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Dilip D'Souza

On The Agenda: Police Reform or Drink A Lot

You remember, I hope, my last column. In it, I expressed some optimism about the election results. In particular, I mentioned Faizabad constituency, which includes Ayodhya, where the BJP got its behind thwacked. Its candidate there was none other than Vinay Katiyar, the bead-wrapped cowboy of the Bajrang Dal.

I mention Faizabad again because what happened there might just be a tiny microcosm of the the '98 elections. In particular, of the theme I went on about last time: the way the optimism the election wrought was invariably tempered with despair.

Indeed, Katiyar lost. Indeed, that was a timely notice to the BJP and its supporters that people eventually look for more than an obsession with temples. Those are both good things, as far as I'm concerned. What's not so good is the man who beat Katiyar in Faizabad, the man whose delightful past I saved for this column. That's a fellow called Mitrasen Yadav, from the Samajwadi Party. Our friend Mitrasen has, as a prominent entry on his resume, an actual conviction for a murder in 1966. He was given a life sentence -- a life sentence, yes -- for that murder, but was later acquitted. He has at least 11 more cases against him under a veritable waterfall of IPC section numbers.

Fine, so this is no more than routine peas pulao for Mitrasen's party. It showered UP's voters with candidates who sported criminal records, among whom Mitrasen -- if you can believe it -- stands out not at all. But mull a while over the choice Ayodhya's poor voters had. On the one hand, a bigot whose selling point is that he spreads hate and preaches destruction -- and is facing criminal prosecution too, in the Babri Masjid demolition case. On the other, a criminal thug.

So, if you lived in Ayodhya and you had tired of the pernicious campaign to whip up religious passions that has centered there for so many years, you had an alternative this year: you could vote for vicious crime.

That was the choice in Faizabad.

Perhaps you hold close to your chest the fond hope that your own favourite party did not offer the electorate criminals to vote for? Well, forget it. The Congress, the BJP, the CPI (ML), the RJD, the Janata Dal, the Samata Party, the Shiv Sena, the JMM (all varieties), the RJP, the BSP, the AIADMK, various smaller parties, independents, rebels and the Samajwadi Party -- all put up or were dubious candidates. So much for pious pronouncements every party makes about ridding politics of crime. Corrupt, communal, secular, disciplined, sons of the soil, cadre-based, Marxist, whatever you like, whatever they profess -- they were indistinguishable in this one thing above all: they gave us scores of candidates with criminal records. Many of whom won.

This might well be the distinguishing feature of the election: the way it has ensured that a gang that belongs more properly in jail will march into that august building in the heart of New Delhi and make laws for us to live by.

If that doesn't make you want to throw up, I've got more for you to chew on. This round of elections also conferred respectability on these famed people whose deeds turned your stomachs not so long ago: Sukh Ram (Himachal Vikas Congress), Kalpnath Rai (Samata Party), Om Parkash Chautala (Haryana Lok Dal (R)), Madhukar Sarpotdar (Shiv Sena), Laloo Prasad Yadav (RJD) and Dr J Jayalalitha (AIADMK). In fact, so respectable has the lady doctor become, that when she arrived in New Delhi on Sunday night, Sushma Swaraj of the BJP welcomed her with garlands of flowers.

I feel the bile rise in my throat.

Under the hopeful banner "Now get down to real work, you guys", the Sunday Times of India devoted a page of its March 8 issue to an exploration of what our new Parliament "must tackle with utmost seriousness and without delay." There, Ram Joshi, ex-vice-chancellor of Bombay University, says "priority number one is the universalisation of primary education." Chidambara Chandrasekaran, a demographer, thinks "every MP must be asked to visit his or her constituency every month and speak on (population control)". Ela Bhatt, the Magsaysay Award winner from Ahmedabad, says "the next government should accord top priority to child care." And Ram Jethmalani, the well-known lawyer, tells us that the new MPs must turn the long-delayed Lokpal Bill into law "to end corruption in high places, including that of the prime minister, ministers and MPs."

I read these, and several other valuable suggestions on this page, and I found myself wondering: what have these eminences been drinking?

Can a Chautala be expected to understand what universalisation of primary education means, let alone work to implement it? Is a Sarpotdar actually going to visit his constituency every month to speak about population control, or care about child care? Will Sukh Ram and Kalpnath Rai and Jayalalitha and Mitrasen Yadav really be interested in ending corruption among MPs? Sukh Ram, the dude with cash in his bed sheets?

Please, let's be serious.

Let's be serious, indeed. Now the elections are done with, we've woken to find that the hole of criminal politics is dug deeper than it ever has been. That's a very serious matter. Nearly two generations of Indians have been deprived of the experience of seeing criminal politicians go to jail. What can we do about that?

It's hard to know where to start, even with the Sunday Times page in my hand. Still, I would probably plump for something not mentioned on that page at all: police reform. We have to find ways to motivate the police to arrest and punish politicians guilty of crimes against us. Without this, every other reform, every other programme, will remain as meaningless as it has all these years. For criminals are not interested in programmes, they are interested in crime.

As long ago as 1981, the National Police Commission recommended a series of reforms for the police. It commented that "interference with the police system ... especially by politicians, encourages the police personnel to believe that their career advancement does not at all depend on the merits of their professional performance, but can be secured by currying favour with politicians who count... This process sets the system on the downward slope to decay and total ineffectiveness." In other words, the police do not take action against politicians for fear of reprisals that will affect their careers. In turn, politicians use the police to do the nasty for them.

The NPC recognised that the police must be able to operate independently; politicians cannot be allowed to retain the control they now have over police officers' careers. With this in mind, the NPC recommended the constitution of a State Security Commission in each state. This Commission will be made up of the Home Minister of the state, two MLAs (one from the ruling party, the other from the opposition) and four appointees from among retired judges, government servants or other respected public figures. Rather than the home minister alone, as now, it is the SSC that will evaluate police performance, deal with transfers and promotions and so on.

Constituting such an SSC, according to the NPC, will "help considerably in making police performance politically neutral."

There should be no need to point out, but I will anyway, that in the nearly two decades since its reports were submitted, none of the NPC's recommendations have been implemented. Naturally, politicians are reluctant to give up control of the police. That reluctance makes it more imperative still that public pressure forces them to do so. I suspect much of the wishful thinking in the Sunday Times can wait: if we outside the Lok Sabha can adopt a one-point agenda of demanding police reform until it happens, we will have achieved a great deal. All those other nice things might then actually take off.

So hear us, Atal Bihari and Inder Kumar and Sharad, as also Mitrasen and Madhukar and Om Prakash: pick up those NPC reports, blow the dust off them and get down to implementing the reforms they suggest. Make it your business to constitute those State Security Commissions immediately. Allow the police to function independently, free of political interference.

Hmm. What IS this stuff I've been drinking?

Dilip D'Souza