The actions of the police, both local and RAF, against the student protesters in and around Jantar Mantar in New Delhi last week reinforced the need for change in the way the police service is handled in this country.
Every so often the central government will talk of the need to “decolonise”. In the last year the Prime Minister has spoken out for a change to the education system and the Railways Minister went after the iconic bandhgala, a garment born in India worn by railway personnel, for reflecting a “colonial mindset”.
A government struggling to meet expectations will likely try to distract the public from serious matters. And so it cites the need to remove supposed vestiges of colonialism – a spectre that in the minds of the BJP still haunts us nearly 80 years after independence.
Usually this is nonsense but if there is an institution really in need of serious decolonisation, it is the police service. Not their uniforms, to be sure, but their very structure and mindsets.
Protecting the public was only a secondary duty of the police of the British Raj and that has been carried over into independence.
The police of India, including Meghalaya, are there to enforce the authority of the rulers over the ruled, to protect the interests of the state, to preserve the privilege of the elite and to quash dissent.
That is their duty – to protect and serve, not the public but the powerful. Fail to give way quickly enough to a VIP’s convoy and you might face severe tonguelashing or worse from the police escorts.
The rot is everywhere in the service. Starting at the top, ministers and top civil servants have too much power over the police. And that makes the latter unable to hold the first two to account.
Corruption is not unheard of among police personnel either. Most drivers or two-wheel riders among the public will have at least one story to tell. And let us not get started on the way illegal coal is seamlessly moved in and out of the state under the very noses of the cops. And close to the very top, GK Iangrai, an Assistant Inspector General, is alleged to have illicitly profited through his position for years. He seems to have been prosecuted only because he fell foul of his seniors. How many more stories remain untold?
When the state police are suspect, people often look to the Central Bureau of Investigation for an impartial probe. But the reality of this is not clear-cut. Being under the thumb of the Centre means that the CBI, like other central investigative authorities, can be weaponised against enemies of those in power in New Delhi.
Like in other government posts, corruption allegations are frequently made when it comes to recruitment. And if corruption is present right at the start, how can anyone expect the rest of the service to be clean?
The only way to make the police better is to decouple them from the government. Make recruitment transparent; appointments, promotion and transfers independent; have complaints against the police investigated by a truly independent ombudsman and branch of the police itself.
Only then can the police truly start to serve the public free of fear of the politicians and bureaucrats. But to do this might take decolonisation too far for those holding the reins of power.
