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.

PEACE........THE VANISHING FACET

Ironically, a part of the media is proud that India is rated better than Pakistan though; we are in the bottom quarter of the Global Peace Index (GPI) scale and slid from a pathetic 109th rank in 2007 to dismal 128th rank in 2009 of the 149 countries considered for the study. I, unfortunately, fail to figure out why most of us, including media, are so obsessed with Pakistan in every sphere. Even a child will admit to the fact that the only way to improve in any sphere is to look up to the one’s doing better than we are and working towards it. Pakistan, in no way is a Bench mark for our growth in this fast growing world. However, in absolute terms, we are dragging our selves down the scale due to obsessions, political opportunism, corruption, apathy of the common man towards day to day happenings, division of society and people through mounting animosity among humanity etc.
Institute for Economics and Peace (IEP) a US based organisation considers following parameters in arriving at the rankings:
• Internal conflicts
• Terrorism
• Human rights abuse


What is plaguing India is not Human rights abuse? In some countries, the citizens do not have the right to expression and right to choose the government. After having travelled extensively in reasonable number of countries across globe, interacting with citizens of broad spectrum of countries and residing in different countries, I can confidently say that we rank much better in terms of Human rights abuse. Nevertheless, we are losing our PEACE due to internal conflicts and Terrorism which are on rise.
Internal conflicts, be it Ultra-left rebel movement, agitations for separate states, regional and linguistic animosities, River water disputes and Unrest arising from Unemployment and Inflation are result of apathy of the common man towards deterioration of the values in the Indian society, unclipped power enjoyed by the ruling elite, Business houses, emergence of fundamentalism in all spheres of life and resignation of common man to the happenings around him. It is worth while looking at contemporary case in points randomly to demonstrate the deteriorating society.

Corruption: Bofors scandal in l980’s was all about 400 Million Rupees. The citizens of the country at that point of time have rightly shown the door to the corrupt government then. However, telecom scam in the first decade of this new Millennium is worth 5 to 10 Billion Rupees. Despite the enormous magnitude of this scam, the regional party which was involved in the scam and the ruling National party were given another term in this great Democracy.
Political Bankruptcy: Around 20 Engineers in Shriram sagar (Major Irrigation) project in Andhra Pradesh were suspended by the government when Engineers involvement in the corruption surfaced. Paradoxically, a regional party fuelling animosity among the regions with in Andhra Pradesh for political gains is protecting the corrupt officials in the guise of regional bias by the present government. Can anything be more blatant than this? It is amply evident that the political elite we trust are fanning negative emotions and demeaning the society for their own narrow and disgraceful goals.
Ultra left rebels & Anti-social elements: These outlaws and devious groups are involved in extortion, mass killings and dis-orientation of society. In spite, they find backing of some devious individuals, a few ideologically bankrupt politicians and professionals. If successive governments in the infected states were committed, they could have easily surmounted these groups either during their infancy phase or their development phase. To demonstrate this, we need to look in to a news item on how Ultra-left rebels felt suffocated in Jharkand state after the state has come under President’s rule and resulted in the migration of the rebels to West Bengal. Unfortunately, political head wigs in West Bengal across all parties (including the Railway Minister) are indifferent on taking a firm action on the rebels even after so many innocent lives were lost in the train accident due to a suspected sabotage by the rebels. To top it all, there is a disagreement among Federal ministers on the ways and means to fight the rebels, thus mounting the probability of more threats to the common man on the street.
Terrorism: There is a growing scepticism in people across India and outside the country that the Federal and state governments are soft on Terrorist groups due to the fear of alienating a religious community which is considered an obvious vote bank. It does not require the knowledge of rocket science to understand how Afzal Guru, the master mind behind Parliament attacks which has shaken the country could survive so long even after being handed the capital punishment by the highest Judiciary of the country. There are persistence intelligence reports that terrorist groups may resort to terrorist activities and hijacking of planes to secure the release of surviving terrorists in the custody of the law enforcing agencies namely Afzal Guru and Kasab. We fail to understand why the government is dragging its feet in implementing the pronounced court judgements and thus putting many more innocent lives in danger to possible attempts by accomplices of terrorists in securing their release. Regrettably, a few disillusioned people and victims of terror in other communities have retaliated with acts of terrorism, which is highly condemnable and to be nipped in the bud. “An Eye for an Eye” justice does not auger well for our secular society.
Unfortunately, Indian Citizen’s memory is getting shorter and apathy to the transgression in the country is ever-increasing which is a sign of further deterioration in values in the Indian Society and escalation of unrest in the country. It’s time to wake up from the slumber and do our bit.
Citizens of Iceland need to be appreciated for ranking 2nd in the scale despite facing the worst economic crisis in their country’s history in 2009. Generally, economic crisis leads to social unrest and further escalation of crisis. This can be seen in Greece in 2010. However, the citizens of Iceland and the political big wigs across the party lines in that country had shown enormous resolve to overcome the crisis without hurting its social fabric. Kudos to its ruling elite and its citizens.