CHALLENGES OF COORDINATION IN

INDIAN POLICE

Multitude brings confusion. Multitude breeds rifts. Multitude is the source of

contraplex drives, necessitating efforts to forge divergent thrusts into a single
mosaic. This is true of police also. India has a multitude of police organisations.
Crime and law and order being a state subject, each state and union territory have
its independent police force. A host of central police agencies like CBI, IB, SIBs,
RAW, CRPF, BSF, CISF, ITBP, SPG, BPRD, NPA, NICFS to name a few
operate under the direct control of the central government. The fabric of Indian
police is woven with nearly two scores of police organisations, held together by
same laws, procedure and the goal of national interests.
Various state and UT police organisations reflect the diversity of India while
central police agencies, the unitary nature. State and UT police organisations
extending from Kerala to Jammu and Kashmir, from Gujarat to Arunachala
Pradesh enjoy divergent ethos, environment and professional attitude in spite
and uniform police structure and goals. The people of the concerned regions
man them at lower and middle levels of the hierarchy though officers drawn
from the length and breadth of the country head them at the top. These
organisations jealously retain their identity and character and seldom venture out
to interact with others though much is made on paper and public platforms
about the needs of border meetings, combined operations and sharing of
professional expertise and intelligence. Though a deep feeling of fraternity is a
reality in police all over the world, it seldom manifests in cooperation and
coordination in working for professional goals. Police organisations see each
other with suspicion. Competition rather than cooperation forms the plane of
their mutual relationship. The ingrained thirst for recognition and desire to
monopolize accolades and policing is the basic thrust of avoiding anything to do
with outsiders. Differences of job culture and environment make cooperation
and coordination further difficile. Differences of identity and character add to
the problem. As a result, police organisations build barriers around them and
work in isolation on common issues of crime, security and law and order, leading

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to duplication of work and wasted efforts en face criminals and hors la loi with
their tentacles spread all over the country, taking best advantage of the splintered
mosaic.
The spiel of central police agencies is quite different. They represent unity in
diversity with an amalgamation of men, identities, environment and character,
drawn from diverse sources and tested in a single crucible. Their stretch is broad
covering the length and breadth of the country with opportunities for interaction
inter se and outside. These agencies do depend on state and UT police forces for
manpower. They do operate all over the country. Yet, these agencies have their
own identity, character and job environment, which do not encourage give and
take with state police forces and inter se in any meaningful sense. Again, it is one-
upmanship and immanent passion to corner all recognition. Precedence of
narrow interests over performance and results in central police agencies is not a
wholesome affair.
Synergy for better policing is briller par son absence in the mosaic of Indian
police. An institutional mechanism for cooperation and coordination between
various police organisations is the need of the hour in India. Old habits die-hard.
There are instances of such an institutional mechanism being proved ineffective.
An apex intelligence coordination committee to bring all intelligence agencies
under a single umbrella has not met with much success in independent India. Save
routine inconsequential papers and reports, intelligence agencies and elite security
and protection groups of the country work in isolation from each other with no
coordination to speak of. It is so also with police training and research agencies,
working in their own ivory towers abstracted from field requirements, as there
is neither the institutional mechanism nor the will to come together, interact and
cooperate.
Reasons are many for these barriers. Police forces work under different
governments and ministries headed by politicians of their own political and
ideological agenda. State and UT police forces follow the agenda of their
respective governments. Among the central police agencies, CBI reports to the
ministry of personnel, intelligence agencies to cabinet secretariat and most of the
other agencies to the home ministry. Egos of the heads of these governments and
ministries come to play in the style of functioning of the police forces. Added
to this are the bloated egos of the heads and chiefs down below the line of these
organisations. Together, they prove a deadly combination against creating a
mosaic of police environment in the country. Each piece works on its own in
artificial isolation from the other. This is the tragedy of Indian police.

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Good fences make good neighbors. But, this is not true of organisations
forming the splinters of gestalt dedicated to common goal like policing.
Cooperation, coordination and synergy for concerned efforts are the needs here.
Symbiosis, not fences makes sense here. Organizational goal is the raison d’etre and
has to be reached by all means and resources. Every failed opportunity lost to
do better signify a failure. Every failed opportunity to interact with a potential
source is an opportunity lost to do better. Every wasted mutual relationship
signifies a failed opportunity to interact. Every missed beneficial contact is a
wasted mutual relationship. Such beneficial contacts being infinite among police
organisations, moving towards the same goal of security and rule of law, the
dimension of the lost opportunities to do better can only be imagined. This is
what is happening in Indian police: police forces failing to pool together their
immense potentialities by each going its separate way. Each looking weak sans
mutual support in the process.
Lack of coordination is not just an inter-organizational challenge. It is an intra-
organizational problem too. In the mosaic of state police force under a single
police chief, myriad subordinate units pull apart from different sides and defy
the compulsions of cooperation and coordination inter se, required in the
interests of the organizational goal. District police units and functional units like
the crime branch special branch, armed forces, training units, police research and
administration units, each function independently and in complete isolation from
the other in violation of the call for synergy from above. The tendency of going
alone is inveterate in Indian institutional psyche. Ultimately, it is individual
performances that is recognized and appreciated. Institutional performances
have few takers in Indian environment. Cooperation and coordination though
spawns better performance, the prospects of shared recognition and
appreciation are deeply resented. Recognition and appreciation get precedence
over organizational objectives in the present environment of Indian police. The
remedy lies in restoring organizational objectives to their rightful place in the
ambience of police. The immanent prevarication of the police from the
professional path and the ingrained slant to self-agrandisement makes it easier
said than done.
Border meetings are rare. More than that, often they are meaningless exercises
conducted for the purpose of record. Joint operations by neighboring police
units are rare to the extent of being unheard of. Resentment to take advantage
of the specialized units like crime branch, special branch, training units etc is also
evident. The only exception is the services of the armed police in states and the
paramilitary forces at the centre. The reason is that the utility of these forces in

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controlling unruly mobs overshadows the problems of ego-clashes and

recognition.
Mutual indifference is just one side of the problem and simpler in that. The
other, more complicated face of the problem is inter-organizational rivalry and
attempts to sabotage the works of each other. This manifests in two forms: One,
as a self-surviving, instrument and the other, as a result of jealously and one-
upmanship. Police in a region collude with law-breakers of the region wherein
the law-breakers restrain from creating problems in the region in exchange for
trouble-free life from the local police. The criminals are allowed free to operate
anywhere outside the jurisdiction of the local police. The arrangements can other
passive or active. In a passive collaboration, police, do not actively assist the law-
breakers in their nefarious activities outside. Just that the police knowingly shut
eyes to the existence of the criminals in exchange for the latter refraining from
stirring water at their ponds. Criminals in exchange for the latter refraining from
stirring water at their ponds. Criminals use the places for retreat and rest. They
serve as hiding places for the criminals. Criminals need such places of retreat and
rest to fall back after their activities outside. Bangalore serves as such a retreat for
most terrorist groups including Naxalites, LTTE, ULFA, Kashmir separatist and
radical Akali cadres. The terrorists avoid striking anywhere in Karnataka and
unnecessarily stirring the police there. In return, they in particular use Karnataka
in general and Bangalore as a retreat for hiding, rest, medical care and strategic
meetings. Sivarasan, Subha and their associates hid in and around Bangalore after
assassinating Rajiv Gandhi. Naxalites are often noticed taking medical treatment
at various private clinics in Bangalore. So also other terrorist groups. Local police
avoid acting against them unless compulsions dictate otherwise, so that dogs in
slumber are allowed to continue to sleep.
In an active collaboration, both the police and the criminals or one of the
parties actively assists the other. The police may assure and actually provide
protection from potential troubles. They may leak intelligence about outside
police organisations operating against. The hors la loi on their part may use their
criminal skills to the advantages of the police in sabotaging the interests of the rival
police organisations apart from sharing the res gestae of their operations with the
police. The police may use the criminals to raise crime rate at particular areas in
the neighborhood or create law and order problems there for strategic benefits.
Even in case of cooperation and coordination as a state policy, coordination
may become a casualty in the absence of purposefulness and commitment. The
combined operations of Karnataka and Tamilnad police often with the help of
BSF in the forests of M.M. Hills region along the Karnataka-Tamilnad border

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against forest brigand Veerappan is a point. Nine years of combined operations

yielded no results. Lack of coordination between Karnataka and Tamilnad
police is often stated as a source of the glitch. Approach of the police of the two
states to catch the brigand is presumed to be at variance. Tamilnad is considered
to be relatively soft to the brigand while Karnataka, that lost many of its officers
and men to the guns of the brigand, is after his blood. Au reste, absence of
bureaucratic and operational coordination between the police of the two
neighboring states and survives in his exploits sans souci. As a strategy, he strikes
inside the borders of a state and escapes to the forests of the former state after
striking inside the borders of the other state. A perfect coordination between the
police of the two states should have made the operation easier and more
feracious. But, it is not to be the case. The game is going on and the police of both
the states are frustrated on end. The case of Veerappan clearly shows that border
areas, where coordination between different police units is called for effective
policing, are havens of criminal operations. Absence of coordination in police
makes it so.
Sabotage of mutual interest is not a problem confined to Indian police only.
It is a universal problem and manifested in the police of even enlightened
countries like the United States. There are instances available of the CIA and the
DIA, the intelligence brethren of the United States government, trying to steal
sensitive assets and useful agents from each other’s furrow and undermining
them when failed to win over. Such instances in the police of other countries,
however, do not make them en regle in Indian police.
Lack of professionalism and single-minded commitment to organizational
goals is the root cause of the problem. Absence of institutional machinery for
affecting coordination and efforts to define the scope of such coordination adds
to the problem. The so-called border meeting and occasional seminars and
conventions are informal and far-between measures on individual inspirations
of a few, at best. In the ambience of absence of the spirit of cooperation and
coordination, such isolated inspirations seldom make abiding impact. Mutual
suspicion builds barriers. The problem can be overcome by two methods; one
devising institutional machinery for such cooperation and coordination between
different police organisations with a rider of making their use binding in all
relevant case. A compulsion brought about by law for cooperation and
coordination will go a long way in improving the situation. Second, encouraging
and cultivating the spirit of cooperation and coordination in the police culture.
Coordination at higher levels in key operations and exposure of the lower levels
to their success stories will bring necessary changes in the psyche of the Indian

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police. Careful overhaul of the selection process to absorb right people and a
training programme devised to strengthen the characteristics of cooperation and
coordination will go a long way in building an environment of cooperation and
coordination in Indian police. Work culture in police force must encourage it.
Leadership qualities that realize cooperative and coordinated efforts into reality
and pave the path for it, have to be made the bedrock of policing and police
character.
Indian police now is more a collection of splinter groups than a mosaic. There
is no rhyme or reason in their mutual relationships. Different police forces do
not match with each other. There is discord and cacophony; no concinnous
music. Each Police organisation in the tapestry of Indian police works for its own
end at its own wavelength, spawning a picture of disorderly melange. How such
a motley crowd can perform the job of national interest together? The
disharmony cost India a Prime Minister and an ex-Prime Minister in the hands
of assassins and terribly suffered the country in the hands of the extremists of
Punjab, Kashmir and Northeast. Dacoities are rampant. Threat to peaceful and
orderly life is prolate. Security is shaky. Public fund invested on the police goes
down the drains. The resurrection of Indian police must be built on the
foundation of cooperation and coordination between diverse police forces to
make concerted policing possible. A semblance of unity in diversity in the mosaic
of Indian police is the need of the hour. A sense of belonging and oneness among
all police forces is sine qua non for effective policing. Unless this foundation is
laid, the edifice of Indian police is bound to crumble and collapse one day. No
attempts to resurrect Indian Police will ever succeed unless this basic need is
fulfilled. A fractured police setup as in India now is a dangerous drain on the
public exchequer with unimaginably huge money, time, energy and work wasted
by seepage through weak joints. Once this problem of cooperation and
coordination is fully attended to, the money, time, energy and work saved are
enough to take the police to the heights unimagined before and infuse new life
and vitality to it. Unfortunately, no serious thought was given to this matter of
utmost importance in the last five decades of independence. It is high time now
that Indian leaders realize the bevue and make up for the lost time by giving their
full attention to this nonfeasance. Only that can save India and Indian police from
the present maelstrom.

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