Antidote to riots

Antidote to riots

Politics is taking a toll on policing. Delhi Police failures make a strong case for police reforms.

That national security adviser Ajit Doval – whose brief is geopolitical issues and tackling external security threats – had to fill in the breach on domestic peacekeeping duties in riot-hit Delhi, and show to police and political authorities how their job should be done, poses grave questions about the Delhi Police, which reports to the Union home ministry. Likewise, the Delhi high court had to coach it in basic policing functions, when it asked why FIRs had not been registered over hate speeches made in the city this month leading up to the riots that have exploded since Sunday.

Failure to act on intelligence inputs, inaction despite thousands of calls on helplines, inadequate deployment in riot hit areas, and even instances of blatant collusion with rioters are among the charges levelled at Delhi Police. Disturbingly, they have recalled for many the pattern of police behaviour during Delhi’s infamous 1984 riots which, ironically, BJP endlessly berates Congress about. Delhi’s AAP government cannot absolve itself of all blame either. While it argues, correctly, that the city’s police force reports not to it but to the Union home ministry, the chief minister still has considerable moral authority which has hardly been wielded adequately.

The nub of the problem, as the Supreme Court bench hearing the Shaheen Bagh case observed, is “lack of independence and professionalism of police to act as per law”. It careens between inaction and disproportionate force depending on what it thinks will please its political masters. This hobbles both its independence and its professionalism. The problem is not confined to Delhi but recurs in states like UP, Bengal and elsewhere in India – essentially, India’s police forces repeat a pattern inherited from the British Raj.

In 2006, Supreme Court made a powerful case for police reforms but little meaningful change has been achieved. It is now time to force the pace, and make police accountable to a legislative assembly committee in states and parliamentary committee in Delhi. This would ensure transparent and bipartisan oversight and free IPS officers from the grip of incompetent or politicking executives. Governing parties should not resist this necessary reform either. After all, look at what happened in Delhi: the enormous expenditure and effort undertaken to tell a certain positive story about India during US President Donald Trump’s visit, got overtaken by another story of the old India of communal riots and religious hatred rising again.