Law and order suffers as trivial duties detract the police

In November 2008, the citizenry of Mumbai questioned the government as to why 45,000 Mumbai policemen were unable to beat back 10 terrorists. The people of India have time and again posed a similar question, namely, why is it that 22 lakh policemen in our 29 states and 9 lakh central paramilitary forces are unable to maintain the country’s law and order, prevent lynching, put down terrorism and investigate crimes satisfactorily?

India has the largest police force in the world. Russia, the largest country (area wise) in the world, has only 11 lakh policemen, while the US, the second-largest, has over 10 lakh law enforcement employees. The third-largest country, China, has only 16 lakh police officers. India is the seventh-largest country in area and yet, it has nearly 30 lakh policemen.

Essentially, India’s law and order and crime problems stem not from a lack of policemen but on their utilisation, as many of them are wasted on several non-police duties. India is the only country where the entire responsibility of maintaining peacetime internal security has been entrusted to the fragmented police units present in 29 states, without any concurrent responsibility being extended to the Centre, except in grave emergencies. By a strange coincidence, this responsibility now extends to domestic and international terrorism, too. This is because ‘police’ and ‘public order’ are placed with our states under Schedule 7 of our Constitution.  

Over a long period of time, the states and the Centre have started entrusting a mind-boggling array of heavy responsibilities on the police. Besides investigating crime, they are also asked to collect fines, issue licences to eateries, horse-drawn ‘tongas’ and bullock carts, locate missing persons, impound stray cattle, kill stray dogs, dispose of unclaimed dead bodies, round up  beggars, protect mangroves and sand beds, detect illegal building constructions, detect “beef crimes”, regulate dance bars, detect cyber crimes, monitor social media, work  as police ‘orderlies’, collect political intelligence, protect vital installations like offices, factories, bridges or water-storage areas, escort prisoners and important persons, undertake counter-insurgency operations, and defend international borders.

The police are stretched far beyond their capacity to meet these innumerable challenges. The life of an average policeman in India continues to be strained when, in addition to his usual police duties, he is also held responsible for a minister’s stolen buffaloes (something for which five policemen in Uttar Pradesh were suspended). Or, when asked to trace a minister’s lost pet dog, something that happened in Jaipur while the cops were busy investigating a case of dacoity and gang-rape. The same policeman will be held responsible if his area is hit by international terrorists from across the border.

This system does not exist in any other country. In all the other countries, internal security is the concurrent responsibility of the Centre and states. The Centre has, in most countries, their own central or federal police to discharge this responsibility. Even Pakistan has formed seven federal police systems like Railway Police, Federal Investigation Agency, National Highways and Motorised Unit, and Pakistan Railway Police to deal with countrywide problems like counter-terrorism, highway security, airport security and railway policing.

Au contraire, India has no federal police to investigate an all-India crime. Even the CBI or the NIA has no policing powers in the states unless they are “invited” by the local state government or ordered by the courts. Even our railway policing is managed by 29 different state railway police systems.

Real internal security or police reforms can be brought about only by faithfully implementing Supreme Court directives, reducing the present heavy load on the state police, diversifying internal security responsibility between the Centre and the states, and creating specially empowered agencies for social reform laws, as in other countries.

The writer is a former Special Secretary, Cabinet Secretariat. He is also the author of the recently released book, ‘Keeping India Safe: the Dilemma of Internal Security’