Watch the average cop standing for hours at Jantar Mantar or Connaught Place while a teenager live-streams their stoicism for likes and thinks: “heartless sarkari lapdog.” But he is no different from you or me. He has to pay school fees, care for ageing parents, bills to be settled, and an irate wife asking why he hasn’t come home with the veggies. The woman constable facing an angry crowd has her own battles to fight in a society often uncomfortable with women wielding authority. Yet they are expected to stand for hours, taking abuse, sarcasm and mockery, and hateful placards. Gen Z won’t like this plot twist because the police is the class enemy—especially for Naxalite-inspired student movements, but let’s log into reality. Just for a moment, stop thinking of the average policeman as the boss villain from a Bollywood action flick to see them as just tired regular humans trapped in an infinite loop of political commands, serving as the ultimate meat-shield for netas for whom accountability is an expired subscription.
Watch the reel of a young protester and a lawyer asking a harried SHO a simple question: under what law have you detained this protestor? Why are you using force against peaceful demonstrators? The answer is a mute helpless stare or absurd defence. Meanwhile, the politicians who give the orders hide behind khaki while the police, seen as brainless puppets take the full brunt of public hatred. The system still looks official, the uniforms still look legitimate and the language still sounds legal. Power loves this arrangement. When society finally erupts in disgust at the sight of youth being dragged and beaten, the hatred lands hardest on the uniformed men and women who symbolise power, while their masters who issued the orders keep their distance. Not an accident, but it is the design feature of the misuse. Usually, passing the buck to someone less powerful is called cowardice. In politics, it is called crisis management. Ministers don’t stand behind barricades, facing furious young people and camera flashes. Senior police officials issue instructions from well-guarded air-conditioned offices to men and women in khaki to enforce decisions they had no part in making. Should the operation succeed, the government claims credit for restoring order. But when it turns ugly, the blame falls on the cop. Of course, there are rogue cops: most of them are from rural, patriarchal backwaters where empathy isn’t part of the core curriculum. There are corrupt officers, custodial torturers, fabricators of evidence and lawmen who abuse their authority simply because they can. But it is equally wrong to assume that everyone in khaki is a thug.
We’ve seen this before. In 1970s America, when four university students protesting the Vietnam War were shot by troops, public anger over the government’s handling of dissent forced the administration in retreat. Youth fury drove the 2011 Arab Spring which brought down Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. But police violence was part of larger political crises. The philosopher Max Weber defined the state as: “A human community that (successfully) claims the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force within a given territory.” A baton can clear a street but cannot answer a question about a paper leak, or explain unemployment or restore faith in an institution whose duty is to be accountable. When a government relies on force because it cannot calm outraged citizens, it may win the immediate confrontation but lose the larger argument.
This columnist isn’t handing out participation trophies for carrying a riot shield and wielding a lathi. The systemic rot in the police force is real. But it is a rookie mistake to hate its pixilated symptoms while ignoring its algorithm designers. Politicians rely on peoples’ collective amnesia, hoping for righteous viral rage to be directed downward at the foot soldier, and not upward at the puppet master. Next time you see a cop standing stoically under a barrage of sarcasm, remember: they are just flesh and bone, buffering in a broken system, while the real architects of chaos are safely offline, waiting to see results. An inquiry that punishes a constable while protecting those who issued the orders is not accountability; it is hypocrisy salad dressed in the vinegar of falsehood. Gen Z is right to demand accountability and political masters must answer for their decisions; not hide behind the uniform. The lathi can end a protest but cannot settle a debate that brings people out on the streets. A government that fails to understand the difference may discover those it sends to defend its authority have become the visible evidence of its failure to convince the nation that it cares.