Let me start with a question, What should be felt ideally when see or hear Police?, I think it should be equal justice, law enforcement and security of citizens. But the question is, are these duties performed by police ideally?. The most probable answer would be a NO But what made the condition of this system so grim? India’s existing police system suffers a series of deficiencies from problems relating to a police organization, environment, infrastructure, and understanding, to obsolete weaponry and intelligence gathering techniques to a shortage of manpower to corruption, the police force in the country is not in a good shape.major deficiencies are:
1. An overburdened police force: A high percentage of vacancies within the police forces exacerbates an existing problem of overburdened police personnel.
•86% of the state police comprises of the constabulary.
•Crime per lakh population has increased by 28% over the last decade (2005-2015). However, convictions have been low.
2. Pendency: 30% of all cases filed in 2016 were pending for investigation by the end of the year.
3. Decreased Expenditure on police in recent years is adding to the resource crunch.Between fiscal 2011 and 2015, states spent 4.4% of their budgeted expenditure on policing on average but this has reduced to 4% over the last four years.
4. Police accountability: As per the police laws, both the Central and State police forces come under the superintendence and control of political executives. Police priorities are frequently altered based on the will of political executives.
5. Police-Public Relations, which is an important concern in the effective policing is suffering from the great trust deficit.
2018 survey across 22 states on perceptions about policing, found that less than 25% of Indians trust the police highly (as compared to 54% for the army) and the reason for the distrust is that interactions with the police can be frustrating, time-consuming and costly.
6. Criminalization of Politics: improper implementation of police reforms could be attributed to lack of political will, which in turn could be linked to the growing criminalization of politics.
Way Forward
1 SMART Police: Police reforms are needed on three fronts:
Improvement in capacity and infrastructure of police forces.
Revisiting the constitution of police forces in the country through legislative/ administrative changes.
•Technological scaling-up.
2. Independent Complaints Authority: The Second Administrative Reforms Commission and the Supreme Court have observed that there is a need to have an independent complaints authority to inquire into cases of police misconduct.
3. Constitute Police Complaints Authorities at the state and district levels to inquire into allegations of serious misconduct and abuse of power by police personnel.
4. Community Policing Model can help in reducing the trust deficit between police and public as it requires the police to work with the community for prevention and detection of crime, maintenance of public order, and resolving local conflicts, with the objective of providing a better quality of life and sense of security.
Various states have been experimenting with community policing including Kerala through ‘Janamaithri Suraksha Project’, Rajasthan through ‘Joint Patrolling Committees’, Assam through ‘Meira Paibi’, Tamil Nadu through ‘Friends of Police’, West Bengal through the ‘Community Policing Project’, Andhra Pradesh through ‘Maithri’ and Maharashtra through ‘Mohalla Committees’.
- 5. Utilisation of funds for modernisation(%)
Both centre and states allocate funds for modernisation of state police forces. These funds are typically used for strengthening police infrastructure. However, there has been a persistent problem of underutilisation of modernisation funds. For example, in 2015-16, the centre and states allocated Rs 9,203 crore for modernisation. However, only 14% of it was spent.
Sources:
niti.gov.in
Drishti IAS
-Vijayveer Malik
Good Job. Keep it up. 🙂