SOME LIVES ARE MORE PRECIOUS THAN OTHERS

                                  SOME LIVES ARE MORE PRECIOUS THAN OTHERS

Despite the emphasis on ‘EQUALITY’ in our Constitution nowhere is it mentioned that all human lives are equally valuable. Had it said so we would not find state ‘protectees’ guarded by our elite forces at the cost of us aam aadmi who are left bhagwan bharose. Prime Minister Naendra  Modi’ s public utterances did raise hopes that he really meant to eliminate VIPsm from society. Sadly he stopped short at removing beacon lights from cars.

India is among the least policed countries in the world. According to reports appearing in the media from time to time, with just one policeman for 761 persons India has fewer cops per capita.  If you deduct the numbers diverted to VIP security the ratio will come down further. In contrast, there are as many as 47,557 cops protecting 14,842 VIPs across the country which comes to a ratio of three to one. If the UPA was benevolent in doling out VIP security, which is mostly seen as a status symbol, the present NDA government has been no less generous.

Roughly 400 VVIPs get different levels of security (X,Y, Z, Z+) from the central pool  on the basis of their `positions’ or threat perceptions. There are close to forty in Z+ category. Forty-five personnel drawn from premier para-military agencies provide each of them and their family members round-the-clock escort and static security at their respective houses. Each one of them is provided a bulletproof car along with escort cars wherever they travel in the country. Not only this, state governments have to provide territorial security to all these VVIPs, when they visit their states. The prestige attached to the presence of commandos has a trickledown effect on these states, which have drawn their own list of VVIPs to be guarded by locally raised commandos. States have their own list of VIPs guarded by men drawn from the district police thus depleting the strength of the police stations and in turn depriving the common man of the minimal security he might have expected.

The list of ‘protectee’ VVIPs is fattening each day, In its defence the central Government says that it has constituted a committee under the Union Home Secretary to decide on who should get security and how much going entirely by threat perception. There is no transparency and consistency in the assessment to be reviewed annually. It is common knowledge that finally the decision is not bureaucratic but political. You scratch my back and I scratch your. There is a quid pro quo between the Congress and BJP to provide SPG cover to bed-ridden Atal Behari Vajpayee as a justification to do the same for Sonia Gandhi and her kin. Priya Ranjan Das Munshi, George Fernanandes and Ashok Singhal, to name only a few, have not been heard of nor  seen in public for several years but their lives continue to be ‘perceived’ as threatened.

On does not mind persons holding important and sensitive positions being secured at the tax payer’s expense during their incumbency only. The public find it difficult to digest the same privilege being offered to the ‘formers’ and ‘futures’. It galls to see the likes of Laloo Yadav, Pappu Yadav, Mulayam Singh Yadav, Mayawati and A Raja, enjoying X.Y, Z category despite being criminally indicted. Such high-profile security makes them into instant celebrities. By contrast there is not even one unarmed constable for people like us who, in their police career spanning decades, sent many to jail and may be some to gallows.

In this country of 1.25 billion people, only a chosen few get security. Even where threat perception is obvious and danger imminent the common man gets no help. In thousands of such cases, people are still losing their lives. Most vulnerable is our fourth estate. Attacks, often fatal, on our media persons have become too frequent. They deserve adequate personal security. The sadhwis who showed exemplary courage in complaining against Ram Rahim, the CBI DIG who painstakingly investigated the case and the judge who convicted the pseudo Baba are the real heroes and were threatened more than once. It is citizens like them who deserve to be protected.

Shouldn’t state security shrug the VVIP tag and become available to everyone?

Sudhir Kumar Jha

(The author is a former Director General of Police, Bihar and a free-lance writer.)

                                      THE DRAGON WILL NOT STOP HISSISNG

The debacle of October-November 1962 when China overran our territory in NEFA (North East Frontier Agency) disgraced us but also jolted us out of complacency born of the five principles of Panchsheel. The army retreated to the foothills to reorganize. The Ministry of Home Affaairs asked the Intelligence Bureau to set up intelligence out posts at intervals along the Mcmahon Line, a notional line drawn up by the British more than a century ago, demarcating India-China border. A large expanse on either side was to be the no-man’s land.  Armed police battalions were taken on loan from some states to give armed cover, in platoon strength, to these posts. Bihar sent its Gurkha Military Police battalion with me as the Commanding Officer. For us it was a non-family posting with free ration. We had the operational charge of the entire Subansiri Division with headquarters at Ziro. I had then asked the Director, Intelligence Bureau, how a platoon of armed police could take on the Chinese army  only to be told that we were only cannon fodder; our role was limited to keeping the IB informed  about the intrusion.

Few in the country had heard of NEFA, now Arunachal, until the Chinese aggression. The Agency was administered by the Ministry of External Affairs. The Chinese argued that India herself treated NEFA as a foreign territory and had therefore placed it under the MEA. The administration of NEFA was run through a ‘single line’ hierarchy of officials headed by the Political Officer who belonged to the newly created Indian Frontier Administrative Service. PO was the District Magistrate, Collector, Judge and Superintendent of Police all rolled into one. Under him he had Assistant Pos at the middle level and Base Superintendents at the bottom. In 1965 the area was brought under the Ministry of Home affairs and the PO was designated as Deputy Commissioner.  Entry into NEFA was restricted; you could enter only with an ‘Inner Line’ permit. In farthest north we had the McMahon Line. NEFA could thus be described in three ‘lines’. I detrained at North Lakhimpur in September 1964 and started for Ziro, hundred odd kilometers away, by jeep. My unit had already been there for some time.  My journey took nearly eight hours as roads were practically non-existent. The Border Roads Organisation were blasting away to lay new alignments.

Our outposts had the Chinese as next door neighbours. Local tribals, few in number, would carry tales from one side to the other. The Chinese refrain was how they did not look like Indians and how Indians had fled away in 1962 leaving them to their fate and that they should expect no better the next time. Luckily the threats and blandishment did not cut much ice. ‘Neighbour’s envy’ was writ large on the Chinese words and actions. During the Indo-Pak war of 1965, finding Pakistan on a losing wicket, China issued an ultimatum to India to stop the war or else. We in NEFA remained on stand-to alert for fifteen days by which time the crisis was over.

 I set out on inspection tour in November-December 1966. I may be the only IPS officer to have trekked along the Mcmahon Line for forty five days and to have inspected all my posts. Distance between two posts was expressed in terms of so many days’ march. The going was tough but then I was young and fit. There were no roads, not even tracks at places, and at places we had to monkey crawl and climb. I had with me my Gurkha bodyguards and some porters. Being hilly people Gurkhas were used to climbing up and down. Initially I found crossing cane suspension bridges over fast flowing Himalayan rivers daunting but soon got the hang of it. An army helicopter carried us to our post at Nacho and after that three days march to our company headquarters at Limeking. From there the tracks forked right and left to Taksing and Maaja. We spent one night at our post at Maaja at a height of 7500 feet.. Next morning as we were getting ready for onward journey when my platoon commander informed me that the Chinese troops about 100 strong had crossed into the no-man’s land and set up camp about a kilometer from our post, within  shouting range so to say. I decided to stay on. It now became a battle of nerves. Our standing instruction in such a situation was to stand fast but make no provoking gesture. So we watched and waited, eye ball to eye ball. It was the oft repeated Chinese tactic to test if we ran away in fear or stood our ground. After two days the Chinese went back and we resumed our onward journey.

Our next halt was Taksing a bigger place than Maaja and not desolate at all. It was the headquarters of Assistant PO. It was flat land with a Buddhist monastery, Lamas and yaks. At a height of 8500 feet it looked like an extension of the Tibetan plateau.  One of our patrolling parties had come across an empty packet of Chinmin cigarettes popular in China and an item of free army supply. Not much excitement there and we tracked back uneventfully to Nacho from where we were airlifted to Daporijo which had by then become my battalion headquarters.

I do not trust the Chinese. Their intentions are as inscrutable as their faces. They are bullies and should be dealt with as such. Our troops standing their ground at Dakolam is a befitting rebuff to them. Today it is Doklam and Pangong, tomorrow it can be some other place. The Dragon may not always spit fire but it will not stop hissing.

Sudhir Kumar Jha

Patna          19 August 2017

(Author can be contacted at  sudhirjhapatna@gmail.com)

                                 TERROR ATTACKS AND BRITISH RESPONSE    

Europe is the latest front in the Islamic terror strikes on the West. Deadly strikes hit Brussels, Germany and elsewhere over the past year.  Assailants linked to the Islamic State attacked a concert hall, stadium and restaurants and bars in Paris in November, 2016 killing 130. Will the Vatican be next? A newspaper cutting featuring a Nostradamus prediction foreseeing a “Muslim army” marching through Europe went viral in the wake of the Paris atrocities. Did the 16th century mystic philosopher foresee the rise of the murderous ISIS cult?

Britain’s brush with terrorism is not new. The island kingdom  suffered attacks in the latter part of the twentieth century carried out by various Irish Republican Army (IRA) groups linked to the Northern Ireland conflict and  attacks by Middle Eastern terrorist groups linked to the Arab–Israeli conflict. What is new is that recent terrorist incidents have been linked to Islamic fundamentalism employing  fidayeen suicide attacks where terrorists launch a raid knowing they will probably die and aim to kill as many as they can. On July 7, 2005 four separate Islamist extremist suicide bombers detonated bombs on three underground trains and a double decker bus killing 56 civilians and injuring 700. After a lull (or heightened alertness post-9/11 in US?) of a dozen years the country has been hit by a series of terror attacks in 2017.

On 22 March 2017 six people, including the attacker, died and 50 people were injured in a terror attack near the Houses of Parliament.  Khalid Masood mounted the pavement in a hired car and drove into pedestrians on Westminster Bridge. He then ran towards Parliament and stabbed a police officer to death before being shot dead by officers.

On 22 May an attack in Manchester Arena left 22 people dead and 59 injured.  The suicide  bomber, Salman Ramadan Abedi, 22, was born in Manchester to Libyan parents. Abedi travelled between Libya and Britain, and was known to intelligence agencies in Germany and France.

 On 3 June a white van hit pedestrians on London Bridge before three men got out of the vehicle and began stabbing people in nearby Borough Market leaving seven people dead and 48 injured. The suspects were shot dead by police minutes later.  Khuram Butt, 27, a British national who was born in Pakistan, is believed to be the ringleader. Butt was open about his extremist views and was known among the public as such. But despite receiving calls from concerned members of the public about Butt’s increasingly radical views, police concluded that he was not a threat and the investigation was scaled back. Butt is the third terrorist in recent months to carry out an attack despite being known to security services. . Confronted with public outrage Assistant Commissioner Mark Rowley of London Police admitted Butt was known to police and MI5 but said there had been no evidence of "attack planning" and he had been deemed as a 'low priority.'

The attacks took place close to the general election on June 8. An exasperated Prime Minister Theresa May In a speech outside Downing Street   rounded on those who "tolerate" extremism as she told them: "Enough is enough.” She also made clear that county councils must play their part by breaking up ghettos where “evil” ideology can breed and stopping it spreading in schools. She may as well have said that local police must put in their bit .The Bobby in course of his beat patrolling knew and was known to each household and residents would confide in him any suspicious arrivals or absences. 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". It is worth mentioning that county police, of which Bobby is a part, is neither under nor have regular exchanges with the Metropolitan Police or the MI5.

Security and intelligence agencies have been and will continue to remain whipping boys in the blame game. Under the circumstances they have not done too badly. It is not as if the security services had lost control. While there had been three attacks since March, another five alleged plots had been foiled in the same period. They said it was difficult to prevent attacks that involved knives which gives the attacks a new dimension.

The bomb attacks on London have raised questions about how Britain's counter-terrorist services handle radical Islamists with suspected ties to terror groups and have emphasised differences between the UK and US. One of the striking areas of contrast is the degree to which each government legislates against the expression of unpopular, offensive or ‘extremist’ views, particularly those attributed to members of Muslim community. While both countries have long traditions of protecting the freedom of expression, the UK government has shown increasing tendency to legislate against allegedly ‘extremist’ speech, even in the absence of a connection to substantial criminal steps or potential violence.  By contrast, the US government has been particularly loath to intervene or legislate against the expression of unpopular, offensive or ‘extremist’ views so long as that speech is unconnected to violent or criminal action. As well as gathering more information about other components of a suspected cell, British tactics are also aimed at gathering evidence that will stand up in court. But US agencies have preferred early action against suspects in the hope that doing so will nip the possible plots in the bud and unnerve other conspirators.

Following 9/11 American approach has been more aggressive and direct with the result that there has been no major terrorist attack there after 2001. First, the US treats the fight against terrorism as a “war.” Consequently, there has been a heavy input from the Defense Department and armed forces in disrupting terrorist networks,  al-Qaida  most of all and now ISIS. The extraterritorial nature of al-Qaida led the Americans to view the threat’s external dimension. Consequently, the US approach consistently has been to “take the fight” to the enemy and push the borders out. Additionally, the US approach has been proactive promoting reform and democracy in the Middle East, recognizing that economic and democratic opportunities are needed to counter radicalized ideologies.

Britain seems to have neither the will nor the resources to go that far. She is caught in her own dilemma of making a choice between freedom and security. We would all like to have full freedom and total security.   The two do not co-exist in real life. We lose some to gain some. If life sans freedom is unthinkable, a life led in terror is not a life worth living. To strike the right balance between the two remains the biggest challenge before Britain today. If she goes too far she may be portrayed as a police state; if she does not she will be seen as a soft state and continue getting hit. ‘Thus far and no farther’ is no easy decision to make.

 What makes things worse for Britain is her over concern for human rights.  Having lambasted the autocratic regimes in the Arab world all these years for human rights violation spy glasses are constantly turned on Britain for any signs of similar transgression. Her erstwhile colonies even today accuse her of double standards, civil at home and barbarian abroad. She has to tread carefully. The Human Rights Act has played a crucial role in restricting the scope of counter-terrorism measures in Britain. The Act has also had a major influence upon which foreign terror suspects can be deported from Britain for preaching hate, or actually planning an atrocity. The 2001 legislation in the wake of the September 11 attacks on the United States allowed terror suspects to be detained without charge – leading it to be described by Amnesty International as “draconian” – but by 2004, the House of Lords had declared it incompatible with human rights. The security services are left to deal with terrorism with one arm tied behind their backs.

Sudhir Kumar Jha

(The author is retired Director General of Police, Bihar and a free-lance writer)

                         

Do Not Sell Your Soul

                                                       DO NOT SELL YOUR SOUL

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)

                                  BANGLADESH POLICE: SOME IMPRESSIONS                                                                  

 An Indian visitor to Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh, will find the newspaper reports on crime and police fairly familiar.  Like in India, police is media’s pet whipping boy. Policemen, jointly and severally, are lambasted for highhandedness, brutality and corruption. The reputed British journal The Economist (dated June 18-24, 2005) quotes Odhikar, one of the human-rights groups active in Bangladesh, claiming that as many as 168 people have been killed by the security forces in ‘crossfire’, a local substitute for ‘fake encounters’ in the first five months of the current year. In the same vein the Bangladesh Institute of Human Rights reports two hundred people being killed by the law enforcement agencies in the first half of the current year, an increase of nearly three times over last year. One message rings loud and clear – the need to sensitise these forces to human rights.

 The bete noire is the Rapid Action Battalion (RAB). Sounding very much like India’s Rapid Action Force, a wing of the para-military CRPF, RAB was created on 26 March, the Bangladesh Independence Day, last year. It has seven battalions in the field. A Director, who holds the rank of Additional Inspector General of Police, heads it. The real operations are controlled by the Additional Director who is a full Colonel of the army.  RAB has a fair dose of deputationists from the defence forces. Only one-third out of a total force of approximately 5500 is from police, ostensibly to conduct the investigation and to ensure that RAB conforms to law. Each battalion is under a Lt. Colonel of the army. In the beginning full-fledged Superintendents of Police were placed as Second-in-Command. There was furore as the Ss.P. refused to work under the Lt. Colonel on point of parity of rank. Putting Additional Ss.P. as 2-i-C resolved the impasse. Created to combat gunrunning and organised crime that was beyond the capability of the police station, RAB has developed a long arm. So as not to depend entirely on the feed from the local police, it has added an intelligence wing. Some successes have come RAB’s way but, going by media reports, it has earned more opprobrium than encomium. It seems that in its brutal campaign against alleged criminals, it has shown scant regard for human rights. Not only the fourth estate but also leading public men, political parties and human rights groups are intermittently up in arms against the highhanded and at times extra-legal methods employed by RAB in carrying out its given task.

 The police feel particularly helpless in handling incidents of political violence that is endemic in Bangladesh and in which both the contending big parties, the ruling Bangladesh National Party (BNP) and the Awami League (AL) are implicated. The Economist further quotes Odhikar reporting 526 political deaths in 2004. The local heavies of the ruling party are generally better placed to sway the law enforcing agencies. Such crimes put the police in an unenviable situation; they are damned if they do and damned if they don’t. Only a few of these get highlighted in the international press, such as the grenade attack on a rally of the AL last year in which Sheikh Hasina, a former Prime Minister and now Leader of Opposition, was among the lucky survivors. At times like this police do not know how to react though, theoretically, a police force should know that mayhem is mayhem and should deal with the situation in a purely professional manner.

 Many of the allegations against the police may be unfounded or exaggerated but during his stay of seven weeks spread over two visits within a span of three years this author did not come across an official denial or clarification. If the police department has a public relations wing, it needs to be activated. To be fair to the police, they have not delivered too badly given their handicaps. Nor should all the ills of the police be placed at the doors of the present political dispensation.

Bangladesh has stuck to the British-Indian model of policing more closely than perhaps India. The criminal justice system remains virtually unchanged. There has been very little tinkering with the major laws. The sections of the Penal Code, Criminal Procedure Code and Evidence Act remain the same as in the original legislation. Only the prefix ‘Indian’ has been removed and rightly. The Indian Police Act of 1861 is still in operation though it is now known as Bangladesh Police Rules. The departmental hierarchy remains what it was in 1947. Police in India is a state subject.  Not so in Bangladesh which has a common police force for the whole country still headed by an Inspector General. His rank has not been upgraded. He still equates with the 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.

 The strength of the police force underwent substantial increase in the 1970s. More police stations had to be created to contain the landless sarvaharas (proletariat), a left extremist upsurge in northwest Bangladesh akin to then ongoing Naxalite movement across the border. Ten battalions of armed police were raised to assist the army that was then fighting insurgency in the Chittagong Hill Tracts. After the operations were over, these specially equipped and trained police personnel were deployed for conducting elections and on such other jobs that kept them in close contact with political elements. Soon they lost their bite and became like other policemen in the country.

In 1982 General H.M. Ershad converted all subdivisions into districts by one stroke of pen. Consequently, there are today 64 districts in Bangladesh. Perhaps to keep up with the Joneses, Dhaka, Chittagong, Rajshahi and Khulna were declared metro cities and police commissionerates. The police commissioners are currently all in the rank of DIG and are squarely under the IGP. They are not, however, vested with as much and as wide ranging authority as their Indian counterparts.

 Through successive reforms the British had tried to give the Bengal police a civilian character subject to judicial and magisterial scrutiny. That was undone in East Pakistan/Bangladesh progressively after 1947. The rough and ready methods of the Punjab police introduced by the Pakistan Government after 1947 could not have appealed to the investigators trained under the Bengal system. Before the partition, the Bengal CID was both dreaded and respected for its efficiency and thoroughness. The Detective Department of the Calcutta Police was cited as a role model even for the London Police. The technical infrastructure, such as Finger Print Bureau, Forgery Section and Photo Section et al, was concentrated in Calcutta. Dhaka then had none of these and Bangladesh even today is deficient on this score. It does not have a Forensic Science Wing that is the backbone of scientific investigation. It is understood that this is included among the projects to be funded by the UNDP. Happily, Bangladesh has not lagged far behind India in opening the police ranks to women; one of them is an Additional DIG. The presence of women at various rungs of the police ladder is reassuring.  The image of Ardhanarishwar comes readily to mind; partial feminization or softening of the force tends to make it more sensitive.

Given the dense population of Bangladesh the police-public ratio there does not compare unfavourably with India or other less developed countries. The problem thus may lie not so much in numbers as in the low morale of the force, a result of several factors over a long period of time. Police in Bangladesh have had to function under the shadow of the army. Earlier it was the Pakistan army and it has been the Bangladesh army after 1971. After the ‘liberation’ the Bengali officers of the erstwhile Pakistan Police Service (PPS) filled the senior positions. President Zia later brought in a number of officers who had been sacked from the army. They were put through a condensed course of police training and, given their army seniority, soon occupied the higher ranks of police, causing much heart burning among the PPS officers. The present IGP is the first career policeman recruited to the Bangladesh Civil Service (Police), corresponding to the Indian Police Service, as an Assistant Superintendent of Police (ASP) in 1973. His two immediate predecessors had army background.

 When the author was in Dhaka in October 2002, the army had been requisitioned to flush out illegal firearms and arrest proclaimed offenders. Army detachments set up roadblocks and conducted searches of targeted houses. The exercise was repeated and for longer durations. This was a job that should have been carried out by the local police with, at best, a backup support from the city or district armed reserve. Today RAB would do it. With the army, RAB and the Bangladesh Rifles (BDR) in border areas, the counterpart of our BSF, breathing down its neck, the local police feel hamstrung.  No wonder that one can discern a certain amount of cynicism at the cutting edge of police administration. 

The Police Training College at Sardah, some 30 kilometres from the Divisional town of Rajshahi, was set up in sylvan surroundings by the river side, nearly hundred years ago. The British IP officers allotted to Bengal cadre were sent there for initial training. The isolation irked but there were compensations. There was enough game to hunt; there were indigo planters to socialise with during weekends. There was the Officers’ Mess to accommodate a dozen of the probationary Assistant SsP and Deputy SsP. It was rightly known as ‘Philaur of eastern India’. After partition Philaur remained in India and officers of the Pakistan Police Service came all the way to Sardah for their training. The government has since upgraded the college into an Academy and all ranks of Bangladesh police are being trained there. There is overcrowding and the worst sufferers are the ASsP. The first batch (1973) had about 150; the current lot on way to Sardah is over 250 strong. They will have to live in dormitories. This type of community living may sound more egalitarian but may not be conducive to the development of officer-like qualities. Besides, such heavy intake is bound to choke career prospects and cause loss of morale.

The constabulary needs to receive more attention. Their image has to be bolstered. Though the law speaks of a constable as an ‘officer’, he has been equated with unskilled workers and menial staff under the government. He is paid accordingly. To pay such lowly salary to a person who can put people behind the bar, howsoever temporarily, is a sure invitation to corruption. The constabulary has been agitating for a long time and does not take the assurances seriously any more. One can hope this anomaly will be addressed sooner than later.

It is time a high-powered police commission was set up to recommend comprehensive reforms. Policing the police has to be on top of the agenda. A whole new phase has to be introduced into the system, one that will make room for educated, honest and sensitive men and women to join the force.  Whether the government will have the political will to carry out any sweeping changes is any body’s guess. The recommendations of India’s National Police Commission were consigned to the dustbin. Bangladesh may be a different story.

 (Sudhir Kumar Jha)

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

FEMINISATION OF INDIAN POLICE

              (Published in the Statesman, Kolkata and Delhi on Sunday 26 October 2014 under the title WOMEN AS COPS)

                                        

The public perception of a burly, mustachioed policeman wielding ‘danda’ with one hand and pocketing bribe with the other is a British legacy. This stereotype has stuck and needs to be corrected. The ideal police should be in the image of Ardhanarishwar, half female and half male, an amalgam of feminine compassion and male machismo. Take it metaphorically and not literally or else the champions of feminism will rise up in arms. Women can take tough decisions - we have the example of Indira Gandhi – and are in no way inferior to men but nature has made them differently so that one complements the other.

Our constitution guarantees gender equality but does not prescribe a quota or a time frame. Our political parties are brazen enough to vociferate a fifty per cent quota for women in police jobs without debating its implications. I am all for women’s empowerment and have for long been an advocate of feminization of the Indian police but not on pro rata basis and not as a knee-jerk response to demands by women lobbies. Any move towards gender equality should be preceded by gender sensitisation and gender mainstreaming. Entry of women into police should begin in small doses and gradually expanded. Increased women participation will soften the otherwise harsh mien that police carries.

Women are joining the police in increasing numbers so their induction is no more a mere cosmetic exercise but if it results in an image makeover for the police so much the better. What must seriously be debated is whether they are to form part of mainstream policing or be earmarked for desk duties or for select jobs relating to women and children?  Woman has been traditionally perceived as the  home maker. Admittedly she can multi-task better than a man. It will still need some juggling to reconcile her role as a cop with that of a wife and mother? Unlike other government jobs one is on call in the police 24x7. Will she have the same uncertain duty hours as her male colleagues? Will she have to be escorted home at the end of the day? Will she be at the risk of transfer anywhere anytime at the whim of the department? Women in the Indian Police Service may serve as role models but their conditions of service are vastly superior to those of the rank and file. Police will continue to be a male bastion and women joining the force must be mentally strong to rub shoulders, not literally, with their male colleagues. It should be made clear to them that once they join the organization they should not expect to be treated with kid gloves. Gender equality does not merely mean pay parity but also work and risk parity.

To ensure what has been said above women must meet the prescribed physical and psychological standard and should not expect deficiencies to be condoned on ‘compassionate ‘ground’. Recruiting widows and daughters of policemen killed on duty is fine but compassion should not extend to taking in over-age or physically unfit candidates. Let them look petite but their bearing must inspire confidence in the public. We come across some smartly turned out young women performing their duties confidently, whether frisking at the airports, directing traffic or performing mela duty. For that they must undergo the same training as men. It is heartening to see women trainees at the National Police Academy not being shown any concession and them taking the rough and tumble of a rigorous training in their stride

The raison d’être of women’s increased induction into police is that they will better serve the needs of their gender who account for nearly half the total population. True, a female victim or complainant will feel more at ease in narrating their woes, rape in particular, to another woman. Incidence of reporting will hopefully increase. Whether that will lead to a more successful follow-up and detection is another matter. There will be some efficient women cops and some not so efficient. In either case they cannot act in isolation and will often need the support from outside.. Women have a keen sixth sense which can make hem good investigating officers but anti-crime operations and law and order situations will at times call for the use of brawn which their male colleagues may provide.

Will police women be utilized in dealing with crimes against women only? If so there may be times when they may find themselves out of work. It is suggested that crimes and situations should be identified and entrusted to women police to handle on need basis. That brings us to the allied issue of having all-women police stations. States have been competing with one another in this regard without an audit of any special benefit that may have accrued from this experiment. Should these police posts be out of bound for male victims and complainants? Rather than having an all-women police station let there be adequate number of police women at every police station to empathise with women who come for help. There are and will be several women capable enough to be posted as officer-in-charge of a police station. Give them a chance but gender segregation may be a regressive step. At any rate an all-female supervisory hierarchy cannot be assured for a long time to come.

Let us hope women joining police will bring down the level of corruption in police? Will police women show more integrity than men when the test comes? Only time can tell but instances have come to light where women have succumbed to the lure of the lucre just as men. It may be only a matter of opportunity and their learning the ropes.

Any intake of women into police will eat into job prospects of men who perceive themselves as bread earners. Some degree of resistance should therefore be expected, Police has traditionally been a male bastion and it will take time for men to get used to the presence of women in their midst as equals and, in some cases, as their superior. Men at times indulge in ribaldry as a release from on-job monotony and tension.  In mixed company they will have to be on guard all the time lest they hurt female sensitivity, however inadvertently, by their gestures and nuances. No more sharing of bawdy jokes. This is only the male perspective. For women the prospect must be more daunting. They will remain vulnerable to sexual harassment during and after working hours..They have to be extra careful in their responses lest an innocuous smile is misconstrued. Gender sensitization is thus going to be the biggest challenge but which will be overcome with the passage of time. As pace of feminization gathers speed, hopefully, women will be integrated into the force and accepted as comrades-in-arm.

No male-female ratio can be fixed for jobs in police. Even in more liberal and open western societies there are today far fewer women in police compared to men. That is because even in the west it is women who are looked upon as home makers and are considered more suitable for fixed-hours jobs which policing is not. An allied problem in the west is their retention which may not be relevant here given India’s low income graph. The world leader is Belgium where one-third of cops are women; Australia and South Africa come a close second and third with nearly thirty percent. India is trailing at a little over five percent. Among the states while Maharashtra has the highest number of women police Tamilnadu has the highest percentage of women cops. Surprisingly, the more literate states of Kerala and Meghalaya have not been able to catch up fast. Considering the background of her social inhibitions India has not done too badly. Feminization of Indian police is a fait accompli. Let entry of women into police continue to be an ongoing process without being in a hurry to jump from five to fifty percent.

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

Do Not Sell Your Soul

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 Right To Information 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 RTI Act 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, apart from besmearing their reputation. 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)