From the Parliament House attack and the Mumbai terror attacks to the recent Pune bombing, the Government of India has often been surprised by its failure to anticipate the internal security threat effectively. The Government and its security apparatus, especially the police being the first responders to any internal security challenge, now constantly live under the shadow of this fear of being surprised again in the future.
The truism about the military — it must be prepared to fight the next war, not the last one — now also applies to the police. It must be prepared to meet the challenges of the future. However, the debate in this country, for fathomable reasons, is geared only towards preparing the police forces to meet the historical and current challenges to internal security. Since taking over as the Union Home Minister, Mr P Chidambaram has been lauded for heralding systemic reforms under his watch. A lot of media attention, simultaneously, has been focussed on police reforms, which have not materialised so far despite intervention of the Supreme Court. Even if these changes were to miraculously happen today, in the absence of any prospective planning, they will only have a palliative effect on the problem.
The challenges of the future will be indistinguishable from current challenges and demand a radically different policing capacity. Developing such capacity takes time: To plan, to recruit, to equip, to train, to develop infrastructure and at times, to even amend legislation. The Government can afford to spend little time brooding over the current situation. To begin with, a time-bound, comprehensive research of the factors that will affect policing in the country in the future needs to be accomplished by a team of reputed academicians and professionals under the aegis of the Bureau of Police Research and Development. The FBI Academy in the United States was offering a 'Futuristics in Law Enforcement' course way back in 1982, whereas BPRD, established with a charter for future research, hasn't produced any significant work on the subject.
The study on prospective challenges for the police must focus on these factors: Environmental changes, technological progress and organisational problems.
The environmental landscape in India is rapidly changing — with an intrusive media, higher educational standards, demographic changes, rapid urbanisation, rabid politicisation of socio-political movements, seemingly greater social tolerance to violent expression of public discontent, and myriad external and internal security threats. The old colonial rural policing model in vogue today is unsuited to respond to these rapid socio-cultural and politico-economic changes. Consider the fact that by 2026, the Registrar General of India estimates that 536 million Indians ie 38 per cent of population will be living in the cities; 74 per cent of Tamil Nadu, 61 per cent of Maharashtra, 53 per cent of Punjab and Gujarat and half of Karnataka would be urbanised by then. If the manning, equipping, training and doctrine of policing in the States are not attuned to these migratory trends, that policing incapacity is bound to further exacerbate social and political tensions caused by urban immigration.
The 26/11 Mumbai terror attack is a telling example of the manner in which criminals and terrorists have started using technology with deadly effect. Although technology assisted crimes cost the world economy more than $ 1.6 trillion last year, India is yet to be really hit — a few sporadic incidents apart — by the tsunami of technology assisted crimes. But this is liable to change in the future as technology continues to occupy a bigger space in our daily lives. However, the knowledge of technology in Indian police forces remains abysmally poor with no institutionalised mechanism to study technological developments and their impact on policing.
Organisational challenges in the police emanate from unclear objectives and colonial militaristic command structure that throttle development, growth and initiative, semi-literate and ill-trained personnel — class 10th pass constables and head constables form 90 per cent of the police force — antiquated weapons and equipment, and outdated processes. In fact, the police manuals used by State police forces were drafted more than 100 years back to deal with the problems of that era. There is no process to review actions taken and results achieved, and to provide feedback to develop and use the best practices.
It is true that the grossly inadequate number of policemen — with only 127 policemen for a lakh of population here compared to over 400 in developed countries — have left police with little time and consideration for improvement. States are now dedicating a large amount of efforts and resources to expand their police forces. However, putting more police into an ineffective and corrupt system could end up producing more ineffective and corrupt police. The system has to be reformed concurrently, or this expansion may end up doing more harm than good.
Any systemic reform, however, has to be also geared towards preparing the police for the challenges of the future. It is for this reason alone that all modern police forces have resident futurists on their rolls. Police in India also has no choice but to follow their lead. It must anticipate the future, if it has to evolve into a modern force suited for a modern India.
