POLICE AS A BACKUP FORCE

The police basically are a backup force of the state administration. Its primary
functions are from en arriere. It is the backbone of the state administration. The
police are the enforcer of the rules and laws of the land and safeguard its
compliance by all. For this reason, the police can be rightly called as the guardian
of the state administration. State administration would be edentate sans the police
with none to keep people on the right sides of the rules and laws of the
administration and make the state administration more than mere paper work.
Even for the hoi polloi, administration is mostly police functions and nothing in
state administration holds its attention as much as what the police does. The
police are the most visible and the most obvious state functionary for them, by
its striking uniform and prim mien in addition to its availability as the dernier ressort
of the state administration. The police form the cutting-edge of the statecraft.
The police functions as both the enforcer of the country’s laws and as the
investigator of the crimes. Ergo, the police both precede and succeed the law
enforcement process and ipso facto encompass the whole gamut of the state
legal system. The very fact that no folds and rumples of the state administration
are excluded from the field of the police reveals that the range and scope of the
policing is as wide as the administration itself and often exceeds it. Take away the
police, the state administration crumbles and collapses like a messy mass without
backbone. The sine qua non of the police in the statecraft is a widely recognized
fact among the scholars as well as the plebeian.
The inevitability of the police in the statecraft also renders it the most abused
setup in the spectrum of the tools of governance. Control over the levers of
running the police organisation is considered to be a significant privilege in the
realm of state administration. This explains the range of influence peddling and
prolate pressures on police transfers and keen concours among politicians and
others to befriend the police.
The significance of the police lies in the lowest nature of the work it does in
contrast to the highest degree of awe and weight it commands among politicians,
administrators and the general public. The esteem, however, worked only to the
detriment of the police organisation. The propinquity to pamper the police while

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helped the growth and expansion of the organization, it certainly spoiled the
police setup and crumbled its professional value system. The development is
obvious in post-independent era for the simple reason that the propensity to
paper the police saw abnormal rise after the country’s reign came to people’s
hands and politicking and political cabals became the rule of the game. While
friendly police became valuable assets to politicians in the chessboard of the
country’s politics, it became the mainstay of the administration with the gradual
fall in the skill and acumen of running the administration. The police, who once
in pre-independent days was basically a force to keep the freedom fighters at bay
and maintain law and order, became the alter ego of the governance sinsyne.
THE POLICE AND THE CIVILIAN AUTHORITY
The root of the problem lies in the civilian control of the police; this control
renders the police liable to function at the pleasure of the civilian authorities
against whom also the police are required to proceed as required by its
professional ethics relentlessly in case of commission of criminal acts. This is a
strange position in a disciplined organisation in which absolute obedience to
masters in the most sanctimonious obligation. Thus the police find itself in an
unenviable position of being absolutely obedient to its political and civil masters,
antilogous to being ever ready professionally to proceed against to put them in
the gaol. This is an impossible position for the police and against the tenets of
the human nature. But, these impossibly contrarious functions are expected from
the police. The problem is overcome by advanced countries like the United
Kingdom by strict adherence to the chain of command with the head of the
organisation responsible to the laws of the country while civilian authority has to
be contented with the administrative control of the police. The safeguard is yet
to seep into the police system of democratic Indian.
THE POLICE AND THE MAGISTERIAL POWERS
However, complete insulation of the police from the civilian control may not
be a healthy development per se in a democratic rule. Here, the need of check
over a function through the bifurcation of operation and control processes in
related job a la the bifurcation of accounts and audit functions in accounts
department come to the fore. The police au fond is arms and muscle of the
administration; it basically is an operational wing of the administration. It is only
the watchdog of the administration. This locus standi of the police imprimis denies
it any job, related with administrative decisions and assessments. The police are
there to obey the orders of the administrative machinery above it to exercise
control over it. A watchdog perforce indicates a master to rein in. This nature
of the police functions necessitates administrative control over it in the use of

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force and other enforcement activities. This is the backdrop of magisterial

powers being denied to the police except where police commissionerates are
organized. The demand of the police to invest it with the magisterial powers is
a corpus of the ongoing dispute. The matter continues to be a contentious issue
between the police and the civil administration and a major source of
dissatisfaction in the police force. The civil administration is resisting a toute force
any attempts to do away the magisterial powers from its hand in favour of the
police, it be in promulgating preventive orders or issuing search warrants or
conducting inquest proceedings or initiating externment proceedings or initiating
preventive proceedings or ordering the use of force, to name only a few. The
argument of the police is that the denial of the magisterial powers that are
exercised by officers as low as Tahsildars in the civil administration is a
preposterous step sans any rational basis and suggests lack of trust in the police
organisation. The denial of the magisterial powers to the police has nothing to
do with trust or lack of it a la audit control over accounts function does not
suggest lack of trust in accounts. The police have forgotten that the civilian
control over the police is in step with well established principles of administration
and functions as a safeguard to the hoi polloi against the dangerous overstepping
or overzealous use of police powers, potential of bringing destruction including
death. Use of force by whomever it be, has a tendency to exceed the limits of
requirement and the plebeian has to be protected from such possibilities. Ergo,
the magisterial control over the police. It is a professional requirement in sound
administration rather than an issue of who is trustworthier. The resistance of the
civil administration to the demands of the police for the magisterial powers is
justified to that extent. The police commission rates are special organisations for
special circumstances requiring intensive policing under the closer scrutiny of the
government in charge of civil authorities. Yet, both magisterial powers and the
police powers being invested in the same hand require lots of explanation to be
a convincing administrative arrangement.
PROFESSIONAL POLICING
In professional terms, insulation of the police only implies insulation from the
political control of the police functions. Neither the magisterial control over the
police functions nor the administrative control of the police force by the civil
authorities comes under the meaning of this concept. The symbion between the
magisterial control and the policing functions in one hand and between and
administrative control and the organizational buildup on the other hand is
essential for a healthy police setup. The symbion should stop here. Nothing
more. When it comes to policing by the police per se, when policing operations

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demand professional decisions, it should perspicaciously be professional police

decisions sans outside interferences in any form. The police organisation has to
be built up as a system to achieve this essential goal to make policing a
professional, convincing and creditable job wherein there would be no scope for
any outside interferences in policing with the highest authority in the setup being
responsible only to the rules and laws framed for the purpose a la the policing
system in Britain.
JUDICIARY AND THE POLICE
The position of the police as the enforcer of the laws of the country gives it
an important place 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 organizational 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 enjoy or suffer 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
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 it
remains en arriere. This explains the sine qua non of the police in state

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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 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 part of the judiciary, its position as a handmaid of
the executive, spreads its role above the scope of the judiciary. Ergo, the police
are a government agency that performs functions both within and above the
scope of the executive and judiciary as well as the legislature. The police are a
government agency that performs functions both within and above the scope
of the executive and judiciary as well as the legislature. The police are 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. What is required is
the realization of this sui generis position of the police and preparing itself mentally
to discharge these cardinal responsibilities in compatibility with the professional
requirements.

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