A democratic and capitalist country (still the ideal form of government after so many experiments), needs six things mainly to survive. A strong army (we have that), a sound judiciary (we have that, at least, at the supreme court level), a robust lassez-faire economy (we are getting there), a free press (we have one but it reports on largely irrelevant things and is biased to the core), an effective foreign policy (the less said about it the better), and Law & Order (which is the topic of this essay).

You might loudly protest I have left out the political system, but that was deliberate. A political system is nothing but the sum of these six things and need not be mentioned specifically.

Let's see what Professor David H. Balyey has to say about our police:

"In India today, a dual system of criminal justice has grown up, the one of the law and the other of politics. With respect at least to the police, decisions made by the police officials, about the application of law, are frequently subject to partisan review or direction by the elected representatives. The autonomy of the police officials, in specific and routine application of law, has been severally curtailed..."

Ah! Couldn't have been said better -- even by an Indian. But, you might say, "We have had police officers like Vyas and Umesh Chandra!" Very true. But they came to be, in spite of the system, not because of it. Swimming against the tide of adversity, knowing fully well they would be stopped sooner than later, they still floated to the top, defying every emotion known to normal humans. (Vyas's son was brutally murdered by the Naxals as a "warning." Vyas, as a response, cracked down on them even more.)

We can't expect a Vyas or an Umesh Chandra to happen on a regular basis. What we need is a system that makes it easier to produce more such sincere officers. Currently, the police system we have, the infrastructure we inherited from our beloved British masters, the one that persists even after we got our Independence, is rigged to make bad things happen to good people.

The British never wanted to raise a humane police force. They only wanted an efficiently ruthless system to keep the rebels (read freedom-fighters) under check. Unfortunately instead of disbanding this unholy organization, after we got the independence, and starting off afresh, we continued with it as if it was a good thing. We inherited the questionable methods the police employed when they dealt with Kranthikaris, lock stock and barrel. That was the first problem with the Indian police.

And after that, things started improving a bit as a lot of ideal young men joined the force, genuinely trying to do something to their country, But they soon found out they are not really the servants of the public, but of their political masters instead. Most recruits' enthusiasm evaporated. They became cynical and found ways to keep the politicians happy by abiding to their wishes and by trying not to step on their toes. This political interference was the second problem.

The sincere members of the police department are in a quandary now. They don't know if they should carry out their responsibilities the correct way, because the danger of getting transferred or getting suspended is very real. A few well-timed transfers can disrupt a police official's family life and bring him down to his knees. The police are so stifled, they can't even go on a strike like employees belonging to other government departments could. There is no just way to deal with their grievances. It's a choking power structure where your immediate superior decides your fate. And, of course, the most superior officer is accountable to his political boss.

Just because somebody is elected to a public office through elections, it doesn't give them carte blanche to ride roughshod over the police force. Because we don't have direct elections, where people can elect a home minister or a chief minister or a prime minister directly, how much democratic this whole thing is, is also doubtful. If we had direct elections, the people would at least know who they are handing over the power to, and such a representative can be at least thought to have the people's mandate. But we have indirect elections, where people select a bunch of MLAs and they in turn elect the ministers and because of the coalition politics we have today, any random guy can end up being the home minister and abuse the office to his advantage.

So, to correct this, control should be completely taken away from the politicians and vested in a tribunal that consists of former judges (unless we accept direct elections as a means of transferring political power, like we have it in the United States). Former judges are a good choice, because if we trusted them to be our final arbiters in matters of law, we can also trust them to do a decent job as far as managing the police force is concerned.

For those of you who think this is far fetched, consider our army. The defense ministry provides only administrative and operational help while the army, by and large, has its own command structure. The state home ministries can be toned down the same way too. However, since the police deal with the general public everyday and because a different kind of discipline is needed for them, the final authority at the top has to be civilian, and hence the need for a tribunal of former judges.

By the time these former judges serve on this panel, they would have already had a public record and a keen knowledge of everything legal. The process that elects them can be similar to the process now employed in selection and promotion of judges in the higher courts of India. So, only the very best will be chosen. And they would serve until death. No politician should ever be allowed to remove them from office.

Secondly, the miserable conditions that come with a job in the police should be removed, thereby re-vamping the image of the police department itself in a positive way.

For one thing, the police are paid low salaries that inevitably push them towards taking bribes. An assistant police inspector gets paid anywhere around 10,000 rupees per month. A joint commissioner of police gets paid around 30,000 rupees per month. One can imagine what the foot soldiers, the ordinary constables must be getting paid. Does the government seriously expect them not to be tempted by bribes? The police should be paid salaries that are proportionate to the amount of risk involved in their jobs. This will ensure the well-educated youth would take up police related jobs and thus bring respectability to the whole profession.

Also, there are no decent working hours for police. They are supposed to be on duty all the time, more or less. An overworked policeman is more apt to take out his frustrations on a criminal in his charge, whether it is right or not.

And finally, the whole police infrastructure is in urgent need of better vehicles, better guns and a well-connected computer network. We need to give our law-enforcers the best possible technology they can have.

All this costs money, but it is important that it need be spent. It's the government that needs to make this a priority and it's the people who should push it to do so through political activism and mass movements. (More on that in the forthcoming essays.)

Any political party that doesn't include this in their agenda as a primary goal is not being true to the ideals of democracy. Any government that doesn't make this its top priority will never be effective. As long as people like the Noida killers can roam around freely, not captured by the inefficient and corrupt police, we haven't really had progress.

Only when we strike the fear of law into thugs and politicians alike, do we see other aspects of the society improving. Remember, when the law and order fail, all the money we make is not even worth the paper it's printed on.

Visit the authors blog: http://provokingperspective.blogspot.com

More articles by Murali Chari

1. The Importance of Law and Order...
2. Do we need a movie on Bhagat Singh?
3. Raja and Rani visit Timbuktu!
4. Worshipping False Heroes
5. The English Media bites the dust
6. "Where We Indians Got it Wrong...."
7. "All this for the rest of us!"
8. Do we deserve the movies we get?
9. The 'friends' you need to dump
10. Raja and Rani visit Timbuktu!
11. "Where we Indians got it wrong….."
12. "When 98 is greater than hundred"
13. "How Easy It is...."