On 10 Feb 2011, Team Nishan had discussions with Major General Surjit Singh at his residence-cum-office at Sector-34 C Chandigarh, regarding paramilitary structure of police and its retrograde effect on police performance with endemic corruption and injustice to common man.
Maj.General Surjit Singh and Campaign Co-ordinator Federica D’Alessandra discussing the impending workshop on police reforms
An article written by General Surjit Singh 0n 26th of March 2009 on security establishment of India in the name “A Tale of two forces:Army and Police” at Vijaywani.com connected us to this legendary soldier. His article not only inspired very spirited response from the fraternity of security professionals from around the world, result of it was the police leadership of pseudo Generals in a ‘tizzy’. 
Some of the responses that came in defensive mode as an outcome of the tizzy from those police officers who often write on police issues stood testimony to the professional bankcruptcy on policing issues. The alleged police leadership was found drawing comparisons of numeric strength of police personnels with that of an army division and brigade and also treating the quantum of civil populace as a measure of justification for proliferation in the ranks of Generals in Police forces across India, without realizing that all these Generals have been witnessed leading the sections comprising of 8-9 people with each one of them in the rank of a brigadier/Inspector/Head constable and 3-4 constables and they have been seen dying like sitting ducks because of their security consiousness. Though they wear the Ranks of Lt.Generals and Major Generals but their tactical mobiligation plans finish at Police station level with the rank of Sub Inspectors. Reasons of this tactical failure are very clear all these positions in police are adminsitartive positions without any specific opeartional role and accountability. It is the lack of sense of job satisfaction that emanates from these adminstartive positions and has drvien out 80 IPS officers from their jobs within last 7 years.11 IPS Officers quit their jobs in 2004, 8 in 2005, 13 in 2006, 16 in 2007, 15 in 2008 & eight IPS officers resigned in 2009. The irony is that inspite of such a sick state of police in India, its top police leadership is still not ready to accept the truth and has been attributing its own complete failure to political leadership.
The work of police in general begins with Patrol officers(Constables) to collect criminal intelligence and establish rapport with public of his area to instill sense of security and finishes with Investigation officers(Assistant Sub Inspectors/Sub Inspectors) and forensic experts. Police needs constabulary to regulate traffic and may ocassionaly need special armed intervention teams comprising of small units of 10-15 personnel that can be commanded by Sub Inspectors and not IGs/DIGs/SPs.
The police in India was created by colonial rulers with the enactment of Police act of 1861. In this police structure Constabulary (Constables & Head Constables)was expected to be performing the job in mechanised form and bound for obedience and servility to crush the uprising of Indians to perpetuate their colonial rule and in the current police structure also it continues with constabulary counting for 87% with same recruitment standards,training and job profiles of a robot, when police leadership is questioned on police performance it raises the issue of police public ratio and at that time they bank upon this very slab of Police personnel. But they forget that this constabulary is recruited by them(IPS) only after taking bribes and without any standardization.
12% of the police comprises of middle ranking officers(ASI to Inspector), intake into this category is done by the recruitment boards that comprise of IPS officers and this process is completely marred by corruption in every state. The complete police work revolve around the 99% of this police slab of police officers that are outcome of the corruption of IPS, hence the performance can be anyone’s guess.
The training that is imparted to police officers in police academies most of it revolves around military pattern of working with lot of stress on drill and arms and inculcates sense of blind obedience and servility to seniors and proves retrograde to democratic police functioning. The police officers that have been part of training team in one of the police acdemy for last 3 decades admitted on condition of anonimity that this training inculctes sense of fear and inferiority complex among the person who under goes this training and lowers the selfesteem, hence, needs to be changed immediately.
On public outcry of police apathy, top police leadership raises the bogey of police public ratio and talk of constabulary but while raising this issue they forget that raising the number of their constabulary that is trained to act like contract labour wouldn’t raise policing standards. The success of policing completely depends upon the trust of public on police and the police that acts as an accused friendly police for money and does injustice to witnesses and the complainants can never inspire trust. The police corruption is biggest impediment in police performance. To win over the trust of public, police leadership needs to bring transparency, skillfull professionalism and stringent accountability measures into police working.
Turning into a professional police officer is highly transformative and comprehensive process but the top police leadership that takes all the policy decisions, completely lacks on this aspect. They gain only the clerical administrative experience by monitoring the statistical periodical returns on operational policing and vast experience of conducting press confrences on the field work of front line police officers.
A large number of doctors, engineers, management professionals are attracted to policing for its challenging nature but on having taken the plunge in this service they realize that the positions are more of adminstrative nature with clerical application of mind on statistical monthly or quarterly returns and they have no direct operational role in day to day opeartional policing and it leads to low selfesteem and make them pliable and corruptible. The rise of criminalization among IPS is the outcome of faulty recruitments and training and the positions headed by them have become redundant with the maturing democracy.
The 99% of operational police comprisng of ill trained constabulary and investigation officers/ experts is controlled by 0.13% IPS officers who doesn’t possess any specialisation but the absolute adminstrative and disciplinary powers without any direct role and accountability and the result is endemic corruption/ extra judicial killings/ criminal acts of brutal and excessive use of force to the extent that democratically elected governments are driven to the brink of collapse by the outrage of public and attributable to this very power structure.
It is high time that security professionals from proven backgrounds, academics and political leadership rise to this ocassion and help the sick police forces in over coming the challenges thrown at them by this colonial power structure.
The only way out is complete restructuring of police forces in India with reinventing of IPS as a specialist cadre that can be acheived with adequate field experience as patrol officer for minimum two years and than being graduated to Invetigation officer for five years and than to specialist with degrees and research work in criminology and forensics and social sciences. With this mode of intake and transformative/comprehensive process of turning into a police officer only specialists with 10-15 years of field experience of operational policing will be graduating to occupy the positions of police leadership that will take adminstrative policy decisions to keep police forces performance oriented to protect the values of democracy. This intake system and promotion policy system will revolve around opeartional requirements of police work and will give sense of achievements and fullfillment to incumbents and raise self esteem of these professionals that will save them from being corruptible and turning into criminals.
Local accoutability mechanisms with civilian oversight and adequate local representation will be another panacea to police corruption and apathy.
being completed……………!