Cops Are "Civilians": Take # 2

The Barkha Dutt Show last night was on Maoism, and featured a very senior IPS officer with a huge handlebar moustache; a very "military" mien. During the show, this dude said something so stupid and wrong that I decided to comment on it today, to be read along with yesterday's post. The IPS officer said that policemen are like soldiers in the armed forces, because they too wear a uniform. Barkha too kept referring to constables of the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) as "soldiers."

Nothing could be further from the truth. Policemen are "civilians" and this IPS officer was himself recruited through a "Civil Services Examination."

Indeed, what has gone wrong with policing in India is that it is increasingly becoming a "military police." This is just another sordid aspect of socialist totalitarianism. The Central State has over 200 battalions of the CRPF under its command and control, and they are used at will to supercede the local police. This is a development in our polity that should be a cause for great worry.

We in India, because of State Socialism, have lost the essence of "civil government." Our politicians are all "party animals" who never earn their keep in The Market. They just live off the fat of the land. Our "civil servants" are all party workers too - and this means that our government is a "party government" - of the socialist party or parties. The very word "civilian," in India, does not apply to any government functionary.

It was the Honourable East India Company that brought civil government to India. There were three "services" to which a recruit could belong - the civil service, the military service, and the opium service. The lowest rung of their civil service was that of "writer," and he was known as a "civilian" - to differentiate him from the military man. There was no separate police service till 1861, by which time the administration of India had been passed on to the Crown. But the Imperial Police was still civilian. George Orwell worked for this branch of the government - in Burma. The officers of the Imperial Police would have been aghast had anyone considered them at par with the military.

When India first got its police forces in 1861, the idea was still quite new in Britain itself. Robert Peel had created the London Metropolitan Police a few decades earlier - the "Bobby" is named after him - and it is unthinkable that these unarmed constables could be likened to recruits to the British Army. They were, and still are, civilians.

The very fact that a senior IPS officer, on prime-time television, could call his office "military," and the added fact that the CRPF "military police" are seen as the solution to our law and order problems, illustrates how horrible our "civil administration" has become. Especially the police.

In yesterday's post I had outlined my solution to Maoism: Withdraw the State Police from all tribal areas. Let the tribals "self-police." For a long-term solution to our problems, I suggest DRASTIC police reforms. We don't need a military police. We certainly don't need a politicized State police. At worst, let us have local constabulary under the control of city and town mayors, to perform duties of riot control only, where necessary. Nothing more.

For more on my views on criminal justice, see the relevant chapter in my Natural Order: Essays Exploring Civil Government & The Rule of Law, free e-book here.