Wise British came to INDIA as conquerors camouflaging themselves as businessmen. They purposefully schemed to keep police ill equipped and inadequately remunerated.
Police which provided indispensable services to the society in the form of maintenance of law and order, always remained at the receiving end. The Britishers deliberately aspired for a draconian tyrannical force, driven to generate additional resources through their aggressive and suppressive means. The maintenance of perennial friction between the public and police suited their best interests as alien sovereigns.
It was simply on account of such well calculated stratagems, they managed reigning over INDIA with a few hundred highly dedicated and motivated, highly paid and well looked after civil servants.
The British long ago left, but no one seriously deliberated for ridding our Nation from feigning agonizing notion of ‘foreign rule’ from our mentality.
Since the existing conception of domineering police suited well with the grandiose scheming and manipulative machinations of politicians controlling the epicentre of power. They engineered for its indefinite continuation. This further manifested itself into creation of several proliferating polluting, power lobbies, within the institutional police setup. Resultantly this not only weakened the authority of police but raised serious questions about its credibility.
Following the footsteps of politicians, the bureaucracy and judiciary joined their bandwagon for bashing the perplexed and enfeebled police on all available opportunities. Consequently senior police officers became spineless outcasts having virtually left with no suitable protective shield during the crisis situations. This further mushroomed into fountains of frustrations, openly spilling out in the form of vituperative outbursts directed against defenceless junior officers.
All policemen not affiliated to formidable potent godfathers were reduced to directionless destitutes. All upright officers believing in principles of equitable dispensation of justice and non prejudicial treatment to all citizens were forced to lead a life of solitudinarian singularity.
The existing rank structure in police forces is seriously proving counterproductive, rather a stumbling block in its advantageous functioning. There should not be more than four ranks among commissioned and non-commissioned ranks, respectively.
The chain of command gets weakened under the present hierarchical system, resulting in seriously hampering the process of relief timely reaching down to the ground level. Among these ranks a number of pay bands can be rearranged, depending on the length of service, plus qualitative and quantitative work assessment of individual officers.
We must realize that the working of each service is quite different, all comparisons drawn are simply out of place. Most of us are in the habit of lionizing our respective services to such towering pinnacle heights, from where we are unable to pragmatically view the triumphs of other services.
All services play a crucial role in enhancing the glory and grandeur of our National pride. The basic quintessential fact being that the different services are assigned divergent roles according to requirements of nature of jobs assigned to them. Target of all services is to pursue goals and objectives with a paramount view to promote efficiency and achieve best possible results.
Heavy responsibility rests on the shoulders of our political leadership for ensuring that adequate steps are taken for mending fences and building bridges between assorted government agencies for their concerted smooth functioning. Services should be willing to lend a helping hand to each other during the time of crisis, well within the parameters of existing law.
There is a strong requirement of forging an unbiased integrity in our thoughts, actions and deeds for achieving an overall superiority on all fronts.
Time in and time out emphasis is laid on inculcating a “fear of law” among the citizens. Time is now ripe for redefining our fundamentals, by replacing the word “fear” with “respect”. If we examine their meanings we will realize our mistake. Fear is an unpleasant emotion caused by belief that someone or something is dangerous, likely to cause pain or threat. Respect is a feeling of deep admiration for someone or something elicited by their abilities or achievements. Common citizens simply need to fearlessly respect law.
Applying the same criteria police must reciprocate adequately.All we need is a friendly, helpful, sympathetic, compassionate, accommodative, thoughtful, humanitarian police force, since they are assigned to enforce law of the land on their own fellow countrymen.
( Author of the article is a former Deputy Commissioner of Delhi Police )
