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SharePass by Churchgate any day and you will see a sea of khaki. These are policemen, lots of them, milling around the station. Blank out the uniform for a minute and what you will see is a bunch of men with time on their hands, "chit-chatting".
Pass by the Marine Drive fly-over and you will see two reed-thin cops at different vantage points, scanning the horizon with binoculars. On the Mohammed Ali Road flyover, the police presence is even more ubiquitous. They are leaning over the parapet scouring the streets below for terrorists.
Pass by -- if you can, but let me tell you it's tough -- on any of the city's busiest roads during rush hour when there is a nakabandi, and you will find miles and miles of frustrated motorists, taking half-an-hour for a five minute stretch, while policemen peer into passing vehicles for terrorists.
Common sense tells me that though terrorists are cowards, they are not idiots. They strike at the softest of soft targets, and having struck, disappear. It is months before they will strike again, probably in another city and aimed at a different kind of target altogether. Presumably our Top Cops are aware of this too. Which means that the overt show of police strength is to either intimidate the terrorists or to reassure the citizen. My view is that it does neither, because it is so very comical in character and so very ineffectual in practice.
There must be other ways of instilling confidence in our police force. To me, this is an impossibility at present because our police forces have been thoroughly politicised at the top and thoroughly corrupted below. Policing itself has, therefore, become a secondary objective. This has resulted in a complete loss of respect for our police force even in a place like Mumbai. (Imagine the state of affairs, then, in UP and Bihar).
The tragedy of 11/7 provides an opportunity to the central government to carry out the long postponed administrative reforms of the Indian police. The first step is to take policing out of state government control where it is most vulnerable to political abuse, and to make it a central service with fixed tenures for important postings (thus reducing political pressure). There are a whole slew of reforms suggested by high-powered committees over the years. Here's a chance to shake the dust off them and bring them into force. Or should one say, bring them into the force.
One reform, which has not been suggested but which changed circumstances now demand, is the upgradation of the intelligence system. We have to live with terrorism for years to come, so a strong intelligence network is an imperative. In today's system, an intelligence posting is not sought after because the "perks" are elsewhere. Intelligence, therefore, has to be made into an elite posting, with better allowances and a higher status. Once that is done, the best and brightest in the police force have to be "encouraged" to move into it.
Taking police control out of the state government's hands will, in the long term, transform the police force beyond recognition. Here are three reasons why. The Babri masjid was allowed to be demolished in spite of enough forewarning. The police, in fact, just stood by while the damage was being done because they were under the orders of the BJP-ruled UP government. Even worse was to happen in Gujarat in 2002 when the police often participated in the butchering of Muslims on orders of Narendra Modi. We now know that Babri Masjid and Gujarat are the prime reasons why jehadis have embarked on their despicable path of revenge. The third instance is the "morality" pre-occupation of the Maharashtra home minister, RR Patil. Because of this, all that the Mumbai police seem to have done in the recent past is to close down dance bars, investigate "wardrobe malfunctions". If the police had, instead, been doing what they should have been doing, who knows if 11/7 would have happened at all?
There's yet one more reform, shelved for a long time, which needs to be put into action as fast as possible. This has to do with increasing the representation of the minorities in the police force at all levels. There is a huge disparity in the percentage of Muslims, Sikhs, Christians and others in the population, and their numbers in the police. Affirmative action is required here because communal problems can often be diffused by a sensitised police force.
This column began with the picture of a loitering police presence. Wouldn't it make a difference all round if that presence were of a purposefully marching one?
