Sunetra Choudhury: Indian cops would never have let London riots happen

If you've been watching what's happening in Britain the last few days, then like me, you may have wondered about the efficacy of their policing system.

London Bobbies with their heavy, riot gear getting hit with booze bottles by delinquents aren't looking that impressive and I'm wondering if our own, rather pot-bellied force armed with lathis have been right all along: Is their way of controlling crowds or handling situations much better than the Brits?

It does sound improbable doesn't it? I mean, when was the last time you heard a mushy, heartwarming story about cops or just a story about them doing something right. I have covered the crime beat for years and I've met some great officers, but my quintessential police story is my very first encounter in college.

My friend and I took an autorickshaw and when the much-expected fare dispute happened, we threatened to take the auto driver to the local station. Unfortunately, the auto driver called our bluff and we landed at the local thana.

Two policemen immediately showed interest in our case. By then, we were a bit embarrassed about disturbing public officials for a minor issue, so feeling rather shy, we related how the auto driver tried to take us for a ride. Suddenly, the auto driver was on his knees.

One policeman had slapped him so hard, it echoed in my ears. He started speaking and was hit again. By then, my friend and I just wanted to escape but apparently we couldn't. 'You'll have to register a complaint.'

By then, my friend and I were almost crying along with the auto driver, who was mumbling for mercy. And it wasn't until they made me write a note saying I didn't wish to register a complaint that the cops let us off.

My story has nothing to do with crowd control but it illustrates the kind of aggression with which the Indian cop approaches everything — from Kashmiri schoolboys that dare to throw stones, to BJP protestors outside Parliament, to yoga pracharaks who threaten a kapala bharati-powered revolution in between their pranayams, to even frail farmers who protest their land being taken away.

If you make some noise, then you're messing with the system and as a cop, it's my duty to bring you down using whatever I have in my back pocket — be it tear gas, water cannon, lathi or bullet.

"We just wouldn't have allowed this to happen," said a senior officer and also one of the nicest people on the job, when I asked him about the Brit way of doing things. "If we sensed any danger to public property — and we would have on the first day — we wouldn't have waited for it to get so bad, we would have used whatever it takes." Firing? Lathicharging? "Anything it takes."

I wanted to understand the standard operating procedure. At what point does the police officer decide that a tear gas is too mild, and they needed to get a bit more heavy. I pushed him to be more specific till I realised that there was no manual that set down procedures.

A sub-inspector or an assistant sub-inspector was authorised to take the call that in the UK was being spelled out with much hesitation by the prime minister himself. Water cannons have to be imported from Northern Ireland as they've never been used in the mainland before. Even after four days of rioting, David Cameron's assurance was that water cannons could be obtained within 24 hours!

Surely this would be frustrating for a policeman who's getting heckled by young kids on the street? Isn't that the defence that many security personnel use for hitting back in the valley?

I wrote to a young detective of the Metropolitan police to understand this better and here's what he said: "The irony is that the outrage began over alleged police brutality, yet just three days later the public demand we crack down on everything that moves, impose curfews, deploy the army, use water cannons, etc! This just highlights the ridiculousness of the situation and the reason we do not heed what the public thinks or says, because it is so fickle and changes according to the zeitgeist.

For every disaffected black youth crying out police brutality, there's now 10 white shopkeepers demanding we impose martial law and hang them!''

My cop friend in India would obviously not agree. And when he gave the instance of Section 144, the magic wand that would have stopped any chance of looting in India, I almost agreed with him. I also saw a fair point when he said that the sheer scale that the Indian police dealt with was unimaginable. He pointed out how delegations from other countries like Russia, in fact, came to see how crowd control was done in India and that was an impressive point too.

But when he cited the 1984 riots to tell me how the Delhi police had learnt lessons in crowd control from that, well, he completely lost me. As far as I can tell, the only lesson that any of us learnt from the '84 riots is that you can commit mass murder and if the police want they'll let you get away with it.

Sunetra Choudhury is an anchor/reporter for NDTV and is the author of the election travelogue Braking News