-
economic and political policies, elimination of poverty, development of rural areas,
combating inflation, effective monetary management, reduction of gender gap,
elimination of social inequity inter alia. India encountered severe resource crunch in early
1980s that further deepened by the end of the decade leading to a new economic policy in
1991 that saw a rollback of the economic activities to liberalisation and privatisation at
macro and micro levels in the changed global environment. While civil servants acted as
personal servants of rulers in ancient India, they became state servants in the medieval
age and acquired the complexion of public servants in the British India. The ethos of the
civil services changed to development-orientation in 1950s and to a facilitator's role in
the 1990s to meet the challenges of the democratic needs of the teeming millions. The
point here is that the civil services is and has to be a nebulous body sans its own agenda,
commitments and ideologies in a democracy and function subordinate to the national
needs and policy prioritized by the political leaders. Indian civil services of the British
vintage worked so and the civil services of the democratic vintage nolens volens must
47
follow tout de suite. That is the democracy India consciously opted for and obliged to
follow.
In his letter dated October 15, 1948 to the Constituent Assembly, Vallabhbhai
Patel, the then Prime Minister opined, “…an efficient, disciplined and contented service
assured of its prospects as a result of diligent and honest work is a sine qua non of sound
administration under a democratic regime even more than under an authoritarian rule.
The service must be above party and we should ensure that political considerations either
in its recruitment or in its discipline and control are reduced to the minimum, if not
eliminated altogether.” These are truly prophetic words relevant to the present India that
penetrate the conundrums of its civil service issues. The emphasis is on an efficient and
neutral civil service. However, the problem here is the undue extension of the concept to
conceive two power-centers between political policy-makers and civil service executives.
Justice M.P.Thakkar while hearing a Special Leave Petition of a senior civil servant,
Jagdish Chander Jetli in Supreme Court in 1988 observed inter alia, “The appointment of
the Secretary to Government of India is not on the basis of a competitive examination
where a candidate who secures 99 per cent of marks has to be appointed. Even when a
person appoints a cook or a watchman, he looks for a person in whom he has faith. How
can Government of India appoint any person as Secretary in whom it has no faith?” and
the SLP was dismissed by the Supreme Court. The two contrarious observations sum up
the ground realities and the predicament of the civil services of India in a democratic
milieu. It must maintain its integrity and independence, and en attendant earn
acceptability and faith of the political leadership. This calls for a tact and skill kat
exochem. A civil service sans that cadeau crumbles to be the handmaid of the political
leadership for survival and sycophancy reaches new heights every passing day to the
level of suspending an acolyte from service for spelling wrongly the name of the daughter
of the materfamilias of the party in power while sending an invitation.
Struggle between survival and dignity is as old as human history is. Going for
dignity and right values ignoring survival factors is not everybody’s staple. It takes
tremendous inner strength and resolve. It is this rare calibre that is the indigence of the
extant civil services of India. It is this rara avis that must constitute the pillars on which
48
the plexus of the civil services must rest. These powerful pillars perforce must be limited
in number to avoid degradation by mass mélange and absorption of anyone of some pull
and money power and safeguard standards in excelsis. Indeed the best does not come for
peanuts. Whatever goes for is far more worth of it. Secondly, a perficient, resourceful and
workaholic lean civil services replacing extant sedent and inefficient bulk of workforce
certainly provide a solution to the evils of the administrative overhead apportioning the
major part of the public expenditures of the Government.
Efficient and small is always effective. Right selection and steadfast upkeep of
high standards are easier while size is small. A plexus of civil services built on this
bedrock can do wonders to the country. What India needs now is a lean and mean civil
services imbued with industry, talent, honesty and commitment extraordinaire to its
responsibilities. A beginning can be made in creation of a new lean and mean superior
service above the present Indian Administrative Service with liberal perks and service
benefits even after retirement to attract the crème de la crème. A specially constituted
board of professionals and experts free from political obligations must handle selection
and the management of the new Service. Its selection and recruitment must be a multi-
polar strategy devised with a passion to enroll the best from whatever source, field or age
group sans extraneous obligations like reservations in this nonesuch Service. The guiding
principle here is maximum yield out of maximal talent, integrity, commitment, industry,
and responsibilities en revanche of extraordinary benefits in service and outside. Such a
top-brass guiding administration by personal example at the helm provides a new job
culture down the stream and helps trimming the civil services as a body to be a lean and
mean force, again well compensated, running the administration of the country, ipso facto
drastically cutting down administrative and establishment expenditures on account of the
lean workforce while tremendously increasing its efficiency and perficient output. A
conventional assessment is that an efficient and hardworking workforce of 10% of the
present size in India should conveniently be able to handle the affairs of the country
better and more effectively at a farthing of the present administrative overhead. This is
what India needs now.
49
Insulation of the civil services from the temptations of money and power is a
major challenge. Making its members free from all major needs of life once they joined
the service would be the cheapest strategy open to achieve this telos. The lean civil
services instituted for the country should be made a highly contented and respected entity
while its job and responsibilities are made equally challenging and trying. This is a give
and take policy with provisions for ruthless extraction of those who fail to stand up to the
challenges in hand. A major need of such a civil services is absolutely professional
recruitment and management of the services at all levels under the close purview of a
professional body responsible to the Chief Justice of the country. Even indirect political
pull even from the highest levels in recruitment or management perforce pollutes the civil
services tout a fait. A clear bifurcation of the responsibilities of the political and
administrative wings of the Government as policy and decision makers and as advisors
and executives is sine qua non for the advent of such a refrain in running the
Government. Any attempt at overstepping the other should be viewed as a serious
violation of the code of Governmental procedures.
The suggestions made here are easier said than done. For one, it needs
amendments to the Constitution. For the other, politics being the art of possible, the
political leadership would never compromise with any effort to make away flaccid civil
services that has come to its prise from a hard struggle that is half-a-century long. Yet,
this is the besoin India now cries avec acharnement for.
CORRUPTION IN INDIA
The size of India’s parallel economy at 40% of GDP does provide fertile ground
for corruption. Lack of deterrence against corruption and importance to wealth begotten
by whatever means enormously promoted corruption in India. More important, corruption
in India flows from above from the political class under covers like party and election
50
funds, and senior bureaucrats who are seld investigated or punished, either through
conspiratorial silence or through conspiratorial legislative manipulations. Further,
political patronage gave an aura of invincibility and respectability to corruption and
deprived it of all moral and legal fears. The Central Bureau of Investigation in the Centre
and Criminal Investigation Departments in the states and Union Territories have become
political tools in the hands of the ruling party and grossly politicised the criminal
investigation process in the country. What is worse, the conviction rate is hardly 6% in
criminal cases.
India was placed 73rd in corruption among the 99 countries rated In the
Transparency International rankings for 1999. Corruption flourishes in India because it is
perceived to be a low risk and high profit business. Lack of transparency in
administration provides an opportunity for public servants to mislead citizens and extract
bribes.
The Central Vigilance Commission which was set up in the Centre in 1964 and
Vigilance Commissions and institutions like Lok Ayukta which were set up in some
states as Government agencies and headed by retired public servants or High Court or
Supreme Court judges are proved too inadequate to meet the challenges in hand because
of again the conspiratorial refusal of the political and bureaucratic leaderships to invest
them with necessary powers and organizational strength.
It is only the Supreme Court in India seems waging a war against corruption. The
Government of India converted the Central Vigilance Commission into a statutory body
through an executive order in 1998 on the directive of the Supreme Court. It rendered the
CVC at least statutorily independent of the political and bureaucratic set-ups.
Although everybody in every nook and corner of the country knows who are
corrupt in the Government set-up and knows every details of their mode of operations,
India’s administrative machinery is so devised to ensure that corruption never comes to
its official cognisance even while taking place en plein jour in its own corridors and
antechambers to the benefits of the key politicians and senior bureaucrats. Power
51
corridors and ministerial antechambers are rendered protected places from anti-corruption
moves and converted to safe havens for corruption at high places.
Ill-gotten wealth is generally stashed away in the form of black money in foreign
accounts and benami bank accounts, property, jewellery and other valuables.
It is a common principle in government world-over that if a person is facing a

vigilance inquiry, he should not be placed in a sensitive post. However, this practice was
not being followed in India. Actually, exactly the opposite is true in India. Only those
politicians and bureaucrats who have disposable black money a gogo can afford to buy
high public positions in India. Others are mercilessly sidelined as nonconformists or even
discredited or destroyed as dangerous outsiders in the big business of bribery. Media and
its lack of depth and insight add to the maelstrom while it presumes and glorifies those in
key posts as the rare personification of noble virtues and merit while truth is that those
posts are invariably cornered these days by those who can afford to illegally pay for that
either by kind or other means and therefore grossly corrupt in the world of transfer
business. It is not uncommon to media to add its mite to the charges of the vested
interests against and question appointment of the senior most officer to the top post of a
Government department on the ground that the officer never held charge of a key
executive post till then. Media in India is yet to grow to appreciate the point that the
denial of venal key posts in spite of seniority in the extant milieu of transfer business per
se vouches to the probity and noncorruptibility of the concerned officer. That is how
corruption has flourished in the system.
Endless delays common in India in the conduct of departmental inquiry,

investigation and prosecution help corruption to flourish. Delay provides a cover of
respectability for the guilty.
The significance of corruption as a factor that adversely affects the growth of a

country is being increasingly recognized. Corruption, in the words of Indira Gandhi, is a
world phenomenon. It exists in developed countries too. Corruption is institutionalised as
a part of the democratic process in the USA as lobbying and public relations activities
52
and the country prides in its mushrooming lobbying and public relations firms with major
foreign governments inter alios as its clients. The firms are nothing but mammoth
business houses indulging in legal corruption. This nohow justifies corruption
otherwhere. Indian corruption has special characteristics that make it far more damaging
than corruption in other parts of the world.
First, people in India being poor and largely dependent on the Government for
decent living and even survival, and limited by its excessive laws, rules, regulations and
largess in almost all activities of life with high rates of taxation on every conceivable
items and services, corruption literally sucks life out of their existence unlike those in
developed countries whose dependence on the Government is relatively not so deep and
prolate. This renders corruption in India an extremely dangerous phenomenon with
terminal consequences on the culture, value system and the quality and the content of the
life of the people.
Second, corruption in India flows down from above. Corruption at the top affects
key decisions and policies with sweeping implications while core decisions in developed
countries are taken on merit through transparent competition.
Third, the wealth accumulated by corrupt means in India as black money of the
parallel economy has the habit of disappearing out to safe havens abroad unlike western
countries where capital made out of corruption is generally ploughed back into domestic
production and investment. Thus, the proceeds of corruption while help to finance
business in developed countries, it just adds to foreign accounts in India.
Fourth, corruption in India as a general rule leads to promotion and not to prison.
It is particularly so about powerful officials hand in glove with the ruling party and those
who have money and influence to buy justice and ruling party stalwarts in contrast to
developed countries where in a system and process of accountability even top leaders are
investigated and prosecuted. The most frustrating aspect of corruption in India is that the
corrupt are too powerful to go through such an honest process of accountability as causa
sine qua non of their ill-gotten wealth and power.
53
Fifth, corruption in India is a process against some of the poorest in the world and
against half a billion poor people who are below the poverty line while that in developed
countries it is mostly against people with per capita incomes above twenty thousands
dollars. While corruption anywhere is reprehensible, it is a political dynamite when the
majority of the population cannot meet their basic needs and a few make fortunes through
corruption as in India and other poor countries of Asia, Africa and Latin America.
Corruption there leads to massive deprivation of basic needs and extreme income
inequalities. Ergo, combating corruption in the milieu of poverty is not only punishing
corrupt politicians and bureaucrats, but more important, saving human lives.
Corruption was born with the human being and its history is as long and as varied
as the history of the mankind itself. Kautilya refers to the invincibility of corruption in
public life and the Government of the time in his magnum opus Arthashaastra.
Corruption is a shortcut to wealth and one’s goals and relegation of rightful means to
oblivion in preference to ends at the earliest. It is a problem of attitude that highlights
selfish ends in preference to higher values and ideals that define noble and dignified life,
and pollutes the environment. Corruption is potent of growing exponently by poisoning
the environment to the extent of forcing the noncorruptible to fall in line to survive. The
milieu compels the society to accept corruption as a means of livelihood imprimis and as
a means of accomplishments later. The situation reaches a climacteric while governing
system of the country accepts corruption as a way of public life and its leading lights
pollute the public life by openly resorting it for short time gains. India has already
reached the stage and nothing can save a country from the atrophy save a complete
overhaul by the forces of probity, perhaps vi et armis.
Corruption is the product of man’s natural greed and contempt for rightful means
and constitutes the bedrock of his natural disposition. Therefore, any dream to wipe off
corruption from the face of the Earth is too idealistic to be realistic. Corruption perforce
dies only with the humankind. What can be done and attempted to is its suppression and
creating an environment wherein it becomes less lucrative and more dangerous than it is
now. The deed warrants mobilisation of the increasingly depleting forces of integrity and
probity in high places in Government and public life to fight the environment favourable
54
to corruption. It is easier said than done. The temptation of the easy money is too pollent
to breakthrough its plexure. Indian political system being what it has grown to be in
licentious India of the post-independent vintage does not easily let the easy provenance of
ill-gotten wealth to slip from its proprietorial grip. So also is the demoralised and easy-
laid bureaucracy of the free India. The evil nexus of the two forces need to be breached to
loosen the taut prise of corruption on the public life of India. Till then, meaningful
amendments to the Constitution, criminal Acts and Rules to make corruption dangerous
and less lucrative like decheance of the wealth gained through corruption, institution of
Lok Pal machinery to try corruption at highest levels, making such anti-corruption bodies
really powerful bodies with extra-ordinary powers and unperstringed independence to
tackle corruption cases of any kind and doing away with notorious provisions like Single
Directives to protect higher echelons of the administration from the corruption charges
while it is people in those positions itself are the true springboards of corruption in India
are bound to remain empty slogans for the public platform to fool the public and resisted
by those who count a tout prix while it comes to the crunch. It is left to those outside the
circle to mobilise forces and fight the evils that one day definitely destroy India.
If kingship is a single-point exploitation, democracy is a licence for countless

exploitations who are weaker and more helpless and corruption is the engine that runs the
process of the exploitation. The extent of corruption is a clear indicium of the degree of
exploitation afoot in a given democracy. A democracy is meaningful only when it is
expropriated from the evil of exploitation. In other words, corruption as an indicator of
exploitation in a country stands for negation of the democratic values of a democracy.
Until corruption is extirpated from the face of the democracy of a country and unless
India does it piu mosso brilliant and enlightened youngsters like Saket Rajan falling out
of the mainstream of the national life to join rebellious anti-exploitation organisations
like the Naxal Movement and sacrificing their precious life to police bullets as occurred
in Chikmagalur district of Karnataka on 6th of February is unavoidable. India can be a
true democracy only when it succeeds in bringing corruption in its public life under
control.
55
RECENT TRENDS IN ECONOMIC CRIMES
I begin this paper with the exordium of the article, “Investigation of Economic
Crimes” from my recent book on policing, “Policing the Police” published in 2000 (NPA
Library 001 Accession No. 65724 & 65725) wherein discussing the impact of
liberalisation on Indian economy and economic crimes, I said, “With the liberalisation,
the aboideau of scams and financial irregularities is thrown open and the Indian financial
market is flooded with all conceivable kinds of frauds, shady transactions and corrupt
practices. As long shadows of mixed economy receded from the four-decade-old sky of
the Indian republic in 1990s, the Indian economy is sweltering under the heat of
economic crimes. Not that economic crimes are new to human generation or India; small
fraudulent dealings were born with man and bound to continue as part of his nature till
the imbalance of supply and consumption haunts his existence. What manifested are
organised frauds to loot the public its money by clever use of the financial environment
and the innocence of the hoi polloi; ill-conceived financial rules and laws and slack
financial practices and procedures evidently failed to carry the weight of the liberalised
economy. The people who were inured to protected economy and state control cannot
easily adapt to liberalised economy where all sorts of worms and creatures creep, waiting
to make best use of the laissez-faire. Rules and laws being not tightened to meet the
challenges of the liberal atmosphere, unscrupulous elements have a field day in playing
with the public money either to intentionally defraud or experiment in risky projects. The
plans are always mega-schemes running for hundreds or thousands of crores of rupees of
the gullible public. Corruption in government and public life ease the process. Bribes
play key roles in keeping rules, laws and regulatory authorities shut.”
Edwin H. Sutherland, renowned American criminologist in his propaedeutic of

white-collar crimes in his celebrated ouvrage “Crime and Business” preconises the
special nature of the crimes when he says, “ Since the crimes are generally violations of
trust, they create and extend feelings of distrust. Leadership against white-collar crime is
generally lacking, since most leaders come from the upper socioeconomic class and since
56
the persons in this class who do not participate in white-collar crimes are generally
reluctant to attack other members of their own class.” Economic crimes as another facet
of the white-collar crimes with its nonasuch etat in the caste hierarchy of crimes
transcend the lesser crimes in gestalt and content as its raison d’etre in the tapestry of the
civil society and ipso facto grow ectogenesis to the normal reach of the societal
leadership including the law-enforcing agencies. It is a tragedy of the criminal justice
system.
DEFINITION AND SCOPE OF ECONOMIC CRIMES
For E.H.Sutherland, white-collar crime is a violation of trust. His view emerges

from his definition of the white-collar crime as a violation of criminal law by a person of
the upper socioeconomic class in the course of his occupational activities. The trend of
economic crimes has seen sea-change since the ancien regime with more and more such
violations being committed for the res gestae by individuals or organized groups with or
without inside cooperation and raisonne exploitation of the weaknesses of the extant
financial laws and procedures, the financial institutions and the people who man them. In
the maelstrom, economic crimes can be defined simply as fraudulent financial
transactions for financial gain.
Popular realms of economic crimes these days include political and policy-
making sector, government sector, financial sector, commerce and industry sector and
individual entrepreneurs and cover events and activities like deposits fraud, shares and
securities fraud, company regulations violation, fraud concerning government funds,
counterfeit, import and export fraud, foreign exchange violation, telemarketing fraud,
patent infringement, copyright violation and piracy, tax evasion, smuggling, hoarding and
black-marketing, adulteration, drug-trafficking, insurance fraud, money laundering, high-
sea fraud, telecom and electricity fraud, computer manipulation, internet fraud, land deals
fraud, bribery, cheating, breach of trust and unauthorized commission to name just a
farthing of what actually exist and accrescently expand with the ingenuity of the persons
involved. Some of them like deposits fraud, company regulations violation, fraud
57
concerning government funds, import and export fraud, foreign exchange violation, tax
evasion, smuggling, hoarding and black-marketing, adulteration, drug-trafficking,
insurance fraud, high-sea fraud, bribery, breach of trust and unauthorized commission are
d’ accord with the definition by Sutherland as committed in the course of occupational
activities, while others like telecom and electricity fraud, cheating, patent infringements,
copyright violations and piracy and counterfeit are ectogenesis. Commission of these
crimes in gargantuan scale sponte sua by individuals and organised groups extra-muros to
the occupational activities with or without the cooperation of the invisus insiders
constitutes the recent trend in economic crimes. Shares and securities fraud, counterfeit
cheques, telemarketing fraud, software piracy and patent infringement, software
copyright violation, computer manipulation, Internet fraud and land deals fraud in
mammoth scale are relatively recent trend in the field. High sea fraud, insurance fraud
and money laundering also continue to be periculous threats to the economic security of
the country.
RECENT TRENDS
The flagitious security scam of 1992 involving Rs 8000 crores as the avant
coureur stirred the national conscience to the issue of the economic security and showed
how facilely it can be periclitated by the unscrupulous large-scale inside trading and
fraudulent stock manipulation. The supercherie run the corso from the late Harshad
Mehta case of 1992 to the ban on the high-profile fund manager, Samir Arora from the
capital markets by the SEBI in 2003 on the charge of inside trading in securities. Why the
security scam of 1992 failed to shut the aboideau in the Indian security market in the last
eleven years and why even successful and high profile fund managers like Samir Arora
prefer to resign their lucrative jobs in companies like Alliance Capital Mutual Fund and
resort to such violations? The obvious answer is that the exposures are just the
prevarications from the zeitgeist and neither the concerned regulations are stringent
enough nor the regulating agencies like the Securities and Exchange Board of India
(SEBI) and the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) and the people manning them in their aidos
are competent to cleanse the capital market and protect the interests of the investors.
58
Jucta est alea. The occasional exposures are just eyewashes. Such frauds are bound to
squeeze Indian economy in years ahead.
Another facet of the incompetence of the regulating agencies in the capital market
is the malengine of floating apocryphal companies to fleece the public in crores by
offering shares and disappearing after defrauding the public. There are hundreds of such
flagrant cases reported in1990s with almost none booked for the falsi crimen.
Another serious fraud of recent origin is the use of counterfeit cheques. The use of
stolen cheques and writing cheques on accounts either closed or having insufficient fund
to defraud is a vieux jeu in the business world. The computer revolution has added a new
dimension to it. Often software that can produce legitimate checks is used to generate
counterfeit checks with fictitious names and account numbers to defraud in business
dealings. Counterfeit is anadyomene in a different sancy these days in the shape of fake
stamps scam of mammoth scale run in interstate level with a highly organized plexus.
Telemarketing is another genre of fraud that is in rise that involves the so called boiler
rooms or the telemarketing company promoting sales of worthless goods through phone
solicitation by promising customers riches and gifts that never come. This form of fraud
is already having pollent foothold in big cities of India. Another fraud is floating
teakwood or such plantation companies those mobilize funds from the public with the
pollicitation of distribution of the gain pro rata only to disappear before the climacteric
approaches. However, prompt response from the law-enforcing agencies perficiently
controlled the menace and the defalcation of this shape is in degringolade sinsyne. The
episode marks that prompt response from the law-enforcing agencies do have desired
effect on the spread of the economic crimes.
Copyright violations and piracy are major threats to the book publishing, cinema
and audio and videocassette industries. Patent infringements are the crimes those threaten
new products. The computer revolution has brought software to the ambit of such threats
apart from functioning as a facilitator of fraud and economic crimes by other means also.
Fraudulent interference with the software or programmes used for financial transactions
59
is a convenient tool to defraud companies and establishments in crores in a single stretch
or di grado in grado and do away with all evidence to the act. Lack of proper
understanding of the intricacies of the computer and its software and absence of due
pernoctation at higher levels contribute for such frauds being ascensive. A byproduct of
the computer revolution is the Internet fraud that has diverse gestalt and international
ramifications. Innovative Internet solicitation to part with money for goods, schemes or
services of fraudulent edge is the staple of such frauds. Another aspect of the Internet
fraud involves tampering with others’ financial or establishment accounts by breaking
into their passwords and copying digital signatures to illegally siphon funds or other
valuables to own account. Innovative works of the hackers help the process.
A very disturbing fraud these days, concerns prime government or private lands in
the heart of big cities left unattended for various reasons. The quiddity of the rite de
passage here is the study of the system for weaknesses. Innovative tregetours expiscate in
poor laws, procedural loopholes, lack of coordination among and incompetence of
concerned government departments like the city development authority, the city
corporation, electricity and water supply bodies and the land registration office, and the
greed or indifference of the people who man the government bodies an opportunity to
gobble prime lands worth of several crores of rupees. The ichnography involves
obtaining false power of attorney of the true owner of the land by impersonation from an
unvigilant or greedy notary and selling the land using it. In some other cases, the
tricksters raise buildings on such unattended lands after paying land taxes for those lands
and obtaining sanction for the building plan from the engineering wing of the city
corporation with the help of the tax records as proof of their ownership of the lands. Such
gross anomalies are possible only because of the lack of coordination, defective
procedures and sheer lethargy, incompetence and greed in the government bodies. The
swindlers here secundum artem exploit the gross weaknesses and failures of the
government bodies to make colossal gains for themselves. The res gestae involved in
such frauds and the ease of the method render it a potential mode of the economic crime
of the future.
60
High-sea fraud involving disappearance of the whole ship or its cargo or carrying
false cargo and financial or insurance claims on the basis of mendacious documents may
become assez bien a popular means in days ahead to become rich a pas de geant because
such crimes seldom draw the avizefull attention of the public and the fraud is limited to
the concerned cloistered circles. Insurance fraud on the other hand will re-emerge to the
center-stage in the ambience of the privatization of the insurance sector and its
consequent proliferation. Money laundering is the cleanser of all economic crimes and
the means of salvation to economic criminals; ergo, it is jus naturale that it re-emerges in
various avatars from time to time. Hawala transactions will continue to exist in different
shapes and forms. The secrecy code of the Swiss banks provides the requisite refuge to
the ill-gotten money of the swindlers among politicians, senior government officials,
industrialists, businessmen and enterprising individuals.
Export and import fraud of the recent origin involves false declaration of the
country of the origin to evade anti-dumping duties in addition to over-invoicing of
exports to fraudulently avail export incentives.
Cheating, breach of trust and embezzlement are common economic crimes all
over the world. A survey conducted by Pricewaterhouse Coopers, an accounting firm and
Wilmer Cutler & Pickering, a law firm as reported in the New York Times of July 13,
2003 states that more than a third of the American firms surveyed in the last two years
were found to be the victims of one or the other kind of economic crimes like asset
misappropriation and embezzlement. The survey also suspected doubtful financial
disclosures by more than half of the companies surveyed. It is the case in India too. The
external auditors tend to take refuge under the plea that they audit only the documents
provided to them by the companies and sweep inconvenient facts under the carpet for
quid pro quo. The dictum, fraus est celare fraudem, is conveniently forgotten. It is on
record that almost no auditor is dealt till now for professional apostasy in independent
India and the organization responsible to oversee the auditors condones the professional
betrayal and becomes a partaker in the irregularity as per the dictum, chi tace confessa.
61
NATURE OF RECENT TRENDS
A careful study of the recent trends in the economic crimes brings out interesting
factors common to most of them. The most striking of them is the growth of the
economic crimes usaque ad nauseam to the status of an entrepreneurship both in terms of
respectability a la its description by Sutherland and concomitant responsibility, its sheer
volume, interstate or international spread, highly organized operational plexus, hi-tech
tools employed, highly efficient division of labour with minions at the cutting-edge level
as front operators far removed from the main characters and the brain behind the
operation at concentric circles, resourceful big actors en arriere, detailed planning, study
and probouleusis prior to the operation, professional touch to the whole operation and
high risks and high profits involved.
The recent economic frauds are high-money soigné scams running to multiple
crores. The materfamilias of all the scams of modern India namely the security scam of
1992 involved Rs 8000 crores while the recent fake stamp scam allegedly involves Rs
80,000 crores. The Indian Bank scam of the 1990s involved Rs 1300 crores while the
fodder scam of Bihar ran to Rs 1500 crores. Other major scams of lesser volume are the
Bihar bitumen scandal of Rs 350 crores, Bofors scandal of Rs 64 crores, HDW submarine
scandal of Rs 64 crores, Bihar medical bills scandal of Rs 60 crores, ayurved scam of Rs
32 crores, telecom scam of Rs 6 crores inter alia. However, the leading role in such
embezzlements must go to the banking sector that gobbled public money to the tune of
Rs 1,20,000 crores in three years with the euphemism of non-performing assets or bad
loans that in most cases are advances paid to well-to-do favourites for consideration with
the understanding that the clause of the non-performing assets take care of that.
An important aspect of the modern economic frauds is that the brain behind the
operation who normally are the people of procerity remains incognito and far removed
from the cutting-edge operations by several levels and ensures that the law-enforcing
agencies never reach him under any circumstance and there remains no evidence against
him a la mode the Mafia and its leader, Al Capone. This holds good for all recent major
62
scams and the veracity of the person identified in them as the el patron should be taken
cum grano salis. These crimes au fond are well-plexured conspiracies.
These economic crimes are marked by callida junctura. The cooperation of right
people inside and outside the target institution is bought a grands frais for use at right
time. This brings much needed aex triplex to the process and adds to the plexus of the
operation and brings the elements of corruption to the process. Extra muros entrepreneurs
mastermind these frauds as opus reticulatum after detailed study of the weaknesses and
failures of the laws, procedures, institutions and the men concerned and right and
adequate preparations.
Free market economy in a poor, unenlightened and developing country like India
is like spreading delicious foods around a person dying of hunger with injunctions to
open the dishes only after performing an impossible feat. Imagine the consequences. In a
country like India where easy life and chaltha hai mindset are the bedrock of life and hard
work and commitment are anathema, where merit and brilliance are looked down upon,
where character, discipline and integrity are belittled as the dernier ressort of weaklings,
where criminals, swindlers and murderers become popular political leaders, where
democratic votes are hostages to the riches you throw away, where the hapless hoi polloi
is the prisoner of the vagaries of the arriviste along the ladder across the political
spectrum, where imported isms rule the mindset in lieu of the genuine and holistic
welfare-interests to meet the besoin of the plebeian and the country, where mediocrity
and dishonesty reign supreme and the administration and the law-enforcing agencies
crawl before the criminal political masters and the mesquin and lowly higherups lest their
career interests are harmed, the free market economy turns an apollyon like a pachyderm
allowed a free-run in a plantain plantation. Free market economy per se is not bad. It is
best suited to the countries where it is born in the ambience of enlightenment, civility and
respect to law and societal mores where apolaustic deviants are only exceptions.
Otherwhere, economic crimes are bound to grow exponently with the disillusioned
cleverer elements as the provenance resorting to exploit the weaknesses of the financial
laws, procedures and the institutions and the niaiserie, greed and the lethargy of the
63
people around them. In the ambience of the survival of the fittest, it is hard to find fault
with such criminals. Necessitas non habet legem. It is the inadequate laws, nonpareil
institutions and the mediocre or greedy attercops in charge who inadvertently lure the
desperate people to intelligently exploit them for survival. For, survival is the prime
principle of life. And everything else is secondary to it. Exitus acta probat. Add to it the
fact that money is the blut und ehre that can buy anything from respectability to the
friendship of the people who matter, you have the right recipe for the wild choresis of the
economic crimes limited only by the limits of the creativity of an original mind thrown to
infinite possibilities provided by the inferior laws, procedures and the institutions created
by the lesser minds of the post-independent genre and equally poor manning of them. The
trend for the future can only be defined as unspeakable varieties of every conceivable hue
that is allowed by the financial laws and procedures, financial institutions and their
practices.
INFRASTRUCTURE DEVELOPMENT
Infrastructure is a network of facilitating structures for a process, be it poverty

eradication programmes, economic growth process or any other programme of human
endeavour. It is a labyrinth of relevant and useful facilities created to enable human
endeavour realize a process. Infrastructure is process relevant. The infrastructure needed
in a rural area is different from that needed in an urban area. They are different things
crying for different means. A Government is meant to go for general infrastructures
required for all sectors and ensure on priority benefits for maximum numbers. After all,
salus populi suprema lex est.
Industrial Sector in deliciis
Democracy is feudal in reality involving stiff competitions between diverse

sectors and interest groups to gobble the res gestae available from the State. Power begets
power and money begets money. So, it is powerful sectors that succeed and corner
64
infrastructure development programmes of the State to their advantage when the State
sleeps and forgets its responsibilities. It is what is happening in recent India about the
powerful industrial sector in deliciis. Slogan oriented Indian media and pneumatic Indian
economists are devoted tout a fait to its shallow cause. The devotion has gone to the
extent of a few publications recently warning some Indian cities to develop
infrastructures to the satisfaction of the IT and other industries, or else …….
Priorities in Infrastructure
Women in villages in India die during delivery for lack of motorable roads to take
them in time to taluq hospitals and women here walk miles for a pot of water. This is the
extent of the lack of infrastructure in India. Infrastructure is essential. Basic needs and
amenities of the plebeian should be its priority. Next in order come the needs of decent
living like good roads, bridges, effective communication system, uninterrupted power
supply, decent health and education system and so on. Major projects like dams and
irrigation systems, mining and steel plants, railways and highways networks are also
required to bring about the general economic growth of the country. Commune bonum is
its litmus test. The desirability of an infrastructure depends on who are its focus and how
desperately is it needed. A country has no right to waste its exiguous fund on exclusive
prodigal schemes to benefit a narrow sector like the industry under the fig leaf of the
economic growth. The perverted argument provided in support of the industry is that
Indian industrial products should be made competitive in the world market and that
economic growth itself functions as an infrastructure for the well being of the common
man and therefore all public expenditures for the industry is justified as a vehicle of the
economic growth. The argument is perforce distal from the field reality in the ambience
of the homo homini lupus. Industry is commerce au fond. And therefore profit and self-
indulgence is its ultimate stimuli. State protection to an uncompetitive industry at the cost
of poor man’s advantages is a misplaced priority. Any benefit accrues to the public from
this is minor and irrelevant to the quantum of the public expenditure.
Pampering the Industrial Sector
65
Often, exports and foreign exchanges, and employment opportunities are
advanced as reasons for pampering the industrial sector at the cost of the common man.
Foreign exchanges basically serve big industries for imports and foreign tours and those
who have excess money to indulge in. India can earn more than adequate foreign
exchanges to meet its essential needs including in defence and science and research
without pampering big industries and without undercutting the minimum needs of the
plebian. And creating eurhythmic employment opportunities by flooding the industrial
sector with huge public funds and special and costly favours is a myth created by
intelligent industrialists, and naive economists and media lacking in depth and blinded by
serious myopia.
Economic Growth
Economic growth is necessary. It is basically future looking. Making India an

economic super power in 25 years is a noble dream. But, people come first and reality of
today is more important than the dream of 25 years sinsyne. Tomorrow can wait, but not
today. Only those who suffer it can know the pain of poverty and want. It is sheer sin to
ignore their sufferings and divest funds that rightfully belong to their welfare to the
accounts of the well-to-do industrialists behind the deceptive and elusive slogans of
economic super power and the future prosperity. No Singapore, South Korea or China of
the 21st century vintage can be built on the carcass of the suffering common man.
Ameliorate his life standards to a reasonable level and bring the economic growth
through him. That is true economic growth of a democratic milieu. That should be the
policy of a democratic State. Otherwise, it would not be different from that of the
egregious Khmer Rogue regime of Pol Pot in1970s in Cambodia that tried to bring
forcible Communist glory to that country over the carcass of the Phnom Penh citizenry.
Taste of the Free Spoils
The argument is not at all against industries, economic growth or even

infrastructures, but about emphasis and priority. All those are necessary for the balanced
66
growth and survival of the country. The issue here is undue zeal and unintelligent
championing of the cause of the rich industries at the cost of the hoi polloi as India
witnesses today.
Broad concrete roads, flyovers, uninterrupted power supply, efficient energy

network, and excellent communication systems are welcome as pro bono publico
initiatives. But, when they come as facilitators of rich industries, parameters of the
projects are adapted to the needs of the latter at prohibitive costs to the public exchequer.
The infrastructures, industries demand and got include acres of prime lands in and around
metropolitan cities at ludicrously low throw away prices for non-operational and often
ostentatious purposes, special tax exemptions running for multiple crores of rupees,
exclusive cyber or electronic or similar industry oriented parks with ultra modern
facilities, concessional bank loans, specially constructed access roads to their
headquarters and so runs the endless list. Some state Chief Ministers easily obliged them
in oodles for their own personal, party and political reasons and lost next elections. L’
appetit vient en mangeant. As the industries got the taste of the free spoils from the
Government, their greed grew and recently went to the extent of threatening the
Governments of shifting to other states if their further demands were not met. Bonded
media also added its mite to this silly threat. So goes the game in this maledict India.
What India needs are a holistic approach to its infrastructure developments rather
than lopsided favours to the powerful and their cronies who cry wolf under misleading
claims and slogans. A nation belongs to all and must serve the interests of all sections of
the people including the rich and the poor, and the industrialists and the farmers and
protect who are weak and powerless. In the circumstances of exiguous resources crunch,
a fair policy of eurhythmic division of what is available is called for. This cardinal need
is algate forgotten in India, and Palman qui meruit ferat with the active support of
influential cronies in right places - politicians, bureaucrats, economists and media here.
And the common man is a tragic loser in this triste game. The State policy should be
people oriented in a democracy and it must endeavour to enrich their life. All growths
including economic growth must emanate from this foundation. Only such growths
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endure and make the country prosperous. No foreign exchanges and exports, no palatial
glass edifices of industrial houses, no seven-figure salaries for a few, no wanton
gambling in shares and stocks inter se really make India an economic giant. Singapore,
South Korea, Japan and China from Asia and European countries and the USA built their
economic edifices on the bedrock of its people’s general prosperity and strengths. A few
Everests do not make India a highland. Going for flowers at the cost of roots is a negative
trend fuelled by shallow understanding of the issues. Infrastructure being the soul of any
development, right focus on its priorities is what India needs now and sine qua non for its
onward march.
DEMOCRACY FOR WHOM?
Democracy in puris naturalibus is the rule of the powerful, by the powerful, for
the powerful. It is a concept popularised by the powerful of the West for their own
advantages all over the world though the concept as a a priori theory as the rule by the
people is based on sound principles and noble intentions. The second chapter of the
democracy namely liberalisation is another instance of a noble concept based on the
sound principle of free dynamics of human forces going awry as a policy of the powerful,
by the powerful, for the powerful. Again, the powerful of the West are found pushing
through the agenda of popularising the concept a toute force as a state policy all over the
world for their own advantages. The result is that the world is increasingly becoming a
haven for the rich and powerful at the cost of the hoi polloi.
FAILED HOPE:
India valiantly fought against foreign rule for more than a century with the hope
of bringing deliverance to the country and eutaxy for its people. The half-century of the
democracy sinsyne proved the mendacity of the hope and enthusiasm. The situation can
68
be described in following two stanzas of the poem, “To A Conscript Of 1940” by Herbert
Read:
We think we gave in vain. The world was not renewed.

There was hope in the homestead and anger in the streets
But the old world was restored and we returned
To the dreary field and workshop, and the immemorial feud
Of rich and poor. Our victory was our defeat.

Power was retained where power had been misused
And youth was left to sweep away
The ashes that the fire had strewn beneath our feet.
EXPLOITERS:
The only difference India saw in democracy is the shift in exploiters from the
foreign rulers to the rich and powerful among the natives. While the foreign exploiters
were circumspect and scrupulous in their exploitations for the fear of the world opinion
and their native moral scruples, the native exploiters threw their conscia mens recti to the
wind and turned ruthless in their greed and heartless in their exploitations of the poor
and unenlightened mass of the co-patriots. They have neither the moral scruples nor the
fear of the world opinion. Nor the supremacy of the hoi polloi in a democracy fluster
them. For, their native intelligence is too pollent to be caught by such foolish concepts.
They learnt the tricks of the trade assez bien early. They know how their side of the bread
can be buttered and why there is nothing on the face of the Earth including votes and
status that they can’t purchase with their money and power. That was the doom of India’s
democracy and its people.
BRITISH RULE:
India under the British was not worse than the present India if not better. Those
who lived in both the ages speak una voce and hold testimonies for the irrefutable fact as
69
far as common man is concerned. Life was easy and quiet. There was a feeling of security
everywhere. The air was pregnant with a sense of morality and respect for higher values.
The public life was clean. There was no violence around except for the oragious political
struggle. There was no tourbillion of corruption as it is now. Merit always counted. Not
every thing was venal as of now. Life always moved on expected lines and people could
plan their life and future.
AN EVIL PROP:
The degringolade of India subsequent to its democracy is often blamed on its

population explosion in geometric progression and the accrescent complexity of the life
pattern of the present world. It is partially true. The complete truth lies in the plurisie of
the evils of the democracy that contributed to the descent as an evil prop to the rich and
powerful.
UNFAIR JUDGEMENT:
Elders who lived in both the era and independent and sagacious enough not to be
clouded by pseudo-idealism and concepts of foreign origin swear that the British really
ruled India well non obstante tremendous odds of the freedom struggle and the alien
nature of their rule. The progress India saw during the period was immense and the
country could move pari passu with the world in the matter of progress and modernity.
India saw large-scale developments during the period in all fields including social,
cultural and administrative spheres courtesy the initiatives and the active encouragement
of the British rulers. Disparaging the measures as moves of administrative convenience or
as moves to strengthen their prise over the country is a malengine tout court on the
plebeian and a mal-propaganda natural to our native evil ingine to cover up our mal-
administration in the democratic ambience. Administrative convenience begetting
precedence in the unending schedule of priorities is a common administrative practice
anywhere in the world. A major move like introduction of the railways in India in the 19 th
century was misprised as a move to help British entrepreneurs in India. Such an unfair
70
reclame goes against the spirit of a balanced view and betrays our flair for tilted
judgements. The priorities of the British administrators certainly were more objective and
accountable in administration en face what we encounter by our own rulers now around:
selfish to the core a fond.
DEMOCRATIC INDIA:
India under democracy has become a playground of the rich and powerful and a
field of their unethical manoeuvres and consectaneous mega scams. Yet, they are not
satisfied with the opportunities a la main. They found their opportunity in an extension of
democracy namely liberalisation which is vigorously marketed these days by the Western
powers to meet their own interests. Thus, the powers of the West and the powerful of the
country are now joining hands to further undermine the interests of the poor, weak and
the ordinary. It will lead to a situation where only strong become stronger and perforce
weak, weaker. Democracy is not just freedom. It is the rule of the people comprising rich
and poor, weak and strong, powerful and powerless, competent and incompetent, able
and unable, hopeful and hopeless and the ordinary people. Democracy in its extant gestalt
and liberalisation by its very concept promote the interests of only the rich, strong,
powerful, competent, able and hopeful few. It is not democracy at all in true sense of the
noble concept.
DEMOCRATIC RULERS:
India of the democratic vintage has its rich and powerful either indulging in
criminal acts or being in nexus with criminals to further promote their personal agenda of
becoming richer and more powerful. In the process, criminals are becoming real power-
centres and criminality is gaining in respectability in the country. This made life in the
country unsafe and violence, a daily matter. Merit lost its primus. Personal competence
has become secondary or tertiary to money and power in its ability to boost fortunes.
Status and social position have become the custodies of the rich and the powerful.
Election as a democratic apparatus being money-centric rendered money the centre for
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power. This brought money and power closer. Big money being less than a dream sans
resorting to illegal activities in the circumstances of extant rules and laws rendered
criminality prolate and commonplace in India and an ineluctable ladder to gain power
and position in the democratic government. This led to a strange situation of lawmakers
leading the gang of law-breakers to ensure power and position in the next election. Can
these rulers who perforce break their own laws provide honest governance to the
country? How can the country and its people depend on such democratic rulers for their
security and welfare? India is facing such a conundrum now.
FEUDAL NATURE:
Democracy made India a feudal nation with innumerable political parties

swearing against each other for the sake of political power. It made the country a divided
house with each faction going for the blood of the others and turning the country
ensemble to a huge factious village. Hatred and opposition have become the leitmotiv of
the public life. Violence and intrigues have become the accepted means of ascendancy.
Democratic practices undermined the foundation of peace, harmony and unity of the
nation and weakened the fabric of the moral values and ethical practices in the public life
of the nation. The crème de la crème of the country opted out of the endless strife for
power and position and politics became the dernier ressort of scoundrels in India as
popular saying goes. What can be the character and merits of the rule provided by such
people at the helm? It is where democracy brought India to.
REAL TRAGEDY:
Democracy in India brought real changes to the rich, powerful and the political
class at the cost of its infima species. It removed all the hurdles from their path to become
richer, more powerful and establish political dynasties. British were too moral conscious
to allow such things to happen during their rule. They maintained certain minimal values
in public life that ensured some degree of equal opportunity in all fields depending on
merit. Democracy removed the hurdle for the native rich and powerful and they found
72
their deliverance in symbiosis and synergy. That is the tragedy of the democracy for the
weak and the ordinary of the country.
SPECIAL PREMIUM:
The advent of democracy is marked by accrescent tax burden on the people in the
name of developmental and welfare activities. The wealth so extracted was frittered away
by inefficiency, corruption or sheer wastage. The benefits meant for the people seldom
reached them thanks to inefficiency, corruption and the pestilent middlemen who act as
the conduits of democracy. The toil of the people was looted as taxes to provide for the
security and luxuries of the soi disant aristocracy of the democratic vtntage who assumed
special premium for their own lives.
UNEQUAL COMPETITION:
More and more prop of liberalisation is provided to democracy these days to

make the latter further pro-rich and powerful. That provides the upper strata of the
society more elbow-space for manoeuvres and deceptions to put their money and power
to better use and renders the poor and weak hors concours. Scams of the dimension of
US-64 in the UTI are possible only in such an ambience. Competition is the clavis of the
concept of liberalisation. Competition among the unequal in a nation where nearly half of
the population lives below the poverty line and less than 1% can be credited to be rich
and powerful is nothing more than a mockery of the principle of an equitable society as
well as of the vaulting intentions of democratic principles like the rule of the common
man and welfare of all.
DEMOCRATIC FOCUS:
Liberalisation per se is not bad as is democracy. It is its concept of suum cuique

as opposed to the concept of social responsibility and the unjust practices that poison the
atmosphere. It is a matter of focus of the democratic leadership at the helm of the
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governance. Liberalisation as a policy is discussed in India for more than a decade now in
the ambience of protecting the interests of the lesser rich of the country from the
competition of the more rich of the world. The plebeian has no place in the scheme of
things of a policy of that dimension. This can’t happen in a true rule of the people, by the
people, for the people where poor and weak constitute more than 95% of the people.
A CONSCIOUS POLICY:
An ideal rule in quiddity is a rule pro bono publico that protects the interests of all
sections of the people including rich, poor and weak. But the policy initiatives for the
purposes have to be pro rata to the numerical strengths of the respective sections. It is not
the case in India’s democratic environment. Here, the rich and powerful rule the roost and
the state policy au mieux is directed to their protection as a conscious policy while the
poor and powerless are left to their own fate to meet both the ends. Because, it is the rich
and powerful who count in the democratic schemes of the country to keep power while
the hapless poor and the weak can wait endlessly in the state priorities. This is Indian
democracy.
HUMAN NATURE:
The achilles’ heel lies in the human nature of seeking power, wealth and
opportunities and those who possess it. Present Indian rulers are not a rebours to this
nature nor those others manning the peripherals of a democratic institution in India like
the media and the intellectuals as opinion makers of the country. They save some
exceptions tend to be sensational-centric and prefer to move with the lee tide in lieu of
going to the stark truths. They are proved more prone to be affected by concerted
propaganda and twisted rationale than the ordinary man. That is why an evil like
unrestrained liberalisation is accepted as a deliverance by them una voce; that is why
political leaders in India are glorified in magazines and newspapers as great heroes sans
consideration to their values, merit, performance and ethical standing in public life. It is
their power and status ex consequenti that count over the merits of great performers who
are relegated to the inconspicuous corners of the pages. The common man himself gives
74
precedence to power and mammon over merit at his own cost. That is the prise of money
and power on the human kind tout a fait.
ELEMENTARY NEEDS:
Democracy, sine dubio, is an ideal concept. The concept presupposes certain

elementary needs essential for the success of the concept in practice. Equality among the
majority of the population leading to equal opportunities en principe is centric to the
concept. This is not the case in India. Ergo, the failure. Winston Churchill once said that
democracy is a bad form of government, but it is the best among the available. Coming
from a politician of the democratic dispensation, the faire bonne mine should be taken
with a pinch of salt. Is there no deliverance to a poor nation like India and other nations
of its ilk in Asia, Africa and South America apart from democracy that does not behove
to the diversities of their populations?
What is the besoin of these nations is a system of government wherein around

forty select people of sound attributes of heart and head as a team rule the country a la
present day cabinet and general assembly in one with another team of around forty
responsible people functioning as an accountability team to keep pernoctation over the
governance with the present institution of the President mutatis mutandis responsible for
both the teams. Both teams function as permanent bodies with 25% of the teams retiring
once in every three years without an opportunity for reappointment and together on their
own wisdom decide the replacements ex quocunque capite for both the teams from the
people of proven abilities, integrity and character. The teams together structure the new
teams ex mero motu once every three years after each replacement of the 25% of the
teams. The clavis of the new gestalt is selection of the right people of proven attributes of
heart and head ex professo. The teams together can remove a member of the either team
ex concessis when proved indign for the position and task. Indeed, the ebauche needs
myriad details of immense intricacies to be efficacious. The effort is worth a try in the
interests of a billion Indians.
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REVAMPING THE INVESTIGATION MACHINERY
Indian Constitution makes Criminal Justice System a Rhadamanthine steelframe

of the rule of law when it preconises in Article 20(1), “No person shall be convicted of
any offence except for violation of a law in force at the time of the commission of the act
charged as an offence, nor be subjected to a penalty greater than that which might have
been inflicted under the law in force at the time of the commission of the offence”. A
common place looking but potent instrument in theory that keeps out faith, public opinion
or even sittlichkeit beyond the purview of the nation’s Criminal Justice System and
proclaims the rule of law as its sole life and blood and making all equal before the law
irrespective of one’s status, standing and rank in the society. However, the realities in the
field as it developed today are entirely different from what was perceived then by the
fathers of the Indian Constitution at a milieu of different value system. The democratic
political dynamics of India since independence took a direction entirely different from the
popular expectations and thus the need of corrections perforce.
Political Leadership
Amod Kanth, DGP, who was sacked by the Government from the post of the
Police Chief of Goa on 25 November on the ground that the DGP did not obey the
Government’s written orders reacted by stating that the police are the agents of law and
he did not believe in loyalty to anyone, but strongly believed in the performance of duties
in terms of constitutional, legal and people-oriented parameters. Kudos to his noble ideas
and values. I too had championed that cause of the profession and perhaps the first to
bring out the ideal in concrete ideas in 1990s. However, the conundrum lies in the lengths
to which the Indian Constitution moves and prepares for those paradigmatic roles for its
police in its body and gestalt.
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Police and policing for the Indian Constitution are nothing more than the subject
matters of Legislative Powers as enshrined in the Lists of its Seventh Schedule under
Article 246, ipso facto rendering it within the constitutional limits subordinate to the
control and supervision of the political bosses in power and their policies and
programmes. Sadly, Indian Constitution does not recognise their professional ideals,
values and conscience, and their singular role as the custodians of the rule of law. They
are circumscribed by the political will to which they are subordinate. All the extant ills of
this maledict country emanate from this sole provenance. This is a serious matter as far as
investigation of crimes is concerned.
Criminal Investigation
Criminal investigation as the bedrock of the prosecution, judicial proceedings and

postliminary penal servitude forms the seed of the criminal justice system. Crime
prevention activities being pneumatic and nebulous as what it is, it is criminal
investigation that constitutes the spine of the crime administration anywhere in the world.
Right investigation of crimes is the soul of fair societal living and the foundation of the
fair and secure living.
The Indian Constitution rests the control and supervision of the premiere
investigation agency of the country, the Central Bureau of Investigation, in the hands of
the political leadership of the Union Government and the police and the offences against
the State Laws in the hands of the political leadership of the State Government by
keeping the subject matters in respective Lists of the Seventh Schedule under Article246.
This sine dubio provides a key and decisive role to the political leadership in power in the
investigation of crimes and renders the police mere professional tools of the political
decision makers. Considering the growth of the political culture of the country in the last
six decades and the need of absolute fairness and objectivity in the process of the
criminal investigation, better deal for criminal investigation in the gestalt of the Indian
Constitution is certainly called for. This is sine qua non for the survival of the nation as
well as for the health of its political and public life.
77
Political Compulsions
Shibu Soren, the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha chief, who was the Coal and Mines
minister in the UPA government quit the Cabinet on July 24 in face of vociferous
demand by the BJP and its NDA allies for his resignation after a Jharkhand court issued a
non-bailable warrant against him in a 20-year-old case relating to the 1975 Chirudih
massacre during the agitation for a separate Jharkhand state, only to be reinducted to the
Union Cabinet on November27 as the minister of Coal after the Opposition was cornered
by its own act of going all out in support of the Kanchi Shankaracharya, Shri Jayendra
Saraswati while the latter was arrested by the Tamilnad police on November 11 on the
charges of conspiracy for the murder of a whilom devotee of the Kanchi Mutt,
Shankararaman. The episode makes it crystal clear how political parties treat
investigation of even serious cases of murder as their political pawns to checkmate the
opponents. Criminality is a non-issue in Indian political parlance and criminals
accrescently proved to be the pillars of India’s democracy. They constitute the spine of
the Indian politics. No Government is possible and complete without their participation.
Criminal investigation becomes a farce if left to the mercy of these people, which it has
already become in the last half century in India.
Politics is for Power
Politics is for power. Power in democracy does not come for free. Il faut de l’
argent in politics. No sensible person can squander his hard earned money in political
gambles. That is how corruption enters politics a la derobee. Peter Ustinov said,
“Corruption is nature’s way of restoring our faith in democracy”. It is dangerously
radicated in the extant political system of India so much that politics sans corruption has
become unimaginable. As back as in 1971, when the then Union Finance Minister,
Y.B.Chavan approached the then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi with a proposal for
demonetisations to curb corruption, the only curt response from the Prime Minister was a
question, “Chavanji, are no more elections to be fought by the Congress Party?” That
reveals the political compulsions within which a politician must operate.
78
The grab is more serious lower down the level. Every MLA or MP counts in the
survival game of the politics. The choice is between power interests and national
interests. Almost always it is the survival instinct and the lure of power that prevails true
to the very definition of the politics. People’s representatives are allowed to auction
postings within their constituencies to influence the administration in their favour or to
enable them to pool the fund to face the next election as a quid pro quo for their
continued support to the Chief Executive of the Government and his survival. This is a
vicious circle of political compulsions outgrown in the Indian variety of the democracy.
No investigation machinery can remain fair and objective in such an ambience. Political
system in India has just not matured for the enlightened leadership of the criminal justice
system.
Political Expediency
Criminal investigation in India has become a matter of political expediency. State

political leadership decides about the permission to the CBI to investigate a case
depending on its own vulnerability and interests in the case. Whether it is in states or in
the Centre, criminal cases are taken for investigation, the pace of the investigation is
decided, arrests are made, bails and post-arrest treatments are decided, and even the
quality of the investigation are regulated according to the needs of the politicians in
power. Important investigations continuing for decades and even dying in rerum natura
following political needs are no more exceptions in India.
The way out to resile the criminal investigation machinery to its normal fairness,
objectivity and the framework of the rule of law is to institute a constitutional body for
criminal investigation called the Indian Investigation Authority in the Centre and
subordinate Authorities in the states by due constitutional amendments a la the judiciary
with autarchy to guide the process of the investigations from the scratch to the end sans
immunity to any except perhaps to the President of the country. Indeed the process
necessitates a specialised cadre of investigators responsible only to the Investigation
79
Authority with a senior Supreme Court judge as its constitutional head and senior police
and civil service officers of proven integrity selected by the Authority in consultation
with the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court as members in constitutional posts and
responsible only to the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court and the President of the
country. This may considerably relieve the investigation machinery of the country from
the epinosic political compulsions and bring fairness, objectivity and the framework of
the rule of law so essential for the rightful process of any investigation back to its frame.
COORDINATED APPROACH TO CRIMINAL

JUSTICE SYSTEM
Justice begotten at a cost is justice lost. Justice is a natural right. It is the sine qua
non and the raison d’etre of the social grouping. Justice in a social environment has to be
as natural as sleep or oxygen to a living being. Free and fair justice is the leges legum of
the human rights. The proficiency of the judicial administration system has to be assayed
with this litmus test and its role in the system has to be judged by its contributions to this
goal of the judicial administration system.
Justice in its basic sense necessitates an integral vision. Justice abstracted from its
environment, past, present, future, diverse issues, dramatis personae and related events
cannot be justice in the true sense of the word. Justice in parts is no justice that lasts.
Justice involves delving deep down to the heart of an issue and delivering justice in
reference to all related issues and matters to the rightful entitlement of all. This
presupposes a passion for objectivity and justness and above all, selflessness in the
arbitrators of justice as well as in those who are in the service of the administration of
justice.
JUDICIARY AND THE POLICE
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Effectiveness of police lies in its ability in making justice an easily and cheaply
dispensable commodity. Police are the first line of the means of dispensing justice.
Courts come to the scene only in far later stage for restricted number of cases. For the
hoi polloi, police is the first and the only easy defence against injustices. Most cases of
disputes never cross the thresholds of the police stations. Police do act as arbitrators of
justice in criminal as well as civil cases in exercise of the wide spectrum of
responsibilities of crime investigations, investigations, maintenance of law, enforcement
of order, preventive measures and security duties. They enjoy a key position in the
administration of justice. A good police certainly symbolise effective administration of
justice more than courts and prosecution department together do. That is why a sound
police system is conditio sine qua non for the health and progress of the country and its
tenuous social fabric.
The position of the police as the enforcer of the laws of the country gives it an
edge in the judicial system of the country in enforcement of laws, preventive measures
and investigation of crimes and provides it a strategic relationship with the dispenser of
laws namely the judiciary. Though the judiciary has absolutely no say in the
organisational matters of the police force, it, if it so desires and have adequate resources
to do it, can have absolute control over the police functions as the police au fond is the
enforcer of laws and the judiciary is the interpreter and dispenser of the laws and the
synergy between the two functions perforce implies absolute subordination of the police
functions to the judicial review. However, this may not be the case in practice for several
reasons. One is the concept of judicial restraint. Another is the constraints within which
the judiciary functions. The other is the disinclination of the judiciary to interfere with
the executive functions of the police unless circumstances compel it to do so to discharge
its cardinal responsibility of upholding the rule of law and justice in the country.
In the spectrum of the state administration, the police enjoys or suffers a rather
polemic position defying many principles of the statecraft like the insulation of
legislature, executive and judiciary in the machinery of the state governance or the
81
compatibility between the constitutional rights invested with the importance enjoyed by a
government organisation in the state administration. The police organisation on the other
hand is the best example of the unity of state administration, of the synergy of various
organs of the state governance. It, as an enforcer of laws, investigator of crimes and an
apparatus of state security, share a lever with all the pockets of the statecraft and acts as
the spinal chord of the government by coordinating the functions of the legislature, the
executive and the judiciary in establishing the rule of law. Its bonds with the executive
and the judiciary are equally strong and act as a powerful link between the two powerful
wings of the government. It is a string that binds disparate wings and organs of the
government together and gives it a sense of oneness and belonging while itself remains
en arriere. This explains the sine qua non of the police in state administration while
denying it a ranking place, as a governing body sui juris like many other organs of the
state administration. The police as a government agency represent the driving force of
the executive and the controlling device of the judiciary. It is the working muscle of the
government. It represents the law of the country and therefore ultimately responsible to
the laws of the country. While it is a part of the executive, its subordination to the
judiciary and responsibility towards the law of the country raise it above the scope of the
executive functions. While it is a part of the judiciary, its position as a handmaid of the
executive, spreads its role above the scope of the judiciary. Ergo, the police is a
government agency that performs functions both within and above the scope of the
executive and judiciary as well as the legislature. The police is a part of all these wings
of the government and subordinate of each to them while outgrow each of them in
professional discharge of its responsibilities au reste. What is required is the realisation
of this sui generis position of the police and preparing itself mentally to discharge these
cardinal responsibilities in compatibility with the professional requirements.
UNITY OF PURPOSE IN INDIAN POLICE
In the current system of policing in India, police stations and district police units
form clavis of the administration. Some of the functions discharged at these levels have
concurrent jurisdiction with some special units at state and national levels. Crime
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investigation in special circumstances can be taken over from the district police
administration by the state CID or the CBI at the national level. The police in the state
are devised as an independent unit. In a vast country like India, policing being shared
between myraid independent units with no perspicaciously defined mechanism of
concinnity, the problem occurs of coordination and the unity of purpose in tackling
crimes. Except for the sense of national unity there is nothing common among these
units to appropinquate the gauntlets with a common cause. Even the common Indian
Police Service is unable to bring about a unit of purpose to policing throughout India.
This gives an impression of fragmentation in the Indian police. A fragmented police
cannot turn out work in full-stream owing to the waste by leakage in the process of co-
ordination between the fragmented parts. India must consider devising a pollent unitary
police administration at the centre with full control over subordinate state and union
terrotory police setups. This would avoid coordination problems and help policing by
allogamy to be more purposeful in tackling challenges from the national perspective. It
also makes available larger resources from the national level for policing apart from
strengthening the sense of belonging to one police. This is the conditio sine qua non for
the perficient policing of the future.
CRIMINAL LAWS
A few glaring anomalies and some erroneous provisions more suo in the extant
criminal laws of India improvise for the easy escapades of criminals from the clutches of
law and the harassment of innocent persons by the law enforcing authorities. The
psellisms of the criminal law have to be plugged imprimis if crime administration has to
be effective in India and command a semblance of respect and confidence of the public.
The police or judicial officer under whose custody a person is kept under
detention should be made responsible by name for the latter’s timely release with a
provision that if detention exceeds the period provided by law, it will make the concerned
officer liable for proceedings for unlawful detention sans the privilege of exemptions
ingenerate to the actions performed in official colour.
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CRIMINAL LAW BOARD
India requires the constitution of a statutory Criminal Law Board as an advisory
body to liaise between the criminal justice setup and the union law ministry regarding
criminal laws to facilitate glib process of the criminal justice system. The board, as a
permanent body, may have senior most officers of the central government from home and
law ministries, police and prosecution departments, distinguished humanists and senior
advocates of the Supreme Court as members with the union home minister as its
chairman. It must undertake propaedeutic of the need of changes in criminal laws from
time to time. The board may meet every quarter or a year and discuss extant criminal
laws and their shortcomings in the light of representations received from officers in the
field from the police and prosecution departments and make proposals for requisite
changes in criminal laws e ra nata.
HUMAN RIGHTS CELLS
Institution of human rights cells in each district and metropolitan city as advisory
conseil to the police of the region with local human rights champions as its members to
draw attention to specific instances of inhuman conduct by subordinate officers would
meet the needs to keep the police on pernoctation against excesses. The human rights
cells should be a dynamic part of the police administration in the regions and its
observations should set in motion a process of verification and peremptory action.
Though subjecting police to the scrutiny of an outside setup may appear a retrograde
measure, it may help the assuefaction of the policing methods to human comports and
saves the establishment from the charges of violation of human rights
STRUCTUAL CHANGES
The first and foremost job to do to bring back the police on rails as a fair dealer in
the process of the criminal justice system is to extricate the police from the epinosic
influence of all hues by making it responsible to an independent Authority with absolute
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powers to take decisions on matters of policing and criminal investigation. The Authority
should be a professional body of men and women of proven probity and competence as
members, who reached a stage from where they need not sacrifice their convictions to
appease those in power and standout in foro conscientiae. A working arrangement is to
be devised by which the Authority becomes responsible directly to the legislature and
functions independently a la the judiciary, the Central Vigilance Commission, the
Comptroller and Auditor General or the Chief Election Commissioner.
Creation of a Core Group of people adept in assessing men and character within
the aforesaid Police Authority helps to create a feeling of confidence and job security in
police and prod to discharge the duties of crime investigation fearlessly. This Group that
oversees the work of police personnel from a distance should be ultimately responsible
for all career decisions in the police force. The responsibility of senior officers in
assessing the work of the subordinates that forms the major embarrassment of the present
Indian police dispensation as the infima species of the kind in the world must be limited
to giving opinion about the performance of their subordinates to the Core Group; the
expert Core Group must process the opinion by its own research, expertise and discretion
and take responsible decision on its own research, expertise and discretion and take
responsible decision on its own. The Group must be made responsible for all
development plans of the police, work assessment, job analyses, recruitment and
management of human resources etc. Institution of such a Core Group to oversee the
career development of police personnel without personal bias may bring revolutionary
changes in the police by committing it to its work ethics and professional telos with
single mindedness to bring in objectivity and fairness to the process of the crime
investigation from the vile prise of those in power and rich and powerful enough to
dictate terms to the police.
PROSECUTION
The weakest link in the chain of the criminal justice system in India ironically is
the cardinal factor of the system namely the prosecution that actually heads and guides
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the criminal justice process in countries like the United States of America. The
prosecution as the interface between the investigating agency and the judiciary and
between the investigation and the law is run in India by minor government departments
with all the malaises and malfeasances common to such setups like indifference,
inefficiency, complacency, casualness, corruption and lack of professionalism and
competitive edge. Prosecution is cardinal to criminal justice process and professionalism
and competitive edge constitute the summum bonum of the process as it makes
investigation relevant to the judiciary and judiciary meaningful to the investigation to
emphasise that crime never pays and criminality never succeeds. While investigation
involves indagation of facts and adjudication involves interpretation of laws, prosecution
is involved in the hard creativity and commitment of rendering the facts d’ accord with
the right interpretation as facilitator of the criminal justice system. In this sense,
prosecution is the syndesis of the process and needs really high-calibre performance to
make the criminal justice system a success. It needs social sensitivity and commitment of
the highest order and competitive edge to fight out the rich and powerful criminals with
the best defence lawyers and creative edge in the service of the truth and justice. It is
easier said than possible in a government setup of the Indian mindset.
An efficacious criminal justice system calls for a sound prosecution mechanism

that is flexible enough to draw the best talents from the open market and reward strictly
by chevisance. The investigating agencies at various levels should have the liberty to pick
the best legal talents in the field as prosecutors for a fixed tenure like five years on a
contract to try their cases at attractive emoluments. The fear of outsiders on contract in
government setups is meaningless in the triste ambience of the profligate insiders of the
independent India. The selection of the right prosecutor cannot be left to any individual at
any rank because of the prolate fall in moral standards of the country. Each district police
unit and state and central investigating agencies must have a statutory prosecutor
selection committee constituted of the principal district Judge or his representative as the
chairman, the Deputy Commissioner of the district, the president of the district Bar
Council and a representative formally appointed by the Deputy Commissioner from the
local Human Rights organization or any public service organization as the members and
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the district police chief as the member-secretary for each district, High Court or Supreme
Court Chief Justice or his representative as the chairman, Chief Secretary of the state or
the Cabinet Secretary, the president of the High Court or the Supreme Court Bar Council
and the head of the Human Rights Commission as the members and the chief of the
investigating agency as the secretary-member for the state and the central investigating
agencies for the selection of right prosecutors from the best legal talents in the field for
quantum meruit based on performance for fixed tenures on contract as deemed fit from
time to time. The high nature of the selection committee behoves to the high importance
of the right prosecutors at all levels for the success en semble of the criminal justice
system and the concomitant peace, security and prosperity of the country and its people.
PRISONS
The place of prisons in the plexus of the criminal justice system is sine qua non in
that it is the guardian of all the condemned persons and the fate of their families and
dependants. Their responsibilities therefore are unenviable. This is especially so in the
circumstances that criminals are not born, but made by the circumstances and the
insensitivities of the society and the society that has spawned criminals out of them
because of its failures has a responsibility towards them to reform and accommodate
them. Sadly, extant prison setups in India as government departments as hubs of
inefficiency, indifference and corruption largely lack sensitivity to the gargantuan task.
The sensitivity of the task as the custodians of the periculous criminals including security
threats further escalates the problem. Powerful and rich criminals of whatever category
living in prisons en prince is common knowledge in this deus avertat country. There are
myriad cases of dangerous criminals running their criminal gangs extra muros from the
precincts of the prisons and even committing murders and sabotages with the patronage
of the corrupt prison officials. Such a prison administration undermines the very purpose
of the criminal justice system.
Indian prison administration needs overhauling a fond without the edifice of its
structure being disturbed. How about a Prisons Management Board for each prison with
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the head of the prison as its member-secretary and the head of the prisons department as
the chairman with the Deputy Commissioner of the concerned district, the district police
chief and the district medical officer and two representatives from the local human rights
and social service organizations appointed by the Deputy Commissioner as members
running the administration and statutorily being responsible for the performance of the
prison? It shall deracinate all extant evils of the prison administration and free the hapless
prisoners from all their gratuitous inhuman sufferings and the rich and powerful among
them from being a princely retreat and a haven of safety and security to hide from the
revenge of the opposite groups.
The heart of the responsibilities of the criminal justice system is cleansing the
society by bringing criminals to book. Investigation is the prime tool available for this
end. Human rights, justice and equitability before the law make up the essence of the
privileges man enjoys in the social setup. The organisations entrusted with the
responsibility of protecting the rights and doing justice to all with the equitable process of
the criminal justice system en semble are doing a disservice to the professions and
humanity if failed in their cardinal responsibility for want of coordination and synergy in
approach.
INNOVATIVE TECHNIQUES IN POLICING
Indian Police of the post-independent vintage is deeply mired in the maelstrom of

inaptitude and unprofessional indulgences non obstinate rare exceptions. It is impaled in
the skein of self-seeking objectives and amblyopia. Motivation is the first disaster in the
process. Excellence suffers in the ambience. Those in police in India are familiar with
this mephitis. But, sadly as unenlightened as they are, they think that they are doing a
service to the police by denying the reality. Such people have not realized the fact that a
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sound reconstruction presupposes demolition. Unfortunately, these people are
perpetuating the glissade of the Indian police.
Talks of innovative techniques presupposes a sound foundation. In the situation of

a crumbling foundation as in India Police, talks of innovative techniques appear rather
cosmetic. The singular panpharmacon convenance for the malady of the India Police is
packed in just two words: MOTIVATION and PROFESSIONALISM. Bring it, all other matters
including organizational restructuring, administrative skills, control mechanisms, long
term perspectives, accountability, efficiency, innovative techniques, cost effectiveness,
creative input, response time etc inter se fall in line. Anything done sans the two
attributes as the backbones of the gestalt is an operose labour of carrying to a bottomless
avernus. As motivation and professionalism constitute independent subjects for
exhaustive deliberations inter se and beyond the scope of the extant paper, I attempt a
brachypterous propaedeutic on what innovative techniques are en regle for the India
Police within the given limitations.
1) CREATION OF A DISTINCT DETECTIVE CADRE :
Policing of the ancien regime was basically identified with crime

investigations. Even now, popular perception of the Police is associated with CRIME
INVESTIGATION. The image of the Police is largely dependent on the standard of the
performance of its investigators. The pandemic tragedy of the present Indian Police is
that the investigation ingredient of the policing is accrescently palliated by apparently
more important policing pressures. The prevarication is a major factor in the
degringolade of the police and policing standards in India postliminary to
independence.
Indian police can cover the achilles’ heel by carrying out a separate detective
cadre upto the rank of Inspectors with recruitment and training processes more suo
conforming to the needs of the detective cadre. The cadre should be treated as a
distinct entity for the purpose of seniority and promotions. Inspectors from the
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detective and general streams have to be absorbed to higher ranks on the basis of
seniority cum merit with a clear advantage of one or two years to the detective cadre
so that the best brains are illaqueated to the fold. Periodical in-service training and
tests in investigation skills have to be an essential ingredient of the cadre management
and conditional to gain eligibility for promotion at every level. The demarche may
revert Indian police to its pristine gloria in the vital expanse of the crime
investigation.
Creation of the distinct detective cadre ncessiates perforce the creation of

investigation centres parallel to the police stations in the process of the division of
policing responsibilities at the grassroot levels.
2) POLICE STATIONS AS GRASSROOT POLICE SYSTEM:
A system is a functionally independent unit of mutually dependent entities that

constitute the whole with or without an amblical chord connecting to the
materfamilias for sustenance. Extant police stations can hardly be a system as per
this definition. Police stations as of now are dependent on ectogenous factors for its
functions leading to dilation of effectiveness and professionalism. On the other hand,
police stations as an ideal system must infuse credibility and compel public co-
operation.
The police Inspector in charge of a police station in the new system must have a
legal Inspector trained in law and a panel of local representatives as statutory aides.
For this, the police department must create a new cadre of legal officers trained in law
to staff the police stations and senior police offices. On the other hand, the district
police superintendents must prepare a panel of two or three law-abiding and
distinguished nonpolitical locals of his choice for each police station under him as
democratic representatives. All major decisions and actions of a police station must
originate only after formal discussion between the police inspector, the legal
Inspector and any one from the statutory panel of the locals and on majority decision
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among the three in writing as a statutory requirement. The process helps the
democratisation of the policing at the grassroot level consectary to the zeitgeist sans
the negative aspects of the democratic process. The opus musivum brings the
advantage of a collective decision and a touch of legal expertise and local-sense to the
policing decisions and actions. The systemic change may take away the apollyon of
corruption immanent in the ancien regime and also oppilate it too. Indeed, much
depends upon the avizefull selection of the locals by the district police
superintendent. After all, he is responsible au fond for the perficient policing in his
district.
Two techniques that constitute the bedrock for transforming Indian police to an
efficient outfit in the absence of motivation and professionalism at higher levels are
touched upon here. The Indian police must learn to live with the cul de sac of such an
absence and consectaneous maelstrom and adapt as it is well-nigh impossibel to breach
complacency. Ergo, if anything, it must be at lower levels. And the grassroot level is the
most ideal candidate to take something pro bono publico. Hence, a couple of isagogic
techniques that I think innovative to restructure policing and police administration at the
grassroot level are dealt in brachys here. If the new fangled techniques are imprimis
incorpsed assez bien in Indian police system, I obsign that that contabescent Indian police
is bound to experience considerable face-lift.
THE CORE OF POLICE PROBLEMS
A Country begets the Police it deserves. The Police is the creation of the
society it polices. It inherits its values, culture, practices and aspirations from the society
to which it belongs. The ambience defines the nature of the Police, the country begets.
In this sense, India got a Police system it deserves with all its perversions like corruption,
brutality, criminality, inefficiency, and indeed mediocrity. Nothing more can be expected
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from the fall of value system India suffered after independence. The prime attributes of
the Indian Police system of the post-independent vintage are lack of motivation, lack of
professional commitment, devastating job culture and the ineffective training system.
With the lure of money and the abuse of power as the center of the Indian psyche and
appointments and promotions even at highest levels turning to be arbitrary after
independence, both talent and government institutions withered in the heath. Indian
Police system is one of the major casualties of the apollyon. Right people are crucial for
police and policing. Character constitutes the spine of a Police setup. Police is the real
power in the field and constitutes the strength of both the executive and the political
system. As an instrument of power, it can be a double-edged weapon; a cornucopia of
safety, security and peace while good, and absolutely demoniac while bad. This
festinated the aggravation of the situation. All problems of the extant Police system in
India flow from this single fact; all talks other than these basic causes like inadequate
resources, unscrupulous politicians, legal and political constraints, growing crime rate,
inadequate manpower, fractured organisation etc are either sheer misrepresentations to
evade responsibility or just manifestations of the basic causes projected above.
The lever de rideau here is the issue why and who. It is easy to blame
unscrupulous politicians, the hors la lai, powerful and rich criminals, the lure of money ,
the constraints of democracy, legal hurdles, fragile system, fractured organisation,
professional constraints, accrescently complex and violent society, rise in crime rate,
increasing work pressure and hi-tech crimes. These factors represent the circumstances in
which Police is called to work on and show results. They constitute the raison d’etre of
the Police and do not constitute execuses for inefficiency, nonperformance and failures.
The challenge is to accept the reality and show results. The burden is on those at the top-
wrung of the Police. It is their failures to adequately plan, organise, execute and control
that toppled the Indian Police of the democratic vintage from its high pedastal. Their lack
of foresight and vision, lack of brilliance and foremost of all, the love of the UPSC of the
mediocrity and its certain degringolade from seventies as a responsible public institution
committed to merit and character, combined with the unsavoury rat-race among officials
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to reach the top-wrung, and consequent race to double-bend before the politcal bosses
and the rich and the powerful who count, tore the fabric of the Indian Police to shreds
after independence.
It is a rebours for the political bosses and the rich and the powerful to turn
blind eye to the willing devotion and race of the Police top-brass to please and gratify.
After-all, Gandhis and Buddhas are not born everyday. They perforce take the advantage
of the situation and help their acolytes out of turn as a quid pro quo. The blame for this
sorry state of affair squarely lies on the Police and those who select and recruit such less
than sound character to the Police. The nexus extends even to the rich and powerful and
the hors la lai who count. How the criminals as el patron can be policed by these
weaklings and law and order maintained?
It is preposterous to lay the blame on lack of resources or neglect of the

Police by the executive or the paucity of manpower. The truth is that the Police is over-
indulged in India by the Law-and-Order-sensitive political and bureaucratic machinery as
far as sparse resources of this poor country is concerned. Our Police leaders conduct like
spoilt children. Most of the resources made available are squandered and siphoned away
to non-operational and non-professional extravaganza or just wasted on unrealistic and
foolhardy programmes a grands frais, resulting in no or miniscule returns.
Another mendacity of the stock is the clamour about shortage of

manpower en face ascensive crime rate and policing responsibilities. Again, it is an
attitudinal problem. Effective policing never depends on numbers, more so in extant hi-
tech age. It is quality, planning, secrecy and surprise that really constitute the bedrock of
effective policing. Show of strength is never a forte of good and perficient policing. The
truth is that the wastage of human resources and man-power is phenomenal in Indian
Police and criminal in proportion.
Police leadership is meant to face the reality, assess it, plan with foresight
and vision and accordingly remould the system and the organisation. It must set the lead
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by right job culture. It is here that Police leadership failed. No political boss or
executive head from outside can do the job for him for the simple reason that policing is
an extremely specialised job and no outsider can have a keek to the intricacies of the
Police and policing job.
Problems and challenges are natural in any setup. It is left to the Police leadership
to address them. The problems au fond in Police are lack of motivation, wrong job
culture, absence of professional commitment and poor training en arriere of every other
problem and issue. While this achilles’ heel is prevalent in Indian Police cap-a-pie,
naturally the issue to be addressed is who to bell the cat. Only public opinion and public
pressures can bring about the apotropaic change. But, Police is too a thick-skinned beast
to respond to such opinions and pressures. This is the crux of the problem. Right
recruitment and sound training alone can save Indian Police from its avernus by fine
turning a healthy job culture.
The extant police ensemble is marked by lack of human concerns and empathy for
the fellow men. This has deprived the elements of heart and compassion from the body of
the bureaucracy. Initiatives, novel ideas and creative pursuits are seen as the antithesis of
the police. This has deprived the elements of brain and intellect from the corpus of the
police system. The result is a deadweight-police weighing down on the live India and
sucking it dry with evils and misuse of the powers invested on it for governing and
steering the country ahead.
India is an egregious forerunner in the world among countries most corrupt in

public life. The root cause of this grave malady is India’s corrupt governance pregnant
with inefficiency, indifference and gross temulence of power devoid of human elements.
Police measures have become synonymous in popular parlance and perception in India
with foolhardy decisions and actions far removed from reality. Lack of accountability is
the leitmotiv of governance in India. This is a malengine consciously evolved ab intra to
safeguard self-interests. Power sans accountability rendered police in India an evil per se.
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The evils of policing need not always be directed only against outsiders. Inscience
knows no boundaries. Even those within may become cruel victims of its grossly
unrealistic and farcical decisions as in the case of a highly talented and multifaceted
genius who joined service in a Southern Indian state in 1978. He was soon recognized for
sheer brilliance and purity of character as a diamond that can fit anywhere and as a
peacock among the fowls. Soon the recognition itself turned a noose on his neck. It was
assessed by the inscient bureaucracy that his outstanding attributes might prevent him
from becoming popular among the seniors and prevent him from reaching higher levels.
A two-pronged strategy was devised. He was to be roughed-up and denied promotions to
rub-off his superior qualities and the intimidating aura till the detrition by the sufferings
forces him down to the ordinary level. Once the job is accomplished, his lost seniority
was to be restored a few years before retirement.
He was denied promotions with the connivance of the UPSC following the
meretricious career plan year after year till his junior colleagues became senior to him by
two ranks. He was posted to most humiliating posts and harassed endlessly. However, the
process got caught in a skein as the infaust officer refused to come down from his
immanent and really superior qualities even after two decades of immanity and sufferings
while the bureaucracy refused to yield and give up its illegal and unconstitutional stance
until the officer condescends to the mediocre levels. The refusal of the officer to
approach judiciary against the ill treatment for redressal and his resolve to depend solely
on his talents and character helped the establishment to persist with the preposterous
process. His morale remained high throughout non obstante serious humiliations and
endless grief. He sought refuge in other fields and won nonpareil accolades from
everybody by sheer talents. His tormentors followed him there too. The head of the State
Intelligence who himself a small-time writer and published a few books in a regional
language used esoteric threats in 2000 on the publishers of the accurst officer to
discourage them from publishing his books. The publishers who already had published
half a score books of the officer returned two manuscripts of the officer in sheer
desperation expressing helplessness en face the police interferences. The release of one
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of his books of academic interests by the State Governor in 2000 was ensured stalled in
the last minute.
Fanciful premises bordering madness tout court leading to irresponsible and

eristic career plans of that dimensions are possible only in governance utterly lacking in
accountability and only a sacred country like India can produce such gross grief,
sufferings and humiliations eo nomine noble intensions. Lack of transparency makes such
atrocities possible and permits its practice for decades as in the case study.
The annual assessment of men and officers in the police has become a
travesty of what it used to be or meant to be. In no way, under the present circumstances,
does an ACR reflect an officer’s qualities or capabilities. It is believed that the
department would be far better off without this pernicious evaluation process that breeds
corruption and bias. What characterises the ACR today is a distinct lack of objectivity; it
has become a means to personal ends, a medium for the advancement of individual
interests and even settlement of personal scores. Servility is its inevitable consequence
and it would not be immoderate to say that eliminating the ACR altogether would be
certainly a step forward.
If policing is to be effective in the years ahead, specialisation is crucial. I suggest

three distinct police services with separate recruitment and training: (1) Regulatory police
or uniformed police in charge of law and order and other regulatory duties; (2) Mainstay
police in charge of crime investigation and prevention and security and intelligence
operation; (3) Social police in charge of prevention and investigation of all social
offences and implementation of social legislation. All three wings should have their own
individual organisations up to the district level with independent Superintendents and
staff as required, functioning in tandem in much the same way as the Army, Navy and
Air Force. At the apex, could be a specially constituted body called the State Police
Authority with the chiefs of all three wings as members and the Chief Secretary as
chairman.
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All the present maladies emanate from the politicians who are only concerned
with winning the next elections. Until the organisation is extricated from the grip of
politicians, it cannot hope to rise above the mediocre level, either in proficiency or in
character. Such mediocrity is wont to percolate downwards in a democratic setup.
An All India Police Authority accountable only to the President of India at the
national level with the regional Police Boards in States as independent bodies should be
created. The Authority must be headed by a Supreme Court Judge with the Union Home
Secretary and the Cabinet Secretary as members and the senior most police officer of the
country as the member-secretary. The regional Police Boards must have a High Court
Judge at the helm with the Home Secretary and the Chief Secretary as members and the
State Police Chief as member-secretary. The arrangement will bring to an end
interference of any kind in police affairs, thus enabling the personnel to function in an
independent atmosphere. These measures complete with the overhaul of the UPSC to
bring back all the former gloria of commitment to merit and character may dawn a new
era in Indian public life.
VISION FOR ‘POLICE 2010’ AND ‘POLICE 2020’
The most basic requirement of any good governance is a vision, an ability to look
ahead to the future of the country with great expectations and endless possibilities in
sidelines. This is potential of evolving the governance to greater heights to herald an era
of successes and prosperity. Visions carve paths to the future and prod the governance to
navigate along the couloir. It provides a break from the quotidian plod in preference to
innovative strides to fulfill the vision. Governance sans vision is like building an edifice a
tatons without a plan or blueprint. It at best is a random erection. Vision gives direction
and purpose to the governance. It gives grandeur and a proportion to the process. No
governance can be good and complete without a vision to steer ahead, and true
governance can be built only on the terra firma of a vision. The old concept of a
prosperous India is based on the vision of “Rama-Rajya”. The new concept of India
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coming of age is based on the vision of a world power or a regional power in Asia. Once
a vision of that dimension is contrived to back, it is easy to put the pluses and minuses to
conceive a strategy towards the end. Otherwise, governance is nothing more than a
mechanical motion.
Shree A. P. J. Abdul Kalam, the hon’ble President of India is quoted in

Introduction to the “Report of the Committee on India Vision” prepared by the Planning
Commission in December 2002 as saying, ‘A vision is not a project report or a plan
target. It is an articulation of the desired end results in broader terms.’ The same report
in Conclusion enumerates Nine Nodal points of Indian Prosperity, which as adapted and
edited to the police and policing of the 2020 vintage, can be summed up ut infra:
1. PEACE, SECURITY & NATIONAL UNITY – Physical security both from

external and internal threats—strong national defence, domestic law enforcement
and social harmony.
2. PRODUCTIVITY SECURITY – A vibrant and highly productive policing

sector that can ensure national security, generate stability, stimulate peace, and
produce a safe and confident social fabric.
3. JOBS FOR ALL – A departmental commitment to ensure the right of all
police personnel to be employed round the year in policing according to his
merit competence and skill.
4. KNOWLEDGE – An environment of cent per cent expertise in policing

activities all over the world including latest policing techniques, latest police
technologies, organizational and administrative updates from all over the world,
law reforms and related matters by training and exposures to maximum police
personnel.
5. HEALTH – Care towards physical well-being of all citizens.
6. TECHNOLOGY & INFRASTRUCTURE – Continuous expansion of
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the physical infrastructure for rapid low-cost transportation and
communication that is required for effective policing competitiveness and
policing aides. Application of computers to improve access to knowledge and
information, and increase in the speed, efficiency and convenience of activities
in all fields of policing.
7. GLOBALISATION – Successful integration of Indian police with the policing

activities world over.
8. GOOD GOVERNANCE – Farsighted and dynamic leadership to maximize

effective policing, security and social justice through responsive, transparent
and accountable administration that removes all the bottlenecks to successful
policing.
9. WORK VALUES - Activation of all these nodal points requires firm and
determined adherence to high values, including prompt decision-making,
disciplined execution, systematic implementation, finely tuned co-ordination,
unceasing effort and endurance.
The report also says that the future depends not on what will happen, but on
what is decided to become, and on the will to create it. The vision of 2010 or 2020 must
be one in which all levels and sections of the police and all of its parts march forward
together into a more productive and prosperous future. The vision of ‘police 2010’ and
‘police 2020’ is discussed under these parameters provided in the report as a national
perspective with the purpose of bringing about uniformity of approach and
identification with the national thought process.
PARAMETERS OF CHANGE
Panta rhei. Change is a universal phenomenon and the proof of life. Change
is the manifestation of adoption and adaptation and a carrier of the process of the
evolution. No living organism or organisation can remain unchanged between 2006
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and 2010 or 2020. Necessitas non habet legem. Necessities of the environment
dictate terms for changes and changes occur inter se. That is a sign of growth. This is
so for the police also. Police being an essential service, it can never remain a
deadwood, ergo, must show signs of life and concomitant propensity for change. But
the clavis here is that natura non facit saltum. Change is a gradual process running on
the bedrock of certain definite parameters. Understanding here is prognostication.
Assessing the parameters of the change in this perspective gives clues to the
dynamics that shape the police of 2010 or 2020. A vision is possible and shapes on
the determinants decided upon on the terra firma of these parameters. Vision gives
direction to the flow of the dynamics of the change, and determination to pad-up and
execute the vision provides fuel for realizing the vision.
POPULATION GROWTH
Increase in population does have significant impact on the challenges and the
performances of the police, and inevitably on the direction it takes for its growth.
Ability to assess the challenge provides an allee to decide upon how disadvantages
can be converted into advantage to envision the police of the 2010 or 2020 vintage in
an advantageous mould corresponding to the overall national interests.
Corresponding to the increase in the global population from 6.3 billion in

2006 to estimated 6.7 billion in 2010 and 7.5 billion in 2020, India which is home to
1/6 of the humanity is expected to have its population rise from 1.1 billion in 2006 to
1.18 billion in 2010 and 1.35 billion in 2020 ipso facto figuring to 1.6% population
growth per annum. Police being the custodian of peace, security and national unity in
the environment will have larger challenges and responsibilities to shoulder and
endure, necessitating appropriate measures to stand up to the problems and do better.
GLOBALISATION
With further shrinking and diminishing of the globe to a global hamlet in the next
fifteen years thanks to advancements in the fields of transport and communication, the
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magnitude of policing also becomes globalised with its own advantages and
disadvantages. The shift certainly renders policing a trans-border phenomenon touching
humanity tout ensemble. With crimes and criminality essorant and accrescently
transcending national borders, policing no more will remain an intra-border affair by
2020 and cooperation between the police in the international arena in the common
interests of the rule of law and justice will become the condition sine qua non by then.
Extradition and exchange of criminal intelligence will become centric to effective
policing processes.
It is not only transport and communication that render the globe smaller to an
aldea and contributes to bring global dimension to the criminality. Computer and Internet
revolution added another dimension to the issue along with global economic enterprises
and their global reticulations adding their own contributions to the ascensive criminal
tendencies and their global spread. Cyber crime is gaining its own currency in the police
parlance with its reverberations felt in countries across the world. It will be trans-border
cooperation or perish for the profession of policing in the milieu of the globalisation.
Terrorism as an international phenomenon against humanity will bring the need of
watching and addressing trans-border crimes into sharp focus even to the exclusion of
common intra-border crimes in priorities.
TECHNOLOGY EXPLOSIONS
Technology is a powerful vehicle of the successful policing and constitutes the

spine of effective policing. This is one factor that renders change inevitable for policing
to update itself to keep au courant with the latest technological developments affecting
police and policing as aides either in criminal or policing activities. Technology
explosions touching policing activities either as carriers of the policing activities or as
policing techniques occurred in recent past are bound to continue with accrescent pace in
coming years and the technology advancements in related fields in the next five or fifteen
years will be considerable, calling for suitable updating by the police. Again it is ‘remain
fit or perish’ for the police. Au reste, it is left to the vision of the top brass how to meet
the gauntlets and make best out of the vicissitudes. If police fails here, criminals, anti-
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social elements and the hors la loi will take advantage of the situation and gain upper
hand in this field to be the ultimate apollyon of the policing concept as the saviour of the
innocent and law-abiding citizens. It is an issue of whom among the police and criminals
take better advantage of the open market of the technology explosions for survival and
bring the other to its knee. Police ignore this bitter concours at its own peril.
Technology advancements in the fields of transport and communication do have

pollent impact on the policing methods as they serve as the harbinger of faster response
time and provide access to areas unthought otherwise as possible. Communication
technology is in excelsis these days and bound to make further progress in coming five or
fifteen years. Computer and Internet technologies are the other fields to be watched as a
pollent tool of the information technology. E-governance is a by-word now. It will be an
omnipresent reality in 2020 with 2010 forming a part of the transition period. It will be
particularly so in a key sector like policing with e-policing through computer and Internet
technologies in policing methods and techniques going hi-tech apart from police
administration and organizational activities being fully computerised. Computer and
Internet technologies by 2020 may change the very face of the policing all over the world
so much that the present police systems will remain by that time only as a matter of
archival interests. Policing techniques too may find revolutionary changes if extant
technological advancements are any indications. Latest technologies like DNA profiling
for identification and related activities will find universal acceptance as popular as
fingerprints and footprints now. Even the researches on stem cells coming with solutions
to decide and perhaps cure criminal tendencies cannot be ruled out. Also, feracious
researches and discoveries on super conductivity, solid fuel and liquid nitrogen and allied
subjects may find some relevance to the process of the policing and policing techniques
by the year 2020 if not earlier in 2010. What is called for is a vision and vigilance in part
of the police leaders to make use of the breakthroughs at the advent of the right time to
overtake the visionary and vigilant criminals in the concours for the superiority.
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ECONOMIC GROWTH
Economics and crimes algate go pari passu. They are the two faces of the same
coin in any society, more so in a democracy, and economic growth perforce affect
crime and criminal fields, ipso facto police orientations in a major way. India’s
increasingly dynamic and vibrant economic base lend credence to the view that India
can achieve and sustain higher than historical rates of economic growth in the coming
decades. The compounded effect of achieving the targeted annual GDP growth rate of
8.5 to 9 per cent over the next 20 years would result in a quadrupling of the real per
capita income and almost eliminating the percentage of Indians living below the
poverty line. This will raise India's rank from around 11th today to 4th from the top
in 2020 among 207 countries given in the World Development Report in terms of
GDP. Further, in terms of per capita GDP measured in ppp India's rank will rise by a
minimum of 53 ranks from the present 153 to 100. This will mean, India will move
from a low i n c o m e country to an upper middle income country. It will be a major
accomplishment indeed that is certain to make major impact on the crime scenario of the
country.
Human greed is the main culprit. Inequality and disparities of the economic
growth, particularly in an open market milieu is the second Momus. It is dumb to
presume that economic growth brings peace and stability. The truth is other way round.
Statistics have proved that economic growth in the form of unequal distribution of the
national wealth always increased the propensity towards violence, crime and instability
in the country. This will be the major concern of the police in 2020.
SOCIAL AND POLITICAL DYNAMICS
Factors like social inequities, conflicts arising out of the conversion of the
traditional stratified society to egalitarian society, religious extremism, interstate
territorial disputes, racial and linguistic violence and radical politics of the Maoist
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Communist Party variety will continue to plague the police of both 2010 and 2020 and
keep them on their toes if not further add to their problems. India-Pakistan conflict may
also continue to plague the country in form of internal instability prompted by ISI and
such external agencies. In spite of terrorism prompted by external elements and
extremist activities from disgruntled internal elements, police is expected to maintain the
Indian social fabric intact, and this will be a major challenge to the police by 2020.
TARGETS FOR THE POLICE
Peace, security and national unity are the pillars on which the edifice of the police
is constructed. Social justice and removal of the injustices from the face of the society are
its prime objectives. Crime prevention measures, crime investigation, enforcement of the
laws of the country, security measures, regulating and establishing order in the public life
for the commune bonum are the tools of the police to accomplish these objectives. Police
is duty-bound to perform these objectives and bring about a sense of safety and security
among the people, and a sense of unity without disturbing the social fabric of the country
and without offending basic human rights. People look to the police for their safety and
security. The country looks to the police as an esemplastic factor in the process of the
nationhood. And the society looks to the police for protecting their interests and basic
human rights from vested interests. In the accrescently complex society of the 2020, these
cardinal contraplex objectives of the police will continue to eat up to its vitals unless
sound police alferez finds a balance and guides policing in aurea mediocritas.
Indian police of the 2020 vintage with that of 2010 in a transition to the end will
come on par with the police of the advanced western countries and the weltgeist in
schemes for the protection and safety of the weak, feeble and exploited sections of the
society. Novel and revolutionary schemes for the protection of children, women, elderly
citizens, weaker sections and helpless foreigners from the exploitation will find favour
with the Indian police in the next five to fifteen years.
ELDERLY CITIZENS
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Elderly citizens of the age 65 years or more will rise to 76 millions strength in
2020 from 58 millions in 2010 and 51 millions in 2006. This section of the society that is
weak and incapable of looking after itself needs priority attention to averruncate
exploitations of their age-related infirmities in a society in which their children because
of prolate migrations to foreign countries or other parts of the country for job-related or
other encheasons assurgently leave them to their own fate unattended. The elder citizens
are found targets of specific crimes and exploitations by unscrupulous elements, and
police worth the name should have special programmes for their safety and well-being.
Police of advanced countries including the United States of America have special
schemes and programmes for the safety and protection of this section of the society.
Indian police is yet to catch up with the zeitgeist though scattered attempts are felt here
and there. But, concrete measures in this direction are yet to shape up. Indian police must
see awakening itself to this aspect of its responsibility by the year 2020.
CHILDREN, WOMEN, FOREIGNERS
All weaker sections of the society need special attention of the police with
specific schemes for protection after avizefull study of crimes and criminal tendencies in
the field and adoption of a protection machinery most suited to the situation. Just having
schemes do not make any difference. There should be will to earnestly execute them and
bring safety and protection from exploitation to all the sections of the society to bring in
overall atmosphere of peace, security and freedom from exploitation in the country in
cause of its policing objectives. Indian police certainly will rise to this professional
commitment by 2020.
Child labour is a crime as well as a social dilemma in a country where for many a
square meal is a luxury. Though India has myriad Acts meant for the protection of the
weaker sections of the society like children, women, SCs & STs, and bonded labourers,
often their enforcements are found lacking in will to execute and sometimes steeped in
social problems. The confusions and incertitudes in enforcing social legislations are
likely to be overcome with the coming of age by the police by 2020 to meet the overall
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objectives to bring about an atmosphere of peace, security, stability and national unity to
the country without disturbing the social fabric of the country.
In the ambience of globalization, safety and security needs of the foreigners also
warrant priority attention. Incidence of rape and extortion of foreigners is increasingly
becoming a common phenomenon in India these days. Indian police leaders will find
themselves hand-tied by 2020 to attend this menace in the interests of their own country.
VISION FOR THE INDIAN POLICE
CRIME INVESTIGATION
Investigation is an area Indian police needs to improve considerably. Key to

public confidence in police investigation is a conviction rate of a minimum of 51% so
that there can be a claim that majority of the hors la loi goes behind the bar. But, it is a far
cry from the reality in any police organisation including the Central Police Organisations
in India for any category of crime. That means conviction for a crime is an exception
rather than a rule in India and crime goes unpunished. This reality must change if police
is to be relevant to the future crime situation of the country in 2020.
Another important field where Indian police needs change of its image is
completing investigation within a time-bound frame of three months, or better, less.
Justice delayed is justice denied. Time is a crucial factor in bringing a culprit to the
justice. Period that goes unpunished after a crime a la money borrowed incrementally
adds to the free life of the criminal at others’ expenses. It is not seldom in Indian situation
to see convictions coming after the death of the criminal, or after the criminal fully made
use of the res gestae, thereby rendering Indian criminal justice system and its conviction
an ironical farce. This should stop if Indian police has any passion and commitment for
justice and crime investigation process. It is another vision of the police 2020.
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These are not something impossible objectives to be achieved in the next five or
fifteen years. Political will and committed police leadership at the helm can easily
achieve these targets. And fifteen years is not too short a period to accomplish these
crucial feats. After all, vision of India in 2020 is predicated on the belief that human
resources are the most important determinants of overall development, and it is here that
the Indian police needs to focus to achieve these targets. Indeed minor amendments to the
criminal laws of the country after convincing the political leadership and procedural updates
with an iron hand should be able to bring about these changes. It is a vision a portee for
accomplishment by 2010, if not by 2010 or earlier.
COMMUNITY POLICING
Policing ideally is a job performed for the people, through the people, with police
acting just as catalysts in the process. Police as the specialists in the field initiate and
guide the volunteers from the public pro bono publico. They provide information and
expertise input in the process. The function of the police in policing in a democratic
milieu is just that of an alferez; a friend, guide and philosopher. Secondly, the crucible of
policing in precipitating justice needs to be transparent, and accountable to the public.
This need can be met only by involving the public in the process of the policing. Thirdly,
no police organisation however mammoth and powerful it be, can do full justice to its
work without the cooperation of the public. Ergo, true policing needs to be community
policing-centric. This aspect also covers counseling and consultation aspects at crucial
levels. Community policing lightens the quotidian burden of the policing to the police, so
that the latter can focus on macro aspects of the policing touching national interests and
international angle.
PROFESSIONALISM
A major handicap of the extant Indian police is the infusion of nonprofessional

decisions to the mould of professional decisions of the policing whether it is in service
matters like postings and transfers or policing processes like investigations and
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enforcement of rules and laws. All the present maladies emanate from the politicians who
are only concerned with winning of the next elections. The paramount need of the future
police is a professional image tout au contraire to present image as a handmaid of rich
and powerful. What is required is a perspicacious definition of police duties and
responsibilities and entrusting the force to perform the duties under the avizefull eyes of
the constitution without the distractions of interferences ab extra. The police should have
free hand to tackle and solve issues cropping up during the process of policing with
concomitant responsibility for any failures squarely lying on its shoulders.
Until the organisation is extricated from the grip of politicians practicing

machtpolitic, it cannot hope to rise above mediocrity either in proficiency or in character.
Such mediocrity is wont to percolate downwards in a democratic setup. Lack of character
among the noumenal police leadership actually brought the police forces in India to its
knees before the political leadership of the democratic vintage where more often than not,
politicians bear the major share of the criminal activities of the country. This is a triste
affaire for both the country and its police. The situation is slipping from bad to worse ad
nauseum. Indeed these are mauvais moment for the Indian police. But, no bad days are a
jamais and the tide should change. After all, post tenebris spero lucem. It is a desperate
vision that the bad days in the annals of the Indian police will be over by 2020 and Indian
police will come clean under sound police leadership and right political leadership by that
time. This can be achieved by the creation of the Policing Authority at the helm of the
policing affairs of the country.
An All India Police Authority accountable only to the President of India at the
national level with the regional Police Boards in States as independent bodies need to be
created to oversee and take major decisions pertaining to policing and service matters
including assessment of performances and transfers more suo. A Supreme Court Judge
must head the Authority with the Union Home Secretary and the Cabinet Secretary as
members and the senior most police officer of the country as the member-secretary. The
regional Police Boards must have a High Court Judge at the helm with the Home
Secretary and the Chief Secretary as members and the State Police Chief as member-
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secretary. The facticite will bring to an end interference of any kind in police affairs, thus
enabling the personnel to function in an independent atmosphere. These measures
complete with the overhaul of the UPSC will oppilate the glissade and bring back all the
former gloria of commitment to merit and character to the police. This vision though
appears a dreamer’s dream because of the exercise of machtpolitic and political
unwillingness to give up its extant prise on the police, 2020 is far away to dismiss such a
miracle outright as apocryphal. No labefactation in a national life continues in perpetuum.
This vision as the enfants perdus of resurgence and the pollicitation of the revival of the
Indian police is must for all those who have police interests in their hearts.
SPECCIALISATIONS
If policing is to be effective in the years ahead, specialisation is crucial. The year

2020 must see three distinct police services with separate recruitment and training: (1)
Regulatory police or uniformed police in charge of law and order and other regulatory
duties; (2) Mainstay police in charge of crime investigation and prevention and
security and intelligence operation; (3) Social police in charge of prevention and
investigation of all social offences and implementation of social legislation. All three
wings should have their own individual organisations up to the district level with
independent Superintendents and staff as required, functioning in tandem in much the
same way as the Army, Navy and the Air Force. The vision can be brought to reality
by committed police leadership to bring true professionalism in discharge of the
policing responsibilities and enhance the public confidence in the competence of the
force by 2020 or earlier.
POLICE RUN ON MANAGEMENT PRINCIPLES
Police will do well to formulate actions and operations in line with the latest
management principles and practices following the welt geist. The force by 2020 should
be able either to constitute an efficient gestalt of management experts to advice or hire a
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management consultation firm for guidance. At any rate, the police organisation of the
2020 should be a far smaller unit than now, manned by highly committed and capable
officers who are paid and looked after well by the government.
The last three decades have seen tremendous expansion in the police force. For
lack of an organisational plan and the foresight to assess future demands, haphazard
growth has resulted. Organisational sensibilities such as workload, unit of control,
accountability functional conveniences, span of control and information flow are never
given the attention they need building an organisation. As a result, while a few posts in
the police are overburdened with work, there are many which have no work or
accountability. The lopsided growth of the organisation has spawned acute likes and
dislikes for various positions. Naturally, probity and objectivity are sacrificed in favour of
survival and protection of career interests. Corruption is rampant. This may not be the
sole reason for the falling standards of policing. Yet, it is a major cause. By 2020, police
administration should be able to see the vestigial retrorsum from the prolate
conspurcation.
Rationalisation of the police structure to bring about a balance among the various
posts in the same rank would certainly help to ameliorate the situation. It would also
help to eliminate the wastage of government funds on unnecessary posts. Creation of
such posts to accommodate unwanted elements cannot be tolerated in a serious
department like the police. A systemic growth plan for balanced expansion is what is
called for, if the department is to meet the tasks ahead.
LEAN AND MEAN FORCE
The piece de resistance of the policing by 2020 will be perficient performance

with minimal visible presence. This means a far more professional organisation than
now. This means far more skilled policing than now. This means better management of
the police organisation, better equipped force, men of higher calibre and devotion to work
and more contented people manning the police hierarchy.
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The police of the 2020 will be required to shed its idée fixe for the show of
strength in place of efficient policing. The stress in future will be on lean and fit
policing. The structural deformity of the chorisis and overweight caused by redundant
posts, undefined jobs, lack of accountability, epinosic equation of rights and
responsibilities, top-heavy structure, erratic span of control, demotivating factors,
nonprofessional ambience and uninspiring leadership must become a matter of the past
by the year 2020 with the police going perforce competitive en face gargantuan
challenges from criminals posing threat to the raison d’etre of the police and its relevance
to the extant society.
RESPONSE TIME
The key to the success of the police is its response time, the speed with which it
responds to the gauntlets of the crime. Where time is a precious commodity and a
difference of a couple of seconds make the difference of success and failure of a police
operation, persistent efforts to shorten response time will get the priority in excelsis. The
thrust of the police administration of the next fifteen years must be directed to bettering
the response time as speed will be the mainstay of crimes and criminals of the coming
age. Short response time implies improved communication and transport network and
highly motivated human resources, ever ready to handle challenges. Outmoded
communication and transport facilities in disrepair conditions most of the time have no
relevance there and casual manpower is rather passe in that ambience. Coming years
must see the police force in the finest fettle in terms of orgtanisation, manpower and
equipments and the force becoming a highly organised and efficient limb of the state
apparatus.
GOOD GOVERNANCE
India in its long history saw governance of all kinds, proportions and dimensions
and survived through them. It saw the worst and the best in its 2500 years of recorded
history. It, like other old civilizations of the world, has worked as the crucible of various
experiments in governance. The governance and policing in India now is based on this
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long experience. It is the collective will for good governance that is lacking in India. The
consequence is that the hoi polloi suffer and the country fails to reach the height it is
potential of. The besoin of the extant India is the evolution of a collective will to have
good governance. People must pool their energies to force good governance for the
country. Indeed the job is not easy and the resistance from those in charge of the
governance whose interests lie in the status quo is bound to be hard. But, this cannot be
an encheason to leave the matter of this dimension unattended as the fate of one billion
people depends on this development. Only such a collective will can devolve truly good
governance and policing for the country.
Creation of a self-contained police machinery in place of the present mere nuts

and bolts of the administration is the cardinal need ahead. The nasty political and
bureaucratic interferences in professional policing have done no good to the country and
its police in the last six decades. Insulating the police from the vice prise of the
ectogenetic pressures and influences needs to become a reality in fifteen years since,
should the police have relevance in the governance of the country. This is possible only
by the metamorphosis of the police to an independent body with goals and objectives
perspicuously defined and laid down. The new police have to be responsible only to the
constitution through a suitable machinery of checks and counterchecks exercised by
constitutional bodies manned by people of proven track-record in matters of integrity,
competence and other mental attributes and chosen from academic, bureaucratic and
political fields as well as public life. The change may bring a semblance of justice and
fairplay to administration and ipso facto infuse a value system to the Indian public life
and bring the fear of god to force strict adherence to probity and the rule of law in public
life. India has no alternative to this metamorphosis should the country survive the moral
crisis and degringolade of the national spirit, it witnessed since independence.
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EVOLUTION OF NORMS FOR MANPOWER AND
LOGISTICS REQUIREMENTS AT POLICE
STATION, SUB-DIVISION AND DISTRICT LEVELS
Greek verb ‘logistikos’ meaning compute or calculate, and French verb ‘loger’
meaning lodge are the roots of the English noun ‘logistics’, meaning supply of supportive
attributes like manpower, transport, communication reticulation, weapons systems and
other facilitators in any operation as planned in advance, and accurately trace the true
nature of an effective logistics in terms of computed and calculated planning, and lodging
or infixing the supportive tools as calculated and planned in advance to be lodged at right
time, place and occasion to meet the needs of the operation for efficient performance and
results, ipso facto investing logistics and its execution a managerial edge. Logistics and
logistics support imprimis are managerial tools built on the bedrock of the management
techniques. Logistics au fond is perficient material management run with an edge of
precise time management and efficient space management, made possible with right
foresight, creative vision, incisive planning and accurate execution. Evolution of norms
for logistics in police organisations is byword for the desire for the application of
management principles to policing and police organisations. It represents induction of the
faculty of ratiocination to the field of policing and police organisations. It is a visionary
step and prognosticates the aurora of the scientific age in police organisations. Logistics
norms differ only in details from the Police Station level to the sub-division level to
district level while rest on the same bedrock of broad managerial techniques.
Prime Vectors
Both Police Station and District Police Administration are the pillars of the
policing structure of India with sub-divisions providing the links between the two. Sub-
divisions derive their sustenance and draw manpower and logistics from the Police
Stations, ergo strong and efficient Police Stations mean strong sub-divisions. In
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exceptional cases, sub-divisions can always depend upon the strength of the district
police force. Sub-divisions as such do not have independent existence apart from the
Police Stations under them and the district police administration that guides and controls
them. Therefore, discussion on the logistics requirements of the Police Stations and the
district police administration inter se covers sub-divisions too.
Police Stations and district police administrations as the basic structures of the
policing, need to be pollent units capable of independently tackling crimes, security and
law and order issues from their own provenances, so that higher units are free to focus on
larger issues of countrywide dimensions sans distractions. For this to happen, the Police
Stations have to be full-fledged units as far as their manpower and logistics requirements
are concerned without the need of asking and waiting for the help extra muros. A sense of
autarchy and autarky is basic here. The change brings pride to the unit and boosts morale
bringing in high motivation and inculcating lofty purpose to the job of policing. The end
result will be quality and often competitive performance of very high order in policing
which sadly is a mere dream in the extant policing structure of India.
Police Station setup of present India grievously falls short in logistics and
infrastructure support whether it is in manpower, transport, communication network,
weapon systems or financial powers. Though district police administrations are in far
better position than the Police Stations in all compartments en face respective
requirements, they too are far from an ideal position in respect of their requirements.
While Police Stations must look to the district police administration for help for
manpower and logistics support for every uncommon situation, the district police
administration in turn looks to the state headquarters for elbow space. Even begging other
government departments for transport and other infrastructure facilities is not unheard of.
This is not an ideal situation by any stretch of imagination to any police setup and should
stop.
Armed Police Units
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Both Police Stations and district police administrations should become self-
contained units in respect of manpower, transport facilities, communication reticulatum,
weaponry and other logistics requirements. Every Police Station should convert into a
nidus of police functions under an officer of the rank of Police Inspector assisted by
scores of Sub-Inspectors in charge of different policing functions like crime, traffic,
headquarters, intelligence, law and order and armed police. Every Police Station must
have a unit of its own armed reserve under a PSI that provides men also for extraneous
duties like guards, courts, summons, orderly services apart from being the striking force.
The armed police units of the district police administration need to be strengthened in
most districts and properly trained.
Intelligence Gathering
Both Police Station and district police administration setups as far as intelligence
gathering is concerned is in extremely poor shape uniformly in most states of India, save
a few like Jammu and Kashmir where the need of self-preservation perforce dictated
terms to strengthen the intelligence apparatus. Intelligence is the bedrock of effective
policing and sine qua non for professional policing. Intelligence gathering and analyses
apparatchik is the principium among the core logistics supports that makes difference to
the quality of the policing process in both the Police Station and district police
administration levels. Districts do have structures to handle both the crime and law and
order intelligence, though poorly equipped and seldom made use of, while the same in the
Police Station levels is almost nonexistent. Intelligence gathering apparatchik needs to be
strengthened at both the levels to enrich policing process with relevant intelligence. An
officer of the rank of PSI with adequate staff in a Police Station should be in exclusive
charge of collecting both the crime and law and order intelligence to strengthen the hands
of the officer heading the Police Station.
Mini Police Commissionerates
Police Stations as centres of policing functions must work as mini police

commissionerates sans magisterial powers and treated as such in importance and powers.
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Trust begets trust and trust sprouts responsibility. Once Police Stations revive
respectability and importance on par with that of the British vintage, they may regain
their whilom aureole at no time. This is so also with the district police administrations.
Indeed, there are the issues of corruption and misuse of powers that are beyond the scope
of this discussion and it suffices to state that appropriate checks and counterchecks
should be in place to counter such eventualities.
Nidus of Police Functions
Pollent Police Stations as the centers of police functions justifies fewer police
stations around and irrationalise the present donnert trend among the top-brass of crying
wolf for creating more and more police stations at every possible opportunity and
howling hoarse for many more to create ‘gulli-gulli police station’ situation with most of
them weak and incapable of independent existence and just meant as mere show-pieces
for the public consumption and adding to the welter in jurisdictional and other
complications. The epinosic response is owing to the copycat mindset so prolate among
the Indian police leadership of the post-independent vintage. Quantity is an irrelevant
concept in the extant age of hi-tech world, and transport and communication explosions
render the world increasingly smaller every passing day. What is required is quality. The
stress must be on resourcefulness and response time. Fewer Police Stations, each a nidus
of the police functions at strategic locations and self-dependent in its manpower and other
logistic requirements of transport, communication, weaponry and related facilitators is
the need of the hour. Control room oriented policing with shortened response time are
capable to tackle any kind of police emergencies and contingencies within a given area.
District police administrations must function as the custodian and provider of special
techniques, high-tech gadgets and higher counseling and guidance to the benefits of the
Police Stations apart from its extant conventional duties.
Control Rooms
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This brings the issue of control room oriented policing that suits best in urban
areas to the fore. Shift systems round the clock and response time are the key factors in
such a policing system. Logistics support becomes the crucial issue in the control room
oriented policing system as the effectiveness of the system depends tout a fait on
effective logistics designs, planning and management in place. Police Stations fully self-
dependent in manpower and other logistics supports like transport, communication,
weaponry and other facilitators alone can handle control rooms successfully for perficient
policing. Such a system presupposes committed manpower working on round the clock
shifts and requiring high morale. High morale in turn depends on job satisfaction and
right job culture that are built on perfect man management practices. All these issues
need to be tackled one after the other for efficient policing. Indian police of present days
is a far cry from those objectives.
Manpower
In a country bogged down with endemic unemployment, and steeped in cheap

labour, manpower should not be a problem though eurhythmic quality production may
often become an issue. No discussion on manpower is complete without the factors of
morale, motivation, competence, discipline and commitment are taken into account. No
analysis on logistics is complete without the production factor of the manpower is
assessed.
Shift System
Policing being a round the clock responsibility, a three-shift system is sine qua
non in a grass-root policing unit like the Police Station. And unlike now, the system must
be statutorily defined and duly moulded and rounded off for effective functioning with
clear-cut division of labour in place. Lack of this clarity and arbitrary day-to-day
allotment of duties on one’s own fancies by lower ranks in the Police Stations is the
radicis of all the maelstrom in man management noticed in police stations these days
resulting in low and inefficient turn-out of work. A well-defined shift system and
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purposeful man management policy directed towards high motivation and morale should
work as the nostrum to the malady.
Efficient Man Management
Sound incentive schemes based on the innards of the human psyche and latest
managerial techniques and committed leadership models can do the tricks to maximize
the output with the minimum input and save the criminal wastages in manpower that are
common features of the present man management in Indian police, where a few islands of
manpower are over-worked while most wanze precious man-hours without productive
output. Any step to break this epinosic trend will save Indian police from gargantuan
manpower wastages. This aspect needs priority.
An important feature of the efficient man management is best utilization of the

available manpower talents. Indian police of the post-independent vintage is notoriously
profligate in frittering away and even curbing precious human talents that land on its lap
by its good fortune. An example is that of a brilliant police officer from an Indian state
who made name as a poet, an intellectual and an original thinker on police and policing
subjects with scores of published books on poetry and policing subjects to his credit and a
popular writer on police subjects on all major English newspapers, and well-known for
his immaculate conduct and foursquare character, being persistently and consistently
harassed gratuitously for decades, denied promotion for more than twenty-one years
without offering a reason in the ambience of no reasons existing, often denied facilities
normal even for his posts and repeatedly forced to work in the rank of Superintendent of
Police under his far less talented and far less upright juniors from his own batch now in
the rank of IGPs. Such atrocities are possible in Indian police these days. Reason for the
reductio ad absurdum of the man management in Indian police of the present vintage to
this scale is just jealousy and fear among the higher-ups of being overshadowed by his
superior talents. His fault lies in the denial to approach the court of law in propugnation
of own interests in spite of promptings from well-meaning seniors and his preposterous
pride in deciding that what are his, must come by themselves sans promptings from any
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quarters and philosophizing che sara, sara. He continues in the plight even now without
promotions. This is an example of the criminal wastage of human talents apart from
cruelty and crimes involved. Just thinking how best and to what advantages an efficient
organisation would have made use of his talents by providing right incentives rather than
curbing and crushing his normal opportunities makes this example of negative norms of
the Indian police an eye opener. Such perversions and prevarications of the man
management norms of epinosic dimensions must stop. It is a different story that he did
not wither away like most in similar situations and made big name and brilliantly
succeeded in other avenues. It is true that true talents cannot be hidden and even villainy
of the top brass of the police has limits in curbing and crushing the talents of the
fonctionnaire lower down. This is the brighter side of the spiel.
Precious Man Power

Every employee in any efficient organisation is a precious asset. This is not
because labour comes at enormous cost, but because of the presence of innate
potentialities in every person and its mammoth utility were they are adequately tapped.
The problem lies in the need and competence to extract the potentialities and talents.
Police organisation has a long tail of hierarchy of seniors after seniors. The billion-dollar
question is whether this long tail of seniority of the police department has any relevance
as far as leadership and leadership qualities are concerned. The answer is a big “no”.
Present Indian police is least bothered about the need of sound leadership and leadership
qualities in its body as far as seniority goes and sadly leadership and seniority are
synonymous in its diction. That must stop and the organisation must constitute per se a
climacteric norm to enable the resorgimento of the Indian police to draw it out of its
present chilling hiems.
None realises the importance of every single human hand available as the USA
does, and the care taken and the investment made on each hand in American armed forces
are legendary. India and Indian police though cannot fully follow the American ideal
because of its financial constraints and other reasons, the model sine dubio deserves
avizefull consideration to aemule as a vaulting norm adapted to Indian milieu. Human
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being a natura rei is potential of extending and shrinking to any scope created for him.
This is so also in work environment. A man or woman treated as lowly and dispensable
as it is in the constabulary and other lowly ranks of the Indian police, shrinks au naturel
to adjust to the space created for him, and expands and extends to be der Unsterbliche
ubermensch if he or she is provided for and treated as such. Indian police lacks this
insight to the human psyche and pays heavily in terms of human cost for the grave
incompetence. How fast Indian police realises this fault, so good it is pour-soi.
Maximum output out of minimum resources is the motto here. Maximum output
should be the norms of manpower management in Indian police at all levels rather than
going for blind increase in manpower strength at every possible occasion. High morale,
high motivation and job contentment, high professional pride, adequate rights and
responsibilities, reasonably sound infrastructure and logistics support are the claves for
productive and perficient policing and make difference to the quality of the policing
whether it is in Police Station levels or district police administration levels. This brings
the issue of logistics support to the fore.
Logistics Support
Logistics and infrastructure supports are the core of effective policing and also
serve as the multiplier of manpower. Transport and communication logistics are the eyes
and ears of the perficient policing. In the age of hi-tech crimes and criminals, high-level
logistics support is sine qua non for the policing to be successful. Right logistics support
has four dimensions or factors to be useful and effective in policing: quantity factor,
quality factor, relevancy factor and time factor. Quantity factor covers availability of
adequate logistics support; quality factor covers availability of latest and hi-tech logistics
support; relevancy factor covers the need of logistics support being relevant to the needs
of the policing; and time factor refers to the availability of the logistics support at right
occasion and time. Inadequacy in any of these factors certain to affect the quality of the
policing and needs foremost attention of the police leadership to keep the police and
policing in top gear.
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In Indian situation, the principium of the four factors namely the quantity factor
itself often is a major hurdle because of financial constraints and other problems though
recent rise in terrorism alerted the bureaucratic and political leadership to awaken to this
problem and make more and more logistics support available to police de grado in grado.
But, the quality factor continues to be a major pain in the spine. Criminals are often found
in India better equipped than the police as far as hi-tech gadgets and even crucial
intelligence are concerned. Indian police lacks adequate organizational strength and
expertise to keep up dated to the research explosions in the world market in hi-tech
gadgets in transport, communication, information and weaponry systems. This shortfall
needs to be attended on priority if Police Stations and district police administrations to be
effective in defeating crime and criminals in their own games. Whatever done at present
in this field are sporadic attempts sans systemic efforts. This lacuna needs to be rectified.
Relevance and time factors are logistic maneuvers tout court involving human
assessments and decision making in the process of the policing and depends assez bien on
human excellence involved and requires improved human qualities. That comes by
practice, skill, training, commitment and mature leadership. These factors also need close
attention in efforts to give quality policing to the country.
Maintenance
Any talk on logistics is incomplete without a discussion on maintenance, which is the

weakest link in the mindset of the Indian psyche. Maintenance inherently is the byproduct
of a disciplined mind that is anathema to the Indian psyche. Naturally Indian police is
pathetically poor in maintenance aspect of whatever it does. One factor responsible for
this perilous assuetude is the cost factor involved. The second factor that brings about this
neglect of the maintenance structure in the organisation is the lack of appreciation of the
need of the maintenance in running an organisation and carrying out its operations. This
achilles’ heel of the Indian psyche holds its sway in police organisations also. Sound
maintenance of the logistics infrastructures and other assets is sine qua non for sound
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policing and perhaps gets precedence in importance over acquiring new gadgets and
assets. A sound police organisation just ne obliviscaris this crucial need that considerably
contributes to the success of police operations.
Financial Powers
Police Stations as the nidus of police functions with considerable manpower and huge
logistics support means in its possession and responsible for their maintenance perforce
need considerable financial powers for themselves so that they can look after themselves
without waiting for sanctions from above. This investment also boosts the confidence and
self-reliance of the Police Stations as independent units apart from bringing respectability
and accountability to them unlike now. The advantage here is both physical and
psychological and needs priority attention.
Strategic Location
It be a Police Station, district police administration or any other police unit, its effective
functioning depends very much on small details like its location and building also. They
have to be located at a place decided upon after careful study of the issues involved and
operational facility and convenience considered not only for the easy access to the public,
but also for more crucial strategic reasons of operational considerations like facile
movements, easy logistics support, access to hi-tech equipments, easy access to key
manpower assets, convenience for secret operations et cetera. This important factor is
often ignored in Indian police and it is common to find a Police Station situated in a
locality outside its jurisdiction in urban areas and district police administration being
located in an unplanned shabby rented building in a busy and strategically unsound
locality. Easy availability often guides such decisions in Indian police. Such casual
approaches in such key decisions should stop and proper norms should be laid to bring
order in such key decisions and avoid concomitant mishaps.
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Norms are mere standards, or more precisely, standard customs to be set or
evolved. Indian police as defined and structured by the British administration more than a
century back served the British administration and its objectives in a far less complex
milieu appreciably for nearly a century and later. But, in a situation of panta rhei, the
antianus reticulation is ascensively becoming unfit and incompetent to the changing
trends of the crime and criminality and may become entirely irrelevant to the changed
complexities of crime and criminality if immediate corrective steps are not taken and new
norms are evolved and set for the posterity. In a donnert police structure steeped in
blinkers and mental inaction, the very idea of evolving fresh norms for manpower and
logistics is a highly welcome initiative and deserves hearty plaudite.
TRAINING STRATEGY TO AFFECT BEHAVIOURAL AND

ATTITUDINAL CHANGE IN THE POLICE PERSONNEL
I begin the paper with the first paragraph of the article, ‘NEED OF
ATTITUDINAL CHANGE IN INDIAN POLICE’ from my book “POLICING THE
POLICE”, published in 2000. There I said, “The major problem that confronts extant
police is its attitude to work, responsibilities, profession, organization, government and
the public. It is confounded about its goals, objectives, loyalties, professional ethos, job
culture, procedures and practices that carry it forward in the field in attending
professional duties. In the wilderness of undefined roads, Indian police grope for
perspicacious directions to reach professional ends. Popular phrases like maintenance of
order, enforcement of law, prevention of crime, investigation of offences, protection of
security interests etc are too generic terms to carry any meaning and significance during
the process of actual policing. Perficient policing is possible only in the ambience of
well-rounded and clearly defined specific guidelines for action that help moulding
professional attitude in the organization. Police develop wrong attitudes in its absence
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by erroneous interpretation of the situation around. This is what happens to Indian police
now: wrong attitudes and concomitant confusion about performing legitimate duties.”
Professional ideals of police are rooted in the terra firma of the rule of law,
justice, order and the security of the country and its citizens. Police organization is
basically responsible to the constitution of the country and the government constituted
and the laws enacted in accordance with the constitution. Police lose its relevance to the
country when its professional attitude goes against the cardinal ideals of the profession.
The challenge of a police organization lies in moulding professional attitude as required
by the ideals of the profession. Wrong attitudes inveterate in extant practices and
procedures of policing are shaped by self-interests, misconceptions, ignorance and
tendency to pursue easy and shortcut methods: they are hard to be broken and survive
under most odds. Only efficient, honest and highly motivated leadership alone can crack
the etui encompassing it. Once it is done, building a new set of right professional
attitudes is relatively a simpler job to a committed leadership. Basic to these efforts is a
realization among the top brass about what constitute right and wrong attitudes. The crux
of the problem of Indian police lies here. It is distressing to note that the top leadership
of post-independent Indian police is responsible for the prevarication of the organization
from its professional attitude of absolute commitment to public order and safety, justice
and rule of law to easy and shortcut avenues of selfish interests. The change percolated
downwards. In the rush of Indians replacing the British to sensitive government positions
on the eve of independence, men of inadequate caliber and merit occupied key
government posts. This happened in police as in other government departments. The
result was corrosion in leadership qualities, traits of excellence and high personal merits,
so essential to run public and national affairs at the top. It was during this period that
Indian police lost its track in professional policing and exposed itself to the luxury of
dancing to the easy and soft tunes of convenience by yielding to pressures of political and
other vested interests. Policing powers served as a tool of maximizing self-interests and
personal comforts at the cost of professional policing. In the process, the country
suffered and police lost its face.
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WRONG ATTITUDES APLENTY
A profession like police naturally has its own goals, objectives and ideals to
pursue. They get clouded in the smog of practical turn-arounds in the field and ultimately
lose their edge in the spin of attitudinal aberrations. The consequence is clashes of
loyalties, adoption of immodest vectors in policing, the issue of excesses and inactions,
tendency to bend rules and laws to achieve perceived ends in the hour of need of
upholding the rule of law, urge to cash-in on the ignorance and weaknesses of the
ignorant people around and indulgences in unprofessional works in the name of
discharging legitimate police duties. Performance of any profession depends upon three
factors: professional ideals, job culture and actual practices and procedures. Job culture
is spawned of constant interaction of professional ideals and actual practices and
procedures in the field. Though basically is a product of the past, it considerably affects
the future performance of an organization. Practices and procedures being the primary
vehicle of attitude, they help moulding job culture a la immanent attitude in the job. The
result is a pollent hold of attitude in deciding the direction of an organisation. A
profession loses its raison d’etre while attitude in the job prevaricates from professional
ideals.
People caught in the web of criminal laws deserve sympathy and kindness until
they are proved guilty beyond doubts. They need to be treated with gentleness and
courtesy that behoves to interpersonal relationship in a civilised society while the process
of investigation continues with all efficiency and ruthless exactitude. Police as
investigator is not invested with powers to punish for the crimes committed. Fair chance
to persons under investigation to prove their innocence goes a long way in unearthing
truth and solving crimes justly. This has to be the attitude of the police during crime
investigation. Truth and justice have to be their goal. Indian police lack the maturity
and poise.
A serious Achilles’ heel of Indian police is its perverted attitude towards rules and
laws. Bending rules and laws to suit self-interests is one dimension of the spiel. Another
dimension is its blind application sans sense of proportion and discreetness while self-
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interest is not an issue. It is seen in enforcing laws and maintaining order. Police forget
that rules and laws are just tools in the larger cause of peace and order of the society and
sadly handle laws for law’s sake. Rules and laws are invested on police like weapons as
the dernier ressort while all other avenues are shut. Discreetness is their constraint.
Objectives are primary. Rules and laws must follow them only as tools to that end. The
realisation is rarely found in the present police. It operates laws for law’s sake by
relegating organisational objectives to oblivion. Professional objectives suffer and police
become an object of detestation consequential to this perverted attitude. Mechanical
enforcement of gratuitous rules and laws constrict the freedom of people for no specific
purpose and weaves an unnecessary web of constraints around them for nobody’s good.
The attitude is fatal to fair and professional policing practices and needs to be corrected
on priority to make application of rules and laws need-based in reaching professional
targets.
Another field where police need to change its attitude is its contempt for human
values. Policing is just an instrument to the cause of protecting human values. Police
oblivious to this fact, subject human values to immane policing methods in the name of
policing. Third degree methods are the point. Malfeasances do not behove to the cause
of human values. Means are as important as ends in policing. Pursuing unjust means for
the cause of justice is the spiel of the Frankenstein, the story of an offspring eating its
creator. Inviolable commitment to human values and rights is the foundation of good
policing. Human touch is sine qua non for professional policing. Human concern is the
raison d’etre of good policing. The shift in attitude needs to be from blind and blanket
policing for the policing’s sake to discreet and enlightened policing to reach professional
objectives. The shift has to be from the use of policing powers to maximise professional
goals. The shift must see police taking risks in the interests of the profession and doing
intelligent policing rather than indulging in manoeuvres of personal security. The
process warrants massive exercise in attitudinal change.
AFFECTING ATTITUDINAL CHANGE
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Forcing police away from vicious practices and procedures and undesirable job
culture through the attitudinal change is an arduous and time-consuming exercise even
for experts in the field. The exercise has to be a multi-pronged attack on inveterate
misconceptions and wrong notions in extant policing by extensive exposures to talks,
discussions, seminars, briefings, studies, researches and in-service training involving
analyses of policing, its ideals, objectives, methods, means and ends, social relevances,
pressures, policing environment, psychological aspects of policing etc. The exercise has
to be intended to provoke police personnel to think about their profession without dogma
and arrive at desirable conclusions about professional policing and impress them on the
ingredients of good policing by constant exposure. A few ideal cases as models have
tremendous impact on the cause of creating right attitudes. Studies and researches on
policing and policing methods provide a sound foundation to these exercises. A police
organisation interested in improving its quality and performance cannot go without sound
study centres and research projects on the issues of policing. These attempts provide
both inputs and insight to the behavioural pattern of the police in field under different
situations and stress patterns as differentiated from what are desired. They bring both
gestalts to contrast in terms of their perficiency, professional needs and relevance to the
environment of policing to affect attitudinal change in right direction by way of
conviction. The immediate need is inducing doubts about the soundness of existing
attitudes to encourage discussion on the topic. Deliberate guiding through structured
mental exercises to desirable end forms the latter part of the task. Indeed, the whole
exercise has to be planned and executed in detail by highly efficient leadership in the
police. The conundrum is who behoves to handle the highly responsible job while the
leadership of the police itself is mired in wrong attitudes to the job of policing.
RIGHT RECRUITMENT
Character is nascitur, non fit. Sound character is the materfamilias of right
attitudes. The principium of right training strategy is the realization that character and
attitudes cannot be created. Character is an immanent element. Any discussion on right
training strategy sans discussion on right recruitment is like building an edifice on sand-
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bed, like watering a dead plant, an exercise in futility, an intellectual wanze. Right
training is nothing more than perficient seedling of a seed or precocious flowering of a
blossom. It is more so in issues of character, attitude and behavior, the three being
entwined into one with character spawning attitude and attitude in its turn defining the
behavior. This brings us to the intricate issues of character and character building. The
triste state d’ affaire of the Indian police of the post-independent vintage and its
degringolade after independence can be attributed tout a fait to this single factor: lack of
character. That is recruitment of wrong people, recruitment of people lacking in
character, integrity, honesty, human sensibilities, service motive and Rhadamanthine
attributes.
The corner stone of any perficient training strategy is right recruitment. The
emphasis should be on sound character reflecting on integrity, human sensibilities and
service motive. This necessitates creation of a character profile of each applicant
imprimis in the process of selection and recruitment. Once character is in place, other
needs follow by the fundamentum relationis and secondary to the need hierarchy enface
crucial character in professional policing. Ability to envision and see things in broader
perspective also needs to be tested for final selection.
Indeed, practical problems are mind-boggling if not impossible to manage. First

of all, drawing the character profile of eligible applicants is easier said than done. It calls
for complete overhauling of the extant selection procedures and evolution of
psychological processes as the prime mechanism of the selection in place of present
highlight on answering abilities. Competence of the present psychological processes in
drawing right character profile is another issue. And the ever-presence interference of
political and influential lobbies and the greed of the selectors at all levels are the grave
hurdles for this process to be feracious.
WARMING-UP PROCESS
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The period of initiation is the most important and impressionable period in the
career-life of fresh recruits to the police department. The process of warming-up is based
on the psychological needs of human nature. New entrants must be handled with utmost
care to give them confidence and a feeling of belonging at the incipient stage itself. A
sense of confidence and belonging to the organisation and an ingenerate love and respect
for the higher–ups are the substruction on which discipline grows. Efforts to inculcate
disicipline in a void are like waiting for rain from the autumn sky. Indian police
impresarios failed to understand such finer nuances of administration when they copied
the system of the British Indian police. And so we now have a police system where
discipline is insisted on subordinates sans the conditions requisite for the discipline. The
recruits, who enter the fold with open sensibilities and high expectations, wither after
braving for a while the brusque and insensitive conduct of their higher ranks. These
recruits continue thereafter to be constant enemies of the higher ranks and the department
for which they must continue to work for the next three to four decades. A police
department constituted of such members, thanks to the shabby approach of the insensitive
higher ranks in this most impressioanble period of the former’s carrier-life cannot turn
out eximious work. It is a tragedy that India neither spawned a police force of its ain
superior values nor copied the police force of the British vintage in its entirety with its
finer points, but cultivated instead a burlesque of the rough and mediocre aspects of both.
ACADEMIC TRAINING
It is euphemistic to nuncupate extant Indian police training cap-a-pie as a

maelstrom. It is in utter disarray and directionless. Emphasis is on information, which is
not a big deal in this age of Internet and competitive marketing of all kinds of
information. What is required is blossoming the potential right character, attitudes and
requisite skills. This is the field where complete overhauling of the training system is
called for. Save the constabulary for which spoon-feeding of the rudimentary criminal
laws are must, otherwhere wanze the precious training period on basics while prime
issues like character building and behavioral and attitudinal evolutions remain untouched
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is criminal offence per se. What is required is laying a sound foundation for character
building as a powerful base for passions for righteous policing, and motivating the young
recruits in that direction. This aspect is completely forgotten in Indian police training
now.
Basic police training course at all levels should begin with exclusive exposure in
the first month to the sine qua non of sound character, integrity, honesty, humility, human
sensibilities and the Rhadamanthine attributes as the springboard of the right attitudes in
policing. Policemen as the custodians of the rules and laws of the country and the agents
of the public sittlichkeit in uniform how stand out from the public must be deeply etched
on the young minds to guide them all through their career and light their path with the
flambeau of righteousness thus lighted. The need of right public relations and image
building in perficient policing cannot be over-emphasised at this stage of the adsorption
of the young recruit to the fold of the police setup. The young recruits should be
impressed on the importance of means in achieving targets and how malfeasance leads to
utter disaster in the end. And also how right policing stands on the bedrock of the human
rights.
The subjects to be covered during this period of one month at all levels should
cover in-depth study of human values and their philosophic foundations, policing
philosophy, objectives and ideals of right policing, the locus standi of the police and
policing in a democratic setup and the requisites of adjustments with the political and
other leaderships and the degrees to which the police should maintain its own space and
balance, the place of rules and laws in the overall scheme of the criminal justice system
of the country and the shortfalls, the supremacy of the constitution of the country, the true
meaning of the loyalty and its extensions in a democratic setup, the field realities of the
less than perfect society with which police constantly remains engaged in performing its
duties and how to maintain an adjustment mechanism in diverse situations in the overall
interests of the peace and security of the society. The period must cover also diverse case
studies from the field about the success stories of right character and attitudes in policing
and analyses of the inner dynamics therein. Indeed, these are intangible topics lacking
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suitable textbooks for police studies at all levels now. It means earnest measures towards
writing of suitable textbooks to this end for various levels must find priority.
While the first month of the academic training exclusively covered the character
and attitudinal issues, the remaining period of nine months too should have the subject
covered in addition to conventional police subjects. The telos is to build characters that
approach policing nec cupias, nec metuas. Here too, case studies from the field about
success stories of right character and attitudes must find priority.
Other measures during the academic training at all levels must cover recognition
and ample rewards for development of right character and attitudes even to the exclusion
of talent and technical skills in the training scheme, and right people as the models in the
training staff unlike now when it is only unwanted mediocre stuffs are fed to the police
training institutions at all levels. Excellent initiatives can do the tricks. There is an instant
of a police officer in a police training academy whilom a few years since for a batch of
PSI recruit trainees rubbishing his allotted law classes and in place briefing on practical
tricks from his field experience about making maximum at the earliest to recoup the bribe
paid for obtaining their recruitments. This is ovem lupo committere.
FIELD TRAINING
Field training is the phase at which an entrant truly comes in contact with the true
policing and begins to form his own impression about police and policing in the field.
There are any number of instances in police department senior police officers at the eve
of their retirement recalling with fondness the contribution of a PC or HC they came in
contact at this phase of their career and actually trained them in the intricacies of policing
in the field in drawing the road map of their whole career. This is just to map out the
significance of this phase of one’s career in policing. A wrong trainer at this stage, and a
career wanze. Ergo, it is of paramount importance that only right people in the field
should be carefully selected and nominated to assist and train probationers. Any wrong
choice will result in irreparable casualties and should be avoided with maximum caution.
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This principle should be applied to trainers even at higher levels including the district
Superintendents.
In addition, the district Superintendent should be made statutorily responsible for

imparting right and effective training particularly forming right attitudes in those under
his charge with mandatory provision for his performance in this regard figuring in his
Annual Performance Reports. There should be provisions for removal from service at this
stage of the probationary period for failing to develop right attitudes and character even
after repeated detailed warnings, indeed with checks and counterchecks in place to avoid
misuses.
INSERVICE TRAINING
Repeated exposures to the need of sound character and right attitudes do help in
instilling the qualities. A refresher course of five days on character building and right
attitudes in police training institutes should be made statutorily mandatory once in every
five years at all levels up to the ranks of IGPs. In addition, every promotion up to this
rank should be provisional until the concerned official passes a written test on character
building and right attitudes conducted by the concerned police training institute.
RESEARCH ON RIGHT POLICE ATTITUDES
Higher police training institutes should take up research projects on right police
attitudes on priority on a continuous basis by partaking the services of both eligible police
officers and nonpolice academics from the relevant fields. Every higher police training
institute of the country should have an exclusive department for research and producing
text books on character and attitudes in relevance to police and policing.
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JOB CULTURE
Learning is a continuous process. It is so in police and policing also. All

advantages of the right recruitment, right academic training in police training institutes
and right field training face serious reif if field realities become inconducive to the ideals.
Field realities with their positive and negative elements truly constitute the nidus of the
attitudes one is compelled to adopt and adapt. Therefore, field realities of the policing
warrant utmost attention in the process of breeding right attitudes in the service. It is only
through the right job culture that the police environment in the tide of high morale turns
the leaf and policing s’orienter to build up a set of right attitudes among its personnel.
It is the sacred responsibility of the top brass of the police to ensure that right
means gets precedence over achieving targets somehow. Shortcut methods at the cost of
right means should be discouraged. Exitus acta probat should not be the only and ultimate
motto of the policing. Right attitude should be amply rewarded in the usual course of the
policing. Further, a culture of senior officers briefing their juniors on the need of right
character and attitudes in every possible opportunity should be created in the
organisation. Repeated stresses do have their own impact particularly in a disciplined
organisation like the police.
It is just the opposite of what is prolate in Indian police these days. Wrong values
are encouraged. Corrupt and caste-ridden elements see vaulting spots. ‘Yes, Minister’
tregetours win the rat-race. Corruption is swept under the carpet on the specious claim
that there is a separate organisation to deal with the matter and it is none of the
responsibility of the organisation to keep itself clean. For, if one resorts to the cleansing
process, he is certain to be unceremoniously kicked out by the political leadership. The
situation has reached such a rien ne va plus pass in India that it is often visioned that if an
fonctionnaire is overlooked for promotion or transferred to an undesirable post, more
than often he is surmised and hailed as a four-square and outstanding person and those
who corner desirable posts are looked down upon as part of the coprophagous rot. It is a
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grave vicious circle. There is no point in discussing right attitude unless this pythogenic
vicious circle is broken.
Problem of attitude basically is a problem felt at higher wrung in top brass of the
force. The stiff hierarchical order and command-obedience pattern of functioning make
the lower wrung irrelevant in matters of job attitude. Those down the ladder are loyal
followers and obedient operators in the path and policy laid above them. Their attitudes
change shape from case to case to meet the demands trickle from above. When the
demand is to let out a rich and powerful criminal with royal honours, those down the
level do just that with vengeance; when the demand from above is to frame an innocent
man and obtain his confession by subjecting to torture, they just do that with dedication
for the sake of a well-earned pat of their omniscient superiors. It is again a question of ill-
conceived job culture and attitudes, which need to be corrected, as it is tangible to the
standards of policing as all organisational matters are. The primary target of attitudinal
change is the higher wrung and the top brass. Others follow and fall to place. The key
lies in the realisation that something is wrong in the present mode of policing.
Demolition is the beginning of the construction. Once the realisation of wrong dawns
upon, reconstruction becomes possible. Police being an extrovert and action-oriented
outfit, self-analyses and inward-looking tendencies do not come easily. While things go
wrong, introversion becomes sine qua non for healthy growth. This is what is required in
Indian police now.
HOME GUARDS TRAINING
I am asked to write this article on a specific subject, Home Guards Training.

Rather than resorting to repetitions of what is already known and codified in Home
Guards Manuals, I venture here to touch upon the place of a holistic training programme
in Home Guards setup.
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The backdrop of the voluntary nature and uncertain tenure of service in the Home
Guards necessiates its training programmes to be capsuled in short-term courses, ranging
from five days to a month to avoid long absences of the volunteers from their homes. The
short-term nature of the training underlines the need of repeated training courses in Home
Guards as a device of a stratified and stepped-up training plan. A holistic training scheme
needs to be programmed to these short-term courses. I do not go here to the brasstacks
of a training programme in Home Guards for obvious reasons, and restrict myself to the
scope of the training programmes to make it holistic and complete.
The two facts of a holistic training programme are internal and external
orientations, which in final analysis, complement each other to creat a complete training
programme.
INTERNAL ORIENTATION
Internal Orientation is the most neglected facet of a training programme in the

present world. The basic configuration of internal orientation is founded on right
motivation, professional attitude and creation of a truly committed persona. The
voluntary nature of Home Guards services renders the internal orientation more basic to
Home Guards Training rather than the other way round. The ephemeral nature and
uncertain tenure of the Home Guards service necessiate a strong foundation of the
internal orientation to sustain interest in the service. Its absence manifests in low turnout
of volunteers when called for service and poor performance. Unlike career services,
there is no adhesive of financial guarantee and perks, and job security in Home Guards
service to bind the volunteers irrevocably to the Home Guards Service. The absence
renders the need of internal orientation all the more important in Home Guards
organisation. The need of internal!sat ion of Maslow’s need hierarchy comes to play here
as the internal orientation spurs the need of internal!sat ion. Sans internal orientation.
Home Guards service is hollow, and Home Guards service sans internal orientation is
directionless, Human nature being what it is, the spark of voluntary service, once ignited,
needs to be consistently stoked and sustained to harness the maximum out of it. This need
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can be met only by liberal dose of internal orientation in the training programme. Home
Guards can ignore the need only at its own peril. The fact is that extant Home Guards
training programmes nowhere in India have internal orientation incorporated in its
agenda. This shortfall has arrested the growth of Home Guards movement in India.
EXTERNAL ORIENTATION
Present Home Guards braining basically is external orientation programmes.

External Orientation is constituted. of Knowledge Orientation and skill orientation.
Present training programmes identify knowledge orientation with indoor classes and skill
orientation with outdoor classes. Here also training contents in both programmes in
extant Home Guards training are rather passe and do not meet the operational needs in
the field. The need of updating training contents is largely forgotten. I round off this
discussion with the observation that the knowledge orientation programmes in a
purposeful training plan should include topics like history of Home Guards, its
organizational structures, case studies of model operations, principles of time and space
management, basics of inter-person relationship and courteous conduct in addition to
what is already there. And skill orientation programme in a utility based training plan
should cover latest researches and tools of rescue operations including medical aid,
handling of computers and information technology gadgets, driving, methods of
identififation and defusing of sophisticated bombs, basics of electric wirings in addition
to present topics. The skill oriented training programme must create real skills unlike
being an eye-wash as at present, as the skill is meant to save lives and bring
order.Further, the skill oriented training programme in Home Guards can be either
physical or strategic in nature. Physical skill needs are addressed by parade and physical
training. Strategic skills useful in Home Guards operations, are addressed by outdoor
demonstrations and rehearsals. The strategic skills can be either managerial or operational
in nature. The managerial skill is required to address organisational matters including
planning, communication transportation and control that are central to Home Guards
operations whij^e operational skill comes to force and useful during actual operations.
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INTERLINKED
The two facets of Home Guards Training, namely internal and external
orientations are not distinct and independent entities, removed from each other. They are
interlinked and constitute a holistic training programme. An external orientation like
physical skill harnessed in the parade ground positively contributes to reinforce the
internal orientation of a professional attitude like discipline. Acquiring stratigic skills
contribute to strengthen right professional attitude and motivation. Similarly, the
knowledge of Home Guards history, its objectives and case studies add to motivation
towards Home Guards service.
Home Guards being an organisation of voluntary service, there is a need of

making its training programme a pleasure-event to attract more and more volunteers to
partake in the programme. It is training that differentiates a Home Guard from who is
not. Therefore, the success of Home Guard setup depends on the success-story of its
training programmes.
RELIGION IN POLITICS
“The introduction of religious passion into politics is the end of honest politics,
and the introduction of politics into religion is the prostitution of true religion.” said Lord
Quintin McGarel Hogg Hallsham. According to Benjamin Disraeli there is no act of
treachery or meanness of which a political party is not capable; for in politics there is no
honour; in politics nothing is contemptible. It is in this context Mahatma Gandhi said that
religion and politics are inextricably blended and their separation tantamounts to the
separation of blood and body and called politics without religion a dirty game. For, he
also said in another occasion, “Most religious men I’ve met are politicians in disguise, I
however wear the guise of a politician but am at heart a religious man”. He clearly
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contrasts here two facets of the religion, religion as politics in disguise per contra religion
at heart in politics. His contempt for the former is obvious. He sees the latter face of the
religion having ethical and spiritual nuances a la religion of Emperor Ashoka in the state
affairs as inexorably blended to a healthy politics.
Poles Apart
According to Otto Von Bismarck, politics is the art of the possible. It imprimis is
opportunism and deception. It is hic et nunc and ergo ephemeral unlike religion which
seeks divinity and eternity through the principles of Rhadamanthine sittlichkeit and truth.
Politics is selfish au fond while religion is love and sacrifice. Politics seeks power and
excitement while religion seeks peace and salvation. They are poles apart in their means
and ends and therefore can not bodily blend. However, they can certainly complement
each other as the two faces of basic human activities and enrich human life.
Worldwide Phenomenon
Jay Demerath, professor of sociology at University of Massachusetts, Amherst,

and Karen Straight, doing research there, in A Bridging of Faiths, co-authored by them in
1992 (Princeton University Press), opine that about 1979 things began to change and
religion took on a new political importance. Since then, worldwide, the volatile-and often
violent-combination of a religious state with religious politics is on the rise. The period in
India saw the rise of violent Sikh nationalist sentiments and later Hindu fundamentalism.
Deception and destruction are the two trusted hands of the body of the politics all
along its long history. It was politics at its best at deception that created Israel and politics
at its horrid at destruction that is devastating en revanche peace and security of the
Middle East in the last six decades. Israel like Pakistan came to existence from the
emotional shemozzle of the religion.
Religion Divides
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The machtpolitik between the Western world represented by the USA and Britain
and the Muslim world epitomized by the Afghan war and the aggression on Iraq in 2003
deep down symbolizes the clash of Christian and Islam civilizations. Islam inherently is a
fiery and aggressive religion with a political agenda imbued in its soul. It is an abnormal
conflict wherein the political leaders of the West took on the extremist religious elements
of the Islam. Iraq is only an accidental mactation in the process. However, it is to the
credit of the top Christian religious leaders world over that they refused to involve
themselves in the political conflict and went to the extent of condemning the American
brutality and initiatives. It reflects their maturity and true religiosity.
Religion as politics is a world phenomenon these days. Buddhism is deeply rooted

in the politics of Sri Lanka. The demand for a homeland in Ireland was based on the rift
between Protestants and Catholics in the Christianity. Muslim countries are deeply
divided world over on lines of their Sunni and Shia affiliations.
Religion in India
The love and hate relationship between religion and politics is not new to India.
Vedas and Puranas have references to the corso in oodles. The mythological references to
the conflict between Brahmanism and Kshatriyas as symbolized by the annihilation of the
Kshatriyas by Parasurama indubitably throw light on the age long struggle for supremacy
between religion represented by the Brahmanism and politics represented by the
Kshatriyas of the ancient India. Ultimately, religion accepted its limitations in the
temporal world of power and deceptions and yielded the field to politics while retaining
its divine supremacy in human affairs and activities. The concept of Raja Guru and Raja
Rshis and the respect they commanded from the king and the royalty spawned from this
ausgleich.
Both Gouthama Buddha and Mahavir are rare cases of political personalities from
the royal family finding their solace in religion d’accord with the spiritual disposition of
India. Emperor Asoka was a rara avis of another kind who brought the soul of religion to
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the governance. The concept of Rama Rajya of Mahatma Gandhi is an extension of what
Emperor Asoka brought to bear on the administration.
Religion as Politics in India
Religion as politics in India began to take shape in a big way during the Muslim
rule with Jazia and other religious taxes, forcible conversions and other types of
persecutions of non-Muslims under the state patronage. The Maratha and Vijayanagar
empires are considered as the Hindu reactions to the persecutions. Muslim zealots like
Aurangzeb made his rule a religious cause. Portuguese in Goa followed the suit.
Serious political disturbances in Kashmir have religious emotions working en

arriere. So were whilom Punjab and the Operation Bluestar that led to the killing of Prime
Minister Indira Gandhi. India has political parties wedded to the cause of important
religions of the country. There is nothing wrong in that and the Indian Constitution no
way bars them from politicking. What is reprehensible is the misuse of religion and
religious passions to political ends and the misuse of politics and political deceptions for
selfish and nonreligious ends of the religion.
Anti-religious Politicking
Protection of one’s religion and culture is a sacred duty and a serious need of the
hour. But, God by whatever name belongs to all and His abode in whatever form is
sacred to all. Dividing people and bloodletting in the name of religion is the worst form
of anti-religious politicking. Ignoring the soul of a religion to protect its criminal
elements for political ends is tantamount to violating and annihilating the religion.
Pseudo-secularism is anther shape of the misuse of religion in politics to gain power from
the other extremity. Healthy politics should keep both forms at arms-length. And religion
should keep its sanctity by keeping away from the unholy politics.
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Swami Vivekananda considered religion as the core of politics. American
President, George Washington in his Farewell Address of September 17, 1796 said,
“reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in
exclusion of religious principle”. The religion and politics relationship poses no threat to
a country’s polity as long as politics does not use religion and vice versa. Unfortunately
this is not the case anywhere. This wisdom compelled the First Amendment of The
Constitution of the United States of America to lay down, “Congress shall make no law
respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof”.
Separating religion from politics and state affairs is not tantamount to going anti-
religious; it only means preventing the use of religious passions to political ends and
preventing the use of political deceptions to misuse the institutions of the religion. The
moral and spiritual face of the religion has nothing to do with the division. Indeed,
ideally, as Mahatma Gandhi said, that face should be the blood of the body of the politics;
but religion not as politics in disguise, for it terminally poisons both the body of the
politics and the blood of the religion. Both do well to limit to their own realms and
contribute to each other’s enrichment - politics wedded to the moral and spiritual views
of the religion and religion wedded to give emotional support to politics in its rightful
process.
CORE ISSUE AND THE CORE OF INDIA’S

NATIONHOOD
The achilles’ heel of the present day politics is its unwillingness to comprehend
reality in full force and devise strategies ex consequenti. It may often be an intentional
demarche en face an impossible situation to defer impending disasters or etourderie tout
court in comprehending the intricacies of the reality. In either case, the dimensions of an
issue further entoil to an issue of higher complexities. It is what happened about Kashmir
in the last fifty-five years and continues to happen now.
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IRRELEVANT ISSUES:
The reality is that neither the history nor the religion nor the constitutional
provisions nor the will of the majority constitute a right to a region to be a part of this or
that country in politics either now or at any time in the past in any part of the world.
Neither it can be now for obvious reasons. History is a matter of flux en train. No point of
time can be selected as a reference point in the continuum of the sempiternal timeframe
to decide the future of that significance. Religion never gained currency anywhere in the
world as a factor of nationhood. It is more so in the present enlightened world where
religion as a factional entity is démodé in public life. Constitutional provisions are
temporal and subject to amendments. The will of the people of a region in the vast
tapestry of the nation is just irrelevant even in a democracy as far as deciding the
nationhood is concerned as otherwise every village in a country will turn to an
independent nation and sink the human race in a maelstrom of disorganisation.
KASHMIR AND THE PAST:
India as a nation is a new concept. The concept has no root in history. Maurya,
Gupta and Moghal emperors inter alios ruled vast parts of the present India and regions
outstretching up to Central Asia and present day Iran at various times before the advent
of the British. Kashmir was part of the empires and of smaller kingdoms under Punjab
rulers at different times. Pakistan was carved out of India as a political compulsion. The
history does not support either the claim of India or of Pakistan on Kashmir or the claim
of some for the independence of Kashmir.
RELIGION IS PASSE:
India as a secular country is d’accord with the zeitgeist of the present enlightened
world with the people of all religions in symbiosis here. Seeing any issue through the
glass of religion is tout au contraire to the very spirit India stands for. Islam being the
raison d’etre of Pakistan is its own albatross and does not give it any special claim on
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regions anywhere in the world eo nomine. Further, religion being a factor of politics goes
e contrario to the extant international spirit and rationale. It is so also about Kashmir.
NATIONHOOD:
Nor Kashmir being incorporated in Indian constitution as a part of India gives

India any special claim on Kashmir for the simple reason that any constitution is the
product of the nationhood and not vice versa. India basing its claims on Kashmir on its
constitutional provisions is misleading. On the other hand, if the will of the people of a
region is given liberty in deciding the nationality, neither India nor Pakistan nor any other
country in the world survive as a nation for long. Such a will has no sanctity in a
nationhood. Ergo, it is neither the cover of the constitutional provisions nor the ruse of
the will of the people that provide the justification for the claims on Kashmir with
certitude.
NATIONAL INTERESTS:
There are myriad talks about the Maharaja of Kashmir signing the instrumentation
of annexation with India with a provision for plebiscite while invaded by the Pakistan
army a la derobee as tribals in 1947 and India under Jawaharlal Nehru referring Kashmir
dispute to the UNO and the consectaneous UNO resolution going against the interests of
India. Real polity has no place for idealism. Idealism goes idle en face national interests.
The instrumentation of annexation or plebiscite or UNO resolution has relevance in real
polity only until they serve national objectives. It is true of both India and Pakistan. They
truly are meant to serve only as tools to score points in official talks en pure perte and as
propaganda means. There is no way these factors ectogenous to the national interests
have any say in determining the future of Kashmir.
REALITY OF KASHMIR:
It is an established fact that India was not really interested about Kashmir in the
initial stages. Recorded history shows how India a travers its iron man and the then Union
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Home Minister Sardar Vallabhai Patel offered to Pakistan bartering Kashmir for
Hyderabad. India thought that Kashmir was expendable to its interests. India ignored
Kashmir altogether until the Maharaja of Kashmir signed the instrumentation of
annexation with India and Kashmir became an integral part of India. In real polity
stripped of all clichés and polished phrases, plebiscite or no plebiscite, the only reality in
the process is that Kashmir had become a part of India and the only factor acceptable to
the real polity that can reverse the process is use of force. Real polity nowhere in the
world understands any other language even in a civilised world. The process of
annexation alone made India’s claim on Kashmir absolute and res judicata. It is a fait
accompli in real polity until it is forced away from the Indian Union.
THE GLITCHES GALORE:
The cause of the failure of India in Kashmir non obstante the annexation lies in its
glitches galore en suite in the last fifty five years en face the commitment of Pakistan and
its immaculate works to the cause beyond its abilities and resources that brought it almost
on par with India as far as Kashmir and military might are concerned. India’s glitches
galore begin with the greed of its aging political leaders agreeing in hurry to divide the
country on communal basis lest they may lose the opportunity of ruling the country in
their lifetime. The ceasefire in Kashmir on the call of the UNO while the Indian army
was on a winning spree patently betrays the inexperience and lack of toughness in our
political leadership of the time and all of India’s troubles in Kashmir can be traced to this
single bevue. India’s response to Pakistan’s challenges in Kashmir throughout sinsyne
was casual and disorganised and diplomatic a fond unlike Pakistan’s concerted efforts
beyond its means covering all strategic needs required to stand up to India about
Kashmir. Even its Afghan policy was Kashmir and India-centric. Its prime intelligence
behemoth, the ISI with its committed cadres, was created basically to counter India.
India’s response to the ISI in form of the RAW with much larger resources at disposal is
yet to stand up to its counterpart in Pakistan either in efficiency, commitment or sheer
performance. Kargil intrusion of 1999 is a clear indicator of the strengths and efficiency
of the ISI. The extent of the penetration of the ISI in India is yet to be matched by the
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RAW in Pakistan. The single target of the Pakistan military build-up including nuclear
arsenal and missile technology is India. The commitment and spirit of the Pakistan army
against India is in no way amated by the fighting spirit of the Indian army. This is how
Pakistan prepared itself against India in the last fifty-five years for the cause of Kashmir.
It left nothing to chance and succeeded in breeding and feeding anti-India campaign in
the valley of Kashmir. The repeated military takeovers in Pakistan represent the passion
of the Pakistan army to stall any compromise by its political leadership with India on the
Kashmir issue. It is how Pakistan prepared itself for the cause of Kashmir.
CORE OF NATIONHOOD:
Pakistan believes that the agenda of the birth of its nationhood is incomplete
without Kashmir. Its military forces are fully en arriere of the cause. Unless Pakistan’s
military might is brought to the knees a toute force, its Kashmir adventures are unlikely
to abate. Pakistan by no stretch of imagination will settle for anything less than Kashmir
tout a fait at its control as it has become a matter of national pride to the country en face
India’s superior prowess. India in its part condescend to anything less than as of now only
at its own peril as yielding to Pakistan in anyway about Kashmir now is nothing short of
surrender in real polity. It will be nothing short of the surrender of Pakistan in
Bangladesh war. In this sense, Kashmir has become the core of India’s nationhood while
it certainly is a core issue to Pakistan.
CAUGHT IN A LOGJAM:
With the ultimate positions of both India and Pakistan being defined with
perspicacity and certitude, what latitude can there be for any rapprochement between the
two warring neighbours? All the talks of settlements and summits are mere diplomatic
platitudes meant to satisfy the inner and outer constituencies of the respective countries.
Both the countries know fully well that nothing other than the present situation is possible
except for minor adjustments along the line of control as in Siachin glacier and such
strategic points. In the circumstances, Pakistan is trying its luck by appealing to the
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religious sentiments of the Kashmiris to lure them away from India in one hand and
resorting to terrorism in Kashmir by supporting jehadi groups on the other hand in the
hope that one day Kashmir perchance may fall on its lap. It perforce will continue with
the strategy unless it is mortally brought to its knees and good senses.
The only solution to a problem of the nature of Kashmir’s in real polity is the use
of force. Pakistan knows it. India knows it. Pakistan also knows that it can never subdue
India militarily. India knows that a nuclear Pakistan is a dangerous adversary and it is
now too late to bring the country to its knees. India has to choose between tolerating its
mischief in Kashmir and inducing mortal fear of India pro rata to its size and resources a
tout prix. There is no third option open. This is the hard truth. India can’t afford the
luxury of the wishful thinking that it can fool Pakistan from its stance and bring it around
to the fact that Kashmir from the day of its annexation to India is the core of its
nationhood or economic and other compulsions ab intra or foreign pressures force
Pakistan to shy away from its commitment to the Kashmir issue. No talks and summits
can really make any difference to the issue in the circumstances. It is true until Pakistan
learns by hard way to recognise the reality that Kashmir is an Indian territory and it can
do nothing about it until the unlikely event of it outgrowing India in military might and
physically snatching Kashmir out of India. The army and fundamentalists are too pollent
a force in Pakistan to let sensible voices surface. This is the single most damaging factor
in the life of Pakistan.
INDIAN POLICE AT A CROSSROADS: WHICH

WAY TO TAKE?
Policing, being a specialised job, remains an enigma to outsiders, including

administrators and the general public. Its status, somewhere between the armed forces
and the civil administration, renders its structure, scope and style of functioning
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undefined in the monolith of governance. This coupled with the prolate powers to cover
all aspects of living, has made the police an awful force to live with.
The situation is like one-way traffic wherein the police have a say on every
aspect of the life of the people while the latter hardly know anything about the
department. This has given the police the unique advantage of dictating what should be
what, where and how in policing and the police organisation. This could be a boon if the
right man sits at the top. But, sycophants climb the ladder and reach the top to hold the
reins and guide the destiny of the police. The result is the Indian police has got what it
deserves-a spiritless culture created by incompetent leaders.
It has been nearly five decades since independence. The standard expected and
observed in the police at the dawn of independence is no more. Belatedly though, it has
been realised that self-rule does not mean fraud and tyranny and that the cabals of
compatriots are no less pernicious than that of the aliens. Forty eight years is a long
enough period to realise the need to break away from the webs of corruption in
independent India. India and the Indian police thus stand at a crossroads.
Policemen are social doctors and policing is a surgical operation to systematically

remove cancerous growths from the body of society. What if the band of doctors itself is
infested with serious malignant growths? This is the position of the present day Indian
police. The police, as the enforcers of law and protectors of public interests, wield
tremendous powers. Such powers must be invested only in people of high probity and
conscience. Otherwise, the powers will ruin the social fabric of the country and usher in
anarchy. Powers to search, seize, remove, detain, direct, arrest, hit and even kill may
prove pernicious, if trusted to wrong hands.
How these powers are exercised depends on the work ethics of the organisation.
It is those in an organisation who build up its job- culture and vice versa. Even a
degenerate character turns honest and efficient in an honest and efficient environment.
The work-culture builds and moulds the vitality to meet the general atmosphere around.
Also, an honest and efficient person in a degenerate culture is bound to change sooner or
later, unless his individual strength conquers the vitiating work-culture of the
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organisation. Building up a proper job-culture is, therefore, the bedrock of a proficient
police organisation.
The problem of the Indian police lies in a lack of understanding of the scope and
ground rules of its work. This results in the absence of a proper set of standards to
approach the call of duty. Consequently, each call of duty is approached subjectively,
depending upon the mood and understanding of the police in charge of the situation.
This, unfortunately, is accepted by all strata of people. The Indian police never
recognises the equality of all and the need to provide security to all citizens of India.
Whether it is in matters of protection, maintenance of order, crime control or
investigation, the standards of policing applied to a nameless poor farmer in a remote
village and say, a former Prime Minister, both of whom have equal rights before the law
and the Constitution, do vary.
The point is not that the principle of equality should defy ground realities, but
policing must have a reasonable set of standards within which the more important and
the less important aspects must operate. It will not be so in India until people who place
their personal interests beyond everything, including law, justice, fairness, objectivity,
righteousness, career pride and professional interests, hold the reins at the highest levels
of the department.
There are two types of approach to policing:
a. The playful approach wherein the police, as players in a football game, play
the game within the scope of the ground rules to have the ball inside the
goalpost without committing a foul. Here, the game is played dispassionately
and played because the members are paid to do so.
b. The passionate approach wherein the police break all rules and laws that come
in the way to make their task a success. They may even commit crimes in the
process.
The Indian police oscillate between these two disparate approaches, depending on
for whom they work and what would be their personal gain ultimately. Only a few
people with money and power to back policing of the passionate genre deserve the
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passionate approach. Others must remain contented with the ‘ playful approach’. A
dignified police organisation should shun both attitudes. The former is against the
tenets of professionalism and commitment to work. The latter, in spite of its
commitment to its goals, is devoid of objectivity, fairness and justice. For, policing by
criminal methods cannot be called professional policing.
The right approach to professional policing is a synthesis of both the approaches

in which the commitment to achieve goals respects the rules and laws of which the police
are guardians. Professional commitment implies achieving goals within the parameters
of the permitted methods. The professional end of the police is upholding the interests
of law and justice. Policing is not an end in itself. It is a tool to serve law and justice.
Policing by committing crimes against law and justice is committing crimes against
policing. The Indian police is yet to show maturity of professional commitment
extending equal attention to all the needy, irrespective of their stature, wealth and
position in society.
The state of human relations in Indian police does not bring credit to the
organisation. The relations are brittle and mechanical without a human touch. The
relation between different ranks are soft or hard depending upon the nature of their jobs
and mutual advantage. It is rather a donor and recipient relationship while soft, and
master and servant relationship while hard. There is no genuine human concern and no
sense fo recognition of the other man as another human being. The other’s human
qualities and talents are dismissed as inconsequential trash. This is equally true among
officers of the same rank and has led to an atmosphere of mutual suspicion in spite of an
outward show of belonging to the single family that the police is.
The police chiefs must think hard to decide whether the current model of human
relations in the police is conducive to healthy policing or not. A sound police
organisation thrives on sound human relations between and within ranks, sustained by
genuine concern, mutual respect, recognition, sympathy and understanding. Such
relations do not perforce go against police discipline and the official command-
obedience functions. Instead a sense of belonging and unity of purpose are cultivated.
The hierarchical order only defines the relations created in the minds of the people.
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Good relations strengthen the hierarchical order by making the order willingly
acceptable to all and thus facilitating its working. A subtle mental bond that links all
men in an organisation is its greatest asset. A sense of recognition from others coupled
with the pride of belonging creates a happy atmosphere in the organisation and improves
efficiency and output.
Sadly this is just the reverse in the Indian police. Here, human relations are
vitiated. Mutual suspicion and antagonism are the rule. Men in higher ranks revel in
hurting the pride of the subordinates while the latter wait for the right time to settle
scores. In this atmosphere of hostility and under-cuttings, the organisation and its
objects suffer, all its people suffer and the country suffers. This is where India stands at
present.
The success of a police organisation depends on its ability to create a sense of

pride and dignity in its members including the constabulary, so that they consider
themselves as useful and responsible members of the police outfit and endeavour to live
up to the image. The goal can be achieved by proper modulation of perks, rewards,
praise, good treatment, respect, censure or punishment has been earned by him. This is a
far cry from what is actually happening in India. Good work is seldom recognised. Every
job is done as a personal favour. Medals and citations are divested of their distinction by
being linked to seniority and not merit That is why medals carry no meaning within the
organisation.
What the Indian police inspires in the public is fear and hatred, not trust, respect
and love. This is the greatest single failing of the Indian police. A police force feared and
hated is irrelevant in a democracy. The argument that fear is a necessary constituent in
policing is not based on the right understanding of human psychology. The police does
stand on a different footing from the general public but that status is based on trust,
respect, love and a healthy awe, not, fear and hatred. It is healthy awe that inspires in
citizens genuine cooperation and willing subjection to police authority.
Police is not synonymous with fear. A smiling and helpful police force is a
salient feature of democracy. The police is not the enemy of the people, especially in
democracy. Policing involves enforcement of order for the good of many which may
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sometimes mean inconvenience to a few. The job, if performed right, must win the trust,
love and respect of the masses. The misuse of power and a supercilious approach will
alienate the common man and earn his hatred. The exercise of police powers with
absolute humility is quite possible. An approach of service to the general public renders
the exercise a sensible and delicate task and avoids harshness. It is up to the police to
show its good intentions and convince the public about its trustworthiness. Nothing the
Indian police does now will help to create this image. It is time serious efforts were
made in this direction.
The situation can be salvaged by clearing the cobwebs. There is a bunch of self-
motivated officers in key positions in the police who have contributed to the downslide of
the Indian police in the post-democratic era. They have corrupted the police atmosphere,
set wrong precedents, encouraged self-indulgence eroded its tough image and reduced
it to its present cadaverous existence. These elements should be sidelined to make way
for men of probity to refurbish and rebuild the setup.
The future of India depends upon the strengths and weaknesses of its police.
Defence forces are relevant to the existence of India in so much as defending its borders
and protecting its system of government. But the relevance of the police is more
meaningful, for, here, the very existence of India as a nation is at stake. The significance
of the police is often forgotten somewhere between the width of civil administration and
the depth of the defence forces.
The police must be powerful. It must be a disciplined and committed force. It

saves the country from all disasters; it supports the administration in civil rule and works
as its watch dog. It works as a subsidiary force in support of the military during war. If
need be, it can run the administration when civil rule breaks down and can function as an
armed force if the military fails. The importance of this great tool of governance is yet
to be recognised. It is time Indian police is given a fresh lease of life of vitality and
strength. Yes, something should be done to save the police. The question is, who should
begin the process, and where, when and how? Who will bell the cat to bring it to its
senses?
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INDIAN POLICE : TIME TO TAKE TOUGH
DECISIONS
It is India”s good fortune that its fabric of law and order has withstood the
effects of growing complexity of the Indian society for so fragile is its policing. The
fact that the police systems in a few neighbouring countries of Asia and Africa are worse
cannot be a solace as the political, social and economical structures of those countries
have different backgrounds and value systems from ours. India is a crucible wherein the
dynamics and relevance of democracy in the third world are being experimented with.
The Indian police system must necessarily meet the aspirations of democracy in fulfilling
its objective of maintaining internal order and security. This dimension has added to the
problems of policing in India. The Indian polity confronts its police with ever greater
challenges while giving it an increasingly limited wherewithal to face them.
. A minor shift in the style of policing in the country can make a life-and-death
difference to myriad people. A wrong turn and the police could inadvertently tear the
fabric of the national life to shreds and ruin the country. A right step and an era of
perfect security, order and peace may be created. Only an objective analysis of the needs
of the time and assessment of the situation would give the insight necessary to make the
right choice for police about the course to be pursued. Such an analysis must be carried
out by highly competent persons at the highest level who can see things dispassionately
and take decisions. They must be people who have an overall view of things and are
capable of seeing them against the wider background of national interest. It is a
responsible job, requiring through knowledge of the nuances of police and policing. The
people who do it must be capable of taking hard decisions which may often go against
their own interests and may have far-reaching consequences. The Indian police must
give serious thought to what it wants to be in the future and may have to take some
tough decisions.
There is an impression that the Indian police is not what it was before
Independence. The pride, toughness and commitment to duty are no more visible. On
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the contrary, the Indian police has become soft humble and easy going. Pressure from all
directions has deprived it of its vitality. The police has become a widely abused
organisation by the virtue of its submission on the wishes of its masters under false
notions of discipline. It is the popular scapegoat for anything and everything that goes
wrong in the public life. In the circumstances, a sense of insecurity has developed
among the police men.
A natural outcome of this development is taking things easy, with the eyes and
ears shut, unless career interests warrant otherwise Commitment to policing is sacrificed
in the process. These developments have reduced the police to the level of a toy that
moves only when the spring inside unwinds. New entrants who begin eagerly soon after
the training period, begin to realise the realities.
A serious malady affecting the tough and nonsense image of the police is the
interference of people of some standing in society at all levels. An organisation, looking
for a serious image, cannot afford this intrusion. Policing must be insulated from public
pressures except at the top to which all policing affairs must be accountable. People
handling policing should be responsible only to law and their superiors in the department
and to none else. The regulation of policies in all details must be controlled and guided
by the top. On the other hand, the line authority of the organisation must be all powerful
to guide and regulate policing and police administration.
A police organisation, open to public pressures can do no policing worth the

name. The very idea of being receptive to pressures and interference indicates a lack of
will for objectivity and justice. It is criminal elements which cultivate sources that have
put the policing on the wrong rails. Pressure often forces of the police to commit crimes
under the veil of authority, either by protecting criminals or more dangerously, by
replacing them with innocent people as criminals. The possibility of the police being
open to the influence of the rich and powerful, deprives it of its credibility. A police
force that works at the behest of the rich and powerful can guard their interests only.
Does democratic India need such a police force that allows tyranny of the poor and the
helpless by the rich and powerful? The country has tolerated such a police in the last
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four decades. The people, however, must now act the demand a police that lives up to the
trust placed in it.
The lack of professional objectivity is the bane of the police in independent India.
The problem was simple in British India where the ruler and the ruled were distinctly
identified and the loyalty of the police was defined. Now, the police should do their
duty by the public and law. Misplaced loyalty with an individual, a family, a party or
an ideology amounts to violation of professional ethics. The police, in a democracy is
the guardian of public interests and public safety unlike in the raj where the police
protected the interests of the raj. This distinction is forgotten in independent India where
mental fetters are yet to be broken and legacies of the British rule continue inveterated.
How can a police that stays loyal to personal, familial or party interests ever
discharge its functions objectively to law and general public? What can its locus standi be
when a different person or party comes to power? A pliable police force is an asset to any
individual or party and no sensible individual or party distances it in the name of
professional ethics. It is the duty of the police not to breach the edifice of the
organisation and its spirit.
A byproduct of this degenerate trend is the rise of opportunists and sycophants to

key posts and the fall of honest persons of great calibre. The trend creates a catena of
reactions that slowly eats up the vitality of the police organisation and reduces it to a foul
bunch of bloodhounds of the rich and powerful few. The shoddy creatures sitting court
above men of probity is a dangerous situations. This reverse order of merit is sure to
bring frustration and the collapse of the organisation someday.
The British were the forefathers of the unified Indian Police. It was a force that
met the needs of the time. In an age of rapid changes, the opening up of new vistas and
dimensions to life through inventions and discoveries in science and technology, nothing
remains constant. The scope, design and objects of the Indian police underwent a
metamorphosis with the transfer of government to native hands. The process spawned a
phenomenon in which undemanding aspects of both the worlds survived to create a new
police culture. The distinguishing traits of the Indian police of the British period such as
objectivity, apoliticism, commitment, discipline, quality and high standards were
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discarded. Traditional Indian values such as a simplicity, charity, wisdom, mutual,
respect, and human qualities were given up too. The convenient factors of the old and
new worlds were chosen to create a new police culture while demands on policing were
at the crucial stage in the recent years of independence.
The Indian police officers overnight rose to high positions made vacant by the
resignations of their senior British officers. The need for creating a new work –
relationship with native political leaders was an opportunity to usher in a new police
culture in free India. Soon the police became a tool in the hands of the power-brokers of
free India. How can the police be objective, honest, apolitical, committed and disciplined
in such circumstances and how can it uphold the rule of law and justice in line with its
professional ethics in such a situation?
A job culture involves basic beliefs and principles of the organisation,

professional ethics and degree of commitment to the aspirations of the organisation. To
what extent precedence and practice mould the job culture decides the success or
otherwise of the organisation. It is important that only the right people reach the top. A
headless organisation is better than one headed by a degenerate weakling. This is why
the policy of selection and promotion at high levels plays a vital role in the growth of the
organisation. In a democratic age of self-seeking short-term political leadership, where
sycophancy is the sole criterion for ascending the career ladder, the policy of recruitment
and promotion is far from direct. All those committed to the cause of police and
effective policing must break the trend and endeavour to provide a fresh lease of life for
effective policing.
A serious subculture of the Indian police in Indian hands is committing crimes to

prevent and detect crimes and breaking laws to catch law-breakers indeed in the name of
showing results. The misplaced stress on results without a concern for organisational
and national goals of law and justice only reflects a shallow intellectual commitment to
duty on the part of the top brass and the lack of desire to probe the root of the problem.
Now, on to third-degree methods in crime detection. Even senior officers tacitly

supporting the third-degree methods applied on suspects who may turn out to be innocent
at the end, is not uncommon.
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Crimes are crimes whether they are committed by the police or by the public.
What right has the police to inflict suffering on others, merely on suspicion? After all, it
is not the agency to pass judgement on crimes. None placed the police beyond the scope
of the Indian Penal code. What justification can the police have to commit crimes to
collect evidences of other crimes? The sadistic and criminal tendencies of the police are
not more justifiable than those of the general public.
Discipline is inseparable from police. It governs all parameters of the foce and
makes its hierarchical order meaningful and purposeful, the command-obedience
relationship, sharp-edged and functional conduct, meticulous. But these days, it is used
as a cover by the people in higher ranks to indulge in wrongdoing and to silence the
conscientious few in the lower ranks. It is also a cover to promote the interests of juniors
who support their evil deeds by sycophancy and personal loyalty; and to suppress those
juniors who are strong, proud, independent and ask questions.
A subtle hatred for superior qualities of the subordinates in inherent in the Indian
police force of today. Another act carried out behind the façade of discipline is an
officer forcing a subordinate to achieve personal ends. Here, the police ranks display
exceptional unity in helping a colleague to suppress the subordinate who shows the
tendency to go against his senior’s orders. Youngsters in the organisation who drop out
weaken the organisation. There are any number of examples of fearless officers who
have acted upon their conscience at the cost of promotions and elevations.
The Indian police finds itself in a blind-spot today, at a crossroads from where it
should build bridges to the future. It must shed its mental fetters, rise to its feet and learn
to be natural. A slip at this stage would be a tragedy while a right move would be a major
turning point.
It is indeed a crucial juncture for the Indian police.
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NEED TO LIBERATE LAW ENFORCERS FROM
UNHOLY ALLIANCES
Crime, politics and the police are the three sides of the vicious triangle within
which the future of democratic Indian and its free people are trapped. Although wealthy
industrial and commercial houses form a fourth dimension, their techniques are as yet
limited to manipulative strategies to gain a strangle hold over political power by remote
control. It is their wealth that fills the coffers of the troika and helps reduce the normal
life of free citizens to a welter of uncertainties and endless misery.
Politicians protect criminals from the law while criminals reciprocate by acting as
their henchmen. Policemen go to politicians for job protection and strike an
understanding with the criminals to make money. Thus works this nexus of vile power-
brokers, preying on innocent people, bloating itself on the blood of the hapless masses.
The trio of manipulators is a dangerous force in the Indian democratic situation.
Combined as a tight-knit power-block, they have touched all the facets of public life with
the sole intention of garnering all the benefits. The tragedy here is that the vice is
perpetrated by those whom the public trust as their benefactors and protectors. The
amoral side of this operation does not seem to have affected either the police or the
politicians in any way and the abuse against the Indian public goes on unabated. It
seems that all actors in this tragic drama think that Indian democracy is a free-for-all
field to grab to the maximum in a world where all look for themselves and only those
who grab the most survive. This approach is certain to undermine not only the
democratic setup of the nation, but its very social fabric.
When the maintenance of law and order is in the hands of unscrupulous police,
queer things may take place. Long ago, a dacoity was reported in the house of a person
of dubious reputation in a particular district . People who knew the background said the
act was committed by his illegitimate son after a serious quarrel. Court cases were
pending against the son. A case was registered with the local police. The complainant
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however thought it was best to patch up with the suspect in order to protect his family
honour. This was done and the case was pursued with an ex-convict being picked up and
shown as the accused. Arrest,” recovery” and chargesheet followed a decade after the
dacoity. Such developments make criminal administration a mockery. What a serious
breach of public trust it was and what a serious crime was committed by the police who
involved a person whom they knew did not commit the offence!
In another incident that dates back to 1981, a police official in charge of a

subdivision in Karnataka picked up a poor goldsmith from a small town for
interrogation about receiving stolen properties. He subjected him to torture in a tourist
bungalow of the same town for two nights to make the innocent goldsmith confess to
something he had not done.
The goldsmith died on the second night of torture. The official who has worked
as Circle Inspector in the town until a few months before, had indulged in this activity
without the knowledge of the senior police officers of the town. The news of the lockup
death, as such deaths are popularly known, was published in local and other newspapers.
The wife of the goldsmith filed a complaint before the local court. The District
Superintendent of Police and the Range Deputy Inspector General of Police, who had
benefited from the flexible ways of the official when he was the Circle Inspector, rose to
the occasion to save their protégé. They visited the town and entrusted the investigation
to a Deputy Superintendent of Police of neighbouring subdivision with oral orders to
certify the case as not proved. The Deputy Superintendent complied and sent his repot
to the court and that was the end of the case. A police official who with the support of
his community, got posted as the police chief of a State in 1986, wanted to favour a
fingerprint sub-Inspector, who has been under suspension for long after being arrested
in a criminal case of community interests. He summoned the Superintendent of Police in
charge of the case and examined the file about the suspension. The Superintendent of
Police failed to understand that the action was an indication that he was to end the Sub-
Inspector’s punishment. Even of he had understood, he could not have acted for, the
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Sub-Inspector had been suspended by an officer of the rank of the Deputy Inspector
General of Police, Moreover the case was pending trial in a court. After a fortnight, the
police chief secured the Sub-Inspector’s release, but nurtured a grudge against the young
Superintendent. He manipulated the records and made sure that the latter was not
selected for the Indian Police Service. The career of a bright officer suffered a severe
setback. Such cases of avenging non-cooperation are common these days. The trend is
adversely affecting the organisation by weakening its cause for fairness, law and justice.
How subordinates are brought around is another story. A young sub divisional
police officer in a small town known for its speculative business activities conducted a
raid on a library, run by a powerful local community. It was actually a gambling house
patronised by prominent people of the town. The officer rounded up more than 50
prominent people including rich businessmen, senior government officials and local
politicians, with huge stake monies. Though the library had been a gambling den for
years, none had dared to raid it in spite of repeated public petitions.
As the law requires that the place must first be proved to be a common gambling
house, the officer recorded in the station house diary the names of all those who were
gambling at the place and let them of with a written warning that cases would be booked
if they continued to gamble there. The officer learnt too late that the gambling den was
patronised by the Superintendent of Police of the district and the Deputy Inspector
General of the range and the men were their friends. He was transferred to a remote
place, with the annual confidential report stating that the public might revolt against the
officer if he continued . The library continues to be a gambling den. The DIG at the place
of the new posting of the officer wanted him to marry a girl from his circle. His parents
however, got him married to a girl of their choice. This antagonised the DIG who, in his
next annual confidential report, showed his junior as a liability to the police department.
Also he prevailed upon other officers who wrote confidential reports to give adverse
remarks. Most of them obliged and the appeals of the junior officer were never allowed
to reach the government.
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It is to his credit that the officer did not break down and continues in service while
his far less competent colleagues have overtaken him on the career ladder. Denied
selection to the all-India service, he later appealed to the Chief Secretary not to consider
him any more for the service. He took this drastic step in utter contempt for the corrupt
department heads who sat above him and decided his career advances.
Is it by design or accident that independent India has raised a criminal outfit to

catch criminals? It is in the interest of the police to accept the reality so that remedy could
be thought of.
Unhealthy practices of myriad variety are found at the highest levels. A recent
instance is that of a police chief who, along with his wife, was taken to court on the eve
of his retirement to face trial for defrauding the public and a spastic society in whose
name he sold(charity) entertainment tickets. It is a different story that the officer
managed to silence the social worker who brought up the charges and made sure the case
fell through for lack of evidence. To what sad levels could men in high ranks stoop to
make a few dirty bucks!
The Indian Police Service continues to be an intellectually poor unattractive realm

with only the mediocre opting for it. The constabulary which forms the bulk of the
service is largely constituted by people from the lower strata of society who are diffident
and hence do not exercise their powers against the more enlightened people. The
tendency to foul-up superior intellect and excellence is another factor that has adversely
affected the police setup. The general reluctance to adopt modern techniques of
policing and management, the dogmatic approach to man-to-man and public relations
and the lack of understanding of human nature are other factors responsible for the
unfortunate state of affairs. These problems can be overcome only by efficient police
leadership at all levels and only if a semblance of objectivity reasonableness and good
judgement touches the core of the police administration.
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At present, growth is not much more than a spasmodic reaction to stimuli and
lacks the benefit of an integrated approach. A permanent cell of organisation experts
under the direct control of the police chief to redefine the police organisation is required
to make it more meaningful and need-based. This could help in streamlining the
hierarchy by eliminating redundant posts, rationalising workloads, preventing
duplication and redefining duties and procedures and thus the rights and responsibilities
at each level. Result: police functioning would be made more cost-effective and
efficient.
The annual assessment of men and officers in the police has become a travesty of
what it used to be or meant to be. In no way, under the present circumstances, does an
ACR reflect an officer’s qualities or capabilities. It is believed that the department
would be far better off without this pernicious evaluation process that breeds corruption
and bias. What characterises the ACR today is a distinct lack of objectivity; it has
become a means to personal ends, a medium for the advancement of individual interests
and even settlement of personal scores. Servility is its inevitable consequence and it
would not be immoderate to say that eliminating the ACR altogether would be certainly a
step forward. If policing is to be effective in the years ahead, specialisation is crucial. I
suggest three distinct police services with separate recruitment and training: (1)
Regulatory police or uniformed police in charge of law and order and other regulatory
duties; (2) Mainstay police in charge of crime investigation and prevention and security
and intelligence operation; (3) Social police in charge of prevention and investigation of
all social offences and implementation of social legislation. All three wings should have
their own individual organisations up to the district level with independent
Superintendents and staff as required, functioning in tandem in much the same way as the
Army, Navy and Air Force. At the apex could be a specially constituted body called the
State Police Authority with the chiefs of all three wings as members and the Chief
Secretary as chairman.
All the present maladies emanate from the politicians who are only concerned
with winning the next elections. Until the organisation is extricated from the grip of
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politicians, it cannot hope to rise above the mediocre level, either in proficiency or in
character. Such mediocrity is wont to percolate downwards in a democratic setup.
An All India Police Authority accountable only to th President of India at the

national level with the regional Police Boards in States as independent bodies should be
created. The Authority must be headed by a Supreme Court judge with the Union Home
Secretary and the Cabinet Secretary as members and the senior most police officer of the
country as the member-secretary. The regional Police Boards must have a High Court
Judge at the helm with the Home secretary and the Chief Secretary as members and the
State Police chief as member-secretary. The arrangement will bring to an end
interference of any kind in police affairs, thus enabling the personnel to function in an
independent atmosphere.
ROLE OF POLICE IN THE RECONSTRUCTION OF

INDIA
The police is the watchdog in a democracy. It forms the axle that keeps the vital
engine of the administration running. It is modelled on the British system except for a
few changes made in response to the situation regarding crime, security and law and
order. That is not to say that the Indian police is alien to the Indian situation. The utility
of the Indian police to India depends on the direction and degree to which they have
taken to this process of adaptation and also how successfully and efficiently.
The responsibility of the police as an organisation is three fold in enforcing the

rule of law; assisting the judiciary in the dispensation of justice and keeping an eye on
the internal security of the country. The three responsibilities do widely vary in their
scope and functional requirements. The police may sometimes be called upon to break
laws, though surreptitiously, in order to protect the security of the country. Or, while
they function only as a fact finding machine to help the judiciary enforce the rule of law,
they may be asked to enforce laws as enforcers of law and order.In spite of these
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variations, what gives the police a holistic dimension is their importance as the spine of
the rule of law. They are the watchdog of the administration. The police are one of the
most important levers required in running the machinery of statecraft. That explains the
impatient race among rulers to control this vital lever.
ASPECTS FORGOTTON
The very nature of the functions of the police demands that it be insulated from
the vagaries of the short-time rules of a democratic setup. Their responsibilities as
enforcers of law warrant their allegiance exclusively to the rules and laws of the country;
they are beholden to the judiciary as the investigating authority while their part as
watchdogs of the country’s internal security raises them above political and leadership
bickerings. Often, these aspects of the police are happily forgotten in India.
The reasons lie in the rulers as well as in the police. In the rulers because it is
natural for anyone to take advantage of the tools that make themselves available for
use and it is rather naïve to expect the rulers to ignore it while the police willingly offer
themselves to be at their disposal. The rulers of democratic India do use the police for
their personal and party ends to the extent that the nearly half a century after
Independence has obfuscated the distinction between national interests and personal
interests of the rulers in the use of policemen.
RESPONSIBILITIES IGNORED
The reasons lie in police because the police of democratic India chose to brush
aside their professional and national responsibilities and instead preferred to be the
handmaid of those in power . Two factors helped the process. One was the wrong type of
people at the helm of the organisation as models. Another was the lack of understanding
of the concepts of obedience and discipline. The nonprofessional approach of the police
leadership percolated down and sadly was accepted as the general rule by the rank and
file.
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The entire force has forgotten that its primary obedience is to the laws of the
country and that the rulers and mere representatives of the laws. The police have
forgotten the cardinal principle that their profession dictates them to do their duty even if
it may be against the rulers if the law finds the latter doing wrong. Serious professional
lapses have not only weakened the Indian police, but damaged the political system,
social values and the credibility of the democratic process. Ignorance and indifference on
the part of the public in general, and the intellectual class in the police system, have
ended up with the police acquiring a free hand to function without restraint and
guidance.
The country, indeed has a sturdy police framework in terms of organisational

strength and budgetary provisions. Only, the fabric is in poor shape. That money is
liberally made available to the police indicates political patronage. In other words, the
rulers have recognised the important role played by the police in running the
administration. This leads to a close link between politicians and the police. This is
where crime enters the picture. The link is too deeprooted to be easily severed.
The police have two weak areas- the nonprofessional approach and arbitrary
management. Both are interlined and contribute to each other’s existence. The
nonprofessional approach has eroded professional commitment and encouraged
corruption. Professional pride has been pushed into oblivion. Personal interests have
gained precedence over organisational interests. The breaches have helped opportunists
to intervene and dictate terms to the police. Matters beyond the realm of the police
have gained in importance at the cost of the organisation’s credibility.
The system has undergone a lopsided growth with random spurts of control and
workload, unfair selection and recruitment procedures, neglected training, inaccuracies
in the assessment of work and people, irregular promotions and transfers, unplanned
modernisation programmes and funny service rules. Efficient management has been
relegated to the background with the whole set up inclined towards a rigid hierarchical
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order. This trend has told upon the professional qualities of the police causing decline in
its organisational efficiency.
BRITISH CHARACTERISTICS
India, on the threshold of independence, saw both the positive and negative sides
of the British administration. Among the positive attributes was the creation of a sound
police system. Other aspects were a sound professional approach, objectivity and
toughness in police work, a feeling of pride among the policemen, a sense of
commitment and fair play in discharging the work in hand, high morale and respect for a
healthy value system.
The most glaring among the negative qualities are its disinclination to democratic
values, failure to identify with the Indian ethos and failure to appreciate the common
man’s aspirations and predicament. An independent India has added to the negative
aspects. One of them is corruption. Also, the passage of time has set in motion a process
of continuous reconstruction.
The police of the British rule has as its prime objective the interests and upkeep
of the British Raj in India. In democratic India, in the absence of capable leadership, the
system has failed to reset its priorities and formulate its objective. It seems to have
failed to comprehend where its loyalty should lie. The fall of the British Raj, may be, left
a void and they found refuge in the political leadership. On the one hand, the policemen
were unable to think clearly, and on the other, some officers in higher ranks wanted to be
close to and in the good books of key political figures to promote their interests. As a
result, the system gradually lost touch with its professional objective of being loyal to the
Indian Constitution, an objective of establishing the rule of the law in the country Power
went into the hands of dishonest and criminal elements.
EMERGENCY TREND
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The police acted as the handmaid of the political leadership during the
Emergency in 1976, save for a few dignified people. Both the Central Bureau of
Investigation and the Intelligence Bureau were extensively used for political ends. Then
emerged the custom of providing protection mostly to political leaders and other well-
connected personages as the expense of the public. The trend of the police being
committed to political leadership has continued.
It is an irony that the political leadership which is supposed to take the lead in
the reconstruction of India is colluding with the police, which is supposed to be the tool
of the reconstruction, and is striking at the foundation of the strength of the country.
Every year sees a new phase and a new trend in this nasty collusion among the important
players of national reconstruction taking the country nearer to the brink of lawlessness
During the bandh in Bangalore (1991) in connection with the Cauvery water
dispute, the police were mute spectators as the agitators indulged in vandalism and
violence. In some places, the officers were forced to open fire in self-defense and all
hell broke loose. Dealt with in a professional way, the situation could have been
brought under control and the death of several people and destruction of property could
have been avoided, Indeed, a commission of Inquiry under Justice N.D.Venkatesh
indicted the Police Commissioner for his lapses. However, the officer’s political masters
rose to the occasion and soon he superseded a more efficient and down-to-earth senior.
It is a different story that the State administration changed hands within a few months
and the new Chief Minister restored order by putting people in their places. But the fact
remains that the findings of the Justice. N.D.Venkatesh Commission of Inquiry never
saw the light of day.
SERVING POLITICAL MASTERS
The political leaders are wary about the law and the judicial system; and they
have to be cautious on their dependence on illegal political funds. They need the help of
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the police and it is not the other way round. There are many police officers who
understand this dynamics and play their cards shrewdly. A police officer in a southern
State played it so well that in spite of his publicly proclaimed moderate efficiency, he
not an occupied the coveted position of the Police Commissioner of an important city
as Inspector General of Police (by removing the holder of the position within six
months of the latter coming there), but also managed to be there for many years by
getting the post upgraded as and when he was promoted as Additional Director General
of Police and later as Director General of Police at the cost of all other aspirants. On his
retirement from service, the political masters obliged him by constituting a one-man
committee for him, supposedly to examine and advice on the reorganisation of the
police setup fo the State, but actually to provide him creature comforts at Governmetn
expense.
A case of cheating, forgery, falsification of records and misappropriation of over

Rs.35 lakhs by the officials of the Karnataka Home Guards department was unearthed in
1994 and a criminal case was registered in the jurisdictional police station in December
the same year. As the amount involved was huge, a process was set in motion to refer
the case to the Corps of Detectives for investigation. The then State police chief came
to know that one of the accused was his confidant when he was the Commandant-
General of the Home Guards the previous year. Suddenly, all activities regarding the
criminal case were frozen for the next six months till the police chief retired. Only in
July 1995, the case was taken up and handed over to the Corps of Detectives.
In the absence of concern on the part of the political and executive wings of the
administration in straightening out things, the judiciary is doing exemplary work by
taking action to counter the criminal elements. The attitude of the Supreme Court to the
Jain hawala case is a case in point. The awarding of jail sentence to senior bureaucrats
and police officers of Haryna, Karnataka Andhra Pradesh and other states in 1995 for
contempt of court and creation of false evidences, and issue of nonbailable warrants and
refusal of bail to a couple of former Union Ministers this year for allegedly sheltering
mafia dons and engineering anti-Sikh riots in New Delhi are other instances.
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The scene is not as bleak as it seems to be. The wheel of change is slowly
turning. The interest taken by the Supreme Court in the nexus between the politicians,
the bureaucrats and the criminals and the Vohra Committee report on the criminalisation
of politics are found to have their effects.
POLICE UNPROFESSIONAL
Policemen are executives of law and executors of the rule of law. As
professionals, their only interests are the laws of the country and its enforcement at all
costs including personal safety and self-interests. This, however, is only an ideal
situation. The job culture and peer pressure play a major role in setting the standards in
an organisation. This situation is not quite happy regarding the Indian police now. The
reason is the general collapse of the professional instinct, caused by the degeneration of
values. Society gets the police it deserves. A country of self-seekers naturally has a self-
seeking police force and the consequence is lawlessness. This is the malady India
suffers from. The symptoms are crime, disorder and insecurity that have kept the country
and its people in a stranglehold.
An incident that took place 16 years ago in Chitradurga district of Karnataka will
illustrate the kind of professional commitment Indian police pursue. A gambling den
was raided by the police and the owner spoke lowly of the DIGP whom he said was
taking “ mamools” from him every month. The matter was reported by a local
newspaper. This infuriated the DIG and the police turned its ire on the newspaper. The
Deputy Superintendent of Police of the sub-division in which the range headquarters was
situated joined the fight and a gang ransacked the office and the press of the news paper
a week later. Though a case was registered with the local police station and the owner of
the newspaper moved heaven and earth to bring the culprits to book, nothing came out of
it and the case went undetected. But the people knew who were behind it all.
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Such episodes shatter the trust of the public who cannot look upon the police as
the guardian of their rights and interests. Basically, lapses lie more in the concepts than
in individuals. The police as a collective force operated to wreak vengeance on the
newspaper for factual reporting, though somewhat indiscreet. But going on a rampage,
however highly placed the officer in question could be, in nothing but, making a
mockery of professional objectives. The most disturbing aspect of the present Indian
police is the slow and steady process of replacement of the passion for law, justice and
fairness by a single-pointed indulgence of self-seeking tendencies as the drive of the
police system. Much more disquieting is the attitude of the public about the
development and their complete dependence on the police as the protector of their legal
rights, provider of security ad dispenser of justice. What is actually happening is a great
betrayal. Indeed, the tool, namely the police, is there to enforce law and provide
security. But it has become the handmaid of the rich and influential and serves the
interests of the people in that stratum of the population.
Self-seeking tendencies express themselves at all levels of policing and

management of organisational matters. As far as policing is concerned, be it crime-
prevention or investigation, collection of intelligence or management of internal security
or maintaining law and order, self-interest has role to play. It’s expression in crime
management is too obvious a matter.
While intelligence collection is becoming a politically oriented function, internal

security operations are no more than providing cover to political bigwigs and other
influential people at the cost of more pressing problems of national magnitude.]
Law and order has become a tool in the hands of the politicians and the policemen
make themselves available for such games. In the process, honest policemen suffer and
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the morale of the system receives a serious setback. The result is lawlessness spawned
by the absence of effective policing and wrong models as the protectors of law.
The parochial instinct of the police expresses itself in the management and
organisational matters. Under the cover of discipline and the need of tacit obedience, the
game of favouritism is wilfully played on the one hand and any resistance is ruthlessly
crushed on the other. Organisational processes such as promotions and transfers are
widely used to achieve personal ends. Posts with no job content are created in various
ranks primarily to accommodate officers who refuse to fall in line with the higherups for
reasons of conscience and professional integrity. It an upright officer takes a sinecure
posting in his stride and refuses to part with his principles, he is harassed through other
means. Recently the commandant of a training college pressed his higherups and the
state Home Secretary for the removal of a functionary of the college from his important
postion. The latter was accused of involvement in a fraudulent act involving several
lakhs of rupees. The Home Secretary and the chief of the unit ( in the rank of DGP)
made sure that the commandant of the college faced the consequences for recommending
action on their favourite official. His vehicle was withdrawn, telephones were
disconnected, his personal staff was harassed and his subordinates were encouraged to
disobey. This continued until the officer who found functioning impossible went on
leave. He reported back to duty only after he was transferred out. More surprising is that
such incidents take place in the open without any attempt to keep it secret or discreet.
Professional pride is the panacea for the malady of self-interest in professionals.

Greating an ambience of professional pride is a sure way of nurturing and promoting high
professional standards and efficiency. It is immaterial whether high professional pride
creates high standards. The fact is both are important to create a conducive environment
of professionalism.
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India definitely needs such a professional environment in its police force to
strengthen its democratic traditions and the roots of the rule of law. An organised effort
is on in the Indian police to force its members to fall in line at the cost of individual
brilliance and creative abilities. The policemen are starved of innovative steps. The
organisation follows the principle of nipping talent in the bud insisting on
unquestioning servitude. The talk of the top brass on public platforms about the need to
nurture excellence and the outstanding qualities is a farce. Most leaders prefer status quo
at the peril of the growth of the organisation so that their interests remain undisturbed.
For administering the medication, first, topmost police leaders of the country need
to be convinced that the police of present India are really ailing with serious problems
and the system really needs treatment.
WHAT AILS PROFESSIONAL POLICING IN INDIA
Discipline, in the case of the police force, is both an advantage and a

disadvantage. It is an advantage because, if discreetly employed, it can prevent undue
interaction of the police with unwanted elements. It is a disadvantage because the
police, with its trained response, may find it difficult to isolate itself from the behests of
its political masters.
The first and foremost job in this background is to free the police from the
unhealthy influence of politicians of all hues by making it accountable to an independent
authority with absolute power to take decisions. The authority should be a professional
body with men of proven calibre and quality who have reached a stage where they need
not sacrifice their convictions to appease those in power. It shall be directly responsible
to the legislature and function as an independent authority like the judiciary, the
Comptroller and Auditor General or the Election Commission.
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The recruitment procedure should be overhauled to ensure that really the best
from the job-seekers are roped in. Any interference in matters of recruitment should be
promptly and decisively resisted. Only highly qualified officers of proven probity
should be entrusted with the task, the ugly head of bribery ruthlessly crushed and the
unhealthy trend of making recruitment a business checked. The infusion of good blood
even at this late hour is certain to repair the damage.
The jobs should be made attractive with good salaries and satisfactory working
conditions that will give the resolve to resist the bait thrown by the criminals. Social
scientists say that bribery is inversely proportional to the financial strength of a social
group. Therefore, better salaries and congenial working conditions will definitely make
the police less sensitive to these lures. It has to be ensured that the right man comes to
the right job and that honesty is rewarded. An unbiased assessment of the work and
character of the personnel will take the organisation in the right direction.
Those who are empowered to assess subordinates and their work must be made
answerable to prevent misuse of this responsibility. The creation of a high-power core
group of people adept at assessing men and character may help to create a feeling of
confidence and security and inspire the police personnel to discharge their duties
fearlessly. This group should be made ultimately responsible for all career decisions, for
the development of the police, work assessment, job analysis, recruitment and
management of human resources.
It is unfortunate that there is no relation between an officer’s efficiency and

performance and his standing in the organisation. The officers are so indifferent to the
performance of their subordinates that they are absolutely in the dark about the standard
of work turned out under their supervision. Another reason for this sad affair may be that
they are not qualified to assess. This situation leads to random assessment and, in the
process, talents wither and opportunities overtake high-calibre workers on the
hierarchical ladder. This can be rectified by arranging motivation courses for police
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officers who must be taught about the work they are required to perform, its importance
and how to discharge their duties. Policemen generally distance themselves from all
mental activities. Training must endeavour to break this trait and coax candidates to
open up their minds and reflect on all matters before making decisions. In this context, it
must be mentioned that often the habit of reading becomes a casualty once a person
enters the service.
This negative approach to reading and thinking has resulted in poor professional
knowledge, particularly at the higher ranks. Work knowledge is generally limited to
what is remembered from experience and bits of what has been learnt from books during
training decades earlier. The style of supervision in the police should be seen to be
believed. All order to subordinates emanate from a perfect void. The best that is done is
to hold a meeting of subordinates wherein the latter are allowed to arrive at a course of
action to meet a situation and the decision is returned to them as an order to perform.
The style of ineffective supervision must stop if the aim is to achieve quality. The
system of overlapping supervision because of multiple ranks, where none really
discharges his role must be scrapped. A thorough overhauling of training and the
application of modern techniques would go a long way in mending the situation.
The organisation has become top-heavy. In States where there were only two
officers of the rank of Inspector General for say 40,000 men and officers about ten years
ago, there are now nearly 20 officers of and above that rank for say, a force of 50,000.
What are these people at the top policing apart from being a drain on the state revenue
and a nuisance to officers down the ladder by issuing conflicting instructions?
Promotion to a higher rank serves no purpose unless it means a more challenging

job and a suitable man is, therefore, selected to meet the challenges. But this is not the
case. Posts are created to satisfy vested interests. Most of these jobs often serve as
places to forget the pressures of family life. However, the same luxury does not extend to
the more unfortunate ranks at the lower levels, including the constabulary. While
vacancies at the topmost level are filled up by promotions effected overnight, promotions
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at the intermediary levels take weeks and even months, depending on the rank. It is
years in the case of the constabulary. There are cases where vacancies of head
constables and assistant sub-inspectors or sub-inspectors are not filled up for several
years. Many have retired without a promotion. Policing is a job performed mostly at the
lower levels with involvement stopping at the level of the Superintendent. Beyond that, it
is a supervisory task and in a police force with no supervision to speak of, higher ranks
are simply redundant. Any move to expand these ranks cannot be called an honest effort
to serve the public. But that is what is happening.
The process of recruitment is even worse. Selection has become a misnomer. It

is random at best and high business at its worst. This approach may leave governance
and public life in jeopardy. Policing is a highly sensitive profession and requires only
specially equipped people to handle it. It demands certain specific traits in officers which
cannot be learnt by any amount of training. The most evident symbol of authority and
power people trust is the policemen. In the circumstances, the wrong selection can be
fatal for the nation. India is deeply caught in a mire. There is a price fixed for each rank
of the police. How can a recruit who enters service by paying a bribe be expected not to
reap returns? What can be his picture of the service that the enters? It is absurd to expect
professional policing from such a recruit.
The common aim in recruitment now is to complete the job without inviting
legal hurdles. Sometimes even rules are overstepped to cut short procedures and do
away with cumbersome work. Posts at the lowest level but nevertheless sensitive, like
drivers, are filled up arbitrarily. Quality suffers as a result. This is equally so in transfers.
Honesty, integrity and hard work have yielded place to personal loyalty and
usefulness for personal work. Those who do not come up to the expectations of
personal loyalty fall out of favour and are eliminated from the line of command. This is
one of the main factors for the slow degeneration of the police.
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The police is a sacred confluence of those who choose policing as their
profession and work together transcending their caste, creed, social standing and rank in
order to control crime and maintain law and order. But this objective cannot be achieved
when there is no common cause and everybody works for personal progress.
The general reluctance of the Indian police force to adopt new ideas and the
ungainly handling of modernisation projects have resulted in its losing the race with
organised crime and syndicates. Modern equipment are bought, but the personnel are
not trained to use them. Thus the gadgets gather dust and break down.
No government with weak police system can survive, whatever its other assets.
The police should be extricated from the clutches of criminals and politicians to make it
a professional outfit with objectivity and commitment to its task. There is no point in
beginning the cleansing operation from the side of the criminals or politicians. It has to
begin from the side of the police by insulating it from the vile influences of criminal
wealth and political power. Once this is done everything else will fall into place.
NEED OF COMPETENT BRASS IN POLICE
Police is one of the most vital instruments of the public administration and works
as a link between the executive arm and judiciary. It is the ears, eyes and limbs of the
government. No government with a failing police system can survive whatever be its
other assets, It is against this background that the glitches bedevilling the present Indian
police should be viewed. Any complacency at this stage about the existing police system
may prove too costly for the unity and well-being of the country and the health of its
governance.
A job culture involutes basic beliefs and objects of the organisation, professional
ethics and the degree of commitment to the aspirations of the organisation, as laid down
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by precedence and practice. To what results precedence and practice mould the job
culture decide the success or otherwise of the organisation. The decisions and conduct of
those at the helm as the point d’ appui of police circles substruct the life-lines of the
organisation. It is important that only right people reach the top. A headless organisation
is better than one headed by a degenerate weakling. This is why the policy of selection
and promotion at high levels plays a vital role in the growth of the organisation. In a
democratic age of self-seeking, short term political leadership, where sycophancy is the
sole criterion for ascending the career ladder, the policy of selection and promotion is
misdight at best and motivatedly in the reverse gear at the worst, to the detriment of the
growth and functioning of the organisation. All those committed to the cause of police
and effective policing must break the trend and endeavour to provide a fresh lease of life
for effective policing.
How deeply the police is self-centred even within its own organisation and what
care and concern the police leaders show to evolve a perficient and planned police
organisation can be assessed by the trend of evolution of the police organisation as an
increscently top heavy setup and the speed with which promotions are effected at
different levels. In states where there were only two officers of the rank of Inspector
General of Police, for say forty thousand men and officers about 20 years back, there are
now nearly 30 officers of and above the rank of Inspector General of Police, for say
80,000 men and officers; thereby the last 20 years account for 100% expansion in the
lower levels against 1500% expansion at higher levels. What these people at the top do
for policing apart from being a drain on the state revenue and a strain to officers down the
levels with conflicting instructions of dubious merit? Almost nothing. It is unfortunate
that none in the police administration realises that it is not the rank but the real human
stuff inside that decides the height, excellence, merit, intelligence, honesty, integrity
responsibility, work knowledge and human qualities of a person. Promotion to higher
rank serves no purpose unless the higher rank provides a really higher challenges and job
content and a suitable man is perforce selected to meet the increased challenges. This is
not the case in present police promotions where sinecures are created to facilitate
promotions to satisfy in-group instincts, Most of these jobs are without any job content
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and responsibility and often are places to relax from the pressures of family life.
However, the same courtesy does not extend to the more unfortunate ranks at lower
levels including the constabulary. While vacancies at the topmost level are filled up by
promotions strictly overnight, promotions at intermediary levels are effected in weeks
or fortnights or months, depending on the rank in the police hierarchy. It is years in the
case of the constabulary. There are cases where vacancies of Head Constables and
Assistant Sub-Inspectors or Sub-Inspectors are not filled up for several years, depriving
the constabulary of their de jure promotions. There are any number of instances of men
in the constabulary retiring without promotion non obstante their eligibility and seniority
for the existing vacancies, which are not filled up from many years. Policing is a job
performed mostly at lower levels with decreasing involvement upto the level of
Superintendent of Police. Beyond that, it is tout court a supervisory task and in a police
force with no supervision to speak of, higher ranks are just de trop. Any move to expand
these ranks and any undue haste to promote to these levels cannot be called honest
decisions in the functional or public interest. Unfortunately, the Indian police is doing
just that and there is none to put it back on the right track.
DYNAMICS OF CORRUPTION:
A fall-out of corruption in the police is build- up a dynamics which promotes the

interests of corrupt in the system at the cost of those who retained the pristine value of
professionalism. The flexible elements who can be menoeuvred to required moulds
through the juste milieu of pelf and position are useful assets to people in key position to
save their kith and kins’ interests as and when they get involved in criminal proceedings.
Such characters in police are always cultivated and posted to key positions so that
striking compromises when situation warrants becomes easy. This strategy ends up in
honest police officers being sidelined and it promotes corruption. The dynamics while
helps influential individuals to evade the long arm of law, harms the interests of the
country, its police and the rule of law. Police officers of plastic conscience are preferred
to upright professionals to key posts even in national level police agencies like the
Central Bureau of Investigation and the Intelligence Bureau. Police officers known for
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professional approach are spurned and distanced as inconvenient elements. In the
situation, competence plays no role in preferences while honesty, integrity and
professional commitment play negative roles. A history of bending backward on
nonprofessional considerations always becomes a qualification in obtaining preference to
more sensitive jobs in important police organisations.
The first and foremost job to be done is to free the police from the unhealthy
influence of all hues by making it responsible to an independent authority with absolute
power to take decisions on matters pertaining to policing and police organisation. The
authority should be a professional body with men of proven probity and quality as
members, who have reached a stage from where they need not sacrifice their convictions
to appease those in power. A working arrangement is to be devised by which the
authority is responsible directly to the legislature and functions as an independent
authority like the judiciary, Comptroller and Auditor General or Election Commissioner.
Creation of a high core group of people who are adept in assessing men and
character within the aforesaid police authority may help to create a feeling of confidence
and job security and prod them into discharging their official duties fearlessly. This
group which oversees the work of police personnel from a distance should be made
ultimately responsible for all career decisions. The responsibilities of officers in assessing
the work of their subordinates which forms the major embarrassment of the present
Indian police must be limited to giving their opinion about performance to the core
group; the expert core group processes the opinion by its own research, expertise and
discretion and takes responsible decisions on its own. The group must be made
responsible for development planning of the police, work assessment, job analysis,
recruitment and management of human resources, Institution of such a core group to
oversee the career development of police personnel without personal bias may bring
revolutionary changes by committing the police to its work-ethics and professional ends
with due single mindedness.
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The extant system of selecting the police chief is erratic at best and motivatedly
amoral in that it meets political ends of the rulers at worst. A conspicuous example is
from a southern state of India where a police officer who was sidelined in his career as an
inefficient person and degenerate habitual drunkard was given a fresh leash of lefe in
career a I’improviste and posted as the chief of the state police in July 1980, after being
promoted as the first Director General of Police of the state to meet the political and
personal ends of the new Chief Minister of the state in new dispensation that came to
power in the state in elections. Soon, the state found itself engulfed in law and order
problems, rise in incident of crimes, indiscipline and discontent in the state police force
and dangerous union activities by the police personnel. The new police Chief who was
arranged to retire as IGP of the State Vigilance Commission before being awarded the
coveted post of the state police chief was known to attend office in inebriated condition
and while away time in offence, doing nothing, However, political needs overshadow all
such facts in selection to the posts of Police Chief. This is a dangerous trend. Attempts
of the Supreme Court of India in its recent order to formulate a system for the selection of
the chiefs of important police forces of the country like the CBI is a welcome measure at
least in its intent and must spur steps to formulate procedures of the selection of all key
police posts to insulate the process from amoral and very dangerous extraneous
considerations. This is a must in the interests of the country.
RAT-RACE AT TOP AFFECTS POLICING
The British were the forefathers of the unified Indian police. They created the
reticulation of the police force for India with their own designs and objects in sight. It
was a force that met the needs of the time. In an age of rapid changes due to the opening
up of new vistas and dimensions to life by inventions and discoveries in science and
technology, nothing remains quiescent. The scope, design and objects of the Indian
police underwent a basic metamorphosis with the transfer of government to native hands.
The process spawned a synod wherein undemanding aspects of both the worlds survived
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to create a new police culture. The distinguishing traits of the Indian police of the British
vintage like objectivity, apoliticism, commitment, discipline, quality and high standards
were discarded as peregrine and irrelevant in the changed circumstances; and traditional
Indian values like simplicity, charity, wisdom, mutual respect, encraty and human
qualities were distanced as Indian to the police culture. The convenient factors of the old
and new worlds were chosen to warp a new world of police culture while demands on
policing were at the crucial stage in the creant years of national independence. The cabal
was struck by the Indian police officers who rapidly rose in their career overnight to fill
the void, created by the resignations of their senior British officers in the ancien regime
on the eve of independence. The demand for creating a new work relationship with
native political leaders was a historical opportunity to carve a new police culture in free
India. The incompetence of the then police impresarios, their greed, parochial approach
and self-interests spawned the wrong type of police culture. They laid mendacious praxis
to those lower by bending laws and conscience to aggrate men in power with the myopic
object of promoting ain career and personal interests. The police became a lithe tool in
the hands of the power-brokers of free India. How can the police be objective, honest,
apolitical, committed and disciplined in such an atrophy and how can it uphold the rule of
law and justice in line with its professional edict in such a circumstance?.
A fixation towards political masters at the cost of professional uprightness is the

most obvious manifestation of this organisational character of the police setup. The
symptoms are deeper at higher ranks and reach their saturation at the rank of the chiefs
where political selections are crucial in appointments to the levels. Except in rarest of
the rare cases, every police officer ascensively obtempers and goes sequacious to political
masters as he comes nearer to the coveted selection post. Two distinct types can be
marked in this approach. In one, officers take to subordination to political leaders as a
convenient policy from the very beginning of their career, and as a policy, make
themselves subject to the dictates of all political leaders. The very concept of politics is
sacrosanct to them and anybody in it deserves their absolute obeisance. They find the
germ of professional rectitude in meeting needs of political masters and other political
leaders. Any talk of professionalism in the police ectogenesis to political relevance does
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not make sense to them. Every state in India has a set of such police officers who are
generally meek and very popular with politicians of any colour and succeed in getting
favourable postings which ever party comes to power. It is not an accident that these
officers often become intelligence chiefs and in most cases succeed to retire as the chiefs
of the concerned police organisations because of their easy proximity to politicians and
willing readiness to stoop to any level at the behests of their political masters. Politicians
in power need such officers in jobs where lawless operations like tapping of telephones
and illegal operations are part of the game.
There is another set of officers who turn soft to politicians as they reach the stage
of being subjected to political scrutiny for being selected to coveted posts like the chief
of the concerned police set up. These officers are generally known as strict officers and
hailed for their professional uprightness and competence from the beginning of their
career, which is marked with erratic rises and falls on political whims. The public mark
them as ideal professionals. But changes appear in them as they approach the D-day of
their career and they become the best friends of political heads to corner selection posts
with the zeal of a new convert.
In an annual conference of police officers in a state police chief lambasted his

Chief Minister and Home Minister in his speech en face for denying him free hand in
posting of officers in professional interests. The officer next in seniority to the chief,
whose selection as the next police chief was to be decided soon rose to the occasion and
against the decorum of a professional meet, contradicted his chief to state that it was
the prerogative of the ministers to post officers at their will. This shocked the assembled
officers as he did that while he was known as a through professional and strict adherent
to professional values and ethics. His apostasy astounded the police officers attending
the conference who trusted him to up hold the values of his profession till the end.
It is a common practice in some states of India to change key officers of the

police department when a new dispensation takes over the rule. Changes in key position
of the police department following changes in political rule are a common feature in most
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states. This reflects how the political leadership of the country sees the professional
loyalties of its police. This credibility of the professional loyalty of the present Indian
police is incredulously low even among the public. Political leadership believes that all
those in police are venal commodities, who can be win over by throwing loaves and
fishes. It is convinced that most in the police are loyal to one or the other political
groups of the country and its leaders and these factious loyalties within the police setup
do make substantial differences to its political fortunes. Ergo, the mad rush to place
favourite police officers at key positions tout de suite of taking over the administration.
Fractured loyalties of those in the police setup are responsible for this triste affaire. It is
natural for any to respond to the state of affair and make hay while the sun shines. While
political leaders play some police officers in deliciis and not others, they are only
exploiting the Achilles’ heel of the organisation offered to them on a platter and sharing
the res gestae. The culprit here is the perverted loyalties of the police. When the police
play their priorities well by perspicuously defining their loyalties in favour of
professional objectives of the police rather than myopically prevaricating to the mire of
personal loyalties against professional dignity, no more the political leadership finds it
feasible to keep its avizefull pernoctation over the police to play one against the other.
While the police en semble are committed to their professional objectives, there is
nothing to the political leadership to choose from. What is termed as political
interferences in placements of police department is patently the making of the police by
their gratuitous personal loyalties and any blame on the political leadership on this count
is assez bien uncalled and due to parablepsis.
DEVALUATION OF PROFESSIONAL QUALITIES:
The intelligence unit is the most abused section and its chief is the most willing
loyal subservient policeman available to political masters in most of the police forces of
India. Intelligence officers have a responsibility to their organisational objectives and
they ought to be loyal to it and work towards meeting the objectives. But, misplaced
loyalties overturn the scope of intelligence units everywhere in present Indian police.
Intelligence units as a consuetude are seen as the political handmaid of the ruling parties
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and their leaders. The usefulness of the intelligence units as political tools is so
pronounced in India that the units are ascensively brought under the direct control of the
chief executive of the government from its traditional field of the Home Department and
as a consectary, intelligence chiefs are accrescently becoming the prime advisers of the
chief executive head and shoulder above even the chief secretaries in states and the
cabinet secretary in the centre. The out-of-turn importance is a quid pro quo to the lengths
to which these officers go and risk their personal and career safety and honour in
indulging in all types of illegalities to oblige the political masters, lllegalities and
unethical practices like telephone tapping and shadowing political rivals of the ruling
party leaders are only minor prevarications these loyal police officers indulge in to keep
themselves on the right side of their political masters. Assessment of political trends and
suitability of various candidates in different constituents during elections and reporting
of political and other activities of politicians within and outside and ruling party are now
wrongly seen as legitimate functions of intelligence units in Indian police. The zeal of
police officers to prove personal loyalty to the ruling political party and its leaders often
lead them even further. Though the loyalty of these police officers to their political
masters foot the bill for any encomium, it sadly goes against all professional tenets of
any police organisation worth the name. But this is inconsequential to these police
officers. Professional interests lose all significance to them vis a vis loyalty to powerful
per procurationem self-promotions. Where loyalty to right ideals is a basic tenet of the
policing, loyalty becomes a venal commodity to these police officers. The intelligence
chief of a particular state who was a favourite of the chief minister of the state and
retained his position as the chief of the intelligence in additional charge even after
promotion and posting to a higher slot, led a huge contingent of intelligent officer and
camped in Delhi for several days to help his political masters manoeuvre for the Prime
Ministership during the turbulent weeks of unstability after the general election of 1996.
The tragedy of such a perverted loyalty is the devaluation of the professional qualities of
the policing apart from financial implications of such operations and the block they create
in legitimate government works. This is a fine example of sacrificing public interests at
the altar of self-promotion of few individuals.
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Political leaders make best use of this Achilles’ heel in the police setup. How
low police officials at higher ranks stoop to be in good books of political masters can be
seen in some states by the concours among the two important pillers of the state police
setup namely the state intelligence chief and the Police Commissioner of the State
Headquarters in front of the state Chief Minister’s residence early every morning to have
the first private audience of the Chief Minister to themselves. This was a laughing matter
in official circles some years back. Though the hard work of these high profile police
officers to rise everyday early in the morning to pay their obeisance and report to the
chief executive of the state and their sedulity to their work in hand have to be respected
and appreciated, the issue is cannot they discharge these duties sans breaching the pride
and dignity of their ranks and posts and without so obviously expressing their sequacious
tendencies? After all, they have a responsibility towards keeping the pride and dignity of
their ranks and profession, if not of their individuality.
SALVAGING OPERATION
The situation can be salvaged by clearing the cobwebs from the entrails of the
Indian police. There is a catena of self-motivated officers in key positions in the police
who unknowingly brought about the degringolade of the Indian police in the post-
democratic era. They corrupted the police atmosphere, set wrong precedences,
encouraged self-indulgence, pulled down its no-nonsense tough image and reduced it to
its present cadaverous existence. These elements should be side-lined to absorb men of
probity to refurbish and rebuild the police setup. Only really capable impresarios can
pull the Indian police out from its present fix.
WHERE THEIR LOYALTIES LIE...
THE primary duty of the police is to maintain order which would include
enforcing the law and the prevention and detection ofcrime. The police ought to be
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concerned about the interests ofthe general public, the standard of the law, the
administration of justice and the security parameters that ensure it. Loyalty is the
foundation on which the police organisation is built up. Loyalty, would mean steadfast
adherence to what is legal and the law as the word `loyalty' originates from the Latin
lex and legalis.Policing, as a profession in a democracy, denotes fidelity to the
sovereignty of the people and necessitates upholding the law of the country, keeping
up the orderly life of the common man and safeguarding peace and security.
This is where the police differ from private armies. Disaster strikes when the
police function as the private armies of the ruling political party or any influential
member of society. The police in India have fallen into this quagmire, its vitality and
profesionalism pushed to the background.
Loyalty is of two kinds. One is pure and simple fidelity to the master. The
other owes its allegiance to certain ideals and principles. This implies allegiance
to one's duties, responsibilities, objectives, profession and the chosen path of life.
This commitment raises their loyalty to the status of a mission. The loyalty needed in
a profession like that of the police is of elevated nature and it bestows the qualities
of nobility and dignity on the organisation. It lifts the police above factional interests
and gives them a cosmopolitan vitality. The strength and the trust born out of this
superior form of loyalty stand the police force in good stead in its hour of risk and
crisis.
It is tragic that the Indian police prefer to trade this characteristic for
trivial and ephemeral benefits. The trend has spread like wildfire to ravage the
institution. The genesis lies in the promotion of career prospects and other perks dumb
loyalty brings to individuals. Personal loyalty to political masters takes some people to
the top, tempting others to follow suit.
The models created a pattern and the pattern became a part of the system in a
setup where individuality and orginality are not sacred. The real threat lies in the
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possibility of this tendency coming to be accepted as the true character of the police.
This may not take long to happen if the present goings on are any indication.
The malady is not limited to a particular state or unit. There can be hope of
remedy if there is at least one example of the right model. But none seems to be
available. Isolated attempts to tread the right path are seen as deviations from the
mainstream. This is the beginning of the atrophy of the Indian police. How far the
degeneration has spread is evident from the way some important criminal cases of
political significance have been handled. A criminal case warrants professional loyalty
in its investigation to bring the culprits to book. The political status of the accused and
the fall-out are irrelevant to the process of investigation.
The misconceptions about loyalty with a slant in favour of the political

masters and other powerful influence-pedlars have clouded this vital aspect of
policing. With the result, the rule of law has suffered and the administration of
justice is crippled. The damage already done to the country's public life cannot be
repaired until the police are brought back on the rails of loyalty to their profession.
The police, whether it is the Special Protection Group, the Intelligence

Bureau, the Research and Analysis Wing or the Central Bureau of Investigation,
survive the transient political masters and their political groups in power. Their
relevance to the country is more abiding than that of the politicians in power. In the
circumstances, the police ought not to be subservient to the political masters
whose future is unpredictable. The police going loyal to transient political interests
certainly will damage and debase the system itself.
It is a common practice in some States to change key officers when a new

dispensation takes over the rule. A recent example is from Tamil Nadu. And this is not
an isolated case. It reflects the attitude of the political leadership towards the
professional loyalties of the police. Public opinion about the professional loyalty of the
police is rather low.
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Politicians believe that all those in the police are commodities that can be
bought and ``loyal'' policemen to make a substantial difference to their political
fortunes. Hence the mad rush to place favourite police officers in key positions.
Thus politicians exploit the weakness of the organisation. The culprit here is the
perverted loyalties of the police. What is termed as political interference is patently the
making of the police by their personal loyalties.
The intelligence unit is the most abused section and its chief is the most
willing tool. Intelligence officers have a responsibility to their organisational
objectives and they ought to work towards meeting their objectives. But misplaced
loyalties restrict the scope of the intelligence units which are seen as the lackeys of
the ruling parties and their leaders. The usefulness of the intelligence units as
political tools is so pronounced in India that they are brought under the direct
control of the Chief Executive of the Government from the traditional Home
Department and the chiefs are the main advisers of the Chief Executive, head and
shoulders above even the Chief Secretaries in States and the Cabinet Secretary at the
Centre.
This importance is a reward for the lengths to which these officers would
go risking their personal and career safety and indulge in illegal acts to oblige the
political masters. Telephone tapping and shadowing political rivals of the ruling party
leaders are only minor prevarications these loyal police officers indulge in to keep
themselves in the good books of their political masters.
Assessing the political trends and suitability of candidates in different

constituencies during elections and reporting the activities of politicians within and
outside the ruling party are now wrongly seen as legitimate functions of the
intelligence units.
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Mr. Chandra Sekhar, former Prime Minister, in response to a question on
the Jain hawala case during the 11th Lok Sabha election campaign, said the
investigation of corruption cases was the job of a Police Inspector and not that of a
Minister. That answer would be right in an ideal situation where the police function
professionally, with their loyalty fixed to their duties. It has no relevance in a
situation where policemen are loyal to individuals or groups in power. The police
being the executive edge of the administration, their loyalties make all the difference to
the quality of administration.
Factional loyalties have the singular potentiallity of eroding fairness and

impartiality. They make professional loyalty seem meaningless. A mature and sober
political leadership can set right the fractured loyalties of the police organisation. In this
context, judicial activism, in a periodical review of the progress of investigation of
some cases of national importance, is a welcome step although in normal
circumstances such a judicial review would have amounted to interference in the
independent functioning of the investigating authority.
The duty of providing the right guidance and direction to the police lies with
the political leadership. Ironically, the police force has become an object of ridicule
by being asked to investigate certain affairs of the politicians with whom its absolute
loyalty lies and who twist policemen around their little fingers.
INDIAN POLICE NEEDS HEALTHY JOB CULTURE
Policemen are social doctors and policing is a surgical operation of the society to
systematically remove cancerous growths from its body. What if the band of doctors
itself is infested with serious cancerous growths? This is the position of the present- day
Indian police. The police, as the enforcers of law and protectors of the public interests,
wield tremendous powers for the public good. Such powers to interfere with the life of
the citizens must be invested only in people of high probity and conscience. Otherwise,
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the powers by themselves ruin the social fabric of the country and bring anarchy. Powers
to search, seize, remove, detain, direct, arrest, hit and even kill may prove pernicious in
the wrong hands. Powers to decide who has done wrong and how to prosecute them,
when invested in dishonest hands, certainly ruin society and the country. How these
powers are exercised depends imprimis on the work-ethic of the organisation. Though it
is the people of an organisation au fond who build the job-culture of the organisation, it is
this job–culture of the organisation that creates a person in the organisation at a given
point of time. Even a degenerate caractere turns honest and efficient in an honest and
efficient environment. The work culture builds and moulds vitality to meet the general
atmosphere around. Similarly, an honest and efficient person in a degenerate culture is
bound to atrophy sooner or later, unless his individual strength superates the vitiating
work-culture of the organisation, Ergo, building up a proper job-culture is the bedrock of
a perficient police organisation.
India, as one of the foremost and largest democracies of the world, have a great
burden on its flabby shoulders to prove to the world that democracy as a form of
government can stand up to any dissipating influence and hold disparate geographical,
racial, ethnical, linguistic, religious, cultural and economic factors syndetic in its
pandemic prise of liberal benevolence and serve the cause of the unity of the sovereign
country at all odds. The gauntlet India faces in this regard is made kenspeckle by the
locus standi or the country in terms of its position as a ranking leader of the developing
countries. Human nature being as it is, the emerging atmosphere of commercialisation
and material comforts vis a vis accrescent concours for limited resources of the Earth ,
makes man increasingly self-centered and more and more adventurous and violent in his
appropinquation to reach his self-appointed narrow goals. It is true of all social divisions
including religions, language groups, ethnic divides, cultural interests and national
aspirations. Communal hatred, linguistic barriers, ethnic clashes, cultural bickerings and
threats to the national security are orders of the day rather than exceptions with the trends
betraying the indicia of dangerous chorisis. Democracy, unfortunately, is a fertile ground
of such degenerate tendencies because of the trust democracy lays wrongly on the basic
nature and general abilities of common man. The trust is wrongly laid for the reason that
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democracy fails to take into account the reality of the limosis in man which creates all
which creates all havocs and assesses man as just a need-oriented simple animal.
Liberalisation that forms part of democracy, in cahoots with material interpretations of
life, in spite of myriad benefit and comforts it brings with it, certainly poison the
atmosphere to the extent of comminating the very foundation of the democracy and the
unity of the country. This is where the police comes to the picture to control the situation
and save the democracy from its own vices.
The police in a democracy is the watchdog of the democracy. Democracy

basically being the rule of the hoi polloi, clash of interests therein is an expected feature.
In an atmosphere of self-rule by the self-centred people of the present commercial world,
a machinery to show people their limits and punish devious elements in sine qua non.
The police forms the master-axle that runs this vital engine of the administration. It being
the ultimate executors of the laws, rules and regulations that form the chemistry of a rule
of law, whatever be the other attributes of an administration, its efficiency, quality and
success tout a fait depend upon the merits of the police, the democracy evolves for itself.
In the atmosphere of 20th and 21st centuries’ unified world, like all other social and
administrative apparatus, Indian police too have most of its external patterns modelled
after the police organisations in other countries rather than evolved ab intra. This is true
in pre-independent era as well as in post-independent age. In pre-independent era
because, the then rulers namely the British modelled Indian police on the patterns of their
own police back in England. In post–independent age because, independent India’s new
rulers continue with the system left by the British except for spasmodic retouches here
and there in response to time to time compulsions of the realities in the fields of crime,
security and law and order of the country. Though the retouches made their appearances
from the field realities, the ideas and models are algate modelled on parallel machinery in
other countries. It is true about the gestalts and protocols of India’s own Research and
Analysis Wing or Intelligence Bureau or Central Bureau of Investigation or Paramilitary
forces or crack-forces or anti terrorist-squads or organisations to fight narcotics and other
economic offences or normal police station, district and state police administration. It is
not to say that Indian police is tout ensemble alien to Indian situation just because of its
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tramontane jacket. Far from it. Indian police in its foreign jacket goes perforce Indian in
its soul with concomitant advantage and disadvantages of Indian spirit, because Indian
police works in Indian situation and ispo facto adapts to Indian needs and spirit. The
utility of Indian police to India depends upon the direction and degree to which Indian
police have taken to this process of adaptation and also how successfully and efficiently.
It is in this perspective, the role of the police in reconstruction of India, expectations from
it, actual chevisance and its import on national life are discussed.
India’s experiments in democracy are sui generis and stand apart from similar
experiments otherwhere by the non a such characteristics of the country, its people, their
aspirations and historical background. Though the process of adaptation to democracy
was not guided by any deliberate plan to be different, India’s very own situations dictated
terms to the shapes to be moulded specific to its values, needs and aspirations. The
growth of India’s police remained faithful to these shapes more suo.
It is a fact that an organised effort is on in Indian police to force its members to

fall in with its line of profile at the cost of individual brilliance and creative height.
Indian police are continuously starved of freshness and creative innovations as the result
of shutting itself to the creative sparks and other precious attributes of its human
resources. Such a wastage of available human resources can occur only in a government
setup of a developing country like India. What surprises is the extent to which the
organisation goes to nip in bud excellences to perpetuate the interests of its old, secure
world of unquestioning servilitude down the line. All loud talks of Indian police leaders
on public platforms about the need of infusing excellence and outstanding qualities to the
police organisation are shenanigans meant for the consumption of the ignorant public.
Most leaders of the Indian police at heart desire continuation of the status quo at the peril
of the growth of the organisation so that they and their interests remain undisturbed with
unquestioning and dull-witted subordinates down the ladder at their personal beck and
call. Any indicia of threat to the perceived security? Any brilliance of new concepts or
interpretations about the functioning of the police? Lo, most heads come together and
join hands in scrupleless cabals to undermine the source of brilliance. The reason is self-
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interests. Nothing attract and bind them together so fiercely as the possibility of new
thoughts surfacing in the organisation and somebody down the ladder leaving a trail of
blaze of brilliance that may cloud their organisational superiority.
What ensues is a fight jusqu au bout; it would be a fight sans moral or legal
scruples, a fight without a tinge of mercy or sympathy where all fall as one against the
lonely prey till it is neutralised.
Though courts of law can theoretically protect against such harassments,

expenses, time and uncertainties involved and the history of court judgements being
dodged or rendered ineffective by administrative sleight, render the protection
meaningless and force the upright officer to face all humiliations and losses in silence or
yield to the pressures. It is to the credit of Indian police that it has great officers who
withstood all slights without yielding to pressures.
A distinct case is of a senior police officer and poet of outstanding calibre and
excellence from a southern state of India whose uprightness cost him his career prospects.
His disinclination towards flexible ways made him unpopular among those higher in the
hierarchical ladder. He was though greatly feared and highly respected for his superior
and four-square qualities, most of those senior to him were uneasy at his presence.
Repeated attempts were made to discredit him and sully his reputation by any means.
Most senior police officers took him as a thorn in their flesh and joined hands to tarnish
his image. His creditable works as a poet and reputation as a no-nonsense intellectual
sperred their manoeuvrability to achieve this end. They did what they could.
Unfounded abuses and lies were heaped upon him and recorded in his annual confidential
reports year after year. His appeals against the reports were prevented from reaching
government. He was year after year denied decent postings. Mendacity was spread in
words of mouth that he could not manage responsible posts while actually he was never
given a change and tested in holding such a position. To top it all, he was consistently
denied promotion from 1990 for the next ten years and scores of his mediocre juniors
were brought over him in the career ladder sinsyne. To add salt to the injury, his
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colleague thus given promotion in 1990 was brought over him as his senior in 1995 just
to humiliate the upright officer. The officer withstood all these insults in good stead
because of his natural superior qualities, proven reputation and the strength of
personality. He refused the advice of sympathetic superiors to approach the court of law
against the repression as there was no guarantee of redressal from the courts even after a
time-consuming legal battle. On the other hand, the accurst police officer addressed the
Chief Secretary of the state government in 1995 and explained the situation with a
request to institute an enquiry against him which if found him culpable of committing
any major or minor wrong at any time in his career or life or if anywhere found
inefficient in discharging his official duties, he could be removed from police service.
Even this extreme step failed to draw any response from the government. When his
superiors in unholy alliance found that none of their customary methods work with him,
they almost declared a war of nerves on him in 1996. He was refused all normal benefits
entitled to his rank: his car was withdrawn, telephones were disconnected, his personal
staff was harassed subordinates were encouraged to disobey and even access to office
stationeries was denied. While even these measures were not proved feracious in
bringing the upright officer to heels and instead the honest officer grew from strength to
strength by his distinguished and impregnable strength of personality, desperate as they
were, the senior officers, against all legal and administrative proprieties, divested him of
all his official powers he naturally exercised virtuti officii in an effort to isolate the
upright officer tout ensemble. Such harassments are common when a few officers with
awakened conscience, honesty, professionalism and probity in public life disturb the
immoral indulgence of the corrupt lot in police and related departments. Most
consciences do breach, most professional competencies crack and most concerns for
probity in public life just disappear under unrelenting pressures from above. Surviving
such repressions as above is only a rarest of the rare exceptions.
It is a tragedy in Indian police that there is no relation between the efficiency and
performance of an official and his standing in the organisation. The police officials are
so indifferent to the performance of their subordinates and their work turnout that they
are absolutely in the dark about the standard of work turned out under their supervision.
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Another reason for this sad affair may be that they are unqualified to assess. This
situation leads to random assessment when a senior is statutorily bound to assess and in
the process, talent withers and opportunists overtake high-calibre workers on the
hierarchical ladder.
A yardstick to measure an orgnaistion is the degree of success of the organisation

in meeting its raison d’etre. The responsibilities of the police as an organisation basically
is three fold, in that enforcing the rule of law, assisting the judiciary in dispensation of
justice and functioning as the watchdog of the internal security of the country. The three
responsibilities do widely vary in their scope, functional requirements and
appropinquation that while the police function as law enforcers while discharging law
and order responsibilities, they may sometimes be called to break laws though
surreptitiously as the watchdogs of the internal security of the country. Or while they
function only as a fact-finding machine to the judiciary, in enforcing the rule of law in
their capacity as the investigating authority, they may be called to enforce laws as
enforcers of law and order. In spite of these wide variations in the nature of the works
and responsibilities on their bold shoulders, one thing that holds all works and
responsibilities of the police together is its importance as the spine of the rule of law.
The police is the cutting edge of the administration. It is the watchdog of the
administration. This scope of the police often renders it to appear like the odd-job boy of
the statecraft. They, as ultima ratio, are the real dispenser of the rule of law as well as the
guardian angels of the country. This vital place in the administration of the country,
makes the police not only the arms, legs, eyes, ears and noses of the administration, but
the very tool of the country’s well being and survival. The police is one of the most
important levers required in running the machinery of the statecraft. It is why the blind
rush and impatient race among rulers to control this vital lever.
The reasons lie in the rulers as well as in the police. In the rulers because it is
natural for anyone to take advantage of the tools that make itself available for use and
rather preposterous to expect rulers to shut their eyes while the police willingly offers
itself for their personal behoofs. And rulers of democratic India douse the police for their
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personal and party ends to the extent that the first half century after independence has
obfuscated the distinction between the national interests and the personal interests of the
rulers as far as the use of the police of democratic India elected to subordinate its
professional and national responsibilities to the gloria and being the handmaid of the
politicians in power. Two factors helped the process. One was the wrong type of people
at the helm of the organisation as models. Another was the lack of proper understanding
of the concepts like obedience and discipline. These two factors together and seperately
brought about slowly but steadily the degringolade of professionalism in the police of
democratic India. The nonprofessional approach of the self seeking police leadership at
the helm to subserve the personal and party interests of the rulers percolated downwards
in the organisation as a model and sadly accepted as the general rules of conduct by the
maffled police down below at all ranks per procurationem obedience and discipline. The
wrong model led Indian police to forget that their primary obedience is to the laws of the
country and rulers surface to the front only as the representatives of the laws of the land
and ergo secondary to the sacred police responsibilities. The police in new dispensation
forgot the cardinal principle that they are subordinate to the rulers faute de mieux and
their profession dictates them to exercise policing duties even against those rulers if the
laws of the country find them doing wrong. These serious professional lapses not only
weakend Indian police, also damaged political system, social values and the credibility of
Indian democratic process. Ignorance and lack of interest is part of the Indian public in
general and intellectual class in particular in the police system and its time to time
devious shifts added to the malady in the form of giving free hand to the police to evolve
itself sans restraint and sound guidance.
Adaptations to political masters as a bargain to secure key posts prove fatal to the
dignity as well as professional values of the police setup. A police officer of a state in
southern India succeeded in cornering the coveted post of Police Commissioner of the
State Headquarters a few years back by the support of politician known in the then
political parlance as the “ Father, Mother ‘ of the Chief Minister of the state. A few days'
afer, the politician in inebriated state was arrested with his associates while fleeing in a
car late night after involving in a sex scandal involving a budding film star. The police
official who affected the arrest recognised the identity of the person he arrested only after
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the arrested persons were brought to a nearby Police Station in the city. The police
Commissioner was intimated about the developments. The Police Commissioner
promptly made his appearance in the Police Station in the night and ensured immediate
release of his political godfather. But, the political heavy weight in temulent state was
impacable. He caught the uniform collar of the Police Commissioner in front of the
shocked lowly officials of the Police Station and shouted at the Police Commissioner in
his inebriated voice whether he made him Police Commissioner to arrest and bring him
to the Police Station through his juniors. The Police Commissioners was seen meekly
begging the politician to pardon him. The incident made headlines in newspapers. The
Police Commissioner later rose to become the Police Chief of the state and retired now.
Such incidents abound in circumstances of Police Officers vying for coveted posts a tout
prix and as a consequence, the dignity of the posts lowers and the professional qualities
of the organisation suffer.
Present India do have an adequately large and sturdy framework for the police
apparatus in terms of organisational strength and budgetary provisions to sustain it. Only
the canvas held by the framework is flabby and limicolous. This predicament per se
speaks aplenty about the very cause of it. For one, the fact that an adequately large and
sturdy framework or organisational strength and liberal budgetary provisions available
for the police setup is clear caract of the willing political patronage to the apparatus; it
sine dubio proves that the rulers recognised the import of the police in running the
administration. However, the flabby and limicolous canvas ab intra speaks of the
nonprofessionalism under the sound political patronage. This adds up to the close links
between politics and the police for nonprofessional purposes, possibly with criminal
intent as nonprofessional police approach mostly suggests criminal angle in view of the
professional police concerns mostly being focussed on crime control and crime
prevention. Unfortunately, India has passed a long way in this undesirable links to the
lengths of being cannot easily retract its path to cleanse the augean stables of the police
organisation now.
POLICE AS SOCIAL SURGEONS
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Police deal with social ills as physicians and surgeons deal with physical ills. A
surgeon incises parts of the body to set right wrongs and remove dangerous growths from
the system to save a person while a police do the same for the society. Police job like the
works of a surgeon involves administration of bitter potions, prescription of restrictions
and incisions to lay foundation for a sturdy system. Like medical profession, policing is
a highly responsible function and ergo needs to be bound by moral ethos lex non scripta
to avoid misuse of special rights involved in discharge of duties. Both professions
involve independent decisions in handling each case and exercise of infrangible
conscience in doing justice to it. The difference lies in the medical profession mostly
maintaining its pristine purity as a profession while police as a splinter of bureaucracy
being illaqueated by formalities and procedures inherent in government functions at the
cost of forthright involvement and commitment immanent to a profession. The
ineluctable hierarchical order as the spine of policing and the concomitant interferences
from above bring a measure of incertitude and render honest and professional policing
nonpossumus by depriving field officers their freedom in handling cases on dictates of
the conscience. This perforce adversely affects the effectiveness of policing and ipso
facto, the health of the society. It is the reason why in spite of sound presence of the
social surgeons, Indian society witness the deterioration of its health de mal en pis each
passing year.
TRUST OF THE PEOPLE
Physicians and surgeons have as much potentiality and opportunity to damage as

to save health. Because of their expertise and credibility, surgeons have umpteen
opportunities to use their tools and instruments on people on the claim of restoring health.
The whole process is based on trust on the surgeons and their honesty. Imagine the
situation when the lot of surgeons is greedy and sans scruples, while the people have no
alternative to offering themselves for surgery to their hands in times of need. None can
be sure what would happen to an unconscious patient on the operation table in the hands
of such surgeons behind the closed doors of the operation theatre. The whole situation
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becomes hopeless when the whole setup is run by similarly profligate surgeons and the
precept that birds of the same feather flock together operates to hold them in syndesis at
the expense of any relief by appeals or complaints. The harm done to the patient to meet
the greed of the surgeons would be pro rata to the latter’s immoral propensities. Synergy
among them may lead even to venal deals in human organs at the expense of the health of
the ignorant people. Their contempt for professional skills and negligent work may
tremendously harm the safety of the patients. The situation in the field is certain to wreck
the trust of the people on the surgeons. The predicament forces them to rely on the
contabescent setup foute de mieux. The hapless position spawns a sense of disillusion in
people and they even resign to the situation as helpless subjects. This exactly is the
situation of the social surgery by the police in India. The society has to depend for
surgery upon an epinosic organisation, which is inefficient, enrivon with quandaries,
mismanaged, enfested with scandals and above all, undependable. The society, for its
well-being, has to fall on an organisation with which it tends to keep distance and thinks
it indignity to associate, its womenfolk consider as an insult on their womanhood to
approach and its children see it as an image of fear and silenced by invoking its name to
gallow. It is the predicament of the Indian society. On the one hand, the popular image
of the police in Indian psyche is that of a devil, of an evil. But, it has to fall on the police
for all of its social evils. Though part of the bad image of the police is sheer myth, part in
quiddity is the result of wrong people and wrong concepts coming to the centrestage in
Indian police from a long time.
RELEVANCE OF CRUELTY
The similarly of surgeons and police basically is their hard means to achieve the
desired end- surgical methods involving incisive tools to cut and remove unwanted
growths. It is en regle as far as surgeries and concerned. The tragedy of the police lies in
de trop extension of the hard means unlike surgeons to other aspects of life. The
difference between a surgeon and a police is that while a surgeon outside the operation
theatre is a gentleman every farden, unaffected by the ambience, the hard approach
renders a police apocryphal at the cost of civil living and basic human nature. This is
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why the image of the police is very low. The hard methods in police extend even to its
policy of human resources management at the cost of neoteric principles of man
management. The rule of thumb continues to be the bedrock of handling human
resources. Ruthlessness and cruelty are its principal weapons in bringing subordinates
and the public to submission. Human dignity is an unknown concept in the police. The
result sees motivation becoming a casualty in the bedlamish system.
SADISTIC PLEASURE
The endless affairs with legal matters perhaps insensitise the police to the
problems of legality. This is evident in their hors la loi approach to various issues. The
police seem to think that end justifies the means. The problems of malfeasance are
common in the police. The mode of approach of the police to man management proves
this. No scruple is shown in measures meant to bring a subordinate to knees or an
accused to confess to the offence, he had not committed. Third degree methods in
interrogations is a too familiar issue to discuss here. Though third degree methods are
universal in application in police investigations, there are vital differences in their use in
advanced and countries like India. While utmost care and discreetness are employed in
englightened police forces of advanced countries in deciding whether a particular
individual has to be subjected to serve interrogations, where imminence of the concerned
person being an offender is a prime criterion and the methods are used as the dernier
ressort, Indian police like their counterparts in backward countries adopt third degree
methods in investigation as their staple right over innocent citizens and fall to it in the
first available instant like wolves on their preys. It cannot be gainsaid that there is a
streak of sadistic pleasure in Indian police. They think that third degree methods are de
rigueur in crime investigation. The sadistic pleasure finds expression in severity down
the hierarchical ladder at the cost of dignity and self- respect of others down the ladder. It
is a free-for-all field . Basic values like mutual respect and courtesies are rare in Indian
police. Ruthlessness and cruelty are the ropes Indian police find commodious with. This
invidious stria is hardly the desirable attribute to which any decent society wants to
submit itself for any treatment.
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LACK OF COMMITMENT
A ken of the extent to which the Indian social surgeons are committed to their
work and goals can be had from the fact that in a small department headed by a Director
General of Police, deputed from the police department in a southern state of India, a
criminal case of fraud and forgery involving a huge amount was launched against some
staff members of the department in a police station after the misdeeds were unearthed
during an audit. The circumstances of the case normally warrant departmental actions
like suspension of the officials, departmental enquiries and measures to recover the loss
to follow the launching of the criminal case. In this case, the department washed off its
hands after launching the criminal case as if it had nothing to do about the fraud and
forgery in its own organisation. No suspensions, no departmental enquiries, no recovery
processes. Even the criminal case was just a front to save the skin of the people at the
helm of the was just a front to save the skin of the people at the helm of the organisation.
Advice from well-meaning officers in the department to the DGP in 1996 to take the
affairs to their logical ends by initiating essential departmental actions as an apotropaic
measure fell on dunny ears. In addition, the police who were investigating the case were
surreptitiously advised by the DGP to go slow with the case till the people involved in the
case easily retire. This much about the zeal of Indian police as social surgeons in
tackling evils.
“Surgeon” is an abracadabra; the concept of social surgeon is pregnant with

highest ideals human mind can conceive. The application of this concept to recognise the
duties of the police is the highest honour the society has invested the police with, and
ipso facto lays sublime responsibilities on the rough and tough little shoulders of the
police. Unfortunately, police suffer from alexia and fail to read the elevated position in
which they are held while recognised as social surgeons. It is position in which they are
held while recognised as social surgeons. It is sad to see how the sacred responsibilities
are not only frittered away, but abused at will to the chagrin of the hoi polloi. The
consequence is that while the police is yet seen and called as social surgeons foute de
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mieux, they are no more loved and respected as social surgeons should be. On the other
hand, they are misprised and distanced for the apostasy, they suffer from their avowed
path. Indeed the fear of police is there because of the weapons and the muscle of power
they weild. In some parts of the country, even the rear is glidder after the pelbeian has
learnt the lesson that money can do any tricks with the police. The cause of the
degringolade certainly lies in the police itself, in the type of people enter the service, their
calibre, their values and convictions and the professional atmosphere created by the
service. If the organisation and the people in it cannot rise to the high levels expected of
it and prove their raison d’etre, the reason lies in its ephemeral self-interests ectogenous
to the professional values and ideals. Police as social surgeons perforce require single-
minded commitment to the cause of well-being of the society. It is seld or never found in
present Indian police. The society whose well-being is the responsibility of the police,
know it. The police know it. The society is left to itself to mend its problems. Police
work only when there is gratification and while people with muscles of money and power
need help. This certainly is not characteristic of a social surgeon, but of a social-wrecker.
Sadly Indian police is becoming that in oodles, the protector of and tool in the hands of
rich and powerful. The preposterous trend has to stop in the interests of the police as an
organisation and a profession, the society, the country and the humanity. The key for this
change lies in creation of right professional ambience in the police system. The secret of
creating right atmosphere lies in right leadership and the burden of right leadership lies
on right convictions about the importance of police and policing as a profession. The
malaise of Indian police lies in lack of right convictions about the importance of policing
as a profession. The result is that all types of wolves ab intra et ab extra falling on the
system to tear it from all sides and eating it. The wolves within are more dangerous than
outside. The ensure that no upright resistance breed ab intra to the detriment of their
esurient appetite and no professional pride raises its head to topple their schemes of self-
promotion The only response of their greed is wrecking uprightness and professional
pride wherever they are traced. Such hawks in higher echelons of the career-ladder
succeeded in their schemes and the result is the Indian police in its present wretched state.
The salvation of Indian police lies in breaking the vice prise of these arriviste and laying
it in the safe hands of the professionals steeped in the foundations of professional pride
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and uprightness, to make the system acceptable to the society as its protector and ‘ social
surgeons’ true to the abracadabra.
LAW AND JUSTICE
Justice begotten at a cost is justice lost. The fact is lost sight of by present
administration of justice. Justice necessitates an integral vision. It cannot be isolated
from its environment, past, present, future, diverse issues, people involved and related
events. It means delving into the heart of an issue and delivering justice taking into
account all related issues and matters to the rightful entitlement of all. This presupposes
a passion for objectivity and justness and above all, selflessness in the arbitrators of
justice as well as in those who are in the service of the administration of justice. The role
of the police in the administration of justice comes under scrutiny in the context of their
part in the investigation of crimes and maintenance of law and order.
The police play umpteen roles as executors at the grassroots level. They are
basically performers, actual doers in the field. Passion is the normal trait of action.
Objectivity and justness seldom give company to those who act to show results.
Expecting selfless traits in policemen is akin to waiting for rain drops to fall from bright
white clouds. The policemen perform their duties with normal flair and loyalty while put
in service of justice. Only they lean towards the rich and the powerful.
Loyalty to justice is a noble cause. It signifies a heightened mind bound to a

heightened cause. Loyalty to a value or a just cause is always a great virtue. The same
cannot be said about loyalty to individuals of whatever importance. Individual loyalty in
the service of the administration of justice is self-defeating. The achilles’ heel lies in
loyalty, basically faith, a blind faith, sans stirrings in the conscience. The only loyalty
desirable for those in the service of the administration of justice in addition to the loyalty
to the cause of justice and other virtues is loyalty to conscience, freedom of thought and
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independent judgement. A policeman with his loyalty can do an exemplary job in the
administration of justice.
The police, as the cutting-edge of governance, enjoys enormous powers. They

can prevent, check, prohibit, restrain, regulate, confine or arrest erring people. They can
forcibly break-open, enter, search and seize when the need arises. They may use
weapons to hurt and kill. These extraordinary powers are tools of the police in serving
the interests of justice. The police, as the means of justice, is exempted from the process
of justice by the law itself. The relevance of the police in the administration of justice is
two-fold: one, fair exercise of their powers to ensure that no harm is done to the
process of justice. There is virtually no way to force them to comply with the needs of
objectivity and fairplay in work save their own interpretations of laws and actions.
Interference of the court often is to little, too late to be meaningful. The lack of a sound
mechanism of supervision and the poor position of the policeman in society, mediocre
education and a deviant job culture inhibit the police from performing at levels
commensurate with their responsibilities. They have no organisational pride. Field
orientations distract them from high human values. A weak economic position and
opportunities to make easy money render them prone to corrupt practices. There is
nothing tangible in their service to inspire a commitment to the noble cause.
Shallow policing is responsible for all the mishaps and turbulence of the first half
century of independent India. Another factor is the exercise of their special powers
without going against justice. The police is a fence which, with its extra-ordinary
powers, however, can ruin the crop it is asked to protect. The enormous powers confer
special responsibilities on it to protect innocent people from a rash exercise of powers.
Every person thinks he is right and every criminal is just in his own assessment.
Every act of a human being has its own logic, reasons and justifications. This is true of
the police too. Every encounter, every lockup death, every third-degree method, every
wrongful confinement, every illegal arrest and every excess committed by the police has
its own justification. It is irrelevant how the justifications appear to outsiders. You
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seldom find a policeman confessing to a wrong or an excess committed. Commissioners
have explained away the gunning down of innocent citizens by subordinates in broad
daylight as a case of mistaken identity. We have any number of cases of senior police
officers colluding with subordinates in destroying evidence of lock-up death cases.
The cause of failure of the police lies more in the system’s failure, the character of
its main players, deviant job culture and wrong leadership than in the concept of policing.
Police in an inappropriate milieu may turn into a monster.
These days the executive heads of government opt for their own men in the
police force to head premier investigation agencies; political rivals are investigated and
charge-sheeted on flimsy grounds while cases of national significance drag on. The
police is reduced to the state of a tool of political revenge in this power game. In the
process, the police loses its credibility as a nonpartisan player and an infallible tool of
establishing justice.
Making justice a costly affair gives another dimension to the issue. Effectiveness
of the police lies in its ability to make justice an easily and cheaply dispensable
commodity. The police is the first line of defence. Courts come on the scene only in a
far later stage. Most cases of dispute never go beyond the police stations. Good police
certainly symbolises effective administration of justice more than courts and prosecution
department together do.
POLICE MORALE ERODED BY POOR

ADMINISTRATION
The basic ingredients of good policing are professional pride and good image. A
good image boosts professional pride. Good image brings in its wake public cooperation
and enhances the social recognition of the police personnel.
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True policing is impossible in the absence of the strength of pride, responsibilities
to society can be discharged only from a position of strength. A weak police cannot do a
good job. Pride is linked to morale. Police personnel humiliated in career can never
face the people from a position of strength and do good policing. The tragedy lies in
police administration. Its vanity belittles the police, breaches its pride and shatters its
image.
The police administrators in this country refuse to realise the basic psychological
imperative of good policing; they crush professional pride whenever and wherever it is
seen raising its head. Sadly to meet personal ends. Perhaps staff in no other government
department suffer humiliations as in police. This is true at all levels including the
highest ranks.
Suspensions and disciplinary actions are common; when disciplinary action

would include such indecent measures as withdrawal of vehicles, telephone and other
facilities, denial of promotions, transfer to humiliating jobs created just for the purpose
and keeping the person waiting without a job. This attitude produces a weak and
confused police force with a low self-esteem.
The police force is a tactical tool that can be of immense help to check the
interference of the law. The police are aware of this aspect. They know that nothing
works as fear does. They now that the advantages of a policeman out-weigh the risks of
breaking the spine by whatever means and that policemen so reined-in can be made to
perform any job even at risks to his own life and honour. This is why the administrators
spare no effort and lose no opportunities to beat, terrify and bully policeman of
whatever rank, status, and enlightenment, even at the cost of professional pride.
SCAPE GOAT
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An upright officer of the rank of Additional Director General of Police of a State
and a scholar in diverse fields was known to refuse to bend against his conscience and
this fact made him unpopular among his superiors. While he was the Chief of State
prisons in 1995, he addressed his government about the tragic security lapses in a major
prison in the State headquarters and sent proposals to improve the situation. No action
was initiated on the report by the government.
In the closing months of 1995, a mafia gangwar that ensued in the State capital
led to the murder of a gang leader by a prison inmate. The Government ordered an
enquiry by the Home Secretary. The latter who found the ADGP a thorn in his flesh
found a golden opportunity in the enquiry. The officer was removed from his position
and was not given an alternative posting for atleast three months. If anybody was to be
held responsible for the lapses in the prison, it was the government for not acting on the
report of the ADGP.
In this case, not only did the ADGP become a scapegoat for the lapses of the
government, but also an easy target for police officers who found his integrity
inconvenient.
Police administrators wield power over the state authorities. Power breeds
arrogance. The sweep of arrogance is so strong that it has not patience for rules, laws,
codes of conduct, moral values, natural courtesies and human diginity.
An illustration of how low the police administrators of independent India can

stoop is provided by this instance, the likes of which can be found anywhere in India.
A police chief of a State between 1986 and 1990, who had obtained several sites
from the government through false claims in the names of his wife and himself and a
spacious house in a posh area of the State capital refused to occupy the police house
allotted to him and continued to stay in his own bungalow for the first three years of his
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tenure till the end of 1989. He shifted to the police house and took up the renovation of
his own bungalow just a few months prior to his retirement.
Rules required that the full guard provided to his at his own bungalow be shifted
to the Police House.
SELECTION DENIED
The Deputy Commissioner of Police in charge of the armed police force

committed the serious error of shifting one head constable and four constables from the
bungalow to the Police House instead of assigning a new team to the Police House and
keeping the old guard in the chief’s house under renovation to keep vigil over the
construction material. This infuriated the police chief so much so that the Deputy
Commissioner was not selected for the vital All-India Service, not only that hear, but
also in the next ten years while his juniors superseded him. The indifference,
incompetence and corruption within the Union Public Service Commission (UPSC)
helped the process.
The UPSC in its perverted competence has created a new breed of administrators
in the police and other administrative classes. This new breed is interested in nothing
beyond meretricious schemes for promoting its career interests. They only think of more
perks, creating new posts to improve avenues of promotion and fighting for parity with
other services. Thoughts about how the schemes would affect the police structure in the
long run never bother these people.
Newspapers carry report of how promptly and actively regional and central IPS
associations respond to all the decisions touching their career. We never hear these
associations taking up any cause in matters purely professional- law and order, security or
crime investigation. The matters are left to the care of those down the line.
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Administration is a highly specialised field requiring extra-ordinary skills but the
state of affairs in the police field is archaic. Actually, there is no administration worth the
name. There are no long-term plans. No organisational initiatives. No growth and
coordination studies. The organisation takes care of itself depending upon the need
factors. As far as morale, motivation and mental well-being of the manpower are
concerned, the contribution of the Indian police administration is absolutely nil.
Threats and suppression form the essence of manpower management . Waste of

human resources and mandays is the general rule. Quality, efficiency and character are
inconsequential. Assessments are unheard of. Accommodating the desires of the higher-
ups in official and political circles and powerful people on a quid pro quo basis is the
accepted norm.
There is leadership crisis at the administrative level. Reasons for this

deterioration are many. The agency in charge of selection, namely the UPSC is now
manned by people unequal to the task. Restructuring the UPSC with professionals of
competence and integrity can tone up public administration.
Administration as a service in spirit and governance deals with men, money,

materials and machinery through laws, rules, decisions and directions. Administration,
for the most part, is human resources management.
The distinct culture and service conditions of the police, the stress and strain of
policing and the psychological factors throw up problems unique to the organisation.
This renders police administration a specialised field to be handled by experts having
insight into the working conditions and the psychological pressures of policemen.
The responsibilities of any administration are two –fold providing the body and
shape required to fulfil the objectives of the organisation within the limits of the extant
laws and providing the right ambience to boost the morale, motivation and above all the
mental well-being of the personnel.
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The extra-ordinary nature of the police setup and its working conditions render
the latter responsibility a sensitive field warranting specialised study and application.
The complex psychological factors involving policing in diverse social conditions

and social imperatives of a policeman’s life require dexterous handling of affairs to
promote morale and right motivation in place of the rule-of-thumb approach adopted
now. Unfortunately, the present chiefs of the civil service are unequal to the task.
What is required is highly intricate organisational policy imbued with specialised

skills and insight of the highest order to inspire, motivate and get the most out of the
manpower at disposal. The involves balancing many contradictions inherent in the
human psyche. On the one hand, the police force has to preserve its professional pride;
on the other, it has to be taught to accommodate in its character the instinct to obey. It
has to be tuned to be faithful to authority while its ultimate loyalty must rest with its
professional objectives and the rule of law.
The police have to be tough and fearsome to criminals and law-breakers, and
gentle and friendly with the public. They have to be the model law-abiding citizens even
while dealing with hardened criminals.
While they are accustomed to the interplay of ranks and status in the rigid
hierarchical order of the force, they should learn to treat all as equals and exercise
authority over people at the top level in society. In short, the task of balancing these
contradictions is the real challenge for the police administration.
THE INDIAN POLICE: MALADIES AND

REMEDIES
209
Crime, politics and the police are the 3 sides of the vicious triangle within which
democratic India and its free people are inexorably caught today. Though wealthy
industrial and commercial houses form the 4 th dimension of this unfortunate situation,
their manipulative strategies are as yet limited to trying to influence politicians in
pursuit of their interests.
It is their wealth that operates as a catalyst in reducing the normal life of free
citizens to a welter of uncertainties and unending hardships. However, their role is
rather distant and indirect, unlike that of criminals, politicians and the police.
Politicians protect criminals from the law while criminals reciprocate by acting as
their henchmen in handling underground activities. The police goes to the politicians for
job protection while at the same time it strikes an understanding with criminals. Thus
works this nexus of vile power brokers who prey on innocent people and suck the blood
of the hapless masses.
The trio of criminal, political and police manipulators is a dangerous force to

reckon with, in the Indian democratic situation. A tight-knit power-bloc, they have
permeated into all conceivable facets of Indian public life with the sole intention of
garnering all the benefits of an inefficient public administration. The tragedy here is that
this evil is perpetrated by those whom the public trust as their benefactors and protectors.
The amoral side of this operation does not seen to have affected either the police
or the politicians in any way and the vile cabal against, the Indian public works on
indifferent to everything except its own self-interest. It seems that all the actors in this
tragic drama think that the Indian democracy is a free-for-all, where they should try to
grab all that they can in a world where each person has to look after himself.
This approach is certain to undermine not only the democratic set-up of the
nation, but also its social fabric. The blame for this sad state of affairs should be
squarely borne by the ugly troika of politicians, criminals and the police.
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All the maladies of the police today emanate from the politicians who are only
concerned with winning the next election. Until it extricates itself from their grip, it
cannot hope to rise above its present mediocre level.
An immediate need is to streamline the organisation. At present, the growth of

the police department is not really much more than a spasmodic reaction to various
stimuli and as a result it lacks the benefits of an integrated approach. Operational
facilities, counter-balances and counter-checks are inadequate.
The constitution of a permanent cell of organisational experts under the direct

control of the police chief to redefine the police organisation is required to make it more
meaningful and need-based.
This could help in streamlining the hierarchy by identifying and eliminating

redundant posts, by rationalising workloads and preventing their duplication and by
redefining duties and procedures and thus the rights and responsibilities at each level.
As a consequence, police functioning would be made more cost-effective and efficient.
UNATTRACTIVE SERVICE
The accusation that no talent breeds and grows in the wilderness of the police set-
up cannot be easily gainsaid. The Indian Police Service continues to be an intellectually
poor and unattractive service in the spectrum of the All –India services with only misfits
opting for its.
The constabulary, which forms the bulk of the service, is largely constituted of
people from the lower stratum of society who are psychologically handicapped when it
comes to exercising their police powers against the more enlightened people in society.
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A tendency to sideline superior intellect and excellence, a general reluctance to
adopt modern techniques of policing and management, a dogmatic approach to personnel
and public relations and a lack of insight into human nature are other factors responsible
for the unfortunate state of affairs in the force.
These problems can be overcome only by capable police leadership at all levels.
The organisation is bound to experience a glissade until objectivity, reasonableness and
good judgement become a part of the police administration.
The annual assessment of men and officers in the police has become a travesty of
what it was originally meant to be. In no way, under the present circumstances, does an
ACR reflect an officer’s qualities or capabilities or lack thereof. Many therefore believe
that the department would be better off without this pernicious evaluation process that
encourages corruption and favouritism in the force.
It must, however, be said that the evils of the ACR are not inherent in the process
itself, but stem rather from the calibre of those who write them at various levels. What
characterises the rite of the ACR today is a distinct lack of objectivity: it has become a
means to personal ends, a medium for the advancement of individual interests and even
the settlement of personal scores.
Servility is its inevitable consequence and it would not be wrong to say that
eliminating the ACR altogether would certainly be a step towards commune bonum in
the police force.
A Deputy Inspector General of Police in a range wanted a young Deputy

Superintendent of Police to marry a girl close to him. The self-respecting DSP chose to
marry a girl of his own choice. This antagonised the Deputy Inspector General. His next
annual confidential report showed the junior as a liability to the police department.
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The senior officer also prevailed year after year upon other officers to
incorporate adverse remarks in the confidential reports of the junior. Most of them
obliged and this bright junior officer ended up with a series of unsubstantiated adverse
remarks in his confidential reports.
All his appeals were ignored by the Government. As a result, the young officer
was denied selection to the IPS for the next 9 years while his far less competent
colleagues superseded him on the career ladder, though there is nothing in his career to
justify such treatment.
Undeterred by the humiliation and career setbacks intentionally heaped on him he

then requested the Chief Secretary of the Government not to consider him any more for
the IPS. He took this measure to show his utter contempt of the corrupt departmental
heads who sit above him to decide his fate.
There are numerous instances of unhealthy practices at the highest levels in the
Indian police. Karnataka produced a police chief who, together with his wife, was taken
to court on the eve of his retirement, from service by a prominent social worker for
allegedly defrauding the public and a spastic society by siphoning off huge amounts of
money, collected for the spastics.
It is a different story that the officer concerned succeeded in silencing the social
worker through police pressure and ensured that the case fell through for lack of
evidence. The incident betrays the levels to which occupying high positions in the
Indian police stoop to make a few bucks.
In such an atmosphere with the maintenance of law and order in the hands of
unprincipled police personnel. Queer things take place. Long ago, a dacoity was
reported in the house of a person of doubtful character in Dharwad district in Karnataka.
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The dacoity was actually committed by the illegitimate son of the concerned
person after a serious quarrel. The complainant later settled his feud with the illegitimate
son and decided to settle the case of dacoity to save his family name.
He successfully arranged for an ex-convict of Stuartpuram to be picked up and

shown as the accused. A mangalasutra recast from the gold recovered in some other case
was shown as property seized from the criminal !
Such developments make a mockery of criminal justice. What a serious breach of

public trust it is for the police to involve a person, albeit an ex-convict, in a crime which
they knew he did not commit. The incident reveals the levels of criminality to which the
Indian police has sunk.
INHUMAN TORTURE
In another instance in 1981, police officials in charge of Koppal sub-division in

Karnataka picked up a poor goldsmith from Gadag in a neighbouring district for
interrogation about receiving stolen property. They subjected him to inhuman torture in
the Gadag tourist bungalow for 2 nights to make the innocent goldsmith confess to
crimes which he had not committed.
The wife and children of the goldsmith, who found him in the tourist bungalow
after endless running from pillar to post, were chased away from the place though they
could hear his agonised shrieks. The goldsmith succumbed to the torture on the second
night.
The news of the lock-up death, as such deaths are popularly called, was splashed
in local and other newspapers. The wife of the goldsmith filed a complaint before the
local court about the cold-blooded murder of her husband.
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The district Superintendent of Police and the Range Deputy Inspector General of
Police, whose protégé the sub-divisional police officer was, rose to the occasion to save
him.
They visited Gadag and entrusted the investigation of the case to the compliant
Deputy Superintendent of Police of a neighbouring sub-division with oral directions to
finalise the case as “not proved” before the magistrate, who had received the wife’s
complaint and taken cognisance of the plaint.
The Deputy Superintendent of Police complied with these directions and sent his
investigation report to the court for action u/s 210 of the Cr.PC. Thus ended the case of
cold-blooded torture and culpable homicide of an innocent goldsmith.
Such stories of cruelty and criminality make the police appear like demons. What
right has the police to investigate and prosecute criminals while it protects its own
killers?
Though it is difficult to extricate the police machinery from the clutches of the
politicians, it is an important measure that has to be undertaken at al costs in the overall
interests of the country
If policing is to be effective in the years ahead, specialisation is crucial. Three

distinct police services with separate recruitment and training are needed. These are:
1. Regulatory police or uniformed police in charge of law and order

And other regulatory duties.
2. Mainstay police in charge of crime investigation, crime prevention,
Security and intelligence operation.
3. Social police in charge of prevention and investigation of all social
Offences and implementation of social legislation.
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All the 3 wings should have their own individual organisations up to the district
level with independent superintendents and staff as required. They should function in
tandem in much the same way as the army, navy and air force do.
At the apex could be a specially constituted body called the State police authority
with police chiefs of all the 3 wings as members and the Chief Secretary to the
Government as its Chairman.
A PANACEA
Creation of an all-India police authority at the Centre, responsible only to the

President of India, with regional police authorities in each State as subordinate bodies,
may prove to be a panacea to most of the extant maladies of the Indian police.
The all-India police authority may be headed by a Supreme Court judge with the
Union Home Secretary and Central Cabinet Secretary as members and the senior most
police officer of the country as the member-secretary.
The arrangement is likely to bring to an end the undue interference by politicians

in police affairs, thus enabling the police to function in an independent atmosphere. The
Indian police may hope to function well in the new age if these measures are
implemented.
CRIME, POLITICS AND THE POLICE
In a blinkered system like ours, where power and wealth are the ultimate virtues
and where power and wealth in themselves stimulate mutual growth, to the exclusion of
all other dimensions of life it is no wonder that the people of this poor country succumb
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to the trappings of power and wealth at the cost of all virtues, values, pride, dignity and
human decency.
In an increasingly competitive and complex world, where every day, more mouths
are added to share limited resources, where the principle of the survival-of-the fittest
operates to its logical end and where the basic needs of survival and decency can be
assured only with power and wealth, people naturally go all out to ramp the ladder of
power and wealth by whatever means and cost.
JUSTICE, A CASUALTY
In the process, justice and morality become casualties. Criminality too raises its
ugly head as an instrument to achieve otherwise impossible objectives. This is how
politics and crime knit together in the fabric of Indian public life.
The story of the police is somewhat different. As an important part of the

nation’s administration, the police enjoy tremendous power over vast fields of human
activities with responsibilities towards the life and death of the hoi polloi as well as
dignitaries. In this sense, the police are the cutting edge of the State power and its
ultimate bearer.
No power can be its own law without the police on its side as an executioner and
loyal watch dog. This is why politicians in their activities feel the need for wooing the
police to their side.
The police of independent India have become, by reason of their failing strength
of character and talent, easy prey to the power baits of smart politicians.
Their greed, unsound social background, lack of commitment to good values and
failure to comprehend police virtues in the right perspective, make them willing
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partners in whatever politicians do, or intend to do. They refuse to look beyond their
political masters and their dispensations of job favours.
So law, justice, righteousness, professional ethics, morality decency, human

dignity, the common good of people, national interests and even conscience-otherwise
common to any human being-have become invalid nonsense to them
The police, sans sound character and personal integrity, are no more than country
dogs. This is what the Indian police have become in free India. The politicians,
inebriated with new power, smartly brought these weaklings to absolute submission and
held them on a tight-leash to be their personal watch dogs and personal gendarmes-in-
requital for favourable job placements, undue promotions and other largesse from time
to time.
Nothing is valued higher than this largesse and its dispensers by the new police
of India. It is how the police were involuted in the conspiracy against decent public life
of India.
It was a hop and skip for the police from the ugly world of politics to the
mysterious world of crime and the underworld. The police have become a weapon of
politicians to bring about the subjugation of the crime world to use its resources for
political ends.
FALL OF CHARACTER
Politicians, thus, made good use of the decreasing strength of character of the
police in forging a nexus between the police and criminals in the furtherance of their
own ends.
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With a weak spine and no principles in the face of odds, the police are only too
pleased to follow in the footsteps of their political masters.
In these changed circumstances, discipline and subordination, which form the

basic connecting link of the police hierarchy, have lost all meaning, and are interpreted as
blind subservience to those who have power to serve personal interests.
And politicians easily led the police to the despicable cul-de-sac of the nexus with
criminals-the very people who are supposed to be controlled and brought to book for
antisocial activities.
With politicians as the custodians of power en arriere to support, the police

plunged lock, stock and barrel into the lucrative crime world; the resulting wealth and
comforts were in no way less sweet than the hard earned money of law-abiding society.
This is how one nexus between the police and crime world was established.
Whom should we blame for this hapless position? Certainly not the politicians or
their auxiliaries like criminals and police who are the unfortunate by-products of the
grind. They are created by the situation arising from a system which misfits the people
for whom it was devised.
The blame lies either on the Indian people who are unresponsive to the
democratic system evolved for them. Because of their unenlightened and venal
conscience, which is so insensitive that virtues like honesty, service, patriotism, quality
and excellence can make no dent in it at all; or it lies with the political system devised
for them. It failed to take their psychological make-up into account, and ispo facto led to
the problem of maladjustment in national life.
Otherwise, how can we explain criminals and goondas winning elections with
impunity, even while rioting and murders were committed at their behest on the eve of
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elections itself? The fact is that the chance of winning an election often is pro rata to the
aura of a tough image built around the candidate.
IMMATURE ELECTORATE
It is these people who win elections and rule this country. It is these people
whom the Indian electorate prefers to vest with powers to safeguard their interests!
Obviously, the Indian electorate lacks the far sightedness and vision to
understand the consequences of its irresponsible decision.
It is yet too immature to take decisions about the interests of the nation and see
how national interests are closely linked to its personal interests. It is yet to broaden its
perspective to include the life of the nation as an integral part of its own.
Long –term and rational decisions are alien to its nature. Immediate selfish
interests and parochial outlook continue to be the driving force of all its actions and
decisions- on the matters of national importance or personal concern.
In most parts of India, it is money, arrack, sari, threat, fear of landlords or the
blazening propaganda of a candidate that influence its decision as to whom to vote for.
How can the future of this country be safe in the hands of such an electorate and
its elected leaders?
How can an indifferent and irresponsible electorate provide honest and efficient
leadership to the nation?
This weakness of the electorate has ultimately left Indian politics in the hearth of
violence and manipulative extortions, with the instruments meant to protect them
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mowing the field. Saner elements in politics, who found survival difficult, have left the
field, giving way to elements which are more suited to the field.
It is how politics, from a class of dedicated and virtuous leaders, has become a pit
of junk. The credibility, which is the pith of any political life, is the biggest casualty in
Indian politics.
People are more and more disillusioned with the extant political institutions. The
percentage of the electorate that takes the trouble of going to polling booths so cast
votes is steadily decreasing from election to election.
It is an open secret that an election is an opening for a candidate to invest money

to reap wealth, comfort and power for the next 5 years. And how he reaps the wealth,
comfort and power is again not a mystery at all. It is corruption and misuse of public
money.
If he is ambitious and intends to promote his career interests, there is no way out
in the existing system but to resort to pulling strings and pursuing other more deadly
methods. Often with the active collusion of the officious criminals and police.
The unhealthy nexus often leads to and facilitates other forms of crime. Cases of
rioting, assault, kidnapping, rape and blackmail, involving the supporters or relatives of
politicians, criminals and police in futherance of a political cabal are other usual forms of
crime that result from the vicious nexus.
Often, criminals and police are employed to create disturbance or inspire

sensational crimes in furtherance of political goals. The losses of life and property
involved in the wily schemes seldom touch the conscience of either the politicians, the
criminals or the police who are responsible for these dastardly acts.
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The political patronage and the nexus with police desensitise criminals to the
process of law and justice. They are emboldened to commit more daring and ruthless
crimes that endanger the life and property of the plebeians.
The police, in their links with politicians on the one hand and with criminals on
the other, are in their new avatar-the protectors of vested interests with no more
commitment and passion for law and justice.
They have become a discredited force, a willing instrument of power brokers in

the ruthless and violent cabal of power-games with no heart for the common man and
common cause.
This is the requital the Indian electorate gets for letting by its nonchalance and
irresponsibility-the political system putrefy.
POLITICISATION OF CRIME.
What we see today is just the tip of the iceberg. There are more things hidden in
the latter than are seen.
This is soon realised by the opportunist Indian politicians who seize the first
available instance to enlist the support of criminals and underground operators for their
nefarious designs.
This, in turn, is a god–sent opportunity for criminals to restore their lost

credibility and social standing with the help of their association with the custodians of
power, apart from the security and protection from the police that ensure from the
association.
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They promptly grab the opportunity to their advantage and show how useful they
can be to politicians in their career-promotion designs and in the wreaking of personal
vendettas.
The experience and professionalism of criminals come in handy to politicians to

execute their nasty operations without attracting the stigma attached to them.
The vast army of criminals has become ready resource for them to use whenever
need arises. This has given a sense of confidence and security to politicians, who are
otherwise vulnerable in their highly uncertain, challenging and competitive environment.
Often, politicians have so much relied on criminals that the latter have become
their most trusted lieutenants, even getting elected to legislature with their help and
blessings.
There have been instances in India, where prominent politicians have refused to
disown their notorious criminal friends in public even after reaching the vortex of their
political career. This shows the sway held by criminals over politicians in the Indian
situation.
It is a fact that no syndicate of organised crime in small and big cities anywhere
in the world can survive even for a day without political patronage. Ergo, all syndicates
of organised crime and their menace are the direct outcome of the nexus between
politicians and criminals, with the police as bystanders.
No criminal can take lightly the need for political patronage in running his crime
syndicate. Be they smuggling syndicates, gambling houses, narcotics dealers or plain
hoodlums, the only way to survive is to have comfortable political protection at the right
levels.
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MUTUAL ADVANTAGE
The crime syndicate, in return, pay a good percentage of their criminal gain to the
protectors. Thus, it is an arrangement to mutual advantage.
The crime world also provides hoodlums as volunteers to perform challenging

tasks during the election campaigns of their political patrons, apart from liberally
financing these campaigns.
How can a politician, after gaining power with the help of a criminal, ever let
down the criminal? This symbiosis of politicians and criminals which has emerged from
the extant Indian political system. Is the root cause of all the complications discussed
until now.
The very fact that politicians are prepared to risk their reputation rather than
distance themselves from the crime world, shows how highly the world of crime is
regarded by the politicians in their scheme of things.
Politics and crime have become the 2 faces of the same coin in the present state of
affairs and a saying goes that there cannot be politics without crime and no crime without
politics.
In the present Indian situation, it is true that the lotus of politics can blossom only
in the offal of crime.
In an atmosphere where placements and transfers are decided by the needs and
wishes of self-seeking politicians, no police can efficiently function nor can they be free
from the interference of the politicians.
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It is not surprising that hungry politicians grab more and more powers that are
legally and traditionally invested with the police department when the top brass lack
strength of character and conviction.
The leads to a position wherein the police department becomes a chessboard on

which politicians move their pieces to checkmate their adversaries and win the political
game.
In other words, the police sans effective leadership is becoming more a handmaid
of politicians by moving away from its sacred role as the guardian of law and justice and
the protector of the common man.
The credit of bringing the police from their height of power to the present level of
absolute submission should go to the superior strength of personality of wily politicians
who have bent the police on their own terms with the selective use of stick and carrot.
The police is not the real police and what is does is not policing in the proud sense
of the term.
CHANGED ROLE
With the increasing involvement of the police with crass politicians, the
conception of the police about their own role has undergone a large-scale change. No
more do the police look at crime control and maintenance of order as their first duty.
With this, the concern for crime control has received a setback and crime control
and investigation have receded to the last priority-except when politicians are interested
in them for a specific purpose.
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Only crimes that disturb politicians foment police to galvanic and meaningful
action. Other crimes receive no priority.
The very definition of the gravity of crime is adapted to suit the new conception.
Those crimes which are tolerated by politicians are no more crimes.
The self-image of the police as “a fearless arbiter of crime” is changed to a

solicitous servant in attendance at the pleasure of a politician-master.
This blunting of the crime card of the police has made it less awe-inspiring and
less deserving of respect from the criminals.
The police have more and more realised that criminals, particularly those from
organised syndicates, are personal friends of their political masters and they are no
match for the criminals in terms of wealth, influence and social standing. The men of the
police see those criminals on equal footing with their political masters and learn to treat
them with awe.
They find it absurd to act with authority against the high-profile criminals who
are too high for the small stature of the police.
It is unfortunate that the police of today have never realised their infinite stature
as law-enforcing agents vis-à-vis all others including criminals and politicians whom
they are empowered to search, arrest and take to court if they deviate from rightful path.
Sadly, the trifling wealth and the concomitant “ big-man” image of others appear
to the present police as more appealing than their own awful police authority.
On ultimate analysis, crime is a universal phenomenon. All living beings are

criminals in varying degrees. Criminal thought is a part of the natural function of a
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healthy mind as is the moral restraint that prevents the criminal thought from being acted
upon.
External restraints brought about by the fear of law, custom and adverse reaction,
reinforce the inner restraint to prevent the committing of crime.
However, as the force of external restraints weakens for diverse reasons, and the
proporation of gain to be made in committing a crime outweighs the risks involved in the
balance sheet of the operation, the lure of crime increases and the deed is accomplished.
SOCIAL ACCEPTANCE
It is the social situation which controls the external restraints to make committing
a crime an asset or a liability. It thereby decides the proliferation or suppression of
crime, human nature being what it is always.
Criminals are criminals because society gives them easy openings to thus meet
their needs. Politicians love to befriend criminals rather than bring them to book because
the society they live in makes their lives more comfortable with criminals as friends
rather than as adversaries. Policemen find the crime world sweeter because it is how
things stand for them.
The remedy for the proliferation and endearment of crime lies in changing the
social dynamics to make crime a liability to criminals and criminals a liability to
politicians and the police. In the existing nexus of politics, crime and police, crime is an
asset to criminals and criminals are an asset to politicians and police.
Criminals should not be construed as a separate block of citizenry. They are a

cross-selection of people from all fields of life who have moved beyond a commonly
accepted degree in their criminal tendencies.
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Criminality may be prolific in certain civilised fields like commerce and industry
in the form of tax evasion, violation of foreign exchange regulations, hoarding etc.
Such crimes are generally not taken seriously in spite of the public awareness of
the crimes and the social standing of the criminals remains unaffected. Government
servants too come under this category of criminals because of rampant corruption in
public life.
It is a fact that Indian public life is a vast field of criminal activities and
politicians and police, though the custodians and protectors of Indian public life, from
part of the crime world. However, knowledge of the involvement of politicians and
police in this nasty world stirs the public conscience for the reason that they are
supposed to be the people on whom the public relies to save them.
CRIME AND NATIONAL ECONOMY
A word about the effect of the nasty nexus between politics, crime and police on
the national economy.
Unity gives strength. It is true about this nasty nexus also.
The only telos of the nexus is gain by synergy, which brings confidence and
courage to the troika in its nefarious activities, thereby inducing it to more daring and
innovative criminal activities.
This results in proliferation of crime is illegal gain and the incidence of crime is
directly related to increase in black money in the national economy, the proliferation of
crime invariably results in inflation and the weakening of the national economy.
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More dangerously, it results in polarisation of the society into criminal rich and
honest poor, and destroys the country’s moral fabric.
The increasing incidence of easy money, material comforts and political power
of the criminal rich ultimately leads to internal strife and popular terrorism.
The indulgence of the rich and powerful in crime popularises criminal activities
by bringing an aura of status to them and negating all inhibitions in the popular mind.
Society easily accepts the example of the wealthy and powerful for making an
easy buck to lead comfortable lives in the world where life is becoming increasingly
difficult because of the spurt in black money, caused by proliferation of crime.
While decent life becomes impossible by honest methods, the need of survival
forces honest citizens to accept crime as a way of life as the last resort. This would be
where politicians, criminals and police lead the country.
Easy money and easy wealth have a tendency to inflate. Criminals tend to spend
lavishly. This ends up in a spurt in prices of land, buildings and essential commodities,
while honest men have to toil hard for an extra quarter.
Crime begets money, and money begets more money, and more money gets
power, comfort and everything. In the crush, the honest man is lost forever. The ocean
of criminal wealth around him, which is beyond even his wildest dreams, frustrates him
and ravages his sense of morality and righteousness.
It turns him violently against all human values and decency, leading him to a
world of crime and violence. It is what we have seen in Punjab, Kashmir, Assam, in
faraway Sri Lanka or even in Naxalism, where it is disguised as political ideology.
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It is an irony that politicians and the police, who create the demons, fall to the
bullets of the grievously hurt, self-righteous, once innocent people. It is said that even
the dacoits in Chambal are symptomatic of this social and economic malady.
It is true that crime cannot be eliminated from any society as the tendency to
commit crime is ingrained in human nature. However, crime can be suppressed by
appropriate restraints. What restraints and how they are to be applied are ironically
decided by politicians and the police.
If they come out of their indulgent interests to commit themselves to their

professional objectives, they can certainly save India from the present predicament.
Not that every politician and very policeman can come out to achieve this noble
task, but there certainly are noble elements yet surviving as exceptions among them,
who should take up cudgels in favour of the Indian polity and sacrifice their lives and
careers, if necessary, to make the renaissance of Indian police and Indian public life
possible.
The question yet to be posed is: Will the inveterate vested interests let these
sacrifices bear fruit? Let us hope for the best.
CRIMINALISATION OF POLICE
Organised violence is so much a part of Indian politics that all politics parties
have created youth and volunteer wings to accommodate young hoodlums as a fighting
and street-smart force to be used when violence is needed.
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Those who sand out in courage and toughness rise fast and reach the top and
today a very high percentage of Ministers in the Indian Government are these people.
It is ironical that politicians, whose help criminals sought to save themselves

from the police, brought the police and criminals closer to each other, building a bridge
between them. The understanding reached between criminals and the police is to a great
degree responsible for criminalising Indian public life and blunting the effectiveness of
the police.
Though the nexus between criminals and the police is not a new phenomenon,
what was once an exception has now become the rule and what was the rule once has
become the exception. Today criminals on the one hand overawe a weak police force
with their connections with powerful politicians and lure the police with easy money and
comfort on the other, thus tilting the balance to their advantage.
POLITICAL MISHANDLING
Though criminals play their political cards with adroitness, their real aim is to
lessen the pressures of the police on themselves.
If some are born criminals, some choose the path of crime consciously and some
others are constrained to follow it. While faulty financial and social policies forged by
short-sighted politicians are responsible for forcing many helpless people to a life of
crime, these same policies often drive sensitive people to revolt and to embrace terrorism
and violence.
Naxalisim, Sikh terrorism, the ULFA movement, Kashmir separatism, Hindu and
Muslim militancy and even the sympathy in India for the LTTE cause are direct results
of political mishandling of national issues.
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India has seen isolated political attempts in the past to save people from the
clutches of crime and to rehabilitate them. The famous Chambal experiment initiated by
the late Jaya Prakash Narayan had some success in spite of the machinations of certain
politicians in the area.
Not that politics is all bad. It is, by definition, governance of the State by popular
leadership. The malaise of today’s politics lies in its tilt to populism at the cost of
leadership and more dangerously, populism is being considered an investment to earn
returns in multiple proportions. Nothing, it appears, means as much to the Indian
electorate as money to prod them to cast their votes for a particular candidate.
VICIOUS CIRCLE
The history of independent India makes it clear that honesty, patriotism, quality,
service, excellence and even charisma have become casualties vis a vis money and
power on the Indian election stage. In this situation, political poser is equated with
electoral popularity, which in turn is equated with money and power, which can be had
only though political patronage.
The vicious circle has helped to create a class of extortionists who manipulate the
passive public. Politics too has its honest and patriotic people who are committed to the
welfare of society. But, sadly, they are caught up in a system which does not let them
come to prominence unless they come terms with it and adopt the venal proposition of
wining elections to make money to win the next election.
Only those who correctly grasp the inner dynamics of this and adapt to its
mechanics can hop to make any headway. Others are bound to sink. When the system
itself made the election a venal mechanism, corrupt practices that rope in criminals and
police are bound to follow.
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It can be categorically said that the business of crime cannot survive anywhere if
politicians and the police join hands to bring the crime world to heel. But alas, this is not
to be in a world of opportunist politicians and a corrupt, weak, police force both with an
eye on the spoils of the crime. The police force is the weak link in the troika of power-
brokers consisting of politicians, criminals and the police. It functions as an instrument
politicians use to bring criminals to them. The role of the police as a law-enforcing
agency and its hold over criminals makes it a handy instrument for politicians to use.
SAD COMMENTARY
The police is the executioner and odd-job boy of the Government. This image of
the police is effectively made use of by politicians for all conceivable personal and
official purposes. While low-ranking police are used as bodyguards, gunmen,
messengers, watchmen etc, high-ranking police officers are used for the same jobs at
higher levels.
It is a sad commentary on today’s police force that while low-ranking police do

these jobs as an unavoidable duty, high-ranking officers compete and fight among
themselves to attend to the odd jobs of their political masters. This they do, even when
they are fully aware of the criminal antecedents and police histories of some of their
benefactors.
Jobs are judged for importance in the police force on their potentialities for illegal
money from crime. And jobs with potential for such gains are most sought after and are
often paid for in lakhs. This is considered an investment. which will earn many times
more in a short period of time.
Many other jobs, on the other hand are known as punishment postings and are
largely detested. These jobs have no potential for illegal earnings.
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It goes without saying that judging jobs on the basis of the challenge or the
opportunity for service that they provide is a thing of the past. It is the crime world that
decides the importance or otherwise of different police jobs and in actual fact controls
the type and calibre of officers in each job.
In other words, it is criminals who invisibly control the police rather than the
police controlling the criminals. This reversal of function has a lot to do with the low
morale of the present Indian police.
Its members find themselves at the mercy of criminals whom they are supposed to
bring to book. The police is no longer confident that it is mentally and organisationally
equipped to do its job.
Increasingly powerful and modernised crime syndicates have made a farce of

crime control by the police. Many factors place the police at disadvantages. Its growth
has not kept pace with population growth. It is also at a disadvantage as far as
communication, transportation and weaponry are concerned as criminals have the best of
all these.
INCOMPETENT LEADERSHIP
Consequently, police fatalities in encounters with criminals and terrorist groups

are increasing. As a result the police in India is no longer keen to intrfere with the
activities of the underworld. The understanding between criminals and the police is that
both will confine themselves to their respective fields a and avoid embarrassing each
other.
The police is paid for its passiveness while stray troublemakers are silenced. The
Indian police is sane enough to quickly realise that its interests lie in silence while
entangling with the crime world may invite a host of complications.
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The responsibility for the present state of the Indian police rests solely on its
incompetent leadership rather than on anything else. Unimaginative planning uninspiring
guidance and lack of leadership and conviction in the top police ranks has led to utter
chaos. Dangerously ineffective recruitment policies, poor training programmes, misuse
of the facilities of confidential assessment of subordinates and the degeneration of control
and supervision machinery have resulted.
The present Indian police force is utterly unmotivated and police jobs are
considered only as devices that provide rank, power, social status, sundry comforts and a
pension. How can the people of India depend upon this sort of police force for security,
protection and law and order?
TIME TO IMPROVE THE QUALITY OF CIVIL
SERVICE
The All India Service were once called the Steel Frame that held India, a country
which consisted of diverse political systems, comprising British Indian and many other
big and small princely States, together. If India is one today- though in truncated form-
the efficiency of its vintage. All India Services is as much responsible for this as the
might of the British Empire.
The credit for India having made impressive progress, both in the domestic and
international fields and having survived the uncertain, initial years of democracy, under
leaders who had no experience of ruling a country of India’s size and diversity, also goes
to the original All India Services- to its traditions and efficiency, that continued to
survive for some years even after Independence.
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The sterling performances of Sardar Vallabh Bhai Patel in the unification of
India and the brilliant achievements of Jawaharalal Nehru in the international field are as
much the success stories of their civil servant secretaries and advisers as of the leaders
themselves.
The fall in standards of the All India Services, in the values of their officers and
in their efficiency and performance, is symbolic of the fall India itself has experienced.
The All India Services experienced a setback after Independence. This

deterioration was in depth of ideas, quality of performance and honesty of convictions
of their officers. With this deterioration, to All India Service are no longer in a class of
their own. Its members can no longer claim a distinguished standing in society as the All
India Services have been reduced to merely good careers.
The Civil Services had inherited, as a result of their exclusive place in the higher
levels of administration, high pay packets and good perquisites, attractive service
conditions and an awe-inspiring tradition. But since this was not accompanied by
superior performance, the consequence is that the reins of democratic India are now in
the hands of people who are in no way superior in terms of intellectual worth,
administrative skill or human qualities. This is a tragedy for a democracy struggling to
progress.
The British created to All India Services to handle the administration of the
country. They recruited talented people, imparted the best possible training to them
and invested them with the trust, powers and opportunities to carry out their
responsibilities.
They took care of all their personal needs, provided them with many
opportunities for growth and surrounded them with a halo of exclusivity by endowing
them with high social status and providing them with generous creature comforts.
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Independent India needed brilliant people to handle its complex administrative
problems and to implement its developmental schemes. It is tragic that India after
independence not only failed to realise the importance of maintaining its Steel Frame
and improving upon it, but positively contributed to its collapse in a very short span of
time.
Indian leaders wanted the All India Service of independent India to break away
from the British model they had originally been based on and they gave expression to
this desire by altering the name of the Services. It is ironical that the change in name also
initiated a steep fall in the quality of the Civil Services.
At present, the Indian Administrative Services is not even a pale shadow of the
old Indian Civil Services. The Indian Foreign Service stands nowhere near the brilliant
Indian Political Service and the present Indian Police Service lacks the backbone and
professionalism of the good old Indian Police.
A major cause for the disappearance of excellence from the All India Services of
independent India was the secret tendency of the new leaders to look at the All India
Services as their rivals in running the country, rather than as the backbone of the State. A
subtle fear of the All India Services inherited from British India days accompanied by a
sense of awe that the services inspired because of the halo worn by its predecessor, stirred
the new leaders who made every effort to cut the Civil Services to size and show them
their proper place.
SORRY STATE OF AFFAIRS
This occurred together with a fall in the standards of management of the Civil
Services because of the failure to recognise the importance of the Civil Services in
administering the nation. This fall succeeded in bringing the All India Services of the
post Independence era to its present state.
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This brought the Services closer to the people of India in a way, while stripping it
of all its brilliance, excellence and efficiency to give India a mediocre All India Services
to handle its administration. And the result of this is the present state of the country.
The poor state of the Civil Services attracted people of poor calibre. This led to
all kinds of evils including corruption, opportunism and lack of moral strength to stand
by one’s values and convictions.
This situation led to loss of face and subordinated the All India Services to the
ambitions of the political leadership. Its has been a long journey from the bold and awe-
inspiring All India Services that existed at the dawn of Independence to the present meek
and servile All India Services without any backbone to stand erect and hold its head
high.
The reasons for the fall and the mechanism that brought about the change, are not
far to seek. Everything that made the All India Services of the British days a powerful
adminicle for the administration was just swept away while its new avatar in independent
India was brought into existence.
The glory of the old All India Services was built on the 3 basic strengths of
faultless recruitment, perfect training and the maintenance of the highest standards of
professionalism and character t sustain it throughout. These strengths held the Steel
Frame of India together for nearly a century. But independent India just failed to give
these factors the importance they deserved while constituting its version of the All Indian
Services.
The primacy British India gave to the process of selection of people of high
calibre to the All India Services is perhaps the single major factor that made the Civil
Services among the best in the world. Promising people with maturity and intellectual
superiority were selected young through a vigorous and efficient filtering process of a
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carefully devised elaborate public civil examination process under the guidance,
supervision and control of highly qualified professionals in the field.
Rarely was anything other than exceptional merit considered in the process of
selection and human weakness like nepotism, corruption and parochial considerations
rarely interfered in the process, as Britain was not prepared to compromise and accept
anyone less than the best in the higher levels of administration. These people were, after
all, to sit on equal terms with them and help in administering the country! These high
standards in the process of selection and recruitment, made the All India Services of
British days, a really superior cadre.
REASONS FOR DETERIORATION
The grand structure of British rule was to be mercilessly demolished later by

independent India. Unimaginative and messy selection and recruitment procedures,
which were poorly conceived and unskilfully executed became the order of the day.
Corruption, nepotism, narrow considerations and caste and economic reservations
corroded the foundations of the newly-constituted All India Services as time passed.
The reasons for this deterioration in the Civil Services are many. The first is the
general lack of passion for quality and excellence in the Indian psyche. The agency in
charge of the process of such selections, namely, the Union Public Service Commission,
unlike in the British period, is unfortunately increasingly being manned by people
unequal to the task either in terms of their professionalism, efficiency and passion for
brilliance or in their basic character itself.
As the selection of members of the UPSC became politicised, mediocre people

came to fill the slots and in the process, selections to the All India Services suffered.
Since members owed their memberships or chairmanship to their political leaders, they
239
could not avoid the obligatory quid pro quo. This continues to be the state of affairs
today.
The Indian Civil Service, which once produced giants like K.P.S. Menon, now
produces in its new avatar of the IAS and Allied Services only pigmies without voice or
strength of conviction. In this matter, they are like those in the crippled institution of the
union Public Service Commission who select them. The Steel Frame of the IAS has nor
become a gilded plastic frame with its steel conscience crumbling into a plastic
conscience in the present uncertain political atmosphere. A Steel Frame Civil Service
would never have permitted such a degeneration.
The degeneration is manifeast at all ranks in all services, whether it is the

administrative service, the foreign service, the police service, the forest service, the
central services or the specialised services, whether at the sub-divisional or provincial
level or at the highest levels of Central Government. The degeneration is uniform
everywhere.
Whether it be in creative genius, intellectual heights, strength of character, moral

values, width of human interests or noble qualities, the Civil Service of the post-
Independence era are third rate. It does not have its own voice or any originality. Its
members either as Chief Secretaries of State Governments or as Secretaries of various
ministries of departments, are at best paper-pushers and mindless approvers of reports
incompetently prepared by subordinates down the line.
Imagine people of such calibre presiding over the entire Civil Services. Thus
develops a vicious circle that promotes the degeneration of the Civil Services.
Sturdy and sterling All Indian Services are indispensable for the survival of
democratic and united India. Whether it is a cadre of generalists as the Indian
Administrative Service is, or cadres of specialists in the fields of judiciary, health care,
engineering, economics, foreign service, police etc the existence of All Indian Services
240
functions as the basis of governance of India and adds to the emotional bonds binding the
country together.
Also, as a pool of the cream of the people, it is supposed to bring distinguished

and brilliant people to the job of administration of the country and thereby ensure good
government to the country.
THE REMEDY
Any dilution of the high standards of these services is certain to throw the country
to the wolves. British India knew this and perhaps, independent India also knows it. But
it does nothing to arrest the dangerous fall in the standards of its All India Services.
India is preoccupied with myriad issues relating to economic and social

development and perhaps the rapid deterioration of its All India Services does not
appear to be important in comparison with these burning issues. But such a feeling is
wrong. All India Services are a precondition for the survival of India. India must realise
this fact and act fast.
This brings us to the quintessential question as to how the Civil Services can be
brought back to their original standards and glory. How can we get back the original
ideas, quality and performances and honesty of convictions that existed earlier?
The first and foremost task in this regard is pruning the Civil Services to a small
brains trust of brilliance and commitment which will steer the country in the right
direction by giving competent advice on statecraft and actually running the
administration to political leaders.
A TINY SELECT GROUP:
241
Merciless pruning of the extant services to create this tiny, efficient and highly
responsible core is a priority task. Only brilliance and the highest potential should be the
criteria for membership in this nerve-centre.
This brains trust must be kept beyond the purview of extraneous constraints like
reservation of any kind and even age restrictions. The guiding principle here is bringing
together the best talents without restraints of any kind, for ensuring best results. The
services should not be treated as an employment opportunity for the elite, but as the
foundation of the Government.
INTELLECTUAL CALIBRE:
The training programmes for the services have to be made relevant today. Matter taught
has to be updated every year by experts and made changing evento the brightest among
the new recruits, unlike present training programmes which are intellectually
impoverished, irrelevant to the times and which in no way help ensuring the right
attitudes at the higher levels.
Another need is to make the passing of a promotional test, of a very standard,

held by the UPSC or a similar Central agency, mandatory for promotion at every level.
Only such tough measures will keep the Civil Services fit and productive as is required
for the sound health of the administration of the country.
TONING UP THE UPSC:

Overhauling the present mediocre Union Public Service Commission to create an
efficient and responsible set-up capable of handling the enormous responsibilities under
Article 320 of the Indian Constitution, is essential in order to arrest the degeneration that
has set in, in the set-up. This has led to blunders in identifying talent and in managing
the Civil Services.
CREDIBILITY OF THE UPSC:
242
In a recent case, 3 promising officers from the State cadre of a southern State of India,
were denied selection by the UPSC to an All India Service for no obvious reason for 10
years from 1990, while their juniors were elevated. The acute frustration and
demoralisation caused by this led to the break-up of the family of one of the promising
trio.
Violent behaviour by him repeatedly in public led to very embarrassing public

humiliations, and ultimately involvement in a murder case led to his conviction. This is
how a reckless and irresponsible UPSC ruined a promising life for no reason at all.
However, another of the trio was an officer of enormous inner strength as well as
a poet and an intellectual of the highest calibre. He weathered the frustration of the 9
years to rise to a very high level in individual achievement and public esteem to the
shame of the irresponsible UPSC.
The incident created much resentment in the State against the recklessness of the
UPSC and considerably lowered its credibility. Such transgressions are common these
days with the present state of affairs in the UPSC and the overhauling of the
organisation should be aimed at preventing such irresponsible actions that can have such
tragic consequences.
REORGANISATION OF THE UPSC:

The way to prevent such unprofessionalism on the part of the UPSC lies in transforming
it to a highly efficient outfit managed by people of unimpeachable character and
efficiency. This objective can be achieved by suitable amendment to Articles 316 and
317 of the Indian Constitution to ensure that only suitable people become Members
and Chairman of the organisation and remain in the saddle only as long as they retain
their moral and professional calibre.
This can be made possible by constituting a committee comprising the Chief

Justice of the Supreme Court, the Chief Commissioner of the Central Vigilance
243
Commission and the Speaker of Parliament as members. The Vice-President of India
should be the Chairman and clear the names for appointment as Members and as the
Chairman of the UPSC for a fixed tenure. These people should also be empowered to
initiate actions for their removal by an appropriate procedure in fit cases.
Appropriate changes to this effect in Articles 316 and 317 of the Indian
Constitution are likely to plug the existing loopholes that allow too much political
interferences in the process of the selection of Members and Chairman of the UPSC and
thereby in its fair functioning.
TOWARDS SANE SERVICE
It is a historical fact that India which is characterised by its unity in diversity was
never a single nation at any time in its long course of history of several millenniums, till
the feat was achieved in the 20th century.
Neither Asoka Mourya or Samudra Gupta or Chandra Gupta nor Akbar or

Aurangzeb of Mughul dynasty in Indian history can boast of binding all the regions
stretching between Cape Camorin and Karakorampass, and Rann of Kutch and
Arunachal Pradesh under a single rule to give meaning to the concept of a single nation.
No military strength, no religion, no cultural similarities, no unity of civilisation,

no linguistic resemblances nor geographical proximities at any time before succeeded in
forging a single nation out of the vast land masses south of the Himalayas.
If India is a single nation today, though in its rather moth-eaten form, the credit
should go to its distinguished civil service of early and middle 20 th century vintage
which was rightly called as the steel-frame of Indian unity.
244
Should India continue as a single nation, it has to be through the grit, strength and
quality of its civil service alone.
Any tampering with the quality of the civil service and doing anything that may
mangle the ‘steel-frame’ grade of Indian civil service certainly go fatal to the very
existence of India as a single nation.
The worst curse on India and its people is the classification and stratification of
humanity on the basis of births and adoption of rigid codes of social conduct to rule the
relationship between those in different strata.
The lower strata being condemned to be treated less than street dogs and denied
equality and any opportunity of growth and decent life.
This curse for several millenniums permanently handicapped certain accurst

social groups from breaking away from primitive way of life.
This cancer in Indian social life develops a major moral responsibility on India
not only to get rid of the nasty disease, but also to rehabilitate the victims of the age-old
social bevue.
Post-independent India, as welfare state, took innumerable measures, both

constitutional and legislative, towards absterging the sins perpetrated by its past practices
of ages on the unfortunate sections of the society.
The removal of untouchability, prevention of atrocities, reservations, in jobs and

educational opportunities to quote but a few.
Sine dubio, such special treatments alone can somewhat remedy the inhuman
treatment and delour meted out to some without an iota of fellow-feeling and kindness for
generations after generations.
245
Such measures on special footing are not only compensations India must pay for
having deprived some of its children of their growth opportunities for so long, though
belated and inadequate as they are.
They are also a kind of remorse the country suffers for its past sins.
But the cardinal question is the direction such measures must take.
Wrong policies in such matters may not only fail to make the measures
efficacious, but may also block the existing opportunities too.
It may also further weaken the social fabric of the country and ipso facto pose
real threat to the very existence of India as a country.
The apollyon in question is the policy of job reservation in civil service which
may eat up the quality and steel-frame toughness of the setup to disintegrate and
balkanise India sans its only binding force namely a sound civil service to keep the
country united in its diversities.
The victims of the age-old stratified class system actually deserve many more
special privileges than delivered to them at present.
The necessarily need easier access to educational opportunities to prepare them

for higher slots in life.
Hence, the need of reservations in educational institutions.
Perhaps, institution of an apex development bank with branches in all districts or

taluks of the country, exclusively for their financial needs of nonconsumptive nature at
246
nominal rate of interest a la rural or agricultural banks may prove a significant step in this
direction.
Institution of liberal scholarships, concession in or exemption from, application

fee for jobs, wider network or board and lodging facilities for students, free higher
studies, special vocational training for men and women, concessional hostel facilities for
working men and women, easy housing schemes, free advanced medical treatment
facilities, etc are other welfare schemes for the unprivileged classes that may help to
bring them on par with others.
This will wipe out the achilles’ heel from the face of Indian social structure to
make Indian society civilised without affecting the quality of its governance and
parameters of survival.
It was Winston Churchill who said democracy is the worst type of governance
except for all other types of governance. Basically, democracy signifies rule of common
man and rule of mediocrity and ergo, more dangerously the rule of hoi polloi or mob.
This definition applies principally to the political system of the democratic

governance and not to the civil service system which is expected to be the subtle spine of
the democratic rule. A sound civil service as amicus curiae draws the metes and bounds
of governance within which the democratic system must function and also inspire a
sense of moderation, discipline, fairness, legality and reasonableness in the political
leadership of the system.
It absorbs the jerks and shocks of the political follies and helps the political
leadership in taking sound and intelligent decisions at right times.
In this sense, a sound civil service structure is sine qua non for running a
democracy and the strength of the democracy depends entirely on its soundness and
247
quality. A democracy without sound civil service slumps like a mass of flesh without a
spine to support it.
The well being of the repressed class of India depends solely upon the survival of
India as a single nation and therefore on the quality and soundness of the civil service.
If there is anything scanty in the present world, it is high quality and excellence.
They are such a rare commodity that even slight distractions in the swink to cultivate
them end up in their disappearing in thin air. Excellence has a distinct tendency of light
from mediocrity and regrouping otherwise at its own level. This tendency renders
maintenance of the tempo of high quality and excellence a difficult task. Any allowance
to mediocrity leads to a sustained flight of quality and excellence till mediocrity
completely takes over. This is what is feared about present Indian civil service thanks to
reservation policy.
The fear that the steel-frame civil service of the pre-independent India vintage
have crumbled into a mediocre setup now by wrong policies of selection and recruitment
in independent India needs serious attention it deserves.
Several opinion polls point to the diminishing attraction of the civil service to
crème de la crème of the Indian youth in preference to foreign and private industrial
houses and banks as job opportunities.
This trend deserves deeper concern than at present in those who are interested in
the survival of India as a nation and democracy. The interest of the country lies in
marshalling the best talents of the country in service of maintaining the country as a
nation and democracy and that need must get the first priority over all other issues
including developmental and welfare vintage. Unfortunately, it is not happening in
India now.
248
Civil Service is the trunk of the tree of democratic governance and breaking the
trunk itself is self-defeating for all national goals including justice for all. By the policy
of job reservation to civil service, India is venturing to the folly of cutting its own s trunk.
Stracient damage has already been done by this in the last five decades. No distraction
like reservation of any kind must deter the criterion of genuine merit and competence in
civil service.
Real merit and competence emerge from exemplary unity of diverse human
faculties like sound character, strong intellect right attitude, commitment and devotion
to work. Doing anything to subvert these virtues in civil service in tantamount to
wrecking the interests of the country.
It is not that somebody wants to subvert the interests of the country by hoisting
job reservation policy on civil service. The intentions of reservation is beyond reproach .
The fault lies in its pursuance.
Reservation of any kind in civil service clearly proves to be wrong means to reach
the right end. How early India realises this fact, so fast is served India’s best interests.
249

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RANDOM REFLECTIONS

POLICING FOR THE NEW AGE

The work is a bunch of lilting poems in easy, intimate

CªÀÅUÀ¼À°è CªÀgÀÄ-wÃgÀ ¥ÀÄlÖ, ¥ÁæAiÀÄ±À: DgÀA¨sÀzÀ “zÁåj

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CªÀgÀÄ vÀªÀÄä ªÀÈwÛAiÀÄ£ÀÄß wÃgÀ ªÁ¸ÀÛ«PÀ

DR. SHIVARAMA KARANTHA

in introduction to the book

There is an element of delight and surprise

DR. M. GOPALAKRISHNA ADIGA

POLICING FOR THE NEW AGE

Mr. Praveen kumar in this treatise has exhaustively

(SUPREME COURT JUDGE)

The language is flowery.....there is a need to

POLICING THE POLICE

A Police officer and a prolific writer, Praveen Kumar, has published

THE ASIAN AGE

THE TIMES OF INDIA

A police officer unravels his profession.

Policing with a cause. Policing The Police by Praveen Kumar.…….delves

THE HINDUSTAN TIMES

According to Booker T. Washington, “Excellence is to do a common thing in an

Mother of All Breakthroughs

Passion for Excellence

Excellence is not easy to come. It is limited by umpteen obstacles immanent to

Indeed, wider competitions ensued from the liberalisation and globalization do

Excellence is three-dimensional; while ultimate performance is its exoteric face, it

CRISIS OF RIGHT LEADERSHIP IN INDIA

If leadership is the soul of democracy, right leadership is the soul of right

Leadership in Independent India

Present India’s democracy is a misnomer. It is a soulless process in the body of a

The malady is prolate. From politics to familial relationships, from bureaucratic

Another striking manifestation of present India is its narrow vision. Indian

Violence truly pays in Indian democracy. Reasons, fairness, honesty, law or

RIGHT ORIENTATION IN GOVERNMENT

A Mathematics lecturer from a college joined government service four decades

The core of right orientation in government service is an understanding of the

The right orientation can be either inborn or acquired. In absence of appropriate

The value system in bureaucracy is bifarious: inherent values and survival-

Being enervated by the developments and angst-ridden, he realized that he has no

It clearly is a case of honest besoin to adapt to the imperatives of the bureaucracy

A process of ossification has set-in in Indian bureaucracy in absence of real

The indifference is limited to the values ectogenesis to the home-grown value

An enlightened bureaucracy with a noble value structure is a great blessing to any

“ Those that I fight I do not hate,

Governance in a democracy is a bifarious exercise with the political rung

The extant bureaucracy ensemble is marked by lack of human concerns and

Another requisite of good governance is accountability. It gives sanctity to power

A cardinal principle of good governance is objectivity and fair play. The

INDIA AND ALL INDIA SERVICES

Survival of the Fittest

Excellence and courage to stand up to conscience go together. It is these that

Virtus post Numnos

Situation is extremely bad in public administration even in best of the states of

NEED OF LEAN AND MEAN CIVIL SERVICES

Vishnugupta of the Mauryan period authored a treatise known as Kautilya's

It is a common principle in government world-over that if a person is facing a

Endless delays common in India in the conduct of departmental inquiry,

The significance of corruption as a factor that adversely affects the growth of a

If kingship is a single-point exploitation, democracy is a licence for countless