Police caste system

Study jolts Mumbai police into action”, read the headline in a national newspaper a few days ago. And what was the study about? It was a comprehensive internal health check-up conducted by the Mumbai police involving 18,426 of the force’s lower ranks, which found that 20 per cent had such high cholesterol levels that they needed urgent medical attention. Another 60 per cent were borderline cases on the cusp of advancing to the danger level.

In short, what the check-up found is that Mumbai’s police force is extremely unfit. It says something about the way the force is organised that this actually comes as a “jolt” to the top brass, while everyone else in the city isn’t surprised at all. In fact, all of us could have told the police that its cops are so visibly unfit that the “comprehensive” check-up only confirms the very obvious. Policing may be a state subject, but it is certain that almost without exception, what is true of the Mumbai police force is true of the police forces in the rest of India. The reason for that is not difficult to find: in fact, it is there in the headline itself: “Study jolts Mumbai police”. It tells you how very out of touch the Indian Police Service cadre is with the lower ranks that make up the bulk of the force.

You can call it the “Police caste system”. It differs from the Hindu caste system only in one respect; there we have four castes, in the police there are only two: the IPS cadre and the rest. The former are the brahmins while the rest include constables, sub-inspectors, etc. — we can give them any name we like as long as it suggests the underprivileged. By “underprivileged” we don’t necessarily mean short of money. Because entry into the police force, especially at the lower level, is seen as a way of reaping material benefits through the many commonly acknowledged routes. A few of these are hafta (weekly collection), turning a blind eye to a crime, refusing to record an FIR, recording an FIR but under a lesser section, going slow on a case, making witnesses “disappear”, and as many more ways as human ingenuity for the devious solution can conjure up.

In every other way, which means in every legitimate way, they are underprivileged in a hopeless kind of way, hopeless because there seems to be no will to change things around for the better. To start with, their pay scales (the legitimate money) are low and advancement is slow. Second, there is an acute shortage of housing, and you need a lot of luck (or better still, political pull) to get accommodation in police quarters. There is also a general lack of facilities. In the case of the Mumbai police, cops over 30 years of age are given an “incentive allowance” of Rs 250 a month if they remain fit, the definition being maintaining a body mass index of 25 or under. But if a policeman does try to keep fit, where does he go to work out? The force has very few facilities, so the only option is private gyms. These, in Mumbai at least, cost around Rs 700 a month, almost three times as much as the allowance a cop gets. So what does he do?

You would think that a cop’s life is so tough that he wouldn’t have to go to a gym. That his job itself would entail so much physical exercise, that fitness would be a byproduct of his workload. In reality, the reverse is true. We generally see policemen doing a number of duties. There’s the wireless duty, where cops sit around in a parked police van, listening to the wireless and waiting for either an emergency or for summons to another area. Then there is the bandobast duty when a VVIP is coming to town, and policemen (and now policewomen) have to stand behind bamboo barriers for hours and hours. They are on their feet all day, but they are not moving at all. Another duty is to guard a person or a place. In either case, the job consists of sitting around on chairs or benches, with no movement of any kind. Thus, a policeman’s work becomes as sedentary as a man pushing a file in a government office.

Finally, there is an abysmal lack of training. Policemen are supposed to be trained to use firearms, yet how often do we hear that most haven’t been to a shooting range for target practice because there is a huge shortage of ammunition? Even other kinds of training programmes, which could be imparted with minimum equipment, are not on the agenda. Karate could be taught to policemen — this would not only be useful in real situations, it would also help in keeping up some fitness standards. Am I naïve in thinking that the policemen on bandobast and other “static” duties could be made “dynamic” by just moving them around? In the bandobast, instead of just standing around, each policeman could be asked to interchange his position with neighbouring policemen every half hour: this way, not only would he get more exercise, his presence will be more widely seen. The same goes for the wireless van, or the venue protectors. In each case, a pattern for movement could be worked out, one which aids in fitness, and which also promotes visibility. This will also address a major problem with these duties — the utter and complete boredom of having to sit around day after day doing nothing.

I am not an expert, and these are only commonsense suggestions. But people of the IPS cadre are so preoccupied with their own concerns that they rarely look into the basic problems of their men. Or perhaps, the basic problems are so massive, and the funds are so meager that it’s a hopeless situation which no one wants to address. Whatever it is, the caste system is not fair. What about other forms of training? Is the policeman who will have to deal with it on the ground, taught about crowd control? Does his training equip him to deal with rioters and violent crowds? How does he tackle an armed intruder when he himself isn’t armed?

Finally, there is the attitude to women and minorities. There are enough reports in the daily press giving accounts of the rough and biased treatment given to these two groups. Obviously, an attitudinal change is needed in the policeman’s mindset. How is this to be achieved except by training? This needs to go side by side with the mandatory induction of both groups into the police force. While women in the force are beginning to be visible, there aren’t enough of them. As for the minorities, their representation in the nation’s police is still very low — if this is given priority, political correctness will automatically follow. A small final point: the report on policemen’s health is based on tests carried out on constables and others. This was the first time they had ever been checked; IPS officers have a check up every year. Does one need to say more?

(The writer is a senior journalist)