The reforms that are long overdue

India, under the regime of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, has achieved a rare success in emerging as a world power whose voice mattered on the issues of global peace and economic advancement. However, in the area of internal governance, the country’s image is getting somewhat marred primarily because law and order – a subject exclusively falling in the ambit of responsibility of state governments – was not being handled well for a variety of reasons of which ‘politicisation’ of police is perhaps the most important.

At regular intervals, cases of public violence of the kind that demonstrated a complete lack of fear of the law, occurred in one state or the other and heinous offences against women including a girl child that should shake the conscience of the nation, threatened to become an ugly trend.

A voice for police reforms was consistently raised, a debate was set in motion about the share of responsibility of the police leadership that was by and large in the hands of IPS officers and even the highest judiciary of the land had played a helpful part by laying down guidelines on the crucial matter of appointment of the Director General of Police (DGP) of the state.

In no other major country is a career in police offered – through a merit-based national level examination prescribed for the educated lot, for selecting IPS officers – in which a young man or woman is launched at the leadership level within a couple of years after the initial service training, to manage and be on the front line of the thousands of police personnel who serve the state and the district.

Maintenance of law and order is the first duty of the state regardless of the political complexion of the ruling elite and the law recognised the investigation of a cognizable crime as a sovereign function of the police. And yet if the state machinery fails often on that front, people must wake up to the threat that this posed to the democratic system itself.

It is in this context that Home Minister Amit Shah deserves a huge round of applause for tabling a comprehensive set of reforms in Parliament in respect of the basic legal framework contained in IPC, CRPC and Indian Evidence Act. It is now incumbent on all Indians to take a deep interest in the future debates in Parliament whenever the proposed laws come up there for discussion. The laws have to be ‘strong’ in the first instance but their implementation also has to be just and ‘untainted’. The police leadership has to be professionally effective to ensure that the handling of order and law both is impartial - being protective of the law-abiding citizens and capable of producing deterrence for the law-breakers.

Of course, the execution of any law has to be evidence-based and if the use of digital media was made for causing subversion, fostering terrorism and inciting separatist violence, admissibility of evidence has to include digital channels as well. There are strong laws available for dealing with hate speeches that incited communal discord but their implementation was not as prompt - one inadequacy was about the inability of the police to produce the ‘record’ of the speech as evidence.

There should be zero tolerance towards death in police custody or the use of ‘Third Degree’ in police interrogation. The persistent malady of police stations not registering a complaint of a cognizable offence has kept the image of police stations low in the eyes of citizens.

It is a matter of great satisfaction that in the proposed new legal Code, there are provisions of Zero FIR, online receipt of complaints and admissibility of evidence recorded in digital media. And finally, the rising graph of induction of children in beggary in metropolitan centres, in particular, needs to be taken note of - not only from the angle of poverty alleviation but more importantly for the likelihood of this having been made a ‘cartel’ activity. There should be a separate listing of this serious crime with exemplary punishment and police should use Intelligence techniques like surveillance to reach the culprits.

Failures of state governments and state police are spoiling India’s national image before the world as the outsiders did not understand the federal system of this country that gave total control to the state over the police and made the Centre somewhat of a mere observer.

The deterrent punishment provided by the proposed laws for certain crimes no doubt will help but it is the efficient and quick investigation of offences that would hold the key to success on this front - a lot of improvement is needed there. State governments have to spend more to bring the police-public ratio closer to normal.

The focus of policing has to be on police stations - the country should demonstrate this by appointing gazetted officers as Station House Officers who would be assisted by Inspectors and Sub Inspectors in various spheres of duty. This would dispense with the old practise of posting Circle Officers to oversee the SHOs, a contingent of District Armed Police should be stationed at sensitive police stations so that Para Military Forces would be needed only in serious emergencies. The staff of the District Intelligence Unit should be specifically assigned to important police stations.

Strong laws, their impartial implementation and consensus among the politicians to keep law and order and internal security above party politics, are the three requirements of the eco-system that should be created to keep democratic governance going.

(The writer is a former Director of the Intelligence Bureau. Views expressed are personal)