Media reports from across the country indicate that there is alarming loss of public confidence in the capability of India’s 18-million strong police force to maintain law and order in civic society. A broad consensus is emerging within right-thinking citizens that the character of the men in uniform charged with the vital duty of protecting industrious, law-abiding citizens from anti-social elements and apprehending law-breakers is, if at all, only marginally better than of the ubiquitous criminals, they are obliged to bring to book and work on preventing police from running amok.

A rash of police atrocities, brought to light by the media have plunged the reputation of India’s policemen to its nadir. Prominent among them is the daylight rape of a young student by a police constable on Mumbai’s upscale and arterial Marine Drive on April 21, and widespread reports of police apathy and complicity in the sexual molestation of women in the national capital, which has bestowed the scornful title of “rape capital of the nation” upon Delhi. Add to this indifference to the rights of women citizens to go about their business peacefully; routine torture in police stations; open, continuous and uninterrupted graft and manifest dereliction of duty and it’s easy to understand why people fear India’s men in police uniform almost as much as the nation’s criminals.

Quite clearly this situation is untenable because the logical consequence of public loss of confidence in the police force is the rise of vigilante groups and private mafias which settle disputes between citizens and impose their own uninformed arbitrary brands of justice upon local communities. Already it’s well-known that in Mumbai- the nation’s commercial capital. Bal Thackeray, the supremo of a family-run mafia which masquerades as a political party (Shiv Sena) settles civic disputes and visits punishment upon violators of Sena law.

Government and official helplessness about this slow descent into anarchy is unsurprising because it is lax governance and numerous acts of omission and commission of post-independence India’s notoriously amoral politicians which has created this mess. For one it’s no secret that they auction police jobs and postings under a tacit agreement that the men in uniform can recover their investment by shaking down the public. Secondly it is equally well known that civic police forces are obliged to function as private armies at the beck and call of local politicians, to the neglect of their public duties.

While hand-wringing and helplessness about this unacceptable civic crisis is the usual response, the situation is not irremediable. Way back in 1978 the Rustamji Commission detailed an elaborate set of police reforms which could prevent this citizen-supported task force from running amok. Among its most important recommendations is to make the office of the attorney general (aka the director of prosecutions) independent of government in every state. This would free the police countrywide to prosecute and convict law-breakers without interference from politicians.

There are several other initiatives which can be immediately taken by state governments to set the nation’s police force on the path to rectitude and reform. Among them: the establishment of well-staffed public relations departments to hear public grievances and continuous training programmes for the men in uniform. But for these initiatives to materialise, the pressure of informed public opinion is a necessary prerequisite. Effective democratic governance requires public participation in government decision-making processes. Mere hand-wringing and despair is no panacea. 

Also read: Implement overdue police reforms

Education focus helped Labour win
Peculiarly, the popular press in Britain has interpreted the electorate’s verdict in the recently concluded general election in UK in which the ruling Labour party was returned to office for a historic third term, as a verdict against prime minister Tony Blair. However to objective outsiders a third term majority of 67, admittedly not as good as the 160 in the dissolved house, is an indisputable electoral endorsement if one takes natural anti-incumbency (a construct unknown to most British political commentators) into consideration. And for politicians, political strategists and analysts in this country the important message of the May election in Britain is that it was Labour’s activism in education upgradation and reform which swung reluctant voters its way. Prime minister Blair’s singular focus on education betterment enabled Labour to win despite widespread unpopularity of the government’s participation in the Iraq War and the anti-incumbency factor.

Inevitably the Labour government’s education activism hasn’t won unanimous acclaim in Britain. But its stream of policy initiatives in teaching-learning issues and processes was interpreted by the electorate as evidence of good intent and appropriate priorities, persuading voters to overlook the perceived mistake of the Iraq intervention. There is no doubt that Blair’s identification of “education, education, education” as the top three priorities of the Labour party deeply impacted the British electorate and enabled him to overcome. Moreover the Labour party manifesto which promised to raise per capita education expenditure to a massive £5,500 (Rs.4.6 lakh) per year (cf. India’s Rs.2,850) undoubtedly influenced the British people to return Labour.

Against this backdrop, the low priority accorded by India’s political parties to the issue of education upgradation and reform is foolishly myopic. Indeed it’s difficult to recall any references to education reform in the speeches of India’s garrulous politicians. And though they may not know it, as a consequence they have suffered heavily in terms of lost votes at the hustings. Because the plain truth is that the Indian electorate is fed up with the stale promises and obsolete caste, community and vague poverty removal agendas of the major political parties. EducationWorld advised the Congress to fight the 2004 general election on a Labour-style single point agenda of quality education for all. It muffed the chance and as a consequence is hobbled within a coalition of equally obtuse allies.

It’s a measure of the degree to which India’s major political parties are alienated from public opinion that none of them have discerned the huge groundswell for high quality primary and secondary education for all as mandated by the 86th amendment to the Constitution. In every one of India’s estimated 200 million households, as in Britain’s 12 million households, there is a deeply felt, even if unarticulated, need for quality education for cruelly neglected children. Tony Blair discerned this household priority. The foolish strategists of the BJP and Congress didn’t. That’s why Britain’s Labour party has been returned with a sizeable majority while the BJP and Congress, India’s major political parties, weren’t. That’s also why despite the anti-incumbency factor Tony Blair enjoys a 67 seat majority in Parliament while Sonia Gandhi and prime minister Manmohan Singh flounder in choppy coalition waters.