Tag Archives | rule of law

On the exodus of North-East Indians

By on August 25, 2012 in Uncategorized

Were we too hasty in jumping to conclusions?

Now that the dust has settled over the exodus of our countrymen from the eight states of the North-east and we have moved over to meatier issues such as cricket, films and social media, it is time to step back and take a look at some of the conclusions drawn after that episode.

One, the exodus was driven purely by rumours and had no basis in reality. Here is the Business Standard story on the exodus, which says that ‘Not just SMSes & posts on social networking sites, panic happened due to concrete instances’. Another story in the Outlook magazine also suggests that the reasons go beyond the rumours carried via SMS/ MMS/ social media. Now recollect how the exodus, when it happened, was explained as being driven solely by rumours. The conclusion was simple: the Indian state is so effete that it can’t stop 30,000 of its citizens (see update at the end) who fled solely because of some ungrounded rumours. And then the verdict: no Indian trusts the Indian State now.

This is not to argue that Indian state isn’t effete or the level of trust among Indians on their government is very low. That is a fact well-established by many incidents and anecdotes in the recent past. But is it as bad — all gloom and doom — as it was made out in the immediacy of the exodus? Did the media and social media contribute to further erosion of the little trust that middle India still has in the State? That is a question we will have to honestly answer at some point. Bangalore hadn’t become Karachi and Karnataka wasn’t looking like North Waziristan with drones hovering above. Heck, India hadn’t become Somalia, a land where practically no state exists. Really, it doesn’t take much for many among us to swing from ‘India Shining’ to ‘India Whining’.

While arriving at conclusions about trusting the Indian State, we must not forget that the people who chose to move were North East Indians. Since independence, when India inherited the concept of Inner Line and Outer Line from the British, the Indian State hasn’t exactly done much to win the trust of these people. If you have lived through turbulent, conflict-ridden times in the North East, marked with insurgencies and counterinsurgency operations, and have been brought up on horrid tales about the Indian State, you will find it difficult to overcome that instinct even if the Police Commissioner of Bangalore or the Karnataka Home Minister assures you personally. More than an administrative failure of the South Indian states, the exodus is a legacy of last 64 years of maladministration and poor governance in the states of NE India. This blogger would like someone to seriously explain what more concrete steps could the governments have taken to stop the exodus.

Look at it in another way. Across the country, most middle-class Indians would trust the Indian army to secure them, if it so assures them. But if you were to ask the same question in Kashmir or Manipur, you would get a radically different answer. It is the same people, it is the same army but our responses are conditioned by our experiences and the tales that our families have brought us up on. Would anyone draw the conclusion that the whole of India doesn’t trust the Indian army because a vocal section of urban Kashmiris or Manipuris says so? Obviously, the sample being used isn’t representative. Perhaps, it was a similar case for North East Indians moving out of some South Indian cities. We must not jump to hasty conclusions and indulge in collective breast-beating about India based on skewed samples. That time and effort can be better spent in creating public pressure on our political leadership to undertake police reforms and fix the criminal justice system.

P.S. – Jinnah created Pakistan on the premise that an exclusive territory is required to protect a community and its identity. Look where that experiment has brought Pakistan today. Some of our leaders in the North Eastern states need to look at Pakistan closely and ponder. It is not the exclusive territory that safeguards a community but the rule of law. That is the only lasting solution to most problems faced not only by the North-Eastern states but also by the rest of India.

Update (26/8): Even though 30,000 is big number, this story from The Telegraph puts it in context:

Altogether 34,627 people from the Northeast, including students, had left the southern city in special trains, fearing reprisal attacks after the Assam riots. Officially, 3.5 lakh people from the region stay in Karnataka, of which 2.5 lakh stay in Bangalore as professionals and students.[Telegraph]

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Another police reforms rant

By on March 9, 2012 in Uncategorized

So many reports, yet no result

An Indian Police Service probationer was killed by the mining mafia in Morena district of Madhya Pradesh last evening.

Home Minister Umashankar Gupta said Kumar, acting on a tip-off, chased the tractor-trolley carrying stones and ordered the driver to stop. When the driver did not comply, Kumar reportedly got down from his official vehicle and tried to board the tractor. The driver then reportedly pressed a lever and tipped the trolley on the IPS officer, crushing him under the heavy stones. Kumar was rushed to a hospital in Gwalior where he died.[Indian Express]

Of course, people can dissect the operation threadbare — whether the officer followed the Standard Operating Procedure or the local police was part of a conspiracy that led to the officer’s death. Yes, the police in India do not possess adequate skills and capacity to professionally respond to a number of challenges they face today. But that is to miss the larger point. The Morena incident is not the only one where the police has been treated with such contempt. In Hissar, the protesting  Jats attacked a police station earlier this week. Similarly, the police were unable to act against a mob holding journalists hostage in Jhansi this week. The incidents in Bangalore have led to a situation where police is on the street, organising a protest against the lawyers.

Notwithstanding the need to ensure that the police is better equipped to uphold the law, the political context of this malaise cannot be ignored. It is the political interference which lies at the root of this malaise. Police is, more often than not, a tool being used by the ruling parties to further its political aims. No political party in India, despite the Supreme Court’s clear directions, is thus willing to embrace police reforms.

The major excuse given to stall police reforms is actually a thinly-disguised call to continue with this politicisation of police in the name of democratic accountability. It is best understood by this extract from the Fifth Report of the Second Administrative Reforms Commission, which was headed by Veerapppa Moily. This is where the report states the first core principle of police reforms: accountability of the elected government.

In a democracy, the government is elected to serve the people. People transfer a part of the right over their lives to government in order to serve the common goal of ensuring public order and protecting the liberties of all citizens. It is but natural that such an elected government must have authority. In our system, government is accountable to the legislature and to the people. Government must exercise real authority once elected to office. The imperatives of impartial investigation and fair trial demand autonomous functioning of the investigative and prosecution wings. But the overall accountability to the elected legislature and broad direction and supervision of the duly constituted government cannot be diluted. Also, several other functions of police including protection of public property, fight against terrorism, riot control and maintenance of law and order and intelligence gathering to anticipate threats need to be monitored and supervised by the political executive. Any reform proposal must recognise this requirement of democratic accountability and the responsibility of the political executive and elected legislatures. A police free from political direction can easily degenerate into an unaccountable force with the potential to undermine the foundations of democracy. The coercive power of the police can easily extinguish liberty unless it is tempered by responsible political direction.[Para 4.1.1]

Let me draw an inexact but relevant parallel here.The elected government is also responsible and accountable for national security of the country. Replace police with the armed forces in the above extract and it will still make complete sense. But does that accountability translate into interference in routine operational functioning of the armed forces? No politician tells the Navy which Captain should be commanding which ship or which airbase should have how many fighter jets stationed there. The only time when elected political leadership tried to personally select military commanders and direct a military campaign, it resulted in the debacle of 1962 against China. But the politicians continue to do the same with the police. Thus, what we are witnessing is a 1962 every single day in our police’s inability to uphold the rule of law and maintain public order.

As with the armed forces, the elected government must provide broad direction to the police. But it can’t mean direct interference in the daily functioning of the law and order machinery. There are, of course, major problems with the police and the criminal justice system in the country. None of them are easy to fix in a short span of time. But what is dispiriting is the broad political consensus against even moving forward on this critical issue.

The first attempt at police reforms in India happened in 1860. That was also perhaps the only time a government accepted and implemented the recommendations of a police commission. After that, the Indian Police Commission was constituted in 1902, the UP Police Commission in 1960, the West Bengal Police Commission in 1960, the Bihar Police Commission in 1961, the Tamil Nadu Police Commission in 1969, Gore Committee on Police Training by the central government (1971-73), the National Police Commission in 1977, the Ribeiro Committee in 1988, the Padmanabhaiah Committee on Police Reforms in 2000, Sorabjee’s Police Model Act Drafting Committee in 2005, and finally the Supreme Court’s directions were issued in 2006. But all these have amounted to little. Frankly, we don’t give a damn.

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Law, and order

By on September 15, 2009 in Uncategorized

In policing, establishing rule of law is as important as maintaining public order.

The Home Minister’s speech at the Conference of Police Chiefs of various states is sure to earn a lot of media attention. But the speech had much more than a stinging attack on the states for their reticent attitude towards funding, police reforms and internal security. The speech covered a range of issues and laid out some goals for the future.

As impressive as the speech was — and it deserves to be read at least once by all concerned citizens — the total focus of his address on the role of police in maintaining public order, as against establishing rule of law, raises an important question. Why does a modern, democratic India still lay more emphasis on order than on law? Is it because rule of law is only possible in an orderly state? Does it mean that before enforcing law, the state must necessarily establish order?

The state police forces exist in two broad categories: civil police and the armed police. The civil police is one which does the law part: crime control, crime investigations, service duties etc., the part that the common man associates with the neighbourhood policeman or the local police station. The armed police are the one looking after the order part. Most states have them as separate police forces while almost every district also maintains a large contingent of armed units from its own strength. They have no law enforcement and policing powers of arrest, search, investigation etc.

Not many people realise that whether it be equipping or recruiting, the focus of the administrative machinery is more on the armed police. And there are reasons for this lopsided focus on the armed police nowadays. Terror threats, riots, mobs on rampage, violent protests and large political demonstrations do necessitate a robust, well-equipped armed police at the district level. But at what cost?

This penchant for creating a police — an armed police — to handle spectacular disorderly incidents invariably comes at the cost of a reduced share of resources for the civil police, that police with which a law abiding Indian citizen usually deals with (or rather hopes to avoid dealing with, unless forced to).  It is here that the Indian state has to strike a balance between the two policing roles. Alongside strengthening the armed police, reforming the civil police and creating a fair, fast and equitable criminal justice system that the average citizen can repose her faith in would be the least for the government to do to begin with.

To put it straight, the state has to ensure both law and order; not order, at the cost of law. Is Mr. Chidambaram listening?

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