Countries of the World/COUNTRYS.BIN/dp/0170/01702.txt

Text File | 1991-06-25 | 37KB | 582 lines

$Unique_ID{COW01702}
$Pretitle{221}
$Title{India
Chapter 10F.  Law Enforcement}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Melinda W. Cooke}
$Affiliation{HQ, Department of the Army}
$Subject{police
government
state
public
central
forces
states
security
system
indian}
$Date{1985}
$Log{}
Country:     India
Book:        India, A Country Study
Author:      Melinda W. Cooke
Affiliation: HQ, Department of the Army
Date:        1985

Chapter 10F.  Law Enforcement

     The Constitution assigns the responsibility for maintaining law and order
to the states, and almost all routine policing-including the prevention and
detection of crime, apprehension of criminals, and maintenance of public
order-was carried out by state police forces. The Constitution also permits
the central government to participate in police operations and organization by
authorizing the maintenance of the Indian Police Service (IPS). Officers of
the IPS were recruited and trained by the central government and, except for
those on headquarters duty, were assigned to senior positions in the state
forces, where they came under the operational control of the states.

     The Constitution also authorizes the central government to maintain any
forces necessary to safeguard the national security. Under the terms of the
Constitution, these paramilitary forces can be legally detailed to assist the
states only if so requested by the state governments, and in practice the
central government has usually observed these limits. Central control over the
Indian federal system has been a perennial irritant in relations between the
center and the states, however, and in isolated instances the central
government has deployed its paramilitary units to protect central government
institutions over the protest of a state government. Moreover, the limits on
the use of central government forces have not always been in place. During the
Emergency the Constitution was amended (effective February 1, 1976) to permit
the central government to dispatch and employ its paramilitary forces without
regard to the wishes of the states. This action proved unpopular, and the use
of the paramilitary forces was controversial. After the Emergency was ended,
the Constitution was amended in December 1978 to make deployment of central
government paramilitary forces once again dependent on the consent of the
state government.

Police in 1985: A System in Crisis

     The law enforcement system came under increasing public attack during the
late 1970s and early 1980s for its inability to deal with crime and public
disorder. The police as an institution were popularly viewed as corrupt,
undisciplined, and ineffective. The police themselves expressed deep
frustration over their inability to handle the nation's ever increasing
law-and-order problems and appeared demoralized by politically motivated
management.

     The problem was not new. A report by a police commission formed in 1902
concluded that the public had little confidence in the police and believed
them to be corrupt and oppressive. Although this summation was subject to
exception in particular cases, it continued to hold as generally descriptive
of public attitudes toward the police throughout the next eight decades.
Popular antipathy toward them could be traced in part to their former status
as the enforcing agents of British colonial power. Public distrust was also
accounted for by the widespread belief in police corruption and petty
dishonesty at lower levels and charges of partiality, lack of responsiveness,
harassment, and occasional brutality.

     During the 1970s, however, problems began to grow noticeably worse,
partly because of the steady increase in group violence, which forced police
to concentrate deployment near population centers where personnel would be
available to handle outbreaks of public disorder. Although the strength of
central government paramilitary forces was raised to meet these increased
responsibilities, that of the state forces was not, making it necessary to
pull police out of rural areas and off regular patrol assignments. This led to
a rise in individual lawlessness and a deterioration in day-to-day public
order that contributed to the public perception of police ineffectiveness and
in turn to individuals seeking justice on their own. Moreover, putting down
civil disturbances placed the police in a no-win situation, for any action
they took could be interpreted as evidence of partiality to any one group.

     During the same period, police personnel became increasingly dissatisfied
and militant over their salaries and working conditions. Organized police
agitation was first demonstrated in the late 1960s, but the first violent
episode occurred in 1973 in Uttar Pradesh, where police in the Provincial
Armed Constabulary rebelled over working conditions and had to be put down
forcibly by the army. Police agitation had become common by the late 1970s; in
1979 police strikes, demonstrations, and work stoppages occurred in every
state. In a particularly violent incident in Bombay in 1982, the army had to
be deployed to restore order after paramilitary forces sent in to disarm
striking police fired on a crowd of police and sympathetic textile workers,
killing several and sparking serious rioting. Most commentators, official and
otherwise, agreed the police had genuine grievances but that neither the
states nor the central government had the resources to do more than
temporarily appease their demands.

     Finally, the gradual politicization of the police, which had been under
way at least since independence, was greatly accelerated during the 1970s.
This was especially so during the Emergency, when senior officers at all
levels were ordered to take actions that were either of dubious legality or
clearly served narrow personal or partisan interests. Under the Morarji Desai
government of the late 1970s, many of those who had cooperated with the
government during the Emergency were censured, demoted, or even imprisoned.
When Gandhi resumed office in 1980, however, some of those officers were
reinstated or promoted, perpetuating a split in the police ranks and
reinforcing the perception in the eyes of the police and the public that the
police establishment was politically manipulatable.

     Writing in 1984, David H. Bayley, an American specialist on the Indian
police, asserted that the crisis in the Indian police system should be placed
into a broader national perspective. He argued that the Indian political
system was based on scarcity and that the government's role was to allocate
money, jobs, opportunities, and services-including those of the police-to
ameliorate the chronic deficiencies experienced by the population. In India's
open and democratic society, competition for scarce benefits took the form of
agitation to gain the attention of political decisionmakers. "In such
circumstances policing is transformed from the professional imposition of a
coherent moral consensus to an intensely political activity. Politicians see
the police as critical arbiters of personal as well as group advancement.
Order and justice are not rights that everyone may enjoy; they are benefits
that government must allocate among competing claimants." According to Bayley,
many police have tried to resist politicization, but their livelihood and that
of their families were vulnerable to manipulation of bonuses allocated or
withheld and politically inspired transfers. During conditions of insecurity
and lawlessness, police were made more sensitive to intimidation by one group
or the need to exhibit loyalty to another. In the absence of a comprehensive
reform of the system, the deterioration of the law enforcement establishment,
the loss of public faith in it, and increased lawlessness appeared likely to
continue as self-reinforcing conditions of Indian public life.

National-Level Agencies

     The central national-level organization concerned with law enforcement
was the Ministry of Home Affairs, which supervised a large number of
gover