India needs to re-envision its policing: CHRI Senior Advisor Maja Daruwala

Maja Daruwala has been working to advocate for rights and social justice for over 40 years. For 20 years, she was director of Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative (CHRI), a body that advises Commonwealth countries in Asia and Africa, on police and prison reform. She tells Aditi Phadnis police inaction in the Delhi riots was criminally negligent

Now that some semblance of calm has returned to Delhi, what do you think went wrong in its policing during the riots?

It is obvious to the simplest mind what went wrong: and the evidence is everywhere before the most doubting eye that the police were often complicit and certainly inactive otherwise this level of death and devastation could not have happened. There are government of India protocols and Standard Operating Procedures that have detailed instructions about what to do to prevent riots when there is tension in a neighbourhood. Similarly what to do during a disturbance. Its all very commonsense. Here, the inaction was deliberate or if not, then criminally negligent. In my view the leadership has to be called to account.

Is the problem structural? Or organisational (ie, in the way Delhi Police is organised)?

The problem today is both structural and organisational. The police establishment retains the same classist hierarchical, status-oriented structure it has always had. It was designed to be partial and to suppress and it continues in that vein. It is no good to keep blaming the  British. The defenders of bad policing always do that. That does not absolve the many governments that have come and gone from being comfortable with the policing as it is.

In my view, every policeman should join the force as a constable and rise up through merit to the top. But that is just too radical a thought to be entertained in our milieu. Organisationally, there needs to be more specialisation, much more training in orienting the police out of their social norms and moulding them into a constitutional mind set. And more than all this there needs to be accountability for both everyday performance, inaction and wrongdoing. This is not there at all.

You’ve done extensive research on India’s police forces. Are police forces really so short in number that they can say: “Sorry we were busy in VIP duties so we couldn’t respond to ordinary citizens’ complaints?”

First, I would say that however short of manpower you are, it does not lie in the mouth of the leadership that is well paid, well trained and has great power and privilege to say they cannot manage the primary duty they have, which is to ensure that the peace of any locality holds.

Second, what are they saying really? That overkill toward security of a few trumps the lives and property of the many ? Isn’t that coming out of a clear bias? How well is the north east and outer Delhi policed as compared to say, South Delhi?

If there is to be VIP security there are paramilitaries special forces and all sorts; the police leadership has to take all that into account and still provide complete security for people — especially when there is obvious tension as there was in Delhi. Also, while in other places shortfall of personnel may be a problem, it is not so in Delhi. Relatively, Delhi is very privileged in manpower money equipment. You saw on the streets that the police had helmets, shields, lathis, everything but just lacked leadership and had little understanding of their job and clear antipathy for certain parts of the population.   

Lack of response to pleas of police intervention was one problem in Delhi. But much more serious was the way the police just stood by as watched as people looted. Worse, in some cases there was a clear anti-minority bias when it acted.

Yes, the evidence is plain to the meanest intelligence and the most doubting eye. The police have spent millions on help lines, control rooms, women’s safety, PCA vans and advertising them in image building exercises. But when it came right down to the wire they did not respond to emergency calls. So what is their use? These questions must be asked and there must be consequences. There is no getting away from the partiality that the police showed. But it has happened and it will in my view happen again and again, because little or no consequence flow for either the whole cohort or for each individual. Political opportunism has taken over the discourse. And the simple questions are being lost. The public must know right now and not later, whether those policemen seen beating (to death) that young lad have been booked for murder; why they didn’t book those making inflammatory speeches and why they are not doing it even now.  Similarly where a whole cohort stood by in the face of rioting, their commander must be in the public dock for allowing  loot, arson and assault to go forward in their presence. There must be direct questions about  why there was so little preparedness when clearly tension was brewing: was there sufficient deployment and direction.  GOI has several times issued standard operating procedures to be followed when communal tension is perceived.  Were the constabulary rehearsed in these?  

There have been large numbers of fatalities, huge economic loss directly because the police did not do its job and were even complicit. The leadership must be held to account. Merely changing the leadership is papering over the problem. No one is fooled or satisfied by this. There is a huge loss of trust. Surely it must matter to those who have the control of the police?

It is quite clear that in all these instances the police behaved abominably without regard for their duty, their uniform and their oath to act to protect our countrymen. It is not the first time. But will it be the last time or is this a pattern that we are condemned to see again and again? If those who were on the ground and did not act, go unpunished and those who were in command and had the responsibility to order their constabulary to do the right thing but did not, go unpunished then the signal is clear; it’s okay to be biased and selective in who you protect and who you harm. It is vindication for behaviour that is disloyal to the uniform they wear.  

Elsewhere in India, there are complaints of a similar nature. In UP, the police are charged with being trigger happy. In Bengal, they are seen as an extension of the ruling party, whichever it might be. Should India set up an autonomous police commission which investigates and addresses policing issues including training for race and gender sensitivity?

Let me elaborate a little before I get to the question of an autonomous police commission. Police in each state is a state subject. That is part of our quasi-federal arrangement. I feel that is a good thing. The supervision and the control of the police is with that state’s political executive which in turn is responsible to people of the state. So all of it is closer to the ground and the community than if the police were centrally controlled. Local communities should be much more consulted about what their expectations from policing are and surveyed regularly district by district about whether they are satisfied with police performance. Dissatisfaction with performance should have consequences for both constabulary and officers.

But this does not happen at all.  The people have to put up the police force they get locally and not with the service they need. As for an autonomous police commission — the Prakash Singh Judgement of 2006 sets out a state-based bipartisan body that can lay out policy, assure the police provisioning, and judge performance. It also provides for police complaints authorities. Some states have legislated themselves out of these provisions, some have followed them partially, none has really complied in spirit and policing remains the same or worse. We have a way of creating institutions and then ensuring that they don’t work as they really should. So another autonomous policing commission would not, at this stage have my vote.

There is an argument that police in India have more responsibilities today than ever before. On the one hand, traffic police is charged with the responsibility of implementing the Motor Vehicles Act; on the other, cyber crime and economic offences are getting more and more sophisticated. And yet, year after year, state governments’ budget for policing remains underutilised. What seems to be the problem?

I don’t think it’s a question of the police having ever more responsibilities. Policing always has had evolving responsibilities from colonial times, past Independence to now. It is the duty of governments and the leadership within to plan for and create suitable policing establishments that can meet the challenge.

I don’t think it’s a question of money. But a question of how rational its use is, priorities process, specialisation. There are really obstacles within the system for rational spending. Also it’s a question of what kind of policing you want. Democratic countries need democratic policing, not oppressive enforcement like we are seeing now. I think we need to re-envision the police entirely, especially the leadership which has not shown itself to be as responsible as democracy demands it be. A democratic country needs democratic policing. A police that is not a force, but a service. A police that does not only enforce the law but upholds it.