Wednesday, October 7, 2009

“The police mean extortion all over India”

Mr Khaki mood and sood is hot debate now in India but what’s new in it not known as in the past.

Vijay Nambisan writes in the current issue of Outlook:

  • Rudyard Kipling noted in Kim: “Native police mean extortion to the native all India over.” He was careful not to probe any deeper. The native police were the tool of a force whose business was extortion. It ceased to matter whether they extorted on their own behalf or on behalf of their masters. To us natives, alas, the symbolism of the police constable has not vastly changed in a century.
  • India’s administrative system is essentially one that Sher Shah Suri designed nearly 500 years ago. Akbar fine-tuned it, the British altered it to suit their ends, but its main purpose was always the same —efficient tax collection. Justice came a tardy second when it figured at all. The chief innovation of the Raj was the creation of the district collector, an autocrat in his fief.
  • After independence, we retained the system devised to extract the most juice out of us. (A thick-headed press still uses the word “rule” instead of “govern” to describe the political function!) For more than 30 years, the district collector continued to be a petty despot. Now, I understand, collectors are designated district magistrates, and the post is considered very junior in the heirarchy. That is only because the breed has proliferated. There are so many more IAS officers than there used to be, or need to be.
  • The police was used by the Raj to keep a subjugated people beneath the yoke. There were no citizens of India. “Law and order” meant the tax-gatherer’s law, the conqueror’s order. (It still does—see how the home minister speaks of first destroying the Naxalite threat and then addressing its causes.) Justice was something to be bought and sold. (It still is—look at the celebrity hit-and-run cases.)
  • We have done nothing to change this system. The “native” police, under the Raj, were the enforcers, the sharpest weapons of oppression. They still are and use methods devised to suppress freedom fighters. The forced confession, the custodial death, the intimidation of relations, the very lathi—nothing has changed.
  • …The police mean extortion all over India. Doctors are also coming to mean the same. But doctors are relatively empowered. Do constables get to make representations to the various police reforms commissions? Do the eminent people on these commissions visit the thana unannounced? An honest IPS officer can make a deal of difference. The home minister is idealistic in asking top officers to protest transfers, but he is in the right. So is the prime minister, when he speaks of focusing on the thana. I only wish they would take a turn at cheering up the constables.

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