Indian police: Everyone’s favourite punching bag

The Supreme Court passed directions for police reforms in 2006. The directions have not been implemented, but it is the police, and even bureaucrats, who face the flak

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The police system in the country is in bad shape. It is the toughest and the most thankless of all jobs in the country.

(SUNIL GHOSH/HT PHOTO)

Everyday, the police in India face an Odyssean dilemma — the protagonist of Homer's epic, Odyssey, had to choose between Scylla, a six-headed monster, and sailing past Charybdis, a deadly whirlpool, on his tortuous voyage back home after the Trojan war.

India’s police force, similarly, has to choose between enforcing the rule of law and giving effect to the “law of rulers”. The police may have taken an oath to enforce the rule of law but that, quite often, involves daunting risks of antagonising the political class, which has the power to transfer, punish, and humiliate policemen. Under the circumstances, the majority of police personnel choose — quite like Odysseus — what they perceive as the less painful path: Following the law of rulers.

This survival, of course, comes with a price. The police find themselves — justifiably or otherwise — at the receiving end of censure by different pillars of the State and the public.

The judiciary chastises the police for shoddy investigations and indefensible conduct, among other flaws. The bureaucracy finds fault with it for “failing to comply” faithfully with executive directions. The public, of course, blames it for a range of reasons, such as non-registration of FIR, rude behaviour, or use of third-degree methods. And so, the police —understaffed, overworked and functioning under enormous constraints —struggles round the clock. In fact, they receive mostly brickbats at the end of the day.