Way back in 1905, a police commission noted that it had the “strongest evidence” that the police “is far from efficient and is stigmatised as corrupt and oppressive”. This unsavoury reputation of the colonial era has not been erased. Not only has the police remained “corrupt and oppressive”, especially where the poor are concerned, it also remains inefficient. As the country’s first national crime survey pointed out in 1953, “no facilities exist in any of the rural police stations and even in most of the urban police stations for scientific investigation”.
More than half a century later, the scene remains as bleak as before. The criminal justice system, which upholds law and order, has become dysfunctional because the prosecutors cannot pursue their cases against the crooks because of poor intelligence inputs since the forensic facilities are rudimentary. A central academy for developing investigation skills, proposed in 1953, is yet to take shape. Nor have there been any police reforms, as suggested by the Dharma Vira Commission in the late 1970s, or an implementation of a Supreme Court order of 2006 to insulate the force from political influence. Even the improvements suggested in the wake of 26/11 haven’t been carried out.
However, the force cannot be blamed overmuch since it is mostly poorly paid, understaffed, inadequately trained and ill-equipped. It is also overworked since the police-people ratio is 174:100,000 — up from a painfully anaemic 121:100,000 — against the global norm of 250:100,000. If greater attention is paid in the more advanced countries to bolster the image and work ethics of the police, the reason is that the force is the first point of contact between the ordinary citizen and the government. In India, there is no attempt to remove the impression of indifference.