Policing the priorities

Contrary to popular belief, India’s police force is overstaffed and well paid but seriously short of basic equipment to do their job

The police has been on the front line of the countrywide lockdown, earning themselves the sobriquet of corona warriors. But its variable performance during this time has raised many questions about its efficacy in managing law and order. At Anand Vihar (Delhi) and Bandra (Mumbai) stations, for example, neither police commissionerate had any intelligence about the gatherings of migrant labourers clamouring to get home. The subsequent lathicharges to disperse them did little to enhance the reputation of the police as public servants. Poor intelligence was also responsible for the failure to discover thousands of people on the Tablighi Jamat campus — though the nearest police station was just 50 metres away.

It isn’t that that India lacks police resources. One little-known statistic is that India has the world’s largest police force, and that excludes the specialised central police forces — CRPF, CISF or

RAF. As the table, A problem of plenty, shows, even without including the special forces, India’s police strength exceeds China, a totalitarian state with a larger population, or large countries like USA and Russia. Before anyone draws attention to the gap between the sanctioned posts and the actual posts, the numbers for India quoted here are for those in position. The data was provided to Parliament by the Home Ministry.

Yet police records suggest a force stretched to capacity. For instance, of the total major crimes committed and reported in Delhi in 2018, over 80 per cent were not pursued. The pattern is the same for previous years with the statistics worse for the police in the larger states. Now, the Delhi Police is, in fact, the best financed non-military force in India with an annual budget of over ~8,619 crore. The same is not true for the other state police forces, so it is conceivable their investigation may have suffered for lack of funds.

Here, too, there are caveats. It is true that states had for long spent less than should have on police modernisation. But Reserve Bank of India data shows that this had started to change: In the four years up to FY19, state spending on police budgets has grown at a CAGR of 9.16 per cent to ~1.27 trillion. This growth rate is now on a par with the money spent for both social services and economic services in the same time period.

Most of the state police budget goes towards the salaries. There is a reason for it. Unlike other government employees, a police constable draws an annual salary for 13 months every year. Since they cannot avail of the 30 days of earned leave in a year, the money equivalent to an additional month’s salary is paid to them in cash. Some states have begun to wonder if it doesn’t make sense to send police personnel on a month’s leave to give them time to refresh and also save the additional salary bill.

So the world’s largest police force has a horrible record of settling crimes, despite being well paid compared to other government employees. This is not the picture of the police that home ministers at the Centre and at the states paint. Instead as a PRS Legislative Research note points out, the picture is that of an overburdened police force. Also as Comptroller and Auditor General reports have found, “shortages in weaponry with state police forces. For example, Rajasthan and West Bengal has shortages of 75 per cent and 71 per cent respectively in required weaponry”. The Bureau of Police Research and Development (BPRD) has also noted a 30.5 per cent deficiency in the stock of required vehicles with the state forces. Most smaller police station don’t have basic PC.

In short, the states have chosen to invest in a bloated police force that is becoming a huge financial liability while skimping on technology (

chart, Utilisation of funds for modernisation). The police point to National Crime Records Bureau observation that “crime increases with population. More population as compared to previous year will result in increased crime”. The rate of crimes under the Indian Penal Code (IPC) is 234.2 per 100,000, according to the BPRD, and it is rising.

These statistics, like police investigations, have big holes. The total crime reported in India in 2018 was 5,074,634, of which 62 per cent were under the

IPC. The rest were petty crimes under Special & Local Laws (SLL). Excluding the number of traffic personnel, estimated at 72,000 by the BPRD, there are about 2,000,000 police personnel to track these crimes. All crimes considered, there are just three cases for a police officer to solve in one whole year. This is hardly overwork, even if one makes allowance for those on VIP duty.

Finally, there is a hoary statistics attributed to the United Nations. It says a country should have on average 222 policemen per 100,000 people. As V Balanchandran, former special secretary, Cabinet Secretariat, pointed out some years ago “How did we get the figure of 222? Our experts seemed to have copied it from a Wikipedia paper called “List of countries by number of police officers”, which mentions the so-called UN recommendation”. As he explains there is no such UN or any Un-supported body which has made any such recommendation.