Policing in India

Police and public safety. That is another topic Karthik Muralidharan covers in Accelerating India’s Development.  Unfortunately, he says, Indian policing is built on the same structure as the British colonial police system, so it is designed to rule over people, not to serve them.

 

To add to that, the fraction of the budget spent on the police is tiny, which in turn translates into staff shortages. Even that low ratio of police to population is an inflated one because it includes reserved police forces.

“The combination of overwork, unpredictable hours, frequent time away from family, and poor working conditions leads to severe mental health challenges among the police.”

 

Many committees have pointed out the need for training the police in soft skills like how to interact with the public. The budget for training, unfortunately, is ridiculously low, just ₹8,000 per employee during their entire career. This weakness in training impacts everything else too, from forensics to investigative techniques. Budget shortages are so severe that even basic equipment like vehicles and computers are in short supply.

 

Effective policing needs strong community ties, but the police force does not mirror society’s makeup in caste, religion or gender. This further affects the quality of policing.

 

Plus, politicians have the power to transfer IPS officers, reducing their autonomy to enforce the law. Stable and longer tenures are necessary for officers to learn the context and implement effectively, but they never get the chance. Politicians use the police to collect protection money (hafta), a side effect of which is that public views the police themselves as extortionists.

 

Lack of trust in the police has economic consequences, esp. for women who may feel forced to play it safe and work close to home and/or return early. Sadly, this is one of those few topics on which Muralidharan doesn’t have many ideas or solutions. That is yet another sad indicator of the difficulty of this particular problem.