The Police, as a coercive arm of
the state, traditionally enjoy a dismal
position on the credibility quotient of our society. However, the police
hold highest recall during dire distress or crisis
- be it collective or personal.
Psychologically, this is a situation of 'Love' and 'Hate' being the same
kind of response. It implies that the community at large has still not grown 'indifferent'
towards the delivery potential of the
Police, and neither has the 'Police' become
as 'hopeless' as it is often portrayed. Moreover, the Police's dismal image is not so much due to its own ills
and handicaps, but due to the way it has been treated in terms of its
organizational needs and sustenance over the years. Its fate seems to be
similar with the great warrior Ghatotkacha of 'Mahabharata'. He was a child
born out of a non-conventional, non-recognized marriage between Bheema (one of
the Pandavas) and Hidimba (a tribal woman referred as 'Rakshasi') during the
Pandavas in exile (reminds me of government in exile). He was deprived of the
love and caring as befitting to a son of the
great Pandavas, but was used to his best potential when no one could face the wrath of the opposing forces
of the Kauravas. He knew he would die
on the battlefield, and this was also known
to the great
strategist Krishna; yet, Ghatotkacha
pretended ignorance and fought until death for the glory of his father. On the
other hand Abhimanyu was reared in royal traditions with all the classical teaching of state craft. Both youngsters laid their lives fighting for 'Dharma' yet Ghatotkacha's
sacrifice is rarely remembered the way Abhimanyu is lauded and eulogized. Today’s Police is like a Ghatotkacha in our post independence,
contemporary society - everyone needs it, everyone
uses it, but no one owns
responsibility for it, and finally no one wants to be identified with it.
It is only in the post-Independent era that the Police have begun to
be considered as a potent tool of 'social engineering' due to its reach into
the varied activities of civic society and its multi-cultural, multifaceted
interaction with the widest possible cross
section of people. It always is viewed as an instant delivery machine - be it
for social justice or personal favors (legal or extra-legal). However, the
cosmetic ethics of ‘social engineering’ has got smudged owing to its exposure to the unkind weather of conflicting
expectations and manipulations. Today, the
police stand at the cross roads of surging
expectations of community on the one
hand, and the
archaic machinery of governance which fails more than it delivers, on the other. Strides in technology and the communication boom coupled with myriad interface platforms have added more to
its handicap than its strength.
While I appreciate and tend to subscribe to the noble idea of
'delivery' being the basis of judging performance, I am afraid to wonder
whether it is not anachronistic to the fact that
every development or work in our country is indeed statistics driven.
Will it work if
only the police become delivery oriented, and the rest of the agencies and
sectors keep on donning the hats of statistics? Delivery is a conglomerate of
many inputs and variables. For example, it is much needed to secure an area
with multiple police actions rather than a ‘Person’ residing in a particular
locale; but would the police have the liberty to even decide on that line, let alone implement it? I am sure we all have been keen to deliver, but have
succumbed at various levels to the demands of statistics needed to protect the
corroding image and pretended legitimacy of lopsided governance. Where each
police action is decided and molded to suit the political masters and their
malleable partners, very negligible is left to police to decide.
However, as I
pointed out in the opening Para, a lot is still in our hands to correct invent
and share. We may create and train our people to strictly adhere to some of the
basic indicators of ‘feel good factor’ for people whom we are under oath to
serve. Performance assessment on the basis of crime statistics leads to skewed
emphasis on prevention and detection of crime. Our personnel get busier in
managing and manipulating data to project a better scenario of crime in their
respective area than the actual situation on ground. While it creates false
sense of good governance for the system in power, it breaches the basic edifice
of faith and good will that is a prerequisite for a better police-community
relationship. No police can perform well without the desired cooperation from
people. The police are not only a tool for maintaining law & order and
prevention & detection of crime, though it is the most pronounced role in
general. They are leading instruments of all kinds of security arrangements and
enforcement thereof, traffic management, counter-insurgency, implementation of
minor acts having great bearing upon our local living condition and
environment, security of women & children, intelligence of all variety and
kinds and dissemination thereof and so on. It is really disheartening when the
police are assessed on the basis of crime statistics alone and not for that
plethora of responsibilities that they share and deliver with pride.
The police, I
believe, have been kept alienated by design to remain under pressure and
control of their self-proclaimed masters. We cannot change the external
conditions and factors beyond our control, but we can change and correct things
within our limits of activity and control. We may start appraisal of our men on
the basis of a standardized ‘SOP’ (Standard Operating Procedure) and gradually
make it like a thumb rule governing activity and performance of our forces. It
certainly requires a resolve in unanimity which can only come from the top, and
meticulously observed and monitored at various levels of leadership to thwart
subversion or attempted tampering.
It is impossible to
ensure ‘Ghatotkacha’ a social position like ‘Abhimanyu’, but it is always
possible to earn genuine reverence and goodwill of the people who know and
relish the contribution of a ‘Ghatotkacha’.
- Mrityunjay kumar
Singh -
No comments:
Post a Comment