State can't cop out

State can't cop out

Professionalism in the police force is choked by political controls and poor service conditions.

For an agency so critical to public safety and crime fighting, the inability to staff police forces with adequate personnel stands out sharply in the latest data compiled by Bureau of Police Research and Development (BPR&D). Nearly 21% of sanctioned posts are lying vacant, which translates to one cop for every 663 people against a sanctioned police population ratio of 1:518. Contrast this with the allocation of 56,944 police personnel to 20,828 VIPs and we have a situation where the state takes exemplary care of a bloated list of “important” citizens but is not so favourably disposed to ordinary people.

With just 150 cops per lakh population, India's emerging power status is at odds with its position at the near bottom of this statistical table with some of the poorest nations for company. India's general conviction rate of 47% in 2015 and a conviction rate of just 21.7% in crimes against women reveal that most cases brought to trial end in acquittal, a grim reflection of the police force's incompetence. But the blame lies with state governments. The case has been made for greater administrative and functional autonomy to the IPS hierarchy so that police officers, from top to bottom, are not constrained by political imperatives and fear of disciplinary action.

The failure to staff police force adequately has created a corps of overworked and extremely stressed police. In a 2014 BPR&D study, 68% of surveyed SHOs reported that their subordinates worked more than 11 hours daily and 73% were summoned to work on offdays too. Institutional realities like custodial torture, non-registration of FIRs, low conviction rate and corruption are a direct consequence of the apathy to police reforms. The individual failures add up to a big picture that portrays the police in a sorry light.