Police in India

WAKE UP CALL FOR BRITISH POLICE

2011-09-15T05:58:00.000-07:00

(Published in the Statesman on 19 October 2011 and reproduced in Asia News Network and leading Sri Lankan daily The Island on October 21 under the title Bumbling Bobby)

The Tottenham riots (early August) took the British police by surprise. They fumbled initially for apparent lack of contingency plans. They lost more face when the trouble engulfed not only the city of London but much of the British urban landscape (surprising why these. did not spread to Scotland, Wales and North Ireland) exposing lack of coordination among the different city police forces. The London Bobby has long been viewed as a role model for police forces the world over and the Scotland Yard as icon among the detective agencies. Post-riots tongues started wagging that foreign police agencies might think twice before turning to London for advice on public order. There was a tongue-in-cheek suggestion that Prime Minister David Cameron might be calling in experts from New York and Los Angeles police on tackling gangs.
Whatever might have been felt and said in the heat of the moment one should not be too harsh in judging the police. The Metropolitan Police had been headless for some time denying the police the benefit of a centralised command. Not having been exposed to a serious riot since the Broadwater Farm riots 26 years ago they seem to have forgotten their riot drill. They were grossly under equipped and under strength They rose to the occasion like one man once the reinforcements came with sufficient riot gear. The London cops, with their strength gone up from 6000 to 16000, effected 1700 arrests; of the 700 charged two-thirds were remanded to custody. Within hours they were tried and those found guilty were sentenced. (Contrast this with India where there is virtually no conviction following a major riot.) Going by a media poll, despite the initial setback the public (at least the majority of the whites) continue to view their police as professionally competent, fair and impartial. In their view the riots were the outcome of the skewed policies of the government over a period of time.
Britain has been a divided society for the last few decades and the hiatus is only growing. The country has had a problem with its youth, a generation that is functionally illiterate, unemployable, demotivated and criminalised from early childhood, stuck in a vicious cycle of generational poverty. They have no jobs, no prospects, and no future except living on dole in dwellings built out of public money. Hate and anger had been building up over a period of time. The super rich bankers in the Square Mile and the rioters next door in Hackney may be next door neighbours but there is little in common between them besides their fondness for the same gizmos. Walking down the trashed streets one found the items looted were electronics, designer clothes, phones, perfumes, cosmetics and jewellery. It is therefore being said that the riots were a consumerist uprising of the have-nots against the haves.
The native white population has reason to feel threatened by the size and relative prosperity of the non-white immigrant communities. Police will have to remain on guard against the rise of right (white) extremism of the kind that was responsible for the Norway carnage last month. According to his own admission the suspect in the Norwegian attacks, Anders Behring Breivik was only trying to draw attention to the imminent danger of ‘black’ immigrants engulfing the whites if the tide was not arrested.
Leave aside the government police too failed to read the writing on the wall. When the society was static the beat constable knew his charge by name and face. He bore on his person nothing more than a truncheon, more as a symbol of authority than as a weapon of assault. If police was unarmed, so was the criminal and so the cycle went. Law and order problems were few and far between. Lately
police have largely abandoned visits to racially sensitive areas. Any law enforcement in these areas is treated with a simmering resentment which quickly erupts into violence. The easy option for the police has been to designate them as "no-go areas", effectively abandoning the silent majority to a life of misery under the threat of violence and crime. Cuts to policing are evident in the mere fact that visible, proactive patrols don't exist any more.
It is time for police to introspect and to answer a few questions. Was there enough provocation to open fire at Tottenham? It looks like not having had to handle anything so serious for a long time police had become complacent. Fire power was used where other methods such as parleying, baton charge, water cannon and tear smoke might have done the job. Police have to answer the charge of intelligence failure and not having a contingency plan ready. Why did they not activate their ‘sleeper cells’? The deteriorating socio-economic scenario and the near total alienation of the youth were bound to result in an outburst sooner than later. Police failed to feel their pulse. Once the trouble started there was obvious lack of coordination between the police forces of different cities. Why could the conflagration not be prevented from spreading to other cities? If the looters could coordinate their actions through Facebook, Tweeter and other social network sites the police could also have responded in kind and intercepted or jammed them? Perhaps they could not under the law. After all, United Kingdom prides herself on being a free, liberal society.
What complicated matter for police was that the victim in Tottenham was an Asian immigrant. Police, nearly all white, have not been able to shake off allegations of racial prejudice. Considering the large immigrant segment of British population a fresh dose of sensitization is called for. The United States is trying to deal with this problem by inducting a sizeable number of Afro-Americans in their police force.
Having lambasted the autocratic regimes in the Arab world all these years for human rights violation spy glasses are constantly turned on UK for any signs of similar transgression. With the sword of human rights violation hanging over their head British police law enforcement has become lax. In coming years law enforcement without compromising on human rights is going to pose a challenge for them.
The British police are still one of the best in the world. Let them treat the riots as a wake up call, fine tune their strategy and tactics, and take stock of what they have and what they need. Equally or more so, government must take note of the changed environment. With latent hostility at home and international terrorism staring country in the face days of the unarmed beat constable have to end. Police need latest equipment and gadgetry, mobility and, most of all, manifold increase in numbers. Policing, proactive as well as reactive, is going to cost the exchequer a packet, budget cut or no budget cut, and there is no running away from it.

(Dr. Sudhir Kumar Jha)
(The author is a former Director General of Police, Bihar)

POLICE REFORMS:INVOKING ANNA HAZARE

2011-09-15T05:46:00.000-07:00

POLICE REFORMS: INVOKING ANNA HAZARE
(Published in the Statesman, Delhi and Kolkata, on 8 October 2011)

An anti-corruption Ombudsman, to be called Lokpal, had long been envisaged as a watch dog against sharks such as some of those who are biding their time in Tihar Jail. For reasons which need no elaboration the law enforcement machinery, be it the central or state agencies, fight shy of trying to net the big fish, unless the higher judiciary intervenes or the political establishment has a score to settle with their adversaries. Successive governments have been dragging their feet for nearly fifty years creating an impression that there is no political will to stop the loot of public money. It was this pent up frustration that Anna Hazare exploited to build up a mass movement. We bow to Anna’s missionary zeal. His war on corruption should embrace three main areas, namely, electoral reforms, judicial reforms and police reforms. He has the first two in his sights but not the third which impacts people’s lives more directly and at the cutting edge
We invoke Anna to include police reforms in his action plan. Without these he cannot take his fight against corruption to its logical conclusion. Recurring debates about the police-politician and police-criminal nexus notwithstanding the unholy alliance thrives more than ever. If police-politician nexus is the collusive face of corruption, it is of the coercive type at the grass roots level which the aam aadmi has to suffer in silence. It will be in fitness of things for Anna to include in his movement the replacement of the anachronistic, colonial Police Act by a modern law in keeping with people’s aspirations in a democratic 21st century India.
Freeing the police services from political control should top the reform agenda. Anna’s job is not going to be easy. If police was a stooge of the government before independence it has remained so since. The political establishment, irrespective of its hue, has time and again thwarted attempts at police reforms. The Santhanam Committee set up by the Government of India in 1962 came out with several suggestions pertaining to administrative vigilance but skirted the issue of police reforms. The first bold initiative was taken two decades after independence by a non-Congress government. The National Police Commission (1977-79) made sweeping recommendations to make the police a professionally competent, people-friendly force free from political interference. There was high expectation that Charan Singh might see the reforms through but that was not to be. That successor political dispensation found the report too strong to stomach and just sat over it till it died a natural death.
In wake of the first phase of economic liberalization, more as a knee-jerk reaction, the N.N. Vohra Committee was set up to explore the dimensions of police-politician-criminal nexus. In its hard-hitting report the committee exposed the ugly face of collusive corruption and gave specific names which were never made public. The quid pro quo between the senior police officers on important posts and politicians who posted them there benefited both sides but drained the pubic exchequer. Expectedly there was no follow-up action. Once again the ‘common man’ felt let down. Public cynicism was building up. How we missed you Anna?
It was not the government but the higher judiciary which took note of the public mood. Lately the Supreme Court had been critical of the government’s reluctance in replacing/revising the outmoded Police Act of 1861. To placate the Supreme Court the central government set up the Soli Sorabjee Committee to draft a model police bill to replace the existing Act. The Committee submitted a comprehensive draft for a new Police Act. It aimed to define the new responsibilities of the police force and incorporated several measures to improve its professional efficiency while reducing political interference in its working. Nothing was done. Anna, if only you were there to twist the government’s tail!
The government would have dragged its feet had the Supreme Court not dropped the bombshell by passing a historical judgment on September 22, 2006 on a PIL filed by retired IPS officer Prakash Singh to reform the existing criminal justice system with a view to establish better rule of law in the country. The apex court invoked the recommendations of the National Police Commission and the Sorabjee panel and ordered some revolutionary changes in the system with a view to making the Indian Police more accountable and free from any kind of political interference. The 7-point directive includes, inter alia, the setting up of State Security Commissions to insulate police from political influence, selection of state police chiefs for a fixed minimum tenure through a merit based transparent process, take away transfers, promotions and postings from the hands of politicians and entrust it to an independent police establishment board. Not leaving the central and the state governments any scope for prevarication the court ordered them to implement the changes within December, 06 and to send compliance report by January, 07. Had the directive been implemented in letter and spirit, aided by the Right to Information Act, we would have today an efficient, transparent and accountable police force free from political interference. Police performance during the elections, when they function under the control of the Election Commission, has shown that this can be done.
The state governments could not have been expected to let go of their prerogative without a fight. Law and order being a state subject resistance was not unexpected. They expressed their ‘reservations’, states were not ‘objecting’ at this stage for fear of the wrath of the apex court, on the plea of law and order being a state subject. After some legal dilly-dallying the states either implemented it in a heavily diluted form or ignored it altogether. Bihar, for example, brought on its statutes the Bihar Police Act 2007 where in the state government, read the Chief Minister, retained the power to promote, post and transfer at will field officers from DGP down to SHO, magisterial control has been tightened and some retrograde provisions continued with the result that it falls short of being a progressive legislation aimed at giving the public a professional police independent of political control. The Union government too failed to carry out their part of the bargain relating to the central police organizations. Even the contempt notice issued by the Supreme Court went unheeded.
Now is the time to make the push into a shove. We need you, Anna. Strike the iron while it is hot. With the central government on the back foot and states scared of going against the public mood the Supreme Court ought to be moved to follow up on their contempt notice and force the parties to comply. You must win this battle before you can win your war on corruption. Allow police reform to ride piggy-back on your Jan Lokpal Andolan.

Dr. Sudhir Kumar Jha
(The author is a former Director General of Police, Bihar.)

Little Pockets of History

2009-07-08T06:56:00.000-07:00

This was published in The Statesman, kolkata-Delhi, under the title LITTLE POCKETS OF HISTORY on 5 January 2010
RAJ ERA CEMETERIES IN PERIL
Showing respect to the dead is common to societies all over the world. ‘Speak not ill of the dead’, is what we are taught from our childhood. ‘Let them rest in peace’ comes instantly to mind as we pass a grave. Encroaching and vandalising their final resting place can therefore be viewed as sacrilege. Shakespeare sounded a grim warning in the epitaph inscribed into his gravestone at the Holy Trinity Church in Stratford-upon-Avon in England:
"Good friend for Jesus sake forbeare,To dig the dust enclosed here. Blessed be the man that spares these stones,And cursed be he that moves my bones."Shakespeare supposedly wrote it himself because in his time old bodies were dug up and burned to make room for new burials. Many British men and women of the Raj era would have aspired to borrow from Shakespeare's epitaph and wished their final resting places to remain untouched by the encroaching, marauding hand.
There are few well kept graveyards, such as the Bhowanipore Cemetery in Kolkata, Viceroy Lord Elgin's memorial at McLeodgunj in Himachal Pradesh, the Nuns' cemetery near St Bedes College for Women in Simla, and the War cemeteries at Kohima, Delhi, Pune and Comilla in Bangladesh. Most, however, have fallen prey to encroachment, vandalism and pilferage. Some have disappeared due to the vagaries of nature or to the greed for land. It is the same story from Peshawar to Chittagong, Baramula to Trivandrum. Peshawar’s Gora Qabristan, witness to the Afghan Wars, and the cantonment cemetery in Meerut, where the Indian Uprising of 1857 began, are typical of the decay now facing old British graves. As a result, it is nearly impossible to put an exact number, far less to decipher the inscriptions on them. Criminals take away headstones making it difficult to identify the tombs as has happened with the graves of Bethune and Michael Madhusudan Dutt in Kolkata’s Lower Circular Road Cemetery.
Non-British cemeteries have fared no better. The Jewish cemetery, located off Lloyd's Road in Madras, now Chennai, is adjacent to the Chinese cemetery and both cemeteries have clusters of vendors and squatters with vegetables displayed on the road itself at the entrances. Portuguese, Spanish and French tombs have all but disappeared from the Indian soil.
Whereas most of the inscriptions on the grave stones speak of the survivor’s grief and loss, some speak of the vanity of their occupants ignoring Thomas Gray’s famous Elegy “… The paths of glory lead but to the grave.” In most cases, the tombstones are not of Viceroys and other high and mighty of the British Raj but of the countless British civil servants, soldiers, merchants, missionaries, townspeople and teachers, their spouses and children most of whom succumbed not to sword but to summer heat and tropical diseases. They are all part of India’s past. If some headstones contain doggerels we also come across some fine quotes and original compositions. At least some of the tombs can claim to be fair representatives of Indo-European architecture. Much has been lost but not all. If properly maintained these cemeteries can become virtual 'al-fresco museums'.
The care of these graves has become no body’s baby. Lack of interest and resources lie behind this callous neglect. But it is more a question of mindset. This was amply reflected in the adverse media reaction to the restoration in Delhi of the tomb of Brigadier-General Sir John Nicholson, whom William Dalrymple, a British himself, has portrayed as the villain of the 1857 uprising aftermath. Local sensitivities have of course to be taken care of. The Indian public and their representatives in parliament and government have to be sensitised to the fact that conservation of the Raj era cemeteries is not meant to glorify and perpetuate British imperial history but to give us a valuable perspective on India’s heritage. We have to look at these graveyards as ‘little pockets of history’, a who’s who of the British Raj. However much we may resent the British rule in India we cannot wish it away.
The conservation of these tombs and cemeteries is simply beyond the capacity of local church committees. A concerted effort is called for lest this valuable source of history is lost for ever. Sadly, in India the Central and State Minority Commissions and the nominated Anglo-Indian members of state assemblies have been indifferent. The least they can do is to pressurise the government to have pucca boundary walls erected to prevent further encroachment as the hunger for land can drive people to any length. The British Association for Cemeteries in South Asia (BACSA), a London-based charity, has done a great job in listing out a large number of graves and even pays for the upkeep of some. Lately, Lt. Col. Lake has launched a trust in UK with an ambitious target to raise £700,000 a year from corporate donors such as HSBC, Rothschild, Lloyds and other major foundations so that these places can be maintained in perpetuity throughout the erstwhile British empire. India-based NGOs and public authorities may also pitch in and play a coordinating role.
An estimated two million graves of the Raj era, lying in isolation or in clusters in designated cemeteries, dot the Indian sub continent. If the government can catalogue and put them on the net many of the present generation Britain may want to visit India to connect with their ancestors and put a wreath on their tombs. In the process they will be unwittingly promoting what can be crudely termed as "graveyard tourism".
Most of all, we must create public awareness to defer to the dignity of the dead for, to borrow from the epitaph on Viceroy Lord Elgin’s grave, “He being dead yet speaketh”.
Dr. Sudhir Kumar Jha
NIRVANA’ Buddha Colony
Patna 800 001
(The author is a former Director General of Police, Bihar and a free-lance researcher. He can be contacted at sudhirjhapatna@gmail.com)

CYBER POLICING

2009-06-13T08:23:00.000-07:00

CYBER POLICING
Personal Vigilance Is The Answer
Crime on the internet, or cyber crime in trendy parlance, is no more confined to the pages of science fiction. It has truly arrived, leaving the law enforcement agencies baffled. This is a new type of cat and mouse game they have not played earlier nor been trained for. Hackers no longer need violent weapons or accomplices to commit felonies. What they need now is a computer, a screen name, and intent to mutilate one or many computer systems.
Anonymity of the internet and its decentralized global nature helps them to manoeuvre through web pages, access credit card numbers and passwords, or just keep on stalking. Often the only clue is their e-mail address. Fraud has always been around; computers give it a new dimension. What if the numbered Swiss accounts can be compromised? The rise in e-commerce, and soon m-commerce, is bound to present a bounty to the scam artist. What is really disturbing is the wide, and ever increasing, scope of crime through the internet. Be it pornography, blackmail, extortion, drug traffic, terrorism or sheer vandalism, a computer can be exploited.
CURIOSITY
Minors attack computer systems out of curiosity, a thirst for knowledge, and while exploring, exceed bounds of what is legal. Adults do it for reasons that can vary from greed to revenge to sheer mischief. Megalomania or delusion or grandeur is at times the driving force. While commercial, military, government and home computers are vulnerable, the easiest targets are often those at educational institutions. Any effort at building the network defences must start with fixing these weakest links. Favourite targets have been the computers in South Korea, China, the Philippines, Russia, Eastern Europe and US. Can India remain unscathed for long?
While the new medium is a haven for criminals, the anonymity of the web cuts both ways. The cloak of electronic facelessness is the perfect tool for police to run decoys and keep an eye on the bad guy. In a case reported from UK, a sleazy character found an underage girl in a chat room on the internet and tried to lure her into having six at some prearranged location. At the destination a 50-year old policewoman with a shiny pair of handcuffs greeted him. She was the “young girl” all along. India’s police in the metros can take note.
The much-hyped “Love Bug” virus that swept the world recently took the internet world by storm and unnerved the computer security experts. The Philippines police arrested a man suspected of helping to create the crippling virus but had to set him free for want of evidence. Close on the heels came a new and dangerous computer virus dubbed “killer resume”. It was so named because it arrived pretending to be a “resume” from a potential job applicant. The virus was carried in a file attached to an e-mail system using a Microsoft outlook programme. In a not-too-late response Microsoft has come out with an anti-bug patch which prevents the users from running any “executable” programme attachments to e-mail and flashes a warning if there is an attempt.
The authorities complain that their probe is hampered by a lack of laws covering the new global computer network delaying arrest and allowing the suspects time to dispose of key evidence. In the United States, the FBI is alarmed at cyber crimes doubling in a year. Their survey of Fortune 500 companies revealed that 62 per cent of all reported computer breaches till date occurred last year. It feels frustrated at not being able to keep up its excellent track record. In his recent testimony before a subcommittee of the US Senate, FBI director Louis Freeh listed lack of manpower, technology (computer architecture), hazy jurisdictional issues and weak laws as the main hindrances to effective cyber policing. He recommended tougher laws including doubling jail time and fine.
The question of jurisdiction is crucial since internet crimes will often cross state and national boundaries. The US proposes to have Law Net, which would be an online investigating agency that could cross local, state and even international borders. It is imperative that not one but all countries have adequate laws and they enter into treaties of mutual cooperation, like the extradition treaties. Interpol is in a unique position to play a pivotal role, both detective and instructive. Its advice should be taken and listened to.
UTILITIES
In India, our economy is going to be driven by e-commerce. Computer is crucial in the running of infrastructure public utilities such as telecom, power and gas distribution, banking, railways and aviation. E-mail is fast replacing fax and conventional mail (derisively called the “snail mail”). And yet, India is only at the threshold of an internet revolution. According to a guesstimate, only about 15 per cent of a million internet connections are at homes. More cyber cafes and information kiosks will come up once the problems of bandwidth shortage and slow dial-up connections are taken care of. This gives us time, but not much time, to put our cyber policing in place.
Fortunately, so far nothing more serious than software piracy and theft of internet time has been reported to the police. To make our large police force, a few lakh strong, computer literate will be neither easy nor cheap. To start with specialized cells should be created in the central and state police organizations. The ministry of Home Affairs should take the lead, though there is now a separate ministry of Information Technology. One hopes the IT law-in-making will have enough bite. Success will, however, depend not on the stiff penal provisions but on strict enforcement. Also on the anvil is a convergence law, to be called information, communicator and entertainment bill or some such thing. It has to be ensured that the two laws do not work at cross purposes.
IT minister Pramod Mahajan has returned from the United States quite taken in with what the Americans are doing in this regard. He is all praise for the FBI-led National Infrastructure Protection Centre he visited in Washington and has proposed a committee on similar lines. He has said nothing about India having something like the American NetLaw. The central intelligence agencies will have to hone their cyber skill and employ it increasingly for routine espionage and counter-espionage. Surveillance and monitoring will be vital inputs in any future plan for cyber policing.
PRIVACY
The telecommunications and the postal departments intercept transmissions when asked to do so. Why can’t there be a law to make the internet service providers install the data equivalent of wiretaps? The tap must, however, be used sparingly as it involves the infringement of citizen’s privacy. Sensitive issues such as these, one hopes, have been addressed in the proposed information technology bill. Till such time, and it can be a long time, that the police agencies are geared up, the business houses will have to use the protective and investigative cover made available by the private security agencies. Once having vetted these agencies, the police should cooperate with them rather than making their work difficult.
The Central Bureau of Investigation has assumed the entrepreneurial role of introducing the country’s police forces to e-policing. The bureau is in the process of collecting and collating the literature available on cyber crime and distributing the same to the country’s police forces in the form of CD-ROM. It has also planned training and orientation programmes for its own and state police officers. The SVP National Police Academy at Hyderabad has also planned special courses in combating Net-crimes for Indian and foreign police officers.
What is required is to generate security awareness among the computer users through a sustained campaign. Personal vigilance will preempt much of the trouble. Keep changing your password. Enjoy online shopping but be discreet in disclosing your credit card number. The computer must remain user-friendly but should have enough built-in safety to deter the prowler. To this end the designers and the security experts much work in tandem.
SUDHIR KUMAR JHA
14.07.2000
The author is a former Director General of Police, Bihar.

The Interpol Saga - limits of global policing

2009-06-13T08:18:00.000-07:00

INTERPOL SAGA
Limits of Global Policing
Our mega-scams have made the Central Bureau of Investigation a household word. But the CBI can go so far and no further. It can do precious little once scam money has been stashed away in foreign accounts and the dramatis personae have found sanctuary abroad. CBI then takes the help of Interpol. Even to those who have heard of Interpol, it is a mysterious presence, bordering on fantasy, handling operatives in the James Bond mould. The truth is nothing as exciting.
Interpol stands for international police cooperation and not for international policing. Countries are sensitive about their national sovereignty and no country will tolerate a foreign police agency or even an international police body snooping into its affairs however friendly its intentions may be. The constitution of Interpol therefore emphasizes that police cooperation must be limited to criminal offences and that too within the limits of the laws of different countries, in the spirit of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
EXTRADITION
Interpol initiatives are invalid when dealing with fugitives seeking asylum from political or religious persecution. The other day Interpol had to turn down China’s request to arrest Li Hongzhi, the leader of the banned Falun Gong sect, as it could not have involved itself in a case of political or religious nature. Interpol has no branches. Every member country has to designate one of its several police agencies as the national central bureau to liaise with Interpol. It is through these NCBs that Interpol operates. In India, CBI is the designated NCB.
Interpol is a contrivance born out of necessity. The giant strides taken by science and technology in the present century offers increased opportunities for international criminal activity. For instance, preparations for a crime may be made in one country and committed in another; an offender may escape across a border after committing his offence; or he may transfer his illicit gains abroad. Tracing and detaining such offenders, and their eventual extradition, may prove extremely difficult. If these problems have to be overcome police agencies must work together.
A concerted attempt was made to improve police cooperation through the International Criminal Police Commission in Vienna in 1923. It was essentially a European organization and met annually. A degree of mystery still surrounds the years of World War II. The Germans moved its headquarters offices from Vienna to Berlin, but most records have vanished, leaving the allegation that it became an arm of the Nazi state largely unproven. This did not stop the former French President, Mitterand, saying at the opening of the new Interpol buildings in Lyons in 1989 that “the Nazi invasion (of Austria) led to the institution being used for unacceptable ends, against the wishes of its founders and most of it’s members”. After its uncertain wartime history, a broad-based ICPC moved its headquarters in 1946 from Berlin to Paris. New statutes were adopted and Interpol was chosen as the telegraphic address. In 1956 ICPC became International Criminal Police Organisation – better known as Interpol.
Interpol is not an agency of the United Nations though it does collaborate with the latter in certain areas. Like the UN, the membership of Interpol is voluntary. It has become a truly global organization with the number of member countries jumping from 50 in 1955 and 177 in 1997. As an estimated 80 per cent of the traffic going through Interpol’s communication is between European countries, they make a bigger financial contribution. Irrespective of their size and financial contribution all members enjoy equal rights. The supreme governing body of Interpol is its Central Assembly which meets annually and takes all major policy decisions. An executive committee elected by the assembly meets thrice a year to monitor the implementation of the policy decisions.
The General Secretariat is Interpol’s implementing arm and its permanent presence. The Secretary General heading the secretariat is the chief executive officer of Interpol and its moving spirit. The Secretary General is elected by the General Assembly for five years at a time. The secretariat has four divisions – the executive office, the financial controller and the European liaison bureau report directly to the Secretary General. The 300-strong secretariat staff are police officers or administrative and technical personnel.
NARCOTICS
The areas of principal interest to Interpol are offences against persons and property including murder, kidnapping for ransom, terrorism and hostage-taking, traffic in human beings, aerial hijacking, traffic in stolen motor vehicles, clandestine business in firearms and explosives etc; economic and financial crime including currency and document counterfeiting and forgery, fraud of various types involving banking operations and other commercial activities, money laundering, traffic in radioactive substances and environmental crimes; offences involving cultural property such as art theft and trafficking in endangered species of wild life; and drug trafficking and related offences including illicit cultivation, manufacture, transport and sale of drugs. Of the above, narcotics and money-laundering use up the better part of Interpol’s time and resources. It is in respect of these two that our CBI and the Narcotics Control Bureau have the most to do with Interpol.
International conferences on fraud and money-laundering organized by Interpol have strongly urged the member countries to make laws to confiscate the alleged proceeds of crime, even unexplained wealth, using the principle of “reverse onus”. India’s Law Commission has reportedly taken the cue. Lately Interpol has also been collaborating with India’s forest officials and agencies concerned with preservation of endangered species in preventing poaching and smuggling of tiger skins, elephant tusks, rhino horns, etc.
Interpols’ bread and butter is the circulation of crime-related information in what are known as “international notices”. Of the various kinds of notices the red-cornered notice is of utmost concern and urgency to Interpol. It is issued to secure the arrest and the extradition of accused persons.
COOPERATION
Remember CBI activating the red-corner and look-out notice against Quattrocchi (Bofors case) through Interpol in the wake of the Supreme Court upholding the warrant of arrest against him? And for the arrest of Kim Davy in the Purulia arms dropping case? In response to Interpol’s red alert notices, Chandraswamy’s aide Babloo Srivastava was arrested in Singapore, a JKLF leader in Belgium, and drug lord Iqbal Mirza in London. The twin resolution adopted unanimously at the 66th Interpol General Assembly Meet in Delhi in October 1997 – to give legal status to the red alert notices and to create a universal convention on extraditions – may some day become a reality.
Interpol was never intended as an operational force but was concerned to see general cooperation achieved between national police systems and facilitate that by acting as a clearing house of information. Some critics of Interpol see it as Eurocentric. Others find it bureaucratic and cumbersome, besides being remote and distant from on-the-ground policing.
Despite Interpol having moved more directly into tackling terrorism doubts have remained due to a feeling that its worldwide membership could still lead to information in the Interpol network getting into wrong hands. Interpol rejects the criticism but it came in for some defamatory comment when it was alleged that it had withheld information about a Palestinian “guerrilla chief” who visited France for medical treatment in the early 90s. No one, however, questions its pre-eminence in international police matters. It has remained apolitical by and large.
With its high-profile professional image Interpol can step into the next millennium with confidence. If Shengen and Trevi gradually take over Europolicing, Interpol will be able to pay better attention to the rest of the world.
SUDHIR KUMAR JHA
25th November 1999
The Statesman

PRIVATE FINANCING FOR PUBLIC GOOD - THE WAY OF THE BRITISH RAJ

2009-06-13T08:14:00.000-07:00

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TAKE A LEAF OUT OF THE RAJ BOOK
There is no harm in imbibing the good, even from those we hate. If we look at our erstwhile colonial masters with unbiased eyes, there is a lot we can learn from them and adopt to our advantage. Private financing for public good is one of them.
Much as we may hate the British rulers, we ought to be beholden to them for the monuments, institutions and systems they bequeathed us. Some of the buildings they built to house colleges, hospitals and Government offices are beautiful specimens of architecture and are landmarks in our cities today. Yet the British were no philanthropists. In fact, they were penny-pinchers at core. But they were clever and resourceful enough to know when to tap funds and get things done without dipping into profits. The British Governors, Commissioners and Collectors involved the local Rajas, landlords and businessmen in this task, cajoling or coercing them as was considered expedient. The Indian ‘haves’ readily responded and donated in cash and kind. In most cases, the motive was a mixture of altruism and self-interest. They wanted to leave behind something for which the posterity would remember them, they also wanted to ingratiate themselves with the British officialdom in the hope of certain favours, most of all for honorifics such as titles of Maharaja, Raja Bahadur, Rai Bahadur, Khan Bahadur, Rai Saheb and Khan Saheb, etc.
As early as the mid nineteenth century, the British prevailed upon these potentates to open a chain of Anglo-vernacular schools in their jurisdictions, this facilitating the introduction of western education in India. The Government also made them partners in promoting higher English education. Premier institutions such as the Patna College in Bihar and the Ravenshaw College in Orissa developed through donations and endowments from the native Sates and local zamindars. The reputed Patna Medical College Hospital would have been stillborn but for the local donors pitching in. Clearance was received from the Government of India in 1921 to set up a medical college at Patna. The project involved heavy capital expenditure but how to palm it off to others? The Prince of Wales was visiting India around the same time. The Government was quick to seize the opportunity and promptly created a Prince of Wales Medical College Fund. A donation in excess of Rs. 15 lakh was collected in no time. While the college was named the Prince of Wales, the donors had to remain content with wards and facilities named after them.
While heath and education were on the top of the agenda, the Government sought private contributions in other fields equally readily. That was how many district towns got their magnificent Town Halls. When the earthquake hit Bihar in 1934, the Government heavily depended on private donations in cash and kind to meet the twin tasks of rehabilitation and reconstruction, in some cases of an entire township. Even memorials to the British monarch and viceroys were raised with the money so collected. The Victoria Memorial of Calcutta, the Taj Mahal of eastern India, are the most outstanding specimens of this exercise.
The Akipur Zoo in Calcutta could not have become the attraction it is without continuous flow of private donations. The Prince of Wales Museum in Mumbai (shortly to be named after Chhatrapati Shivaji, if the Government of Maharashtra has its way) owes much to the munificence of people like Ibrahim Ramitulla, Cowasjee Jahangir and the Nawab of Junagadh. The pattern was the same throughout the country. Ironically, these carried the name of a British monarch, Viceroy or Governor. At the best, a plaque in some corner acknowledged the donor.
The Raj had no pretences of being a welfare State. It was a police State and it knew its limitation where public spending was concerned. During over 50 years as a free nation we have stretched the concept of “welfare” State to ludicrous limits. In the process the Government bit more than it could chew. It was suspicious of involving private players in the task of nation-building. Always cash-strapped but still wanting to do everything by itself, it slipped in the core areas of mass literacy and primary health care. The Government failed to nurture even the IITs and IIMs set up during the Nehru era now appealing to their alumni and fishing for sponsors. Centrally funded Delhi University and Jawaharlal University are to follow suit. To add insult to injury while the Indian Council of Historical Research and the Indian Council for Social Sciences Research are languishing for want of funds, the Government has decided to endow a chair of Indian history and culture at the Oxford University at a cost of 1.8 million pound sterling.
Equally said is the story of our heritage sites. Far from erecting new monuments that would make the coming generations proud, we have not been able to look after the ones we have inherited. Rather than throwing its hands up in despair, the Government should draw a lesson or two from the Raj. Fortunately, it does seem to be waking up. The Department of Culture, Government of India, set up the National Culture Fund in 1996 as a funding mechanism “different from the existing sources and patterns of funding for the arts and culture in India”. Donations to the fund, exempt from income tax, are to be used for maintaining the historical sites and developing them as tourist spots. In exchange, the sponsors get advertising space the quantum of which is to be decided by the Department of Culture and the Archaeological Survey of India acting in tandem. The Taj Mahal is not up for grabs but the others are. Only in the year 2K have some offers been forthcoming. Humayun’s tomb in Delhi, a world heritage site, is to be illuminated by the Oberoi group. After Hyatt shied away, the Hotel Association of Northern India has come forward to take over the Red Fort. The Indian Oil Corporation is interested in Qutb Minar. Though the list is long, the restoration of the Sun Temple at Konark and the Ajanta and Ellora caves are the priority. Any sponsors?
But maintenance is not enough. Some long-lasting institutions and monuments ought to be created as also some new facilities developed. One such area crying for help is higher education, technical and professional. Not everyone needs to go to a college. Let institutions of higher professional education be fewer but they be real centres of excellence. Setting them up and then running them efficiently will obviously be an expensive proposition and the State will do well to invite individual promoters of consortia to take up these projects. These should be run as any other business enterprise and not as charitable institutions. Fees will understandably be high and admissions to these will have to be restricted to those who can afford to pay and to the meritorious poor through Government and privately endowed scholarship. Let the institute be named after the promoters if they so wish. In any case, it is not a good practice to name the colleges and universities after political personalities. (We can keep Mahatma Gandhi as an exception). Setting up an Indian School of Business at Hyderabad is a step in the right direction.
We received the legacy of the National Library, National Archives and Natural History Museum in places like Calcutta, Delhi and Mumbai. They have reached a point of saturation and decay. Huge recurring expenditure is involved in preserving and updating the contents and maintaining the structure. Horizons of knowledge have expanded and we need many more archives and museums devoted to subjects such as space technology, oceanography, microbiology etc. For that matter, is a Birla Planetarium in Calcutta or a Tarporewala Aquarium in Mumbai enough for a country of India’s dimensions? Surely we need many more. We talk of environment and global warming but how many botanical parks, comparable to the Shibpur Botanical Garden in Calcutta, have we added during our existence as an independent nation? The Jahangir Art Gallery in Mumbai reportedly remains booked for two to three years in advance, thus denying many potential MF Hussains the opportunity to display their talent. There is need for more art galleries not only in Mumbai but in other cities as well. There must be art lovers among our business barons who will love to set up such galleries and go down in history as patrons of art.
The scope is unlimited. The Government should be the catalyst, offer suggestions and help, and leave the rest to the sponsors (no mailed fist, no pinpricks, please). Once the Government has established its bonafides a generous response can be expected. Our private and public sector behemoths are the present-day Maharajas. The tribe has grown beyond the Tatas and the Birlas. We have Ambanis, Azim Premji, Narayana Murthy and many others and funds can be comfortably taken care of. If the Raj (British) could do it, why can’t we? In fact, we can do better by allowing the promoters and donors to name these after themselves, unlike the British who appropriated the name and sent the benefactors into oblivion.
SUDHIR KUMAR JHA
7th April 2002
HT Sunday Spread

BOOK ON PATNA

2009-06-13T08:05:00.000-07:00

SUPERCOP PENS A BOOK
Sudhir Kumar Jha IPS was already a familiar name for his book “Raj to Swaraj: Changing contours of police”, which he had come out with in 1995. But for this police officer, who has joined a long list of writers from the bureaucracy, it was a privilege to present his second offering ‘A New Dawn: Patna reincarnated’ to no less than the president Dr. APJ Kalam on his visit here on December 30.
Jha is understandably elated as the Prez while appreciating the effort commented “It was appropriate that the book comes at a time, when there are changes on the horizons of Bihar”. What’s more, he registered his appreciation by calling Jha for a photo-op which Jha says “I’ll never forget”.
The book itself is a tribute to the various greats who built Bihar. Even as it dwells on a smaller time-frame i.e. modern Patna, the running theme is Patna’s transition from tradition to modernity, the ripple effect of western education, the birth of a professional middle class, the social dynamics and the urban sprawl et al.
The book brings out for the first time the enormous contribution made by Anglo Indian, Bengali, Punjabi and Sindhi communities to the cultural and social life of Patna. The book essays back and forth drawing on recollections while adding value to research and is certain to evoke nostalgia among those who had any direct link to the events that shaped Bihar.
The book published by Veerendra Printers, New Delhi is worth a good read.
HT Patna Plus
3rd January 2006

Subhas Chandra Bose in Bihar

2008-01-17T05:32:00.000-08:00

(Published in HISTORY, Journal of the University of Burdwan, Vol IV, No. 1, 2001)

Subhas Chandra Bose was born and schooled at Cuttack in Orissa. His family had close ties with Bengal but hardly any with Bihar. Bose became known in Bihar only after he spurned the heaven-born Indian Civil Service in 1921, at the age of 24, to join the freedom movement. He was still in his twenties when he started visiting Bihar both as a labour leader and as a Congress worker, often as a protégé of Deshbandhu Chitranjan Das. Bose threw in his lot with Das when, following the annual Congress session at Gaya towards the end of 1922, the latter resigned from the Congress and formed the Swaraj Party—to fight for freedom from within the legislatures. The year 1928 proved annus mirabilis for Bose. Industrial unrest was sweeping across the country. The strike in the Tata Iron and Steel Company had dragged on for months and was on the verge of fizzling out. When the veteran C.F.Andrews had also failed to break the deadlock, Bose was sent for. Bose came, bargained and secured an honourable settlement with the management.. This endeared him to the workers at Jamshedpur and also set the stage for his election as the President of the All-India Trade Union Congress, then the labour front of the Congress. The following year he helped resolve the strike in the Tin Plate Company at Jamshedpur. A decade later he was to tour Bihar extensively under circumstances that were far from happy for him. But let us not anticipate.

Bose always thought himself to be a loyal soldier of the Congress but within the organization he was considered a bull in a china shop. For his Leftist, read Socialist, views he had found a soul mate in Jawaharlal Nehru and at the Calcutta Congress session in 1928 they had together challenged the Motilal Nehru Committee report recommending Dominion Status for India. Bose admired Mahatma Gandhi for giving a definite direction to the Indian freedom movement from 1920 to 1932 but criticised him for the temporary suspension of civil disobedience in 1933. Bose resented the soft and constitutional approach adopted by the Congress Party thereafter. He was deeply hurt when the Congress accepted office. His peers called him a rebel and a radical but Bose was not the one to keep quiet or mince his words. Gandhi thought that responsibility might mellow Bose. With the former’s blessings Bose succeeded Jawaharlal Nehru as the President of the Indian National Congress, at the age of 41. Bose returned the compliments by paying glowing tributes to Gandhi in his presidential address at the Haripura(Gujarat) session in 1938. While the two shared the common goal of independence, they were not in sync regarding the means. Gandhi was prepared to wait and considered it immoral to press for freedom when Britain was on the brink of a war in Europe. Bose, on the other hand, believed in the doctrine popularised by Bal Gangadhar Tilak in the twenties that Britain’s difficulty was India’s opportunity. Ironically, Gandhi had to give the ‘Quit India’ call in 1942 while Britain was still at war.

Gandhi, hoping that Bose would not be running for a second term, proposed Dr. Pattabhi Sitaramayya for the post. Bose not only contested but also won. Gandhi took his candidate’s defeat rather personally and did not forgive Bose. Bose tried hard to soften Gandhi but failed. For Bose the ensuing Congress session at Tripuri (Madhya Pradesh) in March 1939 was a disaster. He was ill and his brother Sarat Chandra read his speech, in absentia. “ In my opinion we should submit our national demand to the British government and give a certain time limit within which a reply is to be received. If no reply is received within this period or if an unsatisfactory reply is received, we should resort to such sanctions as we possess in order to enforce our national demand…What more opportune moment could we find in our national history for a final advance in the direction of Swaraj, particularly when the international situation is favourable to us? Speaking as a cold-blooded realist, I may say that all the facts of the present-day situation are so much to our advantage that one should entertain the highest degree of optimism”. This was to become the leit motif of his speeches during his tour of Bihar a few months later. This suggestion of an ultimatum was brushed aside by the Working Committee in a resolution, which expressed confidence in Gandhi and by implication conveyed lack of confidence in Bose. An ailing Bose sojourned to his brother’s house at Jamadoba in the Jharia Coalfields to recoup his physical health and mental equanimity. The retreat afforded him further opportunity to observe the condition of the Colliery workers. Only days later a composed Bose announced his resignation from the presidentship of the Congress at the meeting of the All India Congress Committee in Calcutta on 29 April 1939. He had realised that Gandhi was Congress and Congress was Gandhi and that he could do nothing within the Congress without having Gandhi on his side. Though humiliated, Bose’s love and respect for Gandhi remained undiminished. It was Bose who first referred to Gandhi as “ the Father of our Nation “ in one of his broadcasts from Southeast Asia.

Bose was down but not out. With his typical sang-froid, within four days of his resignation he formed another party, which he called Forward Bloc, not as a rival of the Congress but to work ‘within the Congress.’ Bose had the tasks for the Bloc well defined: consolidating the Leftist forces, winning over the majority of the Congress to its viewpoint and prevail upon the congress (read Gandhi) to resume the national struggle. The aim of the Bloc was the establishment of a socialist state within a fully independent India ( Purna Swarajya ). The first all-India conference of the Bloc on 22 June 1939 was followed by the formation of a Left Consolidation Committee. Gandhi was cut to the quick and summary action against Bose followed. He was debarred from holding any office in the Congress organization for three years effective from August. It was virtual expulsion. Far from feeling defensive Bose hit back by launching a weekly journal. A war of words ensued between the Forward Bloc and the Harijan.
Simultaneously Bose launched a mass contact programme to explain the raison d’etre of the Forward Bloc as well as to propagate his views on the national and international situation. And he chose Bihar to start his campaign. He had remained in touch with Bihar as the Congress President and from even before. By now the Kisan Sabha had taken firm root in Bihar. Kisan leaders such as Jai Prakash Narayan and Swami Sahjanand had hailed Bose’s election as the Congress President. Earlier, in February that year Bose had presided over a radical-dominated Political Conference at Chauram Ashram in Gaya district. What follows is neither a chronological nor an exhaustive account of his tours in Bihar; it is only a random sample. Bose was a man in a hurry and his Bihar tours at times resembled an election campaign. His hectic daily schedule started early in the morning and stretched late into the night. Moving from place to place he addressed pre-arranged meetings and also spoke impromptu to the people who thronged by the wayside for his darshan. It must have been tiring but the grand welcome he received made it worthwhile. Welcome arches were erected along the route, which was decorated with flowers, flags and festoons. While Bose’s own political and personal contacts also came handy the logistics of his itinerary were mostly taken care of by Swami Sahjanand and others of the Kisan Sabha. The firebrand Sheelbhadra Yajee was present at most of his meetings but Jai Prakash Narayan and Rambriksha Benipuri also shared the dais off and on. Bose spoke in Hindustani and occasionally, in Bengali –speaking pockets, in Bengali. A master of polemics Bose utilised all the dialectical weapons—attack, repartee, thrust and parry, irony and satire. He was quick to expose the chink in the opponent’s armour and drive his own point home. The government’s approach was one of restraint and caution. Realising that Bose ploughed a lone furrough and that he was quite harmless without the Congress, the government had his movements and speeches covered by the local police and the CID (Special Branch) without in any manner provoking him. Even when the district police and the DIG CID suggested the prosecution of Bose and Sheelbhadra Yajee under the Defence of India Act the government chose to ignore it. Bose’s speeches reported by the CID were routinely put up before Dr. S.K.Sinha as the Prime Minister and later before the Governor or his Advisor who found the speeches stereotyped.
Bose addressed a public meeting, about 10000 strong, at the Tilak Maidan, Muzaffarpur (the largest town in North Bihar) in the evening of August 26, 1939. Some Muslims were also present though their number was small. The meeting, which lasted for about seventy minutes, started with a national song in Bengali language sung in a chorus. Bose was presented with three addresses from the local Kisan Sabha, Majdoor Dal and Navyuvak Dal but these were not read. Charging the British with double standards Bose questioned why their Prime Minister had declared to fight for the freedom of Poland and other countries but denied that freedom to India. If old enemies like Russia and Germany could enter into a Non-Aggression Pact, Bose countered, then the Rightists and Leftists in the Congress could easily come together on a common platform. The situation for India and the Congress was substantially improved in 1939 compared to what it was in 1921 and 1925. There was heightened awareness in favour of freedom; the number of Congressmen had gone up from ten lakhs to fortyfive lakhs;Kisans and Majdoors had organized themselves and joined the freedom movement. In 1921 the people of the Native States had not joined the rest of the country in boycotting the visit of the Prince of Wales but now there was a change of mood there also. Moreover, the Congress was in power in eight states and could sabotage or stalemate the government from within. He was critical of the Congress for having accepted office and thereby supporting the Constitution rather than flouting it. He was prepared to follow any Congress leader, especially Gandhi or Rajendra Prasad, if he led a satyagraha , which might lead to Purna Swaraj. But what was the meaning of Swaraj? It did not mean replacing the white bureaucracy with a brown one. The power to govern should pass from the ‘selected’ few to the ‘elected’ few, to the MLAs and Ministers. The question of bread and freedom were not two different things; political independence and economic freedom were concomitants. In his presidential speech Kishori Prasanna Sinha condemned the Statesman for publishing that not supporting British war effort was tantamount to inviting Germany and Japan to overrun India.
The following day he arrived at Danapur (10 KMs from Patna) by train from where he was taken in a procession to Kachhi Talab, Khagaul where about 3000 persons, including some 25 Muslims, had congregated to hear him. As he mounted the podium there was a low-key black flag demonstration. B. Padamlalji was in the chair. Dr. Saghir Ahsan, Chairman, Reception Committee, read out the welcome address in English. Bose spoke in Hindustani and followed his usual line. Britain’s signing the Munich Pact against her better judgment had exposed her weakness vis-à-vis Germany, Italy and Japan, which were superior in air power. Outlining the genesis of the Forward Bloc he explained how it had come into being when the Congress, rather than following a ‘forward’ programme, had started drifting towards constitutional methods. Gandhi and Rajendra Prasad were all right with the Leftists and Socialists provided they could shake off the slackness, which had crept into the Congress, and gave a clarion call for satyagraha. Swami Sahjanand also spoke in the meeting and said similar things. The Subdivisional Officer of Danapur was present throughout and himself signed the CID reporter’s shorthand book. After the meeting Bose left for the house of Jimut Bahan Sen, a former Congress Minister, where he was to have his lunch.
In late afternoon Bose drove to Patna City where he was given a rousing reception .The area between the hackney stand, Chowk and Mangle’s Tank, the venue of the meeting, was decked up in his welcome. A large gathering at the meeting site, estimated at about 20000, included Sikhs, Muslims and Bengalis. Swami Sahjanand took the chair and Rambriksha Benipuri made the welcome speech. Nine addresses were on offer but only the Bengali Yuvak Sangh was allowed to present its in a silver casket. Bose more or less repeated his earlier speech at Khagaul to the effect that the Leftists, including himself, were all loyal soldiers of the Congress and would join a mass movement if the Congress launched one. From Patna City Bose proceeded to Patna Lawn (now known as Gandhi Maidan) where rowdyism made the meeting impossible. Some students, irked at Bose’s public criticism of Gandhi and Rajendra Prasad, showed black flags and raised slogans of “ Subhas go back ”. Bose left the place in a huff. He was running late but an undeterred crowd of about 5000, including women, waited patiently till he arrived at the venue, the Danapur Cinema compound, at 2030 hours. Some black flags were waved but the SDO Danapur, who was present at the meeting, controlled the situation. After Gandhi’s condemnation of crowd behaviour and Rajendra Prasad’s admonition there were no further disturbances at Bose’s meetings in Bihar.
Driving from Patna in the morning of August 28 Bose was given a grand ovation two miles short of Ara town. He was made to leave his car and mount an elephant. Negotiating several welcome arches the procession reached the compound of the Ara Nagari Pracharini Sabha where Bose spoke to a gathering of about 4000. Swami Sahjanand presided. Four addresses were presented on behalf of the youth, students, Kisan Sabha and Majdoor Sabha. There was no variation in the theme though emphasis changed according to the composition of the audience. The Leftists were only the revolutionary arm of the Congress, Bose asserted. He exhorted the people of Ara to join the Forward Bloc in large numbers to compel the congress to launch a satyagraha without further delay. At the end a resolution was passed to the effect that the people of Ara had full faith in Bose. On his return journey Bose received warm welcome at Bikram (5000) and Bihta (6000) where he dwelt on how the interests of the Kisans were being harmed by the landlords and the government acting in collusion. He attacked the Zamindari system and criticised the British for introducing it. He appealed to the Kisans to organize themselves and also strengthen the Congress by enrolling in large numbers, preferably before the 15th September 1939, the last date for enrolment. Das & Company (still in business at Patna) supplied the loud speakers at Ara and Bikram. Leaving Bihta at 1645 hours Bose and party reached Bakhtiarpur at 2005 hours, behind schedule, as he was stopped and garlanded at several places including Fatuha Bazar. Shyam Nandan Singh MLA was in the chair. After speaking to a gathering of about 2000 Bose proceeded to Barh where about 500 persons heard Bose despite rain and late hours (2145 to 2225 hours). Sheelbhadra Yajee proposed a vote of thanks.
On the 29th August Bose’s entourage arrived at Patna Lawn (now Gandhi Maidan) at 1700 hours. Almost 20000 persons including ladies, mostly Bengali, had been waitngThe dais was tastefully decorated and both the tricolur and red flags were conspicuously displayed. Before the commencement of the proceedings Rambriksha Benipuri and Comrade Anisur Rehman exhorted the audience to shout anti-imperialist slogans and it obliged. Jai Prakash Narayan presided. Benipuri made the welcome speech. Bose spoke for over an hour along familiar lines. Referring to the hooliganism at his aborted meeting two days earlier he called it a shame for Bihar and Patna and lambasted the Indian Nation, one of the two local English dailies, for having played it up. He cautioned against the Divide and Rule policy of the British, which they practised not only between the Hindus and Muslims but also between the Rightists and Leftists within the Congress. Taking a dig at the presence of constables in the meeting he remarked that they had been deputed ostensibly to protect him and Yajee. It was a pity that the Congressmen could not protect their own leaders and depended on policemen to do so. This time no attempt was made to disturb the meeting and the audience, defying heavy shower, patiently heard him.
After the Second World War had broken out there was little change in the content of his speeches but his tone and tenor betrayed greater impatience and stridency. Driving from Jamshedpur to Chaibasa in the afternoon of 4th December 1939 he addressed a 200-strong crowd at Haldipokhar in Bengali. About a thousand people were waiting for him at the Gandhi Park, Chaibasa where memoranda were presented to him in Hindi and in Bengali. Bose first spoke in Hindustani and towards the end in Bengali too. In the evening Bose addressed a predominantly Adivasi gathering (5000). The meeting began with slogans of ‘Adivasi ki Jai’. In the midst of his usual speech he made a general appeal to join the Congress in ‘ lakhs and crores’ to give it the desired direction and thrust. The meeting became important for what Jaipal Singh, the most important Adivasi leader to date, said in his presidential speech. Singh said that the Forward Bloc had oppressed the Adivasis just as the Congress had ignored them. He demanded that the Adivasis could join the Congress only if the Chhotanagpur and the Santhal Parganas was recognised as a separate area for the Adivasis. Incidentally, following a fiery speech by Yajee at a meeting of the District Forward Bloc at Jamshedpur on the 12th December, the government directed the DIG CID that Yajee’s speeches should also be reported in full occasionally.
Bose and Yajee were present at Khunti in Ranchi district on the 17th December. Here the gathering was small but Bose spoke at length. He said he was happy to have come to Ranchi after a lapse of twentyfive years. He felt sad that the Adivasis had to migrate in search of bread as they were deprived at home. Striking a sentimental note he referred to the harsh treatment they received in the Assam tea gardens. All this would end once the British left. It did not matter whether Britain won or lost but the war was bound to sound the death-knell of imperialism. If Britain lost British imperialism would end and if Germany lost Germany’s neo-imperialism (Hitlerism) would end; either way these imperialist powers would be weakened, to India’s advantage. Kisans and Majdoors were only waiting to be led. This was, therefore, the right time to hit at the British government.
On the 24th December Bose addressed meetings at Warisnagar (3000) and Samastipur (1000), both in Darbhanga district. On the 25th December he toured Munger district and addressed gatherings at Lakhisarai (5000), Jamalpur (3000) and Munger Town (3000). People had also collected, to see him and to hear him, at Mokamaghat, Barhaiya, Kajra, Abhaypur and Dharhara where his train stopped. The speeches were repetitive in content and their gist only is being given. The British not only ruled India but also exploited her; thus British imperialism was responsible for both her slavery and poverty. Now was the time, when Britain was engaged in war with Germany, to press for swaraj through a non-violent satyagraha to be to be launched in the near future, implying that if the Congress lagged behind then the Forward Bloc was ready to spearhead it. Britain championed democracy in Poland and elsewhere but denied it to India on the facetious plea that because of the friction between the Hindus and the Muslims India was not fit for independence. The British argued that if they went away the Muslims and Hindus would finish one another. Bose dismissed this logic as puerile. Bose retorted that let the British first leave and then the two communities would sort out their differences as they had done for centuries. Pooh-poohing the bogey of foreign invasion on India created by the British, Bose demanded to know how could the British protect India when their own country was threatened? As for the politics within the Congress he was satisfied after his talks with Gandhi that the Congress was not going to fight the British and that in Gandhi’s opinion the Leftists and the Rightists could not work together. That is why he (Bose) had resigned from the presidentship of the Congress and had formed the Forward Bloc – to force the Congress to take up the fight against the British or else the Bloc would do it if the Congress opted out.
It was January 1940 and Bose was once again back in Patna. It was a winter afternoon and the venue was once again Mangle’s Tank in Patna City. Bose exhorted all those present to celebrate the 26th of January as Independence Day with great gusto even though the Forward Bloc had not withdrawn its opposition to the new Independence Pledge. Benipuri, who presided, outlined the details of the weeklong programme culminating in the flag hoisting on the 26th morning at the same venue. Swami Sahjanand also spoke on the occasion. An hour later Bose was at the Patna Lawn (also known then as Bankipur Maidan and now Gandhi Maidan). Sticking to the stereotyped text he added that the news about the war was very confusing. As all the news came from government-controlled radio bulletins and Reuters, a foreign news agency, the reporting was censored and one-sided. While the British success stories were played up the advances made by Russia and Germany were blacked out. He cautioned not to be taken in by the wartime propaganda and concentrate on making the Independence Day a success. He could not go to Gaya owing to section 144 promulgated there. By the way, the highlight of the 26th January was the speech at Barh in Patna District by Yajee. The government agreed with the Superintendent of Police of Patna that the speech was “ a clear incitement to prevent recruiting or any contribution to the war” but overruled his suggestion to prosecute Yajee under the Defence of India Act.
At Bhagalpur in the evening of 2nd February Bose spoke to a gathering of about 9000, including 60 Bengali ladies. In not-so-veiled attack on Gandhi he ridiculed the wearing of khadi and spinning of charkha, which had become the mascot of India’s freedom movement. Slogans of Inquilqb Zindabad and Subhas Babu ki jai rented the air. While Sheodhari Singh MLA presided, Santlal Singh (later a teacher of Political Science in Patna University) also spoke. Bose was again the main speaker at a largely attended Munger District Students’ Conference held at Begusarai on the 3rd February. Rahul Sankirtyayan was in the chair. At Begusarai Bose enjoyed the hospitality of Satish Chandra Bose (uncle of the eminent eye surgeon of Patna Dr. D.K.Bose), a leading lawyer and active as the Chairman of the Munger District Board though confined to a wheel chair. On the 8th February Bose reached the Jahanabad Thakurbari at 1700 hours, five hours behind schedule. He got up to speak amidst shouts of Subhas Babuki jai and thanked the audience for the grand reception they had given him. He was delighted at the large gathering and apologised for the delay in his arrival. He congratulated the students for having observed a strike on the 26th January and urged them to keep up the pressure. He regretted that Gandhi was spending so much time with the Viceroy and the Congress was veering more and more towards compromise. That was going back on the pledge of complete independence they had taken in at Lahore in 1929 and repeated every year on the 26th January. It would be a shame if the Congress in Bihar again joined the government as was being rumoured. He appealed to the Kisans to attend the Congress session at Ramgarh (Hazaribag district) the following month in lakhs and frustrate any move at compromise with imperialism. Swami Sahajanand elaborated the plans for Ramgarh and told the Kisans how to make their presence felt. A big mashal julus would be taken out there with slogans such as samjhauta murdabad, angreji saltanat murdabad to voice their fight against imperialism, capitalism and zamindari. They must blockade the Congress session by their parallel anti-compromise meeting. At the end Bhairo Singh, who presided, thanked Bose on behalf of the public of Jahanabad.
Bose’s proposed tour of the Jharia coalfields on February 11 and 12 had frightened the colliery owners. The Indian Mining Association, headquartered in Calcutta, apprehending “serious labour disturbances” and “organised sabotage” petitioned the Governor of Bihar to prohibit the entry of Bose into the coalfields. Even the Additional Deputy Commissioner of Dhanbad, swayed by the entreaties of the colliery owners, wanted to prohibit Bose’s entry by a general order. The government wrote back to the IMA declining their request and also dissuaded the Addl. DC from issuing any prohibitory orders. As it turned out the government was proved right. Bose, accompanied by Swami Sahjanand, Sheelbhadra Yajee, Dhanraj Sharma and Shankar Lal, Secretary of the All-India Forward Bloc, reached Dhanbad from Giridih, four hours late, at 2000 hours on February 11. Mostly students and about 200 ladies attended the late evening meeting. The colliery workers attended his three meetings on the 12th. Bose’s political utterances were on known lines. Regarding labour, he endorsed the demand put forward by Satya Bimal Sen, the local labour leader, to demand more than six pice in the rupee, that is 10%, to which most of the owners had already agreed. Bose advised the workers to raise, in one voice and in writing; their demand for a rise in wages and to remain prepared to refer the question to arbitration. A resolution was passed calling upon the owners to concede all the demands within fourteen days. The Headmaster of the Jharia High School presiding over one of the meetings raised eyebrows in the government. The Political (Special) Department drew pointed attention of the Education Department. Bose’s speech at this meeting was sent to the Government of India with the Government of Bihar’s next fortnightly confidential report as a ‘typical’ speech from him.
While the heavy rain literally proved a damp squib for the Congress Session at Ramgarh in Hazaribag district (March 15 to 18, 1939) it did not deter the participants of the All-India Anti-Compromise Conference. Bose was the President and Swami Sahjanand together with Sheelbhadra Yajee was active in the Reception Committee. Hitting at the Rightists Bose observed” …The success of this Conference should mean the death knell of compromise with Imperialism…” In an obvious indictment of Gandhi and an ultimatum to the British Government the Conference resolved to start a country-wide satyagraha on April 6 against India’s forced participation in the war and to make a final bid for independence. Ironically, this also marked the breaking up of the short-lived Left Consolidation Committee. The government’s retaliation was prompt. The other leaders of the Forward Bloc were arrested but Bose was surprisingly left untouched. This also was the end of Bose’s direct ties with Bihar.

Reference:
1. Political (Special) Department, Government of Bihar, file no.491 (1) of 1939
2. Political (Special ) Department, Government of Bihar, file no. 65 of 1940
3. A Beacon Across Asia, edited biography, Orient Longman, New Delhi, 1973.
4. The Indian Struggle, 1920-42, Subhas Chandra Bose, Netaji Research Bureau, Calcutta, 1966
5. Freedom Movement in Bihar vol.2, K.K.Datta, Government of Bihar, Patna,1957.
6. Personal Interviews.

Dr. Sudhir Kumar Jha IPS (Retd.),
‘NIRVANA’,
Buddha Colony,
Patna - 800 001
Email : sudhirjhapatna@gmail.com

(The author is a former Director General of Police, Bihar)

RED ALERT OR CRYING WOLF

2008-01-17T05:23:00.000-08:00

‘Red alert’ is a term much abused by the media. It is not a term to be found in the lexicon of the government or the administration. Even the Blue Book governing the arrangements for the protection of the President and the Prime Minister does not use this expression. Even the Webster dictionary does not mention it. It is only the media which advertises this grim-sounding expression to sensationalize a situation. Following a terrorist attack in J&K, a Naxalite raid in Andhra Pradesh or a kidnapping in Bihar , the print as well as electronic media screams that the administration has declared a ‘red alert’. Red Alert isn't really an alert status as much as a sign that things have already gone wrong. History records many instances of deadly strategic surprises. Alert, red or otherwise, was sounded only after Hitler’s invasion of the Soviet Union in 1940, Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941 and the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington and not before. Had the United States gone to Red Alert a few minutes after the first plane hit the World Trade Center, the attack on the Pentagon, the plane crash in Pennsylvania and, perhaps, the second World Trade Centre attack would probably have been averted.
In the Indian context, as a knee-jerk reaction police departments' plans typically include stationing a lot of personnel in visible locations and upping neighborhood patrols. After having pressed the panic button the media forgets all about it. Red alert conveys that something like an emergency has been declared but it forgets that Protective Measures for a Severe Condition are not intended to be sustained for substantial periods of time. Operating at a permanently high level of alert carries its own potentially damaging costs. But you never read or hear of a ‘red alert’ being withdrawn or rescinded.
An alert is the declaration of a threat perception and the colour red conveys danger at its severest. It is in this sense that we can trace ‘red alert’ to the period of the Cold War. Cold War refers to the rivalry that developed during the second half of the twentieth century between countries espousing different political ideologies. The Soviet Union and its satellite states, often referred to as the Eastern bloc, were on one side. The United States and its allies were on the other, and were usually referred to as the Western bloc. Beginning at the end of World War II in 1945, the Cold War lasted until the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s. During the Cold War, both the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. built immense early warning systems to guard against surprise, full-scale nuclear attacks. Initially, the greater amount of information that these systems collected reduced vulnerability to surprise attacks. But as the systems became more sophisticated, each side faced a new dilemma. Various innocent activities could be interpreted by an overly sensitive system as the initial stages of an all out attack. So to reduce the risk of launching a false preemptive attack, the superpowers built alert systems that decreased the sensitivity of the system to incoming information. They color-coded the threat-assessment scheme. Above "Elevated Risk (coloured Orange)," where the country would likely remain at for the duration of the war, there was only one level: "Severe Risk" a.k.a. Red Alert.
A virtual genre of topical fiction sprang up in the 1950s spinning grim tales of just how close to nuclear destruction the world could be. Peter George’s 1958 novel Red Alert painted the worst of all possible worst-case scenarios in the Cold War – an American General loses his reason and orders full-scale nuclear attack on the USSR. It was originally published in the UK as “Two Hours to Doom” – with George using the nom de plume “Peter Bryant”. Eugene Burdick and Harvey Wheeler’s later bestseller Fail Safe so closely resembled Red Alert in its premise that George sued on the charge of plagiarism and won an out-of-court settlement.
‘Red Alert’ has come alive once again for the US government following the September 11 attack. In its war on terrorism it has revived the colour coding of threat perception. A Red Alert would meanthere is a severe risk of terrorist attack or that an attack is imminent or may already be under way. A red alert would also tear away virtually all personal freedoms to move about and associate.All non-critical functions will cease; non-critical would be almost all businesses, except health-related. As the war on terrorism is likely to go on for along time, it will be interesting to observe how the US resolves the confrontation between security and freedom.
Nearer home, let the media not colour-code its own perception of a situation. It should confine its duty to convey to the public any do’s and don’ts that the administration may prescribe in a given situation. It must realise that there is a difference between alerting and alarming the public. If it cries wolf, read red alert, too often it will lose credibility and may not be taken seriously when the situation may warrant. In the mean time, if it must go on red-alerting let it do so to warn against mounting threat from Tsunami, global warming and endangered biodiversity.

(Sudhir Kumar Jha)

The author is a former Director General of Police, Bihar. He can be contacted at sudhirjhapatna@gmail.com

COMMUNITY POLICING: A DISTANT DREAM

2008-01-17T05:15:00.000-08:00

(Published in The Statesman dated 26 April, 2001 )
Community policing has emerged as a buzzword in police lexicon. Is there any substance to it or is it merely a fancy policing philosophy debated in elitist fora and practised in tokenism? With the concept of community living having undergone a transformation in modern times where is the ‘community’ to which ‘community policing’ can be applied? Experiments have nevertheless been going on, though it is not easy to assess their success as community policing means differently to different people. The ambiguity in its definition has tended to confuse any exercise in police-public cooperation or police providing community-oriented services for community policing. There is a broad consensus that greater citizen control over the delivery and management of policing services within the community is the essence of community policing. Ideally the area to be so policed should be compact, with a homogenous and not too mobile a population. It is another name for neighbourhood policing wherein there is visible and accessible police presence. The policeman either lives within the community or is available on a shift basis. It is meant to supplement, and not supplant, traditional policing. It is proactive in character and can be a useful tool of preventive policing; detective policing involves investigation, requiring professional expertise. Police has to reach out to the public, in all humility and sincerity, in the spirit of “help us to help you” in keeping the neighbourhoods free from crime and civic strife. People’s trust has to be won and their involvement secured by giving them a say in the policing of the locality. Now, that is easier said than done. No police agency has been found willing to give any degree of control over the delivery and management of policing services to the people. Lip service notwithstanding, in the tussle between state-oriented policing and community policing the former stifles the latter. Growing social disharmony has kept public order under strain. Crimes have been getting violent and the locals do not want to be seen hobnobbing with the police for fear of reprisal. Resources, human and technological, have to be pooled to provide latest tools for scientific aids to investigation and surveillance, and that kind of synergy means centralised command and control. All this seriously limits public participation in police functioning. No police force really relishes members of the public telling them how they should go about their business, whether in setting goals and priorities or deciding on strategy and tactics. Public-police cooperation is therefore not able to go beyond consultation and closer interaction with the residents.
The nearest we came to community policing in modern times was when Robert Peel introduced the “beat constable” in Great Britain; the London Bobby remained synonymous with community policing for over a century. With passage of time there has been erosion of public trust in police even in that country and the beat constable is no more the friend, philosopher and guide that he used to be. Developed countries such as USA, Canada, Australia, Sweden and Denmark have been experimenting with community policing as neighbourhood crime prevention programmes, in different garbs. In the United States the Community Policing Consortium, administered and funded by the US Department of Justice, is a partnership of five of the leading police organisations firmly committed to the advancement of this police philosophy. Canada has extended community policing to the aborigines under the RCMP First Nations Community Service. A Community Tripartite Agreement between the aboriginal community, the Provincial Government and the Federal Government outlines the specific details of the community policing service. The Communities are involved from the start in the design, implementation and ongoing delivery of their police services. This makes it possible to maintain sensitivity and compatibility with that community’s culture and beliefs and gives the necessary flexibility to accommodate local variations in policing needs. India can draw appropriate lessons from this Canadian model in so far as the policing of our tribal communities are concerned. But it is the Koban system, indigenous to the Japanese police, which has achieved a worldwide reputation and has been copied by Singapore, Philippines and Malaysia. It has stood the test of time and has been accepted by the people of the land. The system operates through ‘police boxes’ and ‘residential police boxes’ at approximately 15000 locations all over Japan. Police boxes are deployed in urban areas and residential police boxes are located chiefly in such rural communities as agricultural, forestry and fishery towns and villages. These ‘boxes’ are the neighbourhood police and the most familiar police contact for the members of the community. These officers are always visible on the street and offer assistance in various personal and community matters. The informal house calls they make help in developing an understanding with their charge. The Koban newsletters, issued by these boxes, play an important part in promoting a friendly contact between the police and the community. The other salient features of the Koban system are the Koban (Chuzaisho) Liaison Councils. Approx 11000 in number, these are made up of local residents from various walks of life. The opinions expressed and the suggestions made in the council meetings help the police in setting priorities and planning their calendar. The third leg of the Koban tripod are about 475,000 households designated as Crime Prevention Liaison Stations, to serve as the basis of civil crime prevention activities in the community.
What has been the Indian experience? India was practicing community policing when the western world was still passing through the Dark Age. The ancient indigenous police system was based on the principle of local responsibility for local crimes. Village was responsible for its own policing and was a self-contained unit of criminal administration. Village autonomy was finely balanced with village responsibility. The system survived despite political and cultural changes under the Muslims, but the degree of its effectiveness varied according to circumstances. The system of policing introduced by the British, institutionalised by the Police Act of 1861, sounded the death knell of decentralized policing based on community acceptance. Though the police manuals paid lip service to taking the residents into confidence and treating them with courtesy, the police soon lost credibility with the public. The conduct of the police was far from people-oriented and its actions exposed it for what it was, an instrument to protect and promote British imperial interests. The system of having town outposts under urban police stations was an attempt at providing a neighbourhood police but the spirit of community policing was missing. The institution of rural police--nomenclature differed from province to province-- was maintained more as the eyes and ears of the government than as friends of the people. Independence was expected to change things but alas! the police-public divide only widened. Neither the laws changed nor the colonial mindset. Even the much-touted National Police Commission shied away from making any concrete suggestions on the subject of community policing other than pointing out the need for securing people’s involvement and cooperation. Efforts made have been half-hearted, uncoordinated and sporadic. In Bihar, as early as the fifties of the last century, the district superintendents of police used to undertake cross-country marches in course of which lot of bonhomie was shown when passing through or camping in a village. The experiments of “Friends of Police” in Tamilnadu, “Mohalla committees” in Maharastra, “Suraksha Samiti” in Orissa, Crime Prevention Committees” in Kerala, “Nagarik Suraksha Samitis” in Delhi and “Raksha Samitis” in Madhya Pradesh failed to make an impact and take root. Indore Police has been doing some community-oriented service work to woo the public but that can hardly be called community policing. Initiatives taken by individual officers to launch community service programmes die with their transfer. Police does realize the value of public support. We are all familiar with police taking the initiative in convening peace committees and appointing special police officers during a communal disturbance or organising Muhalla night watches when there is an outbreak of crime. The arrangement ends as soon as the crisis blows over. That is fire fighting and not fire prevention.
It is not very difficult to see why experiments based on American and Japanese models do not succeed under Indian conditions. The reasons lie in the archaic Police Act, our colonial mindset, prevailing socio-political environment, to mention only the more obvious hindrances. Political parties have been unanimous in their apathy to the recommendations of the National Police Commission. Our political masters are not prepared to let go of their control on police and so any degree of decentralization, which is at the core of community policing, remains a far cry. Nor is the departmental hierarchy willing to vest the degree of autonomy that the police officer on the beat will need. Community policing is also too expensive a proposition for a large and poor country like India to afford. We shall need a ten times bigger police force to try out any thing like a Koban police box. Against the current 1:1000 we will have to jump to a 1:100 police-public ratio, which appears impossible. Viewed as corrupt, highhanded and incompetent, police image has taken such a beating that no Indian household wants a policeman near its doorstep and this crisis of confidence is only deepening by the day. Community policing has been found to fare better among close-knit, homogenous groups. The Indian society is not only pluralistic but also suffers from a high degree of social dissonance on grounds of caste, creed, language, exploding population and crushing poverty. In such a daunting scenario ad hoc, piecemeal measures are doomed to failure. Public opinion should be brought to bear on the Parliament to replace the obsolete Police Act by a suitable enactment to make the police people-oriented and incorporate elements of community policing in the Act itself. A beginning could be made with integrating community policing with the Panchaiti Raj movement but clearly the masters have mental reservations. In the meantime let the police do some soul searching and do what it can -- recast its recruitment, training and appraisal norms – to make itself acceptable to the people. It must also change its character from a “force” to a “service". Till then community policing for us will have to remain a distant dream, a desirable goal, something like our Directive Principles.

(Dr. Sudhir Kumar Jha)
“ NIRVANA ”,
Buddha colony,
Patna 800 001
E-mail sudhirjhapatna@gmail.com

(The author is a former Director General of Police, Bihar.)

Writers' Block

2007-11-21T00:03:00.000-08:00

( published as lead article in the Statesman, 13 November, 2005)

Sudhir Kumar Jha time-travels to walk the musty corridors of the majestic red structure that has been home to the Bengal secretariat for a century and a half, and the nursery of generations of clerks who are a class by themselves.

THE daily commuters who pass it by every day may not cast a second glance at Writers’ Building in Kolkata, but the building is an acknowledged heritage site. Imperial and Gothic in appearance, it has been home to all shades of political opinion, from the imperialists to communists. Its corridors have been witness to history being made and unmade. It has been the seat of the Bengal Government for almost a century and a half. What may not be so well-known is why Writers’ Building is so called. Nor that the present edifice is not the original but only its latest incarnation. The earliest version, erected around 1690, was a mud hovel within the old fort, meant to accommodate the “writers” of the East India Company. It was destroyed in a storm in 1695 and rebuilt. The site shifted to where the GPO is now, where a single-floor brick building came up in 1706.The East India Company’s building programme in Calcutta during the 18th century was meant to be utilitarian rather than demonstrative of imperial grandeur. It remained so even after the grant of Diwani and the victories at Plassey and Buxar had riveted the shackles of the East India Company’s rule in Bengal. With a spurt in the Company’s activities, there was an increased influx of hands from England. Apart from a larger working space, a place had to be found to house these people. As the newcomers were unencumbered by families, even dormitory-type accommodation was deemed adequate. By now the Company could have the pick of the location. Without disturbing the existing arrangement, fresh construction was taken up at the building’s current location adjacent to the lake. The new structure was in place by 1780. Records show that the new edifice had 19 sets of apartments, all identical, contained in a very long, rather solid three-stories block, classical in style, with 57 sets of identical windows, a flat roof and a central projection with Ionic columns. From all accounts it was uninspiring and resembled a military barrack or a seminary, but it was among the few early attempts at large-scale, classically-motivated architecture in India.This original design was super-imposed in the 19th century in two phases. The first, around the middle of the century, simply embellished the existing structure with low pediments. The second enterprise, undertaken at the height of British imperial power under Queen Victoria, was more ambitious. It now had terracotta dressings, dummy portico and pediment, and a Corinthian facade. The building as we see it today covers 2.8 acres of land and is 705 feet wide; the campus is spread over 10 acres. It is a cluster of 13 four-storeyed buildings and has been home to the Bengal Secretariat since the time of Lieutenant Governor Ashley Eden.Who were these “writers” that this behemoth, literally as well as figuratively majestic, was named after? With a view to compete with the Dutch spice traders in the Indies, a band of entrepreneurs formed a joint-stock company and obtained a charter from Queen Elizabeth I in 1600 in the name and style of East India Company. In 1675 the Company established a regular gradation of posts. The lowest rank, that of the apprentice, was discontinued soon. Directly above them were the writers. LSS O’Malley believes (The Indian Civil Service, John Murray, London, 1931) that the appellation originated in 1645 and lasted until 1858 when the British Crown took over the direct administration of the country, by which time the mercantile duties of the office had long since disappeared. Above the writers were the factors (in charge of a trading post and not to be confused with the officer-in-charge in a factory), the junior merchants and the senior merchants — titles borrowed initially from the Dutch East India Company and officially employed till 1842. As a rule the East India Company maintained strictly separate cadres for the civilians and the military but there were exceptions when an infantry cadet received writership and vice versa. George Elliot came out to India in 1779 as an infantry cadet and received a writership two years later. He rose to become the deputy military pay master-general.A writer took about five years to become a factor. As the writers went up the ladder they occupied all the higher civilian offices and discharged assorted functions, mostly related to revenue, the judiciary and mercantile matters. They took on designations such as supervisor, collector, district judge, salt agent and mercantile agent. William Dampiers was the superintendent of police, a post corresponding to the present director general of police of the Bengal Presidency on the eve of the Mutiny and John Elliot, after whom Elliot Road in Calcutta was named, was the president of the Boards of Police and Conservancy in the early years of the 19th century. Some became commissioners, headed the Boards of Revenue and even became governors and governor-general. In all probability Job Charnock, the putative founder of Calcutta, came to India as a writer as did Robert Clive and Warren Hastings.It was mandatory for these writers, at least during their probationary period, to reside in the Writers’ Building. The stipulation of compulsory residence for writers was annulled in 1835. After being used as mercantile offices for some years, Writers’ Buildings became the home of the Bengal Secretariat. It became one of the community’s most conspicuous landmarks.A writer was what the term conveys — a junior clerk, a scribe. There were so many of them. One can visualize them slogging out their days on a high stool scratching interminable entries into a ledger in poor light, holding a quill in one hand and swatting mosquitoes with the other. These writers were sent to factories (trading posts); they kept accounts and were responsible for correspondence with London. Every letter to the head office was made out in triplicate to ensure that at least one surely reached its destination. Two copies were sent by two different sailing ships and the third went across land. Theirs was thus an existence of unbroken drudgery and tedium. A welcome break came in 1830 when David Wilson, a British national, opened a confectionery-cum-bakery less than 100 metres away. The writers could now take short breaks and hop across for a bun or pastry. The outlet, begun to serve primarily the writers, later morphed into the famous Great Eastern Hotel, the first modern, European-style hotel in the country. Alas, the heritage hotel is reportedly up for sale. Thankfully the Writers’ Building faces no such threat.Contrary to popular belief, writers were poorly paid. Perhaps it was in line with the Company’s philosophy: a penny saved is a penny earned. Sir john Shore, successor to Lord Cornwallis as governor-general, had started his Indian career in 1769 as a writer with a salary of Rs 96, then equivalent to £ 12 a year. He was barely able to afford half the rent of an ill-ventilated modest dwelling. Paying low wages was a sure inducement to indulge in “private practice” and corruption. The Company connived with its employees when it came to creative personal trading, as long as its profits were not affected. Corruption was condoned as a well-deserved recompense for spending half one’s lifetime in hazardous exile.The Company’s policy was to “catch them young”. Writers were inducted at the age of 16. Writers’ petitions or job applications had to include baptismal certificates, testimonials and details of education. Considering the writers’ impressionable age and virtual lack of education, in 1800 governor-general Lord Wellesley wanted to establish a college at Fort William for the purpose of completing the education of the company’s servants but was overruled by the court of directors. His dream came true with the opening of the East India College at Haileybury in England in 1806. Wellesley set up on his own in 1800 not a full-fledged college but a modest seminary for instruction in Oriental languages which survived until 1854 by which time it had long outlived its utility.An act of 1826 gave the directors discretionary power to appoint young men between 18 and 22 as writers. A writership was a passport to great riches and it was not always acquired without dubious dealing and corruption. This arrangement lasted from 1827 to 1832. Those appointed under the “nomination” scheme included well-known names such as Sir Robert Montgomery, lieutenant governor of the Punjab from 1859 to 1865 and William Tayler, commissioner of Patna during the Sepoy Mutiny. An Act of 1853 introduced the system of open competition for appointment to the civil service in India — the principle was not applied to the home civil service until 1870 — and the first exam was held in 1855. Henceforthe writers began learning the Indian languages, customs et al on the job as the arrangement at Fort William had by then been done away with. The East India College, however, sent out the last batch only in 1858 with the result that for two years the list of writers was made up of Haileybury men and Competition Wallahs, to borrow the title from George Trevelyan’s famous book. The hereditary connection with India was to become a remarkable characteristic of the Hailebury system. Sons stepped into their fathers’ shoes as a matter of course and brought their cousins and their nephews along with them. The Bengal lists included several Plowdens, Colvins, Tuckers and Metcalfes. The Bombay and Madras allotments showed a similar trend. As Kipling put it in his story The Tomb of His Ancestors, generation after generation came out to serve India as dolphins followed in line across the open sea. The first Indian to enter the civil service by competition was Satyendranath Tagore (1864), followed in 1871 by RC Dutt, BL Gupta and Surendranath Banerjea. Their induction put Bengal in the forefront of western learning. The writers have long been gone but Writers’ Building stands tall to salute their memory. The Indian Civil Service (ICS), the so-called “steel frame”, had every reason to be beholden to the writers. Our bureaucrats even today find it difficult to forsake the Writers’ legacy.

The Name Game

2007-11-20T23:48:00.000-08:00

(Cover Story in the Statesman, 8 July,2007)

How the English christened places in India might evoke memories of the Raj, but the circumstances have, nevertheless, become historical legacy that cannot be wished away, says Sudhir Kumar JhaREMEMBER the faux pas in a recent edition of the Oxford English Dictionary? It said Bangalore — not even Bengaluru — got its name as the locals were Bengalis and spoke Bangla. This was the height of untruth and ignorance, a gaffe not expected from Oxford, but it does explain the myth and confusion prevailing in respect of place names. Places get their names by design or sheer accident. These can be plain, catchy or hilarious, obvious or intriguing, but never without some link to the past. Delving into the genesis of the English names of places in India has been an interesting but challenging exercise. For the sake of euphony, the terms “English” and “British” have been used indiscriminately. These place names evoke memories of the British Raj and, notwithstanding the ongoing attempts at renaming them, the circumstances of their naming have become historical legacy which cannot be wished away.It is sad that no definitive compilation of these names is available. At the beginning of the last century, two Calcutta-based scholars, KN Dhur of the Imperial Library followed by Lt-Col DG Crawford of the Indian Medical Service, made an attempt to list places named after the British. They consulted the survey maps of districts and also went through Newman’s Indian Bradshaw, Smith’s Students’ Geography of India published in 1882 and Keith Johnston’s Atlas of India published in 1894. Periodicals such as Bengal Past & Present and Saturday Journal also yielded some names. To the information so gathered, the two added their own knowledge based on folklore and hearsay. Their total came to a sizeable number, well over 150, but was far from being exhaustive. These came from the whole of British India which covered not only what are now Pakistan and Bangladesh but also Burma and the Malay Peninsula for most of the 19th century. Were they to include the localities or muhallas of towns, roads and streets, public and private institutions, monuments, gardens and parks, et al, so named, their list would have run into thousands. Bangalore Cantonment would have provided over 100 and Kolkata at least 20.The Andaman and Nicobar Islands provide over 40 such names. These islands were formally annexed in 1858 and converted into a convict settlement to confine the great number of life-prisoners left after the Sepoy Mutiny. The British gave the numerous names of their Mutiny heroes and members of the Andamans Commission to places in these islands. Several places in the Sunderbans falling in West Bengal and Bangladesh were named after officers of the Indian Navy, Royal Indian Marine, or Bengal Pilot Service. Amitava Ghosh mentions a few in his captivating book, The Hungry Tide. The one class of Britishers to have left the strongest imprint on the naming of places were the civil servants from the Provincial Civil Service and, later, from the Indian Civil Service, as District Collectors, and some as Lieutenant-Governors. In the days of the East India Company, military officers carried the flag into uncharted territories and laid the foundations of civil administration. New civil stations established by them carried their names, for example Daltonganj and Hunterganj in Jharkhand and Cox’s Bazar in Bangladesh. There are railway stations that were named after the British, be it a railway engineer, priest or civil servant, because there was no village of any importance in the neighbourhood after which these could be named — for example Palmerganj between Gaya and Dehri-on-Sone and Twiningganj between Ara and Buxar. Places were also named after ranks in the British army. We have Captainganj and Colonelganj in Uttar Pradesh and Majorganj in Bihar. Brigade Maidan and Barrackpore in Kolkata and Brigade Road in Bangalore, too, have a British army connection. While many names famous in Indian history are commemorated in place names, many more of the first importance are not thus distinguished. There does not appear to be any place named after Robert Clive or Warren Hastings, the real founders of the British Empire in India.It is notable that most English names were given to places in the first 100 years of British rule in India, very few in the second half of the 19th century and hardly any in the 20th. Significantly, though the missionaries carried their work deep into the hills and jungles and made healthcare and education available to tribal settlements, not many places are named after them; they apparently did not try to impose their own or any other foreign names. Nor did the British try to change the names of villages already in existence.It is not that places were named only after Europeans, though exceptions are few and far between. For example, Achipur near Kolkata, on the banks of the Hooghly river, is named after Yong Atchew, the first Chinese settler in India in modern times. He came to Kolkata around 1780 and enjoyed the patronage of the East India Company as a cultivator of sugarcane.Exceptions apart, these exotic place names are in two parts. The prefix is English while the suffix is vernacular, invariably Persian-Urdu. By far the commonest, in northern India, is ganj, which means a market. Also common are abad and pur, meaning town. Whereas the Hindi garh has been used at least once, as in Georgegarh, nagar does not appear to have been used at all. In southern India, the suffix used is pet, again denoting a town or market; it has also been used in Marathi as Malcolmpet in Mumbai.Places were not always consciously baptised with English names. They just evolved as a corruption of vernacular names. Take the case of Bangalore. The British, after defeating Tipoo Sultan and restoring the Raja of Mysore in 1799, obtained the right to station their own troops in the state. They built their cantonment on ceded village land just east of the ancient town and fortress of Bengaluru, which was soon anglicised to Bangalore. English Bazar in West Bengal’s Malda district was originally the Rangreza Bazar, the dyers’ quarter. The first letter was dropped along the way and it became Angreza Bazar, and hence English Bazar. Kidderpur in Kolkata is not named after Colonel Kyd but derives from an older local name, Khettarpur. Some names got Anglicised, in pronunciation and in spelling, because the British could not pronounce these the local way. Kanpur became Cawnpore and Munger became Monghyr and Danapur Cantonment in Bihar became Dinapore. Likewise, Waris-ali-ganj in Bihar’s Gaya district began to be called Worsleyganj. Grierson market in Madhubani, Bihar, was named after the eponymous linguist, Sir George Abraham Grierson, ICS, who set up the market while he was posted as the SDO of that area. It has been known as Gilesan Market for generations. Bhendi Bazar in Mumbai is a phonetic caricature of “behind the bazaar”.Given below, by way of illustration, is the etymology of some place names from Bihar and Jharkhand:Goldinganj: This is a small village on the Chapra-Sonepur road about 12 km east of Chapra, an old district town in north Bihar. The only claim to fame of this otherwise nondescript place is a ring of mystery surrounding its name. It has a railway station catering to the North Eastern Railway and a post office with the postal index No. 841211. The station is spelt “Goldinganj” while the postmark reads “Gultenganj”. Old records reveal there was in fact one Edward Golding after whom the place was in all probability named. He was appointed the Company’s Commercial Agent at Bettiah in 1766 after the local Raja had capitulated to the East India Company’s forces. In 1769, Golding was promoted as the Supervisor (precursor of Collector) of Saran Parganas. His bailiwick covered what are today Chapra, Siwan, Gopalganj, Motihari and Bettiah districts. Lesliganj: This is an outgrown village, more of a kasba, in Palamu district of what is now Jharkhand. Located about 15 km east of Daltonganj, the district headquarters, on the road to Manatu, it has the usual appurtenances of an administrative outpost — a dak bungalow, a police station and a block development office. It has nothing much to offer except its exotic name. It was founded by, and is named after, Matthew Leslie, Collector of the Ramgarh Hill Tract in the 1780s. As with other East India Company officials of the 18th century, Leslie’s biographical details are extremely difficult to get. His revenue jurisdiction included the whole of what later became Palamu and Hazaribag districts and part of Gaya up to Sherghati. The Cheros had been the rulers of Palamu but their internal feuds afforded the British the opportunity to intervene and eventually assume control. As Leslie had to continually camp in Chero territory, he chose a hamlet that soon became known as Lesliganj, dropping an “e” from his name. It appears that Leslie’s good work as Collector of Ramgarh was taken note of and he was transferred as the Collector and Magistrate of Rungpore district in East Bengal (now Bangladesh), a more prestigious charge. Daltonganj: Situated on the Koil river, this is the headquarters of Palamu district, now in Jharkhand. It has the usual components of a civil station but nothing else and has been a poor and neglected cousin of the other towns in Chhotanagpur. Though connected by rail and road to the rest of the country, its back-of-beyond location is responsible for its relative isolation. The town is named after Colonel Edward Tuite Dalton who, as the Commissioner of Chhotanagpur, founded a settlement here in 1861 on government land where the headquarters of Palamu subdivision was shifted from Lesliganj the following year. When Palamu was made into a separate district 20 years later, Daltonganj was the obvious choice as the headquarters of the new district. Dalton was the commissioner of Chhotanagpur during the Sepoy Mutiny and for many years thereafter. He initiated several administrative measures. In 1862, he ordered an outright substitution of Hindi written in the Devnagri or Kaithi script for Urdu in the Persian character as the medium of instruction and for court work throughout his commissionerate. In September 1870, Dalton laid the foundation of a permanent church at Ranchi in the presence of a large and assorted gathering. He is best remembered for his magnum opus, The Descriptive Ethnology of Bengal, published in 1872.Forbesganj: This is today a subdivisional town of Purnea division in northeastern Bihar. It borders Nepal and is not very far from the Bangladesh border. The checkposts of various government departments notwithstanding, its busy market caters to buyers from both India and Nepal. The main business today is in grains and timber, jute having lost ground to plastic. How did Forbesganj acquire its exotic sounding name? It is named after Alexander J Forbes, an indigo planter and zamindar in Purnea district. His biographical details are not available except that he came out to India in the early part of the 19th century and spent the greater part of his life in Purnea, where he amassed a large fortune, mostly from indigo. One of Forbes’ indigo factories was at Forbesabad, which name was presumably changed to Forbesganj as the place developed into a township with a flourishing market. While on a trip to Calcutta, he died in 1890 at the age of 84, and lies buried at Purnea.Sandys’ Compound: In the heart of Bhagalpur civil station, there is a large tract of land that is locally referred to as Sandys’ Compound. At one time this whole area formed the compound of the residence of Teignmouth Sandys, who was the Judge of Bhagalpur around the middle of the 19th century. He belonged to the Indian Civil Service, though the nomenclature had not been fashioned till then. He was recruited as a Writer, like many others before and after him. William Tayler of Patna fame was his contemporary. Educated and promising youngsters from England were appointed as Writers, something like probationary Assistant Collectors and Magistrates, and rose to become Supervisors/Collectors if entrusted with revenue functions or as Judges if utilised for judicial work. Sandys belonged to the first batch of Writers nominated in 1826 for the qualifying examination in 1827.Revelganj: This is an inconspicuous town in Saran district in north Bihar. Situated 12 km west of the district headquarters town of Chapra, it is served by road and rail. Unlike some other places with European names, it is well known that Revelganj was named after Henry Revel. The East India Company posted Revel as the Collector of Customs at Chapra. It may be recalled that at that time, in the absence of satisfactory road and rail transportation, the East India Company carried on the bulk of trade and commerce by the river route. Revel realised the value of having a proper Custom House to earn revenue for the company so he set up one at Godna in 1788. A market grew around it and in no time the place developed as an important river mart. Revel appears to have been resourceful as well as kind-hearted and became a legend in his lifetime for his humanitarian and charitable acts. His memory was held in such repute that his grave was considered a shrine and his name invoked on occasions of calamity and adversity. It stands in front of the Eden bazaar alongside the Chapra-Guthni road. Tarapada Mukherjee, a local zamindar and lawyer, gave the place a facelift and was also instrumental in establishing a municipality in 1876 by combining the twin revenue villages of Godna and Semaria and, as it’s first vice-chairman, had the new township named Revelganj after Henry Revel. Bakarganj: Not to be confused with Bakerganj in Bangladesh, this lies in the heart of Patna and is named after Robert Barker, an officer in the East India Company’s army. The grant of Diwani to the East India Company in 1765 made the British the virtual rulers of what later became the three provinces of Bengal, Bihar and Orissa. A reorganisation of the East India Company’s army followed. Barker had long served the Company’s Artillery and distinguished himself during the siege of Madras. In the reorganisation, he was to have been made Colonel of the Artillery but had to contend with the place originally slotted for Major Knox of Patna fame. Of the three refashioned brigades, the first was located at Monghyr, the second at Allahabad and the third at Bankipore (Patna) under Barker. The 21st battalion raised by Barker at Bankipur became known as Barker-ki-Paltan just as the 20th battalion raised at Lucknow was called Hussaini-ki-Paltan for having been raised on the day of Muharram. Ironically, Barker-ki-Paltan, after several changes of nomenclature, mutinied at Azamgarh in 1857. Barker rose to become a general and Army Chief and was also knighted. He spent three years at Bankipur (Patna) roughly from 1765 to 1768, that is, until the cantonment was shifted to Danapur. The area around his residence developed as a military bazaar or mandi on the eastern side of Gandhi Maidan and was named Bakarganj after him. It is today an extremely congested commercial-cum-residential locality.Hunterganj: Contrary to popular thinking, Hunterganj in Chatra district, now in Jharkhand, is not named after the famous educationist and indologist WW Hunter. It derives its name from William Hunter who was the Collector of Ramgarh (spelt Ramghur) Hill Tract in 1794. The Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Judicature at Fort William had appointed him and other Collectors of the Bengal Presidency Justices of Peace. Hunter’s jurisdiction extended right up to Sherghati in today’s Gaya district. A patch of jungle was cleared to set up his camp during his visits to Sherghati and human habitation slowly grew around it. Soon it was being referred to as Hunterganj and developed as an administrative centre.McCluskieganj: McCluskieganj is a sad saga of aspirations gone awry. The Anglo-Indians were, generally speaking, a town-bred community without knowledge of agriculture or experience of village life. They were doled out petty appointments in the Railways and Telegraphs departments while their women worked as teachers in convent schools and as stenos in multinational companies. It was becoming difficult to find employment, whether in government departments or in commercial concerns, for the increasing number of Anglo-Indian youth. Having observed their conditions first-hand, the Indian Statutory Commission made a suggestion, with the concurrence of the government of India, that an attempt be made to bring the Eurasians, chiefly the Anglo-Indians, to the land and open up a wider range of self-employment for them. The Anglo-Indians seized upon the idea and was thus born in 1933 The Colonization Society of India Limited, registered as a limited company. On behalf of the company, ET McCluskie, a Calcutta-based Anglo-Indian real estate agent and member of the Bengal Legislative Council, discovered a beautiful spot in the Chhotanagpur forests, 60 km from the district headquarters town of Ranchi. The Society bought 10,000 acres of forest land from the local Maharaja in 1932. Plots were allotted as per the layout plan prepared by McCluskie. In a creditable display of grit and determination to conquer the natural difficulties, they made the clearings, dug wells and planted orchards. It was not long before a large number of sprawling bungalows and cottages situated in the midst of several acres of land came up in these sylvan surroundings. The new colony became home to nearly 300 Anglo-Indian and domiciled European families. McCluskie died soon after and, as a fitting tribute to this pioneer, the new settlers named the place McCluskieganj, the putative Tel-Aviv of their homeland. Come Independence and, feeling deprived and insecure, there was a mad rush to migrate to Australia, the USA, Canada and the UK. The Society went into liquidation around 1955. Today there is nothing much to see here but a place gone to seed. One can take long walks through the forest, do some bird watching and listen to their chirping. Not more than 35 Anglo-Indian families now live here and fewer are descendents of the original allottees.There is no dearth of English place names. One only has to be inquisitive. There has been a trend in favour of demolishing English names originally given to a place. We cannot turn the clock back by renaming such places. Naming Calcutta Kolkata has not made the traffic less congested. People still prefer VT to Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus and refer to Connaught Place as CP and not by its new official appellation. Whether we like it or not, these mysterious place names have become a part of our heritage. Dhur and Crawford could not trace the etymology of each and every name they catalogued, leaving enough scope for future probe. Before the trail gets colder, all such names should be collected, collated and a funded research undertaken to record for posterity the circumstances of their naming.
(The author can be contacted at sudhirjhapatna@gmail.com)

NAPOLEONIC INFLUENCE ON INDIAN POLICE

2007-11-20T23:37:00.000-08:00

(Published in the Indian Police Journal, Oct-Dec, 2002)

We are stuck with the police the British gave us in 1861, which was not what they had back home. Theirs was an unarmed civilian ‘service’; ours was an armed ‘force’. Theirs was the people’s police; ours was the ruler’s police. The Colonial policeman was not meant to have the friendly face of the London Bobby. The paramilitary character and ‘force’ orientation of our police bore the imprint of the Royal Irish Constabulary and its parent, the Napoleonic Gendarmerie, though the British never acknowledged the French lineage.
Napoleon Bonaparte may have been England’s bete noire but for France he was her ‘saviour’. His avowed aim was to save the French from themselves after the excesses of the Revolution. At the same time that he was creating havoc on the borders of his empire through his endless wars with rival powers of Europe, Napoleon was giving those parts of Europe under his own control the highest standards of law and order yet seen on the Continent. Napoleon’s chief tool to this end was his policing policy which allowed him to restore order effectively in an even-handed, professional manner. He rejuvenated the Gendarmerie that he had inherited from the revolutionary governments and refashioned its role. He made it into an armed police force, a paramilitary force in today’s parlance, for maintaining peace and preventing crime in the French countryside. Napoleon was thus the first to create a force exclusively for police functions, leaving the military free to defend the borders and fight wars. Police was to deal with internal security and the army was to take care of external threat, a role distinction that was to become a standard practice all over the world. Soon the Gendarmerie became a solid fixture in the life of rural, provincial France and those other parts of Europe where Napoleon extended his rule. Long after Napoleon was dead and gone, the Gendarmerie became a model for police forces throughout Europe in the nineteenth century. Wherever a state had unruly rural hinterlands to deal with, and where a government was strong and solvent enough to create it, a Gendarmerie appeared. Arguably it had the widest influence of all Napoleonic institutions. Without saying ‘thank you’, the British freely applied the principles underlying the Napoleonic Gendarmerie to the police system they introduced in India in 1861. In 1869 the Royal Canadian Mounted Police did the same when they adopted the Irish model for a centralized, paramilitary force that would keep order until settlement was complete, so that Canada could avoid the experience of the United States where the Western frontier was the scene of bloody warfare between indigenous settlers and white people.
Napoleonic Gendarmerie was an elite force subject to a strict code of conduct. Gendarmes were specially chosen serving or former soldiers. They were elegantly uniformed and better armed which, combined with their height, was meant to produce an impression of reliability, professionalism and glamour. Napoleon wanted the Gendarmerie to be close to the rural communities it served but also stand apart from them. He tried his best to balance this and was largely successful. With its own hierarchy, following a pyramidal pattern, the Gendarmerie was scattered throughout the French countryside in small ‘brigades’ – units of six to ten men, so that no area was left uncovered, not very different from police stations in India. The Gendarmerie, like the police in India, was thus not only the arm of the state closest to the people but also was the most visible symbol of government’s authority. Gendarmes, including their families, were to be housed in barracks, to keep them separate from those they policed and to prevent them becoming a financial burden on the communities they served. Secondly, gendarmes were not to be local men but to come from parts of France other than those they policed. Finally, the Gendarmerie was not accountable to the civilian authorities though the latter could call upon its services.
Britain, the arch-enemy of Napoleonic France, paid the Gendarmerie a left-handed compliment when, in 1820s, Robert Peel chose the Gendarmerie as his model for the Irish Constabulary for policing rural, rebellious Ireland but developed the police of mainland Britain along very different lines. The challenge before the Irish Constabulary (Queen Victoria granted the force its ‘Royal’ prefix for having successfully dealt with the Fenian rebellion in 1867) was similar to what the Gendarmerie had been faced with – to control a hostile rural, Catholic peasantry. Like the Gendarmerie, the Constables were carefully attired, accoutered and armed. Both the forces were subject to a strict code of discipline. The Constabulary too was a centralized paramilitary force with its own chain of command and the only civilian control was at the level of the Secretary for Ireland. The men were not to be billeted on the communities they policed but were to live separately in their barracks. Each County was supervised by a County Inspector, with the counties subdivided into a number of districts, each headed by a District Inspector. At the headquarters the Inspector was assisted by a Head Constable on whom rested the main responsibility for operational policing and conduct of the men in the barracks. There were a number of barracks in each district, usually with a Sergeant and four constables.
In India, the East India Company had been tinkering with police reforms right from the time of Cornwallis but, in the absence of an existing model or a ready blueprint to copy from, only ad hoc measures could be taken. The motley crowd that passed as policemen was under the District Collector who was too busy with his other responsibilities to be able to control the Thana Daroga who behaved like a despot. The public suffered in silence. It was in this background that Charles Napier came to India fresh from the reforms instituted by Robert Peel in England and Ireland. He had seen the police at home regenerated from a state of notorious inefficiency into a fine body of men under proper supervision. No sooner had Napier conquered Sind (now in Pakistan) in 1843 than he set himself to the task of introducing an efficient police on the model of the Irish Constabulary, itself a replica of the Napoleonic Gendarmerie. Police was to be a separate force under its own officers and employed solely on police work. It had to have nothing to do with military or revenue functions. Though the policemen were to be available for assistance to the chief civil officer of the district, yet in each district they were to be supervised by an officer whose sole duty it was to control and direct them. The paramilitary character of the force was reflected in its deportment, weaponry and drilling. The Gendarmerie had made its proxy debut on the Colonial subcontinent.
Enthused by Napier’s successful experiment in Sind, the Court of Directors of the East India Company wanted the Government of India to have one general plan of police organization for the whole country, preferably on the pattern of the Irish Constabulary, read Gendarmerie, but modified according to local conditions. Police was to be taken out of the control of the Magistrate of the district and made into a separate department under a European officer seconded from the military. The reform would have gone through but the Sepoy Mutiny a year later led to reconsideration of certain principles that had been accepted earlier. With the Mutiny still haunting them, the Police Commission toned down the Irish model. They felt that, politically, while the civil constable was more useful he was less dangerous than a military policeman, who was in effect a ‘native’ soldier. They recommended complete separation of a military armed force with military duties under military command and a civil constabulary with civil duties, evoking memories of Napoleonic France. They wanted to combine features of the English and Irish Constabulary Acts so far as they were capable of adaptation to India. Under the Act of 1861 the new police was to be an armed civil constabulary not independent of civilian control. While the Gendarmerie was under the direct authority of the central government, in view of India’s size the new police was placed under the executive governments in the provinces. The general management of the force in each province was entrusted to an Inspector General who was to be a European civilian. While not letting go of magisterial supervision, police in each district was placed under the control a District Superintendent, also a European, seconded from the military. Borrowing the rank structure and even the nomenclature from the Irish constabulary the subordinate force was to comprise of Inspectors, Head Constables, Sergeants and Constables, the Head Constable being in charge of a police station, and the Inspector of a group of stations. Police stations corresponded to ‘brigades’ in France and ‘districts’ in Ireland. India had a long history of village policing which France and Ireland did not have. The new Thana police was therefore to be linked to the village police so as to make the latter a useful supplement to the former. So far the army alone had been housed in barracks; keeping policemen in barracks was Napoleon’s idea he applied to the Gendarmerie. Ireland had followed suit and now India too. The Colonial constabulary was to be paid, like the gendarmes, directly from the government treasury so that they did not become a burden on the local population.
Napoleon had also inherited from the revolutionary governments a less well-known ‘administrative police’, a civilian force which served partly, but not entirely, as the secret police of his sinister Ministers of Police, Joseph Fouché and Jean Marie Savary. In its seedier role, this force coordinated informers and spies, received and evaluated denunciations of one person by another, and enforced state censorship. Britain would have none of this on their mainland, in Ireland or in India. Under the new dispensation there was to be no detective body, no spies and informers, who had been the curse under the later Mugals and continued under the East India Company. Of course, political situation at home and in India was in due course to force the British government to bring in the spies and the censorship.
Napoleon was proud of his elite Gendarmerie; no one was enamoured of the new constabulary. Appearance and efficiency weresacrificed in the name of economy. Despite attempts at ‘civilianization’ the new police could not shake off the imprint of the Gendarmerie and the Irish Constabulary and took on a distinctly paramilitary appearance. As the officers entrusted with putting the new police in place were all Europeans seconded from the military, at least in the initial stages, some degree of militarization was inescapable. The uniform and the badges of rank adopted by the police bore close resemblance to that of the army. Police followed the army drill manual and there was too much emphasis on the physical aspects of training. The ‘service’ orientation expected in a civilian constabulary was never encouraged. Gradually the Colonial police developed the psyche of a ‘force’. The arrangement suited the British rulers and has continued to find favour with successive Colonial governments since independence. Police in India remains an ‘armed police force’ of the state, ‘paramilitary’ in body and mind. The ghost of Gendarmerie continues to haunt.

POLICE REFORM IN THE SUBCONTINENT

2007-09-24T23:50:00.000-07:00

( This article was published in The Statesman in two parts on April 16 and 17, '07 as lead article under the caption Continental Police)

Police reform appears to be the flavour of the season across continents. A realisation was emerging, backed by popular demand, that police reforms were too important to neglect and too urgent to delay. Police was perceived as inefficient, highhanded and corrupt, a mere tool in the hands of the powers that be. A thorough overhauling was needed if the police agency was to be made into a professionally competent body accountable to law. In India the Supreme Court hands down a decision to implement the long awaited police reforms by the year end. Around the same time the President of Pakistan lists reforming the police as one of his major achievements. In Bangladesh UNDP persists in its campaign for giving the police a new friendly face.

Other Colonial Experiences
In Malaysia public concern is voiced regarding the process of implementation of the 2005 Royal Commission into policing. An opinion article appears in Kenya criticising the pace and effectiveness of police reform. In Trinidad and Tobago the Leader of Opposition pleads ignorance about the progress of government drafted and opposition supported police reform bill. In Northern Ireland the Police Oversight commissioner releases a report examining the state of police reforms in Northern Ireland. In Australia an opinion article discusses police corruption in light of the Police Integrity Commission. In UK British Conservative leader David Cameron releases details of police reform plan as Superintendents of County Police grapple with reform and modernisation at their annual meeting. In Guyana a tainted former New York City Police Commissioner is appointed to lead reform of Guyana police. There is call for greater police accountability. In Nigeria a 20-point recommendation is made in a white paper produced by the Presidential Committee on police reforms.

In Indonesia in 1999, that is, post-Suharto, police is separated form the military and is placed under the control of the President of the Republic. As part of the reform process the ethics and code of conduct are rewritten to capture the new civilian mission. There are several shortcomings but the agenda of reform is open and continuing. In Philippine too police is a part of the Department of National Defence until an Act of 1990 makes the Philippine National Police a civilian entity under the Department of Interior and Local Government, to be administered and controlled by the National Police Commission.

Sri Lanka
The setting up of the National Police Commission in Sri Lanka is a concession to the demands by the opposition. It is still at a nascent stage. It is supposed to be a totally independent body dealing exclusively with the members of the Police Department (about 75000 strong). Any person who interferes with the NPC is liable to a seven year imprisonment and fine. That notwithstanding, there are murmurings that politicians do try to interfere when police officers are transferred pending enquiries.

As far as the Indian subcontinent is concerned, dismantling the Indian Police Act of 1861 has proved a hard nut to crack. The motive behind the British masters giving India (as it was then) a police force patterned on the Irish Constabulary and not on Peel’s police is not difficult to guess. It did not bother them if the police machinery was inefficient and corrupt as long as it served their imperial interests. But that should not surprise us. After all, a colonial power has to safeguard its interests first. What is however disturbing that a similar mind set has continued half a century after the British made their exit leaving the subcontinent bifurcated. The same set of politicians in India and Pakistan who had been bitter critics of the colonial police chose to continue them in the same mould and use them as tools of the state power. Status quo continued even after Bangladesh, the third sibling, was born in 1971. Let us examine how police reforms have fared in the three countries of the Indian subcontinent.

Pakistan
In Pakistan demand for police reforms started being raised soon after its birth. It related to having a police commissionerate in the port-city of Karachi, like the one in Bombay. It was sabotaged time and again by vested interests among the bureaucrats and politicians. It was only years later that Karachi and the new capital of Islamabad got police commissioners. If we skip the sporadic tinkering with the police apparatus the first serious and composite attempt at reform was made with the setting up of the Police Committee in 1985. It recommended wholesale overhauling of the existing system. Several foreign missions to Pakistan also echoed the same sentiment. A British delegation visiting Pakistan in 1990 urged that the entire philosophy of policing be recast in the manner suggested by the Police Committee of 1985. Ironically, it was quite a volte-face for the onetime masters to pitch for a democratic police system which they had denied to the subcontinent in 1861. A team of experts form Japan expectedly emphasised the building of trust between citizens and the police. At core lay community policing for which Japan is famous.

As part of the early initiatives of the military government, which assumed power in October 1999, was the devolution of power down to a grassroots level. The assumption was that increasing accountability to the grassroots level would improve service delivery, including that of law and order as well as the dispensation of justice. The Police Order 2002 was a genuine attempt to address inter alia the problem of strengthening the internal organisation of police so that it could grow into a cohesive and effective force. The law provided necessary administrative powers to the police officers and put in place an effective command structure. It also ensured security of tenure to the officers in key field assignments. Along with these improved administrative powers, the role of police was redefined, making it more service-oriented. Stringent checks were built into the system to protect the people's rights. The police relationship with the political leadership was crafted and fine-tuned along with external checks to prevent political interference.

Unfortunately, this law was never implemented. The provincial governments created all kinds of impediments to frustrate the creation of an institution that would check their unfettered powers. They unleashed negative propaganda and created an impression that the new law gave vast powers to police that should be curtailed. The provinces were agitated at the idea of an independent police force that would refuse to let itself be used to intimidate and victimise political opponents, and would only function within the bounds of law; they wanted a pliant and docile police command that would carry out orders unquestioningly - whether to remove hoardings in the name of Islam, arrest and harassment of opposition politicians, to disrupt opposition parties public gatherings or to interfere in elections. Through an ordinance massive amendments had to be incorporated in the Police Order 2002 that, in addition to institutionalising political interference in policing, also struck at the command structure.

In 2004 the Asian Legal Resource Centre presented before the 60th Session of the United Nations Commission on Human Rights in Geneva a rather damaging critique of the situation in Pakistan. It says that the new Police Order of 2002 has failed to provide a framework for public accountability, de-politicisation of the institutions of justice and the provision of a people friendly policing system in the country. On the contrary, by giving accountability to district councils and political figures, the government has assured that the institutional controls of justice remain under the same privileged group as always. The Zila Nazim, a politician, records the annual Performance Evaluation Report of the District Police Officer, counterpart of our district SP, relating to all police functions including management of force, investigation and prosecution of cases for which the DPO is not responsible to him under the law. The first countersigning officer is not the DPO's immediate supervisory officer at the divisional level but the Provincial Police Officer (corresponding to our state DGP). The second countersigning officer is the Chief Minister who ensures total subservience of the DPO by personally recording his PER. With a Zila Nazim and the CM from the same political party, the PPO will also lose his relevance as commander of the force. The DPO, who now can only be posted with the Chief Minister’s approval, will willingly carry out even their illegal orders confident in the knowledge that a politicised Police Complaint Authority will protect him. There is a National Police Commission composed of 12 members, six of which are members of Parliament, with both parties equally represented. The bipartisan approach is meant to send a message that policing is not a politically driven issue.

Bangladesh
The Bangladesh experience has not been much happier. Other than renaming the Police Act as Police Rules nothing has changed for the police in form or substance. Since the birth of Bangladesh in 1971 half a dozen or more committees and commissions have submitted specific recommendations. However, scarce resources, vested interests and lack of political will prevented the reform agenda from being implemented. Police has felt overshadowed by the military. For many years army officers headed the police. Even today the chief of the Bangladesh police is designated as Inspector General and equates with Major General and that is a disadvantage in a country where the army predominates. It was after overcoming a stiff resistance from the army that the government allowed him to fly the flag on his car; no other police officer is permitted that. Lately the bete noire is the Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) which has been charged with fake encounters and repeated human rights violations. Police is grossly understaffed with a police- public ratio of 1:1300 for the whole of Bangladesh while at the sub-district level it is as low as 1:8000. Most policemen are required to work for 13-14 hours a day and even on weekends and holidays. Most of the police budget is consumed by the armed wings but then things are not very different in India. Like in India the percentage of women in the force is small, barely 12%.

In January 2005 a far-reaching police reform project titled 'Strengthening Bangladesh Police' was launched to improve the law and order situation. The Ministry of Home Affairs launched the project yesterday in collaboration with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the UK Department for International Development. The programme aims at improving the efficiency and effectiveness of the Bangladesh Police by supporting key areas of access to justice; including crime prevention, investigations, police operations and prosecutions; human resource management and training; and, future directions, strategic capacity and oversight. The three-year project, involving $13 million, aims at improving performance and professionalism at all levels of the police force. It will focus on crime prevention through better engagement with the community, investigation, operation and prosecution, human resource management, training and strategy and oversight, including clear performance target. Acting British High Commissioner Robert Gibson expressed the hope that the project would help the police serve the public better and said, "A police force free from corruption and political interference will help renew public confidence". The project was designed on the basis of an assessment of police needs carried out by the ministry in cooperation with the UNDP in 2003.

India
India’s track record in carrying out police reform is no better. The Police Act of 1861 has remained unaltered till today. The Police Commission of 1902 was intended more to review the working of the Act after a 40-year run. Apart from some hierarchical changes, like adding the rank of Deputy Superintendent of Police to accommodate the Indians, the structure of the Act remained untouched. Nothing happened for the next seventy-five years. The National Police Commission (1977-79), set up by a non-Congress government, for the first time made sweeping recommendations to make the police a professionally competent, people-friendly force free from political interference. The successor political dispensation found the report too strong to stomach and just sat over it till it died a natural death. Subsequent experience showed that, irrespective of the political hue, no government was prepared to let go of its stranglehold over the police. As a result the Police Act of 1861 still continues in its original form.

Lately the Supreme Court had been voicing its displeasure over the government’s reluctance in replacing/revising the outmoded Police Act of 1861. Sensing the mood of the Supreme Court the central government had set up the Soli Sorabjee committee to draft a model police bill to replace the existing Act. The committee has since submitted its report. It incorporates almost all the directives of the Supreme Court and some more. The Sorabjee Committee submitted a comprehensive draft report for a new Police Act, which aims to define the new responsibilities of the police force, especially the growth and spread of militancy and Maoist violence, and suggest measures for a new working methodology and the use of scientific investigation in view of the future trends of organised crime, including cyber crime, and technological advantages in the hands of the criminals. Concerns for human rights, weaker sections, women and people belonging to Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes have also been addressed. The draft bill also lists measures to improve the working conditions for policemen.

Some provisions of the draft may raise eye brows and prove difficult to implement. The draft stipulates that the rank of constabulary in the civil police be done away with. The argument that the civil police, as against the armed wing of the police, needs better-educated personnel to exercise discretionary powers in dealing with people and investigating cases may be very sound but it is going to cast a heavy financial burden on the states. The experiment may suit metros and large urban conglomerations and be a right step in the direction of community policing but for the far-flung rural areas we also need large numbers of police constables. Similarly, separation of investigation from law and order functions will involve substantial augmentation of police personnel at huge costs, besides the fact that the two cannot be divided into watertight compartments. The duality of command at the PS or even district level will be counterproductive. Then again there will be hardly any relief from political interference if the State Security commission has the CM as its Chairman and the DGP as its Secretary. Likewise if the Central Security Commission has to take orders from the Home Ministry, the political bosses’ will shall prevail. With the Panchayati Raj system taking roots in most states the Panchayat bodies at various levels will have to be inducted into the board which will debate and decide on police planning for the district. While it may reflect popular aspirations more forcefully, one hopes it will not degenerate into we vrs they and hamstring the functioning of the local police. Surely, all these and many other issues will get sorted out during the debates on the floor of the house.

The government might still have dragged its feet had the Supreme Court not dropped the bombshell by passing a historical judgment on September 22, 2006 on a PIL filed by retired IPS officer Prakash Singh to reform the existing criminal justice system with a view to establish better rule of law in the country. The apex court invoked the recommendations of the National Police Commission and the Sorabjee panel and ordered some revolutionary changes in the system with a view to making the Indian Police more accountable and free from any kind of political interference. The 7-point directive includes, inter alia, the separation of investigation from law and order duties at the police station level and a fixed tenure for all officers from the DGP to the SHO. Not leaving the central and the state governments any scope for prevarication the court ordered them to implement the changes within December, 06 and to send compliance report by January, 07.

Some hiccups were anticipated in carrying out the reforms as indicated by the Supreme Court. These surfaced when the Union Home Secretary, representing the Central Government, met the Chief Secretaries and DGPs, representing the views of their state governments, in Delhi on November 14. The reservations, states were not ‘objecting’ at this stage for fear of the wrath of the apex court, relate to the role of the centre in the appointment of the DGPs, security of tenure of police officers and the setting up of accountability commissions. The centre is wary that states are sensitive about any attempt at encroachment by the centre on matters relating to law and order which is a state subject under the constitution. Some legal dilly-dallying was therefore not unexpected. The dead line of 31 December set by the apex court is long past. With the central government and the states drafting and passing their own versions of the Police Act some minor variations may creep in; the parameters laid down by the Supreme Court will not permit major aberrations. The central government will also have to mollify the states if the police bill is to include a category of serious offences – to be termed ‘federal offences’ – that can be investigated by the centre rather than the ill-equipped state police forces.

Whatever forms the new central and state enactments may take one thing is for sure. These will make political interference a shade more difficult and, aided by the Right to Information Act, will usher in accountability and transparency in the working of the police department. Let us hope these will make the police everything they are not: efficient, professional, independent, accountable and representative of social diversity.

(Sudhir Kumar Jha)
(The author is a former Director General of Police, Bihar. He can be contacted at sudhirjhapatna@gmail.com)

Do Not Sell Your Soul

2007-09-24T23:48:00.001-07:00

One can understand, though not condone, freelance biographers and journalists indulging in mud slinging and character assassination to make a quick buck but not officers holding very senior positions in intelligence and investigation agencies. It amounts to ‘selling’ the secrets as the compelling motive is lure of the lucre compounded with self-glorification and instant publicity. Unfortunately more and more of them can be seen succumbing to this temptation.
Those connected with CBI, Intelligence Bureau and RAW have been the worst culprits. Some books that come to mind readily are Inside CBI by its former Director Joginder Singh; Open Secrets: India’s Intelligence Unveiled by Maloy Krishna Dhar, a former Joint Director of IB; India’s External Intelligence: Secrets of Research and Analysis Wing by Maj Gen V.K. Singh; and the latest scoop Kaoboys of R&AW – Down the memory lane by B. Raman, a former Additional Secretary of RAW The authors may claim that they are merely bringing out into the open the anomalies in their respective organisations’s lack of accountability, transparency and effective leadership. What comes out is their lack of objectivity, their own hurt and bruised ego.
Joginder Singh writes that pressure was exerted on him to register a case against Ms Jayalalitha and to block Laloo Prasad Yadav's arrest in the notorious fodder scam case. Among his other ‘disclosures’ Maj Gen V.K.Singh has zeroed in on the well publicised release of Kargil tapes by the NDA govt to the then Pak Premier Nawaz Sharif and has questioned the ethics, wisdom and legality of this action. He attacks RAW with no holds barred.

Maloy Dhar blatantly vents his ire against the then Director IB who is presently the National Security Advisor and the reference is not veiled. Dhar calling his former boss spineless and self-serving is in poor taste and smacks of nursing a personal grudge. He refers to some instances of phone tapping. He writes about much else which is either in bad taste or violation of the Official Secrets Act.

The latest to join the race is B. Raman, a former Additional Secretary of RAW, and he surpasses the others. Look at some snippets from his book. That RAW should have been in touch with America's CIA, UK’s MI6 and other foreign agencies is only in the fitness of things and is hardly a startling revelation. If Raw had a mole in the office of Gen Yahiya Khan Pakistan returned the compliment by fomenting trouble (insurgency) in Punjab in collusion with CIA. Raman does drop a bombshell when he blames the domestic arm, the Intelligence Bureau, for ignoring a crucial input from German intelligence which might have prevented Rajiv Gandhi’s assassination.

Such books dish out salacious gossip and earn good money, besides making the authors the darling of the media for a time. These are based on the author’s personal knowledge or ‘classified’ documents access to which is not permitted even under the RTI Act. Most of what has been said thus remains beyond verification but the unsuspecting public laps it all up. The contents have gone unchallenged by the persons directly or indirectly accused in the book and by that amorphous body called government. There can be state secrets and divulging them may jeopardise national security. It is for that reason that the Right to Information Act, 05 has exempted the intelligence services from its purview. At times these also relate to the conduct of prominent public figures and it is questionable whether washing their dirty linen in public is going to help the society. That our intelligence agencies – be it CBI, IB or RAW – are used as a political tool is an open secret but an insider’s account of factionalism within these organisations or the ongoing turf war between our internal and external intelligence agencies is likely to undermine people’s faith in them.

Books such as these raise issues of ethics, conduct rules and law. The sleuth is expected to be anonymous, with lips sealed but eyes and ears open. All of us who have served in such positions are repositories of state secrets. We swore not to let them out, much less sell them. We held that kind of information in trust and to make it public is downright unethical and a breach of trust. It is not understood why the government shies away from invoking the Official Secrets Act and prosecute such offenders. If they have also violated the Conduct Rules, their pension may be forfeited. If necessary, the OS Act and the conduct rules should be amended to make them more comprehensive and stringent. There is a rule prohibiting government servants from accepting private employment within two years of their retirement. Why can’t there be a rule that an employee cannot publish accounts of his service days till, say, ten years of hanging up his boots? Maulana Abul Kalam Azad stipulated that some pages from his book India Wins Freedom could be published not before thirty years after his death. Too much secrecy can be counterproductive and some degree of public accountability can be achieved by having a parliamentary committee oversee the performance of our intelligence agencies, like in US and UK.

(Sudhir Kumar Jha)

(The author is a former Director General of Police, Bihar. He can be contacted at sudhirjhapatna@gmail.com)

The Dilemma of Proactive Policing

2007-09-15T22:54:00.000-07:00

DILEMMA OF PROACTIVE POLICING

( This article was published in The statesman dated August 17, 2007)

http://thestatesman.org/page.arcview.php?date=2007-08-17&usrsess=1547203731869&clid=3&id=193702

The Bollywood image of the crook invariably getting the better of the police appears to have stuck. This reactive response of the police, and that too in slow motion, angers the public who want to know why the crime could not be anticipated and prevented. In other words, why can’t the police be proactive? Truth is that every police force does want and try to be proactive, often without realising it. In fact preventive policing is synonymous with proactive policing. Foot or mobile patrolling within a given beat, dance-like gestures by traffic policemen on busy crossroads, deployment of uniformed and plainclothes men during VVIP visits, use of closed-circuit cameras in a sports stadium are some everyday examples of proactive policing.
Traditionally and the world over, in the ongoing battle of wits between the law-breakers and law-keepers the initiative invariably rests with the former. They act and the police react. The priority which must be given to the management of change from reactive to proactive policing has been constantly engaging the minds of the police top brass. Experiments continue to be made but no solution has yet emerged. There can be as many facets to proactive policing as an innovative mind can conceive. There are as many stumbling blocks to frustrate the experiments.

Security versus Freedom

Terrorism throws up a bigger challenge than conventional crime against person and property. If life sans freedom is unthinkable, a life led in terror is not a life worth living. A trade-off between freedom and security took place with the dawn of civilized society and has continued ever since. Thus far and no further, but who is going to lay down the line and where? To strike a balance between security and freedom is the toughest test for the security forces today. The laws of civilized society rightly keep them on a tight leash.

Whereas it is ‘no-holds- barred’ for the terrorists the security forces have to act strictly within the confines of law. The Mumbai bomb blasts of 1993 and 2006 did not cripple India’s economy but brought her face to face with the reach and capability of cross-border terrorism. But for the loss of human lives, the synchronised suicidal attacks on the United States on September 11 were comical in their absurdity. Stunned but never witless, the authorities in Mumbai and New York almost instantly sprang into action. The apparent ease with which a passenger could reach the airport barely fifteen minutes before the take-off time and board the flight without any serious checking or frisking raised eyebrows. And yet to say that it was laxity or oversight on the part of the US authorities will not be fair. They allowed this facility in the firm belief that individual freedom should be interfered with as little as possible in a free society like theirs. The law does not permit proactive policing beyond a point, a constraint that is absent under a totalitarian or fundamentalist regime. For instance, even in a crisis grave as this one the FBI agents were seeking search warrants in Florida amid evidence that suspected sympathisers of the accused terrorists were operating in the area. Would the police agencies in erstwhile eastern communist countries or Taliban-ruled Afghanistan have had to act with such restraint? But can we take away a very large measure of people’s freedom even in pursuit of the larger goal of fighting terrorism? Therein lies the dilemma of proactive policing.

Preemptive action can be taken if one had a clue to what the likes of Bin Laden were thinking and plotting, but how to read their inscrutable minds? There comes the role of intelligence that is the backbone of proactive policing. By having a mole inside the militant outfit one can get as close to their thinking process as is humanly possible. Experience, however, has shown that it is extremely difficult to penetrate a multi-tiered outfit in which the top man is a shadowy presence, members are sworn to secrecy on pain of death, and duties are allotted on a need-to-know basis. One version of proactive policing is to wrest the initiative from the militants and take the battle into their camp, KPS Gill style. True, this approach did yield results and Gill today is hailed as a hero and an expert on terrorism but he and his team have not come out unscathed. From the lowest to the highest court of the land have charged them with transgressing the law and several of them, President’s Gallantry Medal winners, are being tried for torture and murder under appropriate sections of the Indian Penal Code. The National Human Rights Commission also gave them a drubbing for the alleged human rights violations. Interestingly, the human rights activists were nowhere to be seen when militancy was at its peak but started crying foul when the tide turned.

Police in all societies have exercised surveillance over known criminals and political suspects by way of proactive policing. But surveillance can be a double-edged weapon and must be carefully and sparingly resorted to. Even in British India this police power was subject to checks and balances. While new electronic gadgets have given the state a much broader sweep and deeper penetration (satellite tracking?), public sensitivity to any real or perceived attack on privacy or individual freedom is now so high that an allegation of telephone tapping becomes the subject of a parliamentary debate and government falls when two constables allegedly watch a top politician’s house.

Then there is the economic aspect of terrorism that stumps the police agencies, FBI and CBI included. There are reports that Laden & Co made a killing in stocks by short selling in some Europe-based company stocks with foreknowledge of the strike against America. No police agency has the expertise to understand such financial tricks, much less monitor and neutralize them. It is no secret that, in India, large funds reach the fundamentalist outfits through the hawala route. We presume that our intelligence people have kept the government informed but there has been a persistent lack of action to monitor the inflow and plug it. Political considerations seem to frustrate proactive policing.

Community Policing

Community policing in which local residents have a say in the policing of their area is yet another example of proactive policing and perhaps the most desirable. But it is a costly proposition and the success varies on the size and composition of the community. A compact, homogenous urban community is the ideal laboratory to try this experiment. Therefore, whether it will suit India, which is predominantly rural and where the level of literacy is low, is a point for consideration. Community policing will involve an exponential growth in the number of policemen. Even an affluent country like the USA could not sustain the high cost for long. There the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994 made important investments in programs designed to prevent crime, including putting 100,000 community policing officers on the street and reducing violence against women and children. The Community Oriented Policing program proved `a miraculous success’ and drove down crime rates. Within a few years one city after another was forced to cut down on the number of community police officers because of drastic slashing of the local budget under this head. As a result, local police chiefs had to reluctantly pull officers from the proactive policing activities that were so successful in the nineties. This was not a choice taken lightly. Police chiefs understood the value of proactive policing but they simply did not have the manpower to do it all. They were being asked to do more with less, and responding to emergency calls had to take precedence over proactive programs. There was increased gang activity. Murder rates and auto thefts--two very accurate indicators of crime trends -- started rising sharply.

Road Policing

Proactive road policing can be an important and visible element in the police’s commitment to protect the public and to support law-abiding citizens’ confidence in law. Criminals use road to carry out a great deal of their activity, ranging from burglary and theft to drug dealing and terrorism. Proactive road policing, apart from ensuring safety on roads, can deny criminals the use of the road and is an effective measure for containing and deterring crime. The deployment of available and emerging technologies, in partnership with the other agencies involved, can thus be a valuable tool in proactive road policing. The installation of speed cameras at selected places and laser tracking of registration details had a salutary effect in the United Kingdom with instances of over speeding and resultant accidents coming down significantly. This will be an expensive exercise and whether a country like India, where even electronic signalling is limited to a few large towns, can afford them is another matter.

Moral Policing

Leave aside the rest of the world, In India itself there have been instances of proactive policing which have boomeranged on the police leaving them with a bruised image. That is when they have taken upon themselves the role of the moral police and self-styled arbiters of social values. And this is one area where the public will not tolerate any uncalled for initiative by the police. The logic is simple. The police are meant to enforce the laws and not to make or interpret them. In a small town in Punjab policemen beat up a group of students celebrating their XIIth class results at a hotel. Not many months back viewers saw policewomen thrashing boys and girls in a park in UP as part of Operation Majnu.

All said and done nothing deters a criminal more than getting legally punished for his act. The successful investigation of a case resulting in the perpetrator getting convicted and sentenced is thus the best form of proactive policing. In the Indian context, many serious crimes would be nipped in the bud if the police acted on the reports of non-cognizable offences. Available resources ought to be more effectively targeted on investigating crime and thus help achieve other objectives. Criminals are expanding their illegal activities and operations in an increasingly complex, political, social, legal, and technologically driven environment. In response police have to develop new techniques to counter and restrict such activities. An appropriate balance must be maintained between the use of new investigative methods and techniques on the one hand and the privacy rights of individuals on the other.

TIGHT ROPE WALKING

Proactive policing is better professed than practised. Police gets damned either way. The research is constantly on to devise new ways of proactive policing. The ideal will be to create a social environment so pure that man is not tempted to break the Ten Commandments. Sadly that is not to be and certainly it is not for the police to play God. Any society will welcome a proactive police but police activism must not be allowed to be carried too far lest it leads to police excesses. In a legal system which allows rights even to the accused, policemen cannot be permitted to be ‘Peeping Toms’ nor in any other manner interfere with the constitutionally guaranteed freedoms or basic human rights. In future changing conditions on the ground may compel governments to enact legislations to vest their law enforcement agencies with wider powers. Till then, proactive policing must mind its limits.

Dr. Sudhir Kumar Jha
(The author is a former Director General of Police, Bihar. He can be contacted at sudhirjhapatna@gmail.com)