UNDERSTAFFED INDIAN POLICE FORCE

The statistics for number of Police personnel per lakh of population throws up an interesting question “Are Indians living in much PEACEFUL, SAFER and LOW CRIME society since it has less than half of the internal security force as compared to the most advance countries in the world, which have most advanced and sophisticated safety systems and crime regulations?”.

Country	Number of Police Personnel Per Lakh of Population	Global Peace Index Rankings in 2011 (out of the 153 Countries Assessed)	Homicide Rate Per Lakh Of Population per year in 2011.
The United States	233	82	4.8
Germany	301	15	0.84
The United Kingdom	333	26	1.23
France	369	36	1.09
India	131	135	3.4
Note: 1 Lakh is equivalent to 100,000 or 10% of a million.

However, the ground reality based on reputed International organization’s studies paints a totally different picture of India.

Internal Security forces are utilized for a wide ranging normal security operations like regulating law & order, VIP protection, election security (Of late, elections in India to various tiers of democracy are being held in phases and for longer durations and has almost become a perennial phenomenon.), traffic regulations etc.   Over and above the normal operations, police forces are deployed to tackle special security issues such as, security and combing operations in Naxal infected areas, foiling Terrorist attacks, managing social unrest fuelled by caste-ist forces, religious forces, regionalism, Anti-capitalist forces etc.

Increasing deployment of security forces for VIP’s protection coupled with deployment requirements for tackling insurgent, naxal and terrorist activities have strained the already limited police forces. 

A report, prepared by Bureau of Police Research and Development, said as on January 1, 2011, the actual strength of the police personnel for per lakh population was 131.39 against the sanctioned posts of 173.51. The report, released by Federal Home Minister P Chidambaram in April 2012, said manpower for protected persons’ protection duty is drawn from available resources generally without corresponding increase in sanctioned strength for the purpose.

Nonetheless, the total police-population ratio (total sanctioned number of police personnel available for per lakh population) has shown wide variations across the country. Intriguingly, the most populous states have relatively much less sanctioned strength of police men than warranted by their total population. West Bengal has just 81 police personnel for per lakh population, followed by 88 personnel in Bihar, 115 in Madhya Pradesh and 118 in Rajasthan against the national average of 174 policemen for per lakh population. Contrarily, sparsely populated states like Tripura have 1,124, Manipur has 1,147 and Mizoram has 1,112 police personnel per lakh population.

Hence, the following measures are immediately warranted by the government to justly meet the law & order situations of ever exploding population, increasing internal security threats, VIP protection requirements and social unrest.

ü  Immediate recruitment and training to meet the sanctioned strength requirements.

ü  Correcting the anomalies in the wide variations of sanctioned strength of the states across the country.

ü  Reviewing the sanctioned strength criteria periodically vis-à-vis deployment requirements.

 With increasing unemployment in India and passion in the younger generation for secured government jobs, it is perplexing to notice the delays in recruitment.

The argument of additional pressure on the exchequer due to increase of security forces may not hold much ice since, peace and harmony with in the country can act as a catalyst for the country’s economic development, thus yielding indirect social and financial benefits to the government and the citizens.

To supplement the above corollary, Stern Review noted that, if the world was 25% more peaceful in 2011, an additional economic benefit of just over US$2 trillion could have been accrued.

THE MAVERICKS: AMMA, BEHENJI & DIDI

I am still and will continue to be intrigued and at times fascinated by the infamous Roman Emperor Nero’s anecdote. By some accounts, Nero ran away to Macedonia with his lady love Claudia Acte, a former slave, against the wishes of his aggressive, cunning and ruthless mother Agrippina, after he was declared a successor to the throne. However, an unwilling and reluctant Nero was crowned the Emperor, at the tender age of 17, after the untimely death of Emperor Claudius in 54AD. Post succession, Nero often made rulings that pleased the lower class and was criticized as being obsessed with being popular. Nevertheless, over time, Nero faced a number of rebellions and power struggles that made him insecure, bitter, resentful and paranoid. Nero progressively seized more political power through tyranny, freeing himself of his advisers and eliminating rivals to the throne to consolidate his power and authoritarianism. The notable of his political adversaries eliminated by him included, his own mother Agrippina along with his teacher and mentor Seneca, close advisor Burrus, apart from his other step brothers and dissenting senators. Rightfully, over the 14 years of his rule, disenchantment among the ruling elite and masses and rebellion in his armed forces alarmingly grew, which forced Nero to commit suicide at the age of 30 in the year 68 AD.

Unfortunately, all martyred rulers hustled to power right from Nero failed to realize their follies when it mattered. Moreover, the life history of late Indira Gandhi is another great example of an honest individual ruined by unrestricted political power.  

Jayalalitha of Tamil Nadu (popularly called AMMA), Mayawati of Uttar Pradesh (popularly called BEHENJI) and Mamata Banerjee of West Bengal (popularly called DID) have gate-crashed into the male club of Indian regional politics, absolutely by their own choice and were readily embraced by the regional masses as the most viable alternative to those in power in their respective states. Regrettably, they had to endure constant insults and veiled wounds from their respective political adversaries since their opponents could not match the political intelligence, energy and allure of the charismatic ladies who rammed in to their political bastions.

Fortunately, all the three women politicians were given huge mandate by masses in their respective states with great anticipation of betterment and optimism. People overly mandated them and hustled them to power expecting them to become CRUSADERS against the evils and deeds of the previous governments that decelerated their progress and wellbeing. On the contrary, they all failed to realize that the fighter in them must cease to exist once the election battles are won, but instead continued to be relentless fighters against their political adversaries and critics. Smitten by power and delimited by sycophants all-round, their fighting tendencies metamorphosed themselves in to more furious, bitter, arrogant, constantly suspicious, insecure, intolerant and dictatorial.

The flaunting of authority, never ending loyalty tests to their loyalists, misappropriation of state finances, personal exuberance to make themselves immortal in the eyes of common man (ala, statues by Mayawati) and wielding of a heavy hand of the state and police against the political adversaries and dissenters alienated loyalists, friends, media, intelligentsia and masses alike and thus made them perceive conspiracies in anything negative and every reversal they had to endure during their time in power. Precisely, this is what Amma and Behenji had experienced in their earlier terms and is currently happening to Didi. Amma and Behenji became imperious, lonely and ill-advised due to desertions by intelligentsia as well as loyalists and were trapped in a state of siege by highly self-centered sycophants and had to chew the dust during the subsequent provincial elections.

Amma, after being out of power for a decade, seemed to have settled well in her new term of office due to the lessons learnt from the past, justifying the rightful mandate against the decade long limitlessly corrupt Karunanidhi regime.

Conversely, Didi seems to be treading the dangerous tyrannical path by installing fear in the masses, being arbitrary, hot-tempered, arrogant and showing little sensitivity and lack of discretion when it comes to atrocities on women and assaults on intelligentsia by political goons. The public outcry, of late, by the disgusted and angered citizens along the media is a testimony of her misrule and highlights the immediate need to completely change her style of functioning.

Although we empathize with Didi concerning the unhealed wounds of those long years of persecution by the previous regimes, she shall realize at once, that her wounds shall be healed and her pain turned to pleasure by keeping her political detractors away from power as long as she can. However, this can be a reality only if, she can relentlessly work for the public causes as well as pragmatically crusade against the misdeeds of the previous government and build enormous warmth and faith in the masses.

The histories of all martyred rulers hustled to power right from Nero can never be glorified due to the existence of factual evidences while as the present crop of politicians still have a great opportunity to learn from the history and imprint themselves graciously and gloriously in to the history books of the future.

COALITION POLITICS VEILING INDIA'S ECONOMIC GROWTH

The federal governments in India since late 1990’s are dominated by coalition politics due to mushrooming of many regional leaders with notional national vision coupled with the inability of the National parties to strengthen and widen their influence in all the regions with diverse linguistic, religious and developmental/ regional growth issues.  

The compulsions of coalition politics in addition to the intermittent elections to either the National parliament or State assemblies had a tremendous impact on the India’s economic progress. Every Indian Finance Minister, since the last decade, was in a catch 22 situation to balance the budget to appease the coalition partners as well as the poor sections of the Indian society to garner the votes on one hand and on the other hand not to derail the Indian economic growth.

P.V.Narasimha Rao’s government, during mid 1990’s, with Dr. Manmohan Singh at the helm of Finance ministry, gave the necessary momentum to the Indian economy by easing measures pertaining to inflows of foreign funds and investments, gave impetus to investments in Private sector, facilitated divestments in public sectors companies to enhance spending on non-existent infrastructure, as well as Industrial, fiscal and monitory policy reforms etc., together with booming software industry augmented the employment opportunities, domestic demand driven growth of small and medium sized businesses, enhanced exports and India’s foreign exchange reserves. The momentum in economic growth sustained despite change of Federal governments. Nonetheless, all the federal governments succeeding P.V.Narasimha Rao’s government were coalition governments and economists cautiously note that successive governments neither presented formidable economic reforms nor imparted the required growth impetus as warranted by global economic dynamics. However, It is widely believed and acknowledged that Indian economic growth since the last decade at around 7-8% is despite the successive federal government’s sincere efforts.

ECONOMIC CONCERNS

NON-REVENUE EXPENDITURE: Non-revenue expenditure coupled with ever increasing, non-directional and porous social expenditure including populist subsidies continuous to be the major hindrance to the economic growth of the country. This unproductive expenditure has been widening the country’s fiscal deficit to intolerable proportion of India’s GDP.

REVENUE GENERATION: Indian Finance Ministers, in the 1980’s and 1990’s, were relying heavily on increasing revenue receipts through rise in Income tax, Customs duty and Excise duties, when economic growth was mere 2-4%. Moreover, the Income tax payers base till the new millennium remained in single digit percentage of the population.

However, the computerisation of accounts and networking of government agencies had widened the tax net to considerable levels which facilitated increased direct and indirect tax receipts.  Additionally, acceleration of Indian economic growth to around 8% had eased the pressure on Indian Finance Ministers to unilaterally increase the direct and Indirect taxes with every passing budget. Every Indian Finance minister since this millennium had either eased the Income tax and customs duty rates or increased the slabs for Income tax or minimised the indirect tax rates on some of the popular products used by the common man, thereby facilitating increased domestic demand driven consumption related growth. Moreover, the introduction of Service tax as a new source of revenue generation eased the direct tax burden especially on lower middle class, middle class and higher middle class population in this country.

FISCAL & ECONOMIC MEASURES & REFORMS: Acceleration of Indian economic growth to around 8% was possible essentially due to Industrial and services sector growth with Agricultural sector growth stagnating at very low levels. Additionally, Indian economic growth had been involuntarily coupled with the global economy in the past decade, vis-a-vis foreign fund inflows and investments; product and services exports; strategic technology tie-ups and partnerships; raw material, equipment and country’s indispensable energy imports. However, the global financial crisis in 2007-08 and financial crisis in Europe in 2010-2011 coupled with high inflationary pressures in India had its decelerating effects on India’s economic growth, which needed timely and well oiled fiscal and monetary policy measures together with Industrial, Agricultural and services sector reforms from the Finance minister, in FY 2011-12. However, the vital policy measures and reforms had become hostage to the hostile coalition politics which unfortunately resulted in the India’s growth slipping to circa 6%.  In addition, the financial aid demands from Federal government from coalition partners for their states, to aid populist measures, have alarmingly increased in the recent years.

The slither in the economic growth and lack of fiscal prudence means loss of confidence by overseas investors resulting in reduction in foreign fund inflows, which will further result in reduced investments and working capital requirements in the vital sectors that will make Industrial and Services sectors vulnerable.  This furthur reduces revenue generation by government, increased expenditure and widening fiscal deficit. Additionally, the widening fiscal deficit will further de-value the Indian currency thereby making the essential energy related imports very expensive and shall elevate inflation. The combined impact of deceleration in economic growth and lack of Fiscal prudence is unfortunately very daunting.

The Union Finance Minister, with a right perspective, identified five objectives with obligatory measures to be addressed effectively in the ensuing fiscal year (2012-13) to give the much needed impetus to the economy. However, the onus firmly lies on other coalition partners as well, to bury their petty political ambitions and short sighted interests in the long term interests of this mighty and vibrant nation.