POLICING UNDER

POLITICAL PATRONAGE

In a blinkered system like ours, where power and wealth are the ultimate
virtues, where power and wealth in themselves stimulate mutual growth to the
exclusion of all other dimensions of life, it is no wonder, the people of this poor
country succumb to the trappings of power and wealth at the cost of all virtues,
values, pride, dignity and human decency. In an increasingly competitive and
complex world where every day more mouths are added to share limited
resources, where the principle of the survival of the fittest operates to its immane
logical end and where the basic needs of survival and decency can be assured only
with power and wealth, people naturally go all out to ramp the ladder of power
and wealth by whatever means and cost. In the process, justice and morality
become casualties and criminality raises its ugly head as an instrument to achieve
otherwise impossible objects. This is how politics and crime knit together in the
fabric of Indian public life.
POLICE AND POLITICS
The story of the police is somewhat different. As the catchpole of the nation’s
administration, the police enjoy tremendous power over vast fields of human
activities with responsibilities to life and death of the hoi polloi as well as
dignitaries. In this sense, the police are the cutting edge of the state power and
its ultimate bearer. No power can be its own sans the police on its side as an
executioner and loyal watchdog. This is why politicians felt the need for wooing
police to their side in their activities. The police of independent India have
become an easy prey to the power-baits of smarter politicians by the reason of
their failing strength of character and talent. They refuse to look beyond their
political masters with their dispensations of job favors; and so law, justice,
righteousness, professional ethics, morality, decency, human dignity, common
good of people, national interests and even conscience, otherwise common to
any human being, have become invalid nonsense to them. The police, sans sound
character and personal integrity, are no more than a country dog, which is what
the Indian police have become in free India. The politicians, inebriated with new

85
 PRAVEEN KUMAR

power, smartly brought these weaklings to absolute submission and hold them
on a tight leash to be their personal watchdogs and personal gendarmes in
requital for favorable job placements, undue promotions and other largition
from time to time. Nothing is valued higher than this largess and its dispensers
by the new police of India. It is how the police was involved in the conspiracy
against decent public life of India.
POLICE AND CRIME
It was a hop and skip for the police from the plangent world of politics to
the mysterious world of crime and the underworld. The police became a
weapon of politicians to bring about the subjugation of the crime world to prise
their resources for the political ends. They thus made good use of the decreasing
strength of character of the police in forging a nexus between the police and
criminals in furtherance of their own telos. With a week spine to hold itself and
hapless in the face of odds, the police is only too pleased to follow the footsteps
of its political masters as the cardinal principle of policing. In changed
circumstances, discipline and subordination which form the basic connecting link
of the police hierarchy, lost all their shades of meaning and are interpreted as
dunny and blind subservience to those who have power, seeking personal
interests. And politicians easily led the police to the despicable cul de sac of the
nexus with criminals, the very people whom both are supposed to control and
bring to book for antisocial activities. With politicians as the custodians of power
en arrier to the hilt to support, the police plunged lock, stock and barrel into the
lucrative crime world; the consectaneous wealth and comforts were in no way
less sweet than the hard earned money of law-abiding society. This is how the
nexus between the police and crime world was established.
CRIMINALISATION OF POLITICS
Whom should we blame for this hapless position? Certainly not the politicians
or their auxiliaries like criminals and police who are unfortunate by-products of
the grind. They are created by the situation arising from a system that is misfit to
the people to whom it was devised. The blame lies either on the Indian people
who are impair to the democratic system evolved for them, because of their
unenlightened and venal consciences which is so dim-witted that virtues like
honesty, service, patriotism, quality and excellence can make no dent on is at all,
or it lies with the political system devised for them which failed to take their
psychological makeup into account and ipso facto led to the problem of
maladjustment in national life. Otherwise, how can we explain criminals and
goondas winning elections with impunity even while rioting and murders were
committed at their behest on the eve of elections itself. The fact is that the chance

86
 INDIAN POLICE

of winning an election often is pro rata to the aura of a tough image built around
the candidate. It is these people whom the Indian electorate prefers to invest with
powers to safeguard their interests. Obviously, the Indian electorate lacks of
foresight and vision to understand the consequences of its irresponsible decision.
It is yet too immature to take decisions about the interests of the nation and see
how national interests are closely linked to its personal interests. It is yet to
broaden its perspective to include the life of the nation as an integral part of its
own. Long term and rational decisions are alien to its nature. Immediate selfish
interests and a parochial outlook continue to be the driving force of all its actions
and decisions, whether it is on the matters of national importance or personal
concern. In most parts of India, it is money, arrack, sari, threat, and fear of
landlords or the blazoning propaganda of a candidate that influence it to decide
as to whom to vote for. How can the future of this country be safe in the hands
of such an electorate and its elected leaders? How can an indifferent and
irresponsible electorate provide honest and efficient leadership to the nation?
This weakness of the electorate has ultimately left Indian politics in the heath of
violence and manipulative extortions, with the instruments meant to protect
them mowing the field. Saner elements in politics, which found survival difficile,
have left the field, giving way to the elements that are more suited to what is
required in the field. It is how politics has become a pit of junk from a class of
dedicated and virtuous leaders. The credibility which is the pith of any political
life is the biggest casualty political institutions and the percentage of the electorate
that takes the trouble of going to polling booths to cast votes is steadily
decreasing from election to election, It is an open secret that an election is an
opening for a candidate to invest money to reap wealth, comfort and power for
the next five years. And how he reaps the wealth, comfort and power again is
not a mystery at all. It is corruption and misuse of public money. If he is ambitious
and intends to promote his career interests, there is no way out in the existing
system but to resort to pulling strings and pursuing other more deadly methods,
often with the active collusion of the officious criminals and police.
POLITICAL PATRONAGE
The unhealthy nexus often leads to and facilitates other forms of crime. Cases
of rioting assault, kidnap, rap and blackmail, involving the supporters or relatives
of politicians, criminals and police in furtherance of a political cabal are other
usual forms of crime that result from the vicious nexus. Often, criminals and
police are employed to create disturbances or inspire sensational crimes in
furtherance of political goals. The losses of life and property involved in the wily
schemes seld touch the conscience of the politicians, the criminals or the police

87
 PRAVEEN KUMAR

who are responsible for these dastardly acts. The political patronage and the
nexus with police desensitize criminals to the process of law and justice; they are
thus emboldened to commit more daring and ruthless crimes that endanger the
life and property of the plebeians. The police, in its links with politicians on one
hand and with criminals on the other, are in its new avatar as the protector of
vested interests with no more commitment and passion for law and justice. It
has become a discredited force, a willing instrument of power brokers in a
ruthless and violent cabal of power-games with no heart for the common man
and the common cause. This is the requital, the Indian electorate gets for letting
its political system putrefy by its nonchalance and irresponsibility.
CHANGED ROLE
With the increscent involution of the police with glidder politicians, the
conception of the police about its own role has undergone a large-scale change.
No more does it look at crime control and maintenance of order as its first duty.
With this, the concern for crime control received a setback and crime control and
investigation have receded to the last priority except when politicians are
interested in them for a specific purpose. Only crimes that disturb politicians
foment police to galvanic and meaningful action. Other crimes receive no
priority. The very definition of the gravity of crime is adapted to suit the new
concept. Those crimes that are tolerated by politicians are no more crimes. The
self-image of the police as ‘a fearless arbiter of crime’ is changed to a solicitous
servant in attendance at the pleasure of a politician-master. This blunting of the
crime card of the police has made it less awe-inspiring and less deserving of
respect from the criminals. The police have more and more realized that
criminals, particularly those from organized syndicates are personal friends of its
political masters and it is no match for the criminals in terms of wealth, influence
and social standing. The men of the police see those criminals on equal footing
with their political masters and learn to treat them with awe. They find it absurd
to act with authority against the immarcescible criminals who are too high for
the small stature of the police. It is unfortunate that the police of the present days
has never realized its infinite stature as a law-enforcing agent vis a vis all others
including criminals and politicians whom it is empowered to search, arrest and
take to court if they deviate from their rightful path. Sadly, the trifling wealth and
the concomitant “big-man” image of others appear to the present police as more
appealing than its own awful police authority.
POLITICISATION OF POLICE
The extant system of selecting the police chief is erratic at best and motivatedly
amoral that meets the political ends of the rulers at worst.

88
 INDIAN POLICE

A police chief in a state was taken to court with his wife after retirement in
1990 February for defrauding the public and a spastic society by sale of charity
tickets in name of the spastic society and pocketing huge amount of money. This
is the standard of people who are chosen by politicians to lead post independent
Indian police.
A POLITICAL INSTRUMENT
In an atmosphere where placements and transfers are decided by the needs
and wishes of self-seeking politicians, no police can efficiently function nor can
it be free from the vice prise of the politicians. It is not surprising that power-
esurient politicians more and more grab powers that are legally and traditionally
invested with the police department when the top brass lack the strength of
character and conviction. This leads to a position wherein the police department
becomes a chessboard on which politicians move their pieces to checkmate their
adversaries and win the political game in their favour. In other words, the police
sans effective leadership are becoming more a handmaid of politicians by
moving away from its sacred role as the guardian of law and justice and protector
of the society and the common man. The credit of bringing the police from its
height of power to the present level of absolute submission should go to the
superior strength of personality of wily politicians who bent the police on their
own terms with selective use of stick and carrot. This police are not the police
and what it does is not policing in the proud sense of the term.
CRIMINAL TENDENCIES
A Deputy Inspector General of Police notorious for his degenerate and
corrupt activities in 1982 while holding charge of Eastern Range in Davangere
in Karnataka desired a young Deputy Superintendent of Police, under him marry
a girl from the family of a rich arrack contractor of his range. The parents of the
young officer fearing undue pressure got their son married in desperation to a
girl of their choice. This antagonized the Deputy Inspector General. His next
annual confidential report of young officer showed the junior as a liability to the
police department and misfit as a sub divisional police officer. He also prevailed
year after year upon other officers who wrote confidential reports of the young
officer to incorpse similar or more deadly remarks. Most of them obliged and
this bright junior officer ended up with a series of unsubstantiated adverse
remarks repeated time and again in his annual confidential reports. All his appeals
were never allowed to reach the government. It is to the credit of the young
officer that he remained unbroken and continues in police service.
There is a case of a Director General of Police in charge of Corps of
Detectives in 1987 in a Southern State of India as the boss of the Food and Civil

89
 PRAVEEN KUMAR

Supplies Enforcement cell under a Director was accustomed to getting free

supply of quality rice, sugar, pulses and other commodities from traders to his
house through the latter organisation. New Director of the organisation who
took charge in 1987 failed the Director General of Police in this illegal
gratification by his principled stand. This enraged the latter to the extent of
hounding the young Superintendent of Police and seeking opportunity to
publicly humiliate him. He followed the young officer wherever the latter went
for raids hoping that he would get some opportunity to fix the latter. When all
the efforts failed, the Director General of Police decided as the dernier ressort to
play a drama of searching the Superintendent of Police in public before invited
press and public in an induced case of trapping on suspicion while the latter was
returning from raids in northern parts of the state, depending his calculations
entirely on the humiliation engendered by the publicity of such suspicions and
searches by a very senior officer coram populo. However, the cabal of the senior
officer came to nought and the Superintendent of Police, was saved from the
gratuitous humiliation in public while inscience of the welcome set for him on
the way by his senior. The Superintendent of Police reached back the state
headquarters accidentally through another route that night. It is of interest to note
that the degenerate Director General of Police was posted as an advisor to the
Governor of North-East state during President’s rule after a few years,
subsequent to his retirement from police service. This is the caliber and integrity
of extant Indian Police Service. This is the reason why Indian society prefer
tolerating social maladies to approaching police manned by such people, devoid
of any decency, objectivity and fairplay, both in private and public life.
As corruption takes control and spreads to all strata of the force, upright
elements in the force become a minority and also forfeit coveted positions in the
organisation as inconvenient candidates. They are scorned as removed from
ground realities and detested and avoided as moles in the mainstream. Their
honest and professional approach becomes a disaster and unpopular
everywhere. Their courage in face of odds loses character amidst popular sound
ad fury of the misinformed. Vested interests inside and outside the police let
loose false propaganda and spread distorted versions of events against such
officers and suborn character assassination to keep own reputations on right
sides. The situation becomes really distressing when superior officers partake in
the game on the side of vested interested for consideration and join hands in an
unholy alliance to bend and silence the upright among them. Taking recourse to
unfair and illegal means to crush upright officers is also not uncommon. Though
courts of law can theoretically protect against such harassments, expenses, time

90
 INDIAN POLICE

and uncertainties involved and the history of court judgments being dodged or
rendered ineffective by administrative sleight, render the protection meaningless
and force the upright officer to face all humiliations and losses in silence or yield
to the pressures. It is to the credit of Indian police that it has great officers who
withstood all slights without yielding to pressures.
It is an irony that the political leadership that supposed to take the lead of
reconstructing India is colluding for mutual selfish ends with the police that is
supposed to be the tool of the reconstruction and thereby strike at the foundation
of the strength and orderliness of the country. Every passing year sees a new
phase and a new trend in this nasty connection between the important players of
the national reconstruction to take the country by some miracle at the last
moment. As the people become more and more attuned to the nefarious nexus
and resign to the assuefaction, the players become more and more bold with the
passing years and go with their nasty collusion at the cost of the nation’s interest
with impunity for mutual relief and benefits by subornation.

91