The Inadequacy Of State Police

Police reforms necessary to ensure protection for honest officers

If a state government’s reputation is at stake, it will not allow a fair investigation. What is the way to make police autonomous? Will any party ruling in a state ever agree?

A mafia exists for two reasons. The first is legal-economic, which creates situations for mafia to come into being. For example, poorly enforced prohibition in a state will lead to a rise of liquor mafia. The second reason is for mafia’s continued existence — political patronage. More often than not, state agencies are equipped to break the nexus with mafia and clean up the administration, but they are rarely able to do so.

For transparent and fair governance to be delivered, it is important for honest officers to be able to do their job. They are frustrated by frequent transfers and getting superseded when it’s time for promotions. In some cases, they are even murdered in cold blood, which is what the people suspect happened to young IAS officer DK. Ravi on 16 March 2015.

Ravi had made a name for himself in his short career in the civil services. People in Kolar were so appreciative of his work that when he was transferred out of the district, there were large protests held against the decision. The young officer had made his name by simply not bowing to pressure while doing his job. In a fashion similar to Ms Durga Shakti Nagpal’s in Uttar Pradesh, he went after the illegal sand mafia. The results were similar in the sense that like her, he too was transferred out.

During his next posting in the Commercial Taxes department, he went after the top 50 tax defaulters — again doing what his job routinely needed him to do. Within the first two weeks, he managed to collect Rs 138 crore by raiding large defaulters. Incidentally, one of these defaulters is the Embassy Group, which has Karnataka Home Minister KJ George’s family venture Kelachandra Group as a business partner. What makes the matter murkier is that the state government has steadfastly refused a CBI enquiry into the matter. Worse, some of its functionaries declared the death to be a case of suicide on the very day of the incident coming to light — even before the investigations had started! And then the police as well as other government representatives hurled innuendos at the departed soul, casting aspersions on his character, to infer that it was most likely a suicide.

RTI activist Ganesh S Koundinya said Ravi had contacted him on the Thursday before he was found dead. “I had a conversation with Ravi on Thursday and Friday, if I remember. He told me that he had conducted raids on some developers and housing societies and recovered Rs 400 crore as income tax… Ravi was looking at raiding some big developers in Bangalore and he wanted to recover the evasion of taxes.”

Given such revelations, systemic changes in police as well as policing are the only solutions to ensure that honest officers are able to do their jobs. Transferring the case to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), which Chief Minister Siddaramaiah did under tremendous political pressure, is no substitute for police reforms. Time and again, people suspect a state’s police are incompetent and demand transfer of the case to the CBI. Not only does this over-burden the central agency, but it also virtually turns law-and-order into a central subject rather than a state one!

We have inherited a police system that was designed to induct officers at three levels: The topmost comprise IPS officers from the ruling British class; the middle rung has inspectors from the pool of capable and educated natives, and the bottom has sepoys. If you look at it from a colonial power’s perspective, it is easy to understand this system. But from an independent country’s point of view, it makes little sense. In England, by contrast, there is only one point of entry to the police system — as a constable. And one of them rises to be the police chief.

One may wonder how this impacts the ability of the police to work honestly, and the answer is — strongly. First, there is a class system within the police force that gives a class permanent and strong power over those beneath it in hierarchy. As a result, there are limitations to what rank an officer can rise to. This leads to lower motivation in the force to put in extra efforts. It also makes those at the top agnostic and disconnected to issues of the lower ranks, leading to an overall frustrated lower half of the force. A more crucial consequence is that an inspector will very rarely have the confidence of providing an alternative suggestion to an IPS, even though he may have 10 years more of experience in the force.

Apart from issues internal to the police force, there also are issues about the police force as a whole. Very rarely does one have faith in a state police CID investigation being neutral and doing an honest job in a probe. This is the primary reason that high profile (read “cannot be brushed under the carpet”) cases get referred to the CBI routinely. Interestingly, the fact that a certain investigation is of national import is not a criterion for the handover. Most of these cases need to be investigated at the local level, and the state police machinery in theory is more than capable of carrying the same out. So what is the problem here?

The state police is not at all independent enough to do their job. The only hope for a fair investigation is via a centrally run CBI. So, does the solution lie in making all investigative police functions a central responsibility? Even the CBI has been called a “caged parrot” by the Supreme Court.

The solution is two-pronged, keeping in mind the requirements in aspects of operations and competence. First is making investigation agency completely devoid of control of either bureaucrats or politicians. Today it is usually an IAS officer in the home ministry transferring officers and looking at their merits of promotions. It’s like an art teacher evaluating a physics paper. Second is to improve their capability by introducing changes to make police overall better trained both technically and in terms of interfacing. Examinations need to be introduced to get into special divisions like financial frauds, as well as to get promoted. A uniform induction level will lead to faster promotions (range expands from constabulary to chief), as well as seniors with grassroots experience.

The fact that reforms are needed is acknowledged more than ever before, but the question remains: Do our politicians have the stomach for it? We cannot conduct sit-ins at Jantar Mantar for everything.