The ‘Constabulary’, seen as a ‘Beat Constable’ or the ‘PCR’ has received least attention in police smartening drives. The fact that they give a ‘face’ to policing by being first responders to city’s or citizen’s emergency has also been understudied. Smart cities see proactive patrols through a fleet of smart speedy vehicles with blinkering red and blue strobe lights and beeping yelp sirens matching the Scotland Yard Metropolitan police of London notwithstanding the gagged khaki beneath the powerful ranks. Smart cities have not been able to improve people’s satisfaction with police performance.
UNDERSTANDING A POLICE CONSTABLE
Historically, the title of “constable” is supposed to be having many origins but the most appropriately respectable to this position comes from UK where a constable or a castellan is an officer charged with the defence of a castle. One could see the Constable of the Tower of London even today. A constable is a law enforcer in most countries or a peace maker as in USA but in every capacity this rank is one of the most strategic bridge between people and the government. It is a position trusted and respected for higher level performance under country’s democratic constitution.
With an average take-home salary ranging between Rs.21,000 to Rs.35,000, constables are expected to work 24/7 and 365 days with festive holidays only adding more work to them. They can rarely demand time for their families or timely food and rest including medical emergency at home. Above all this, they are treated with impudence by people and belittled by their bosses all the time. They carry the historic stamp of being corrupt, working for easy money and discount calls of duties. In smaller towns they are turned into kitchen and family help, child care tasks, cleaning floors and jesters for their officers. A constable has no shoulder insignia and his maximum promotion much later in life can only be to a level of head constable with one strip or one chevron, depending mostly upon his ability to keep his masters in good humour. Only very fortunate ones are able to reach the ASI level before retirement.
DIVERTING ‘CONSTABULARY’ REFORMS TO TECH-IMPLANTATION
Sometime back the Bureau of Police Research and Development (BPR&D) prepared a Concept Note on ‘Policing in Smart Cities’in which the standard items considered for special attention were found no different from what the Second Administrative Commission’s (ARC) Fifth Report on Public Order had described a decade ago. Attention towards Constabulary only became weaker as digitization, automation, and convergence technologies on 5G became integral to smart city processes and systems for citizen-safety, public order maintenance, criminal investigation, information security, etc. The BPR&D paper acknowledged vulnerability of technology-based systems and large-scale collapses due to cascading effect of minor system breaches yet even in their Plan B, they could not place the constable legitimately. This is the high intellectual and experiential deficits encountered repeatedly in police reforms since 1902. Suggested reforms since then have continued to prescribe simply mechanical duties to this so called, ‘cutting edge’ functionary considered ‘least-worthy’ in police force. A modern city exposes him to increased public interaction including investigations, search and registering FIRs. The Second ARC’s 5th Report recognized that any police reform to be meaningful should begin from this primary interface of police with people. However, for whatever reasons, this laboriously prepared separate chapter on Constabulary did not figure out in the final report that was published by the Department of Administrative Reforms and Public Grievance around 2009.
EFFORTS AT CONSTABULARY REFORMS
From the Padmanabhaiah Report of 2000 to the 5th Report of II ARC some common crucial issues have been outlined for consideration as a prelude to improving performance of Constabulary. Many facts which were exposed in the report were highly regressive for this force. Constables constitute 87% of police force, are working beyond routine duties into investigations and judgements for decision making, their eligibility criteria is X or XII pass and are promoted only once in their career. By the time they become Head Constable, they mostly become much demotivated to perform.They are rarely relieved from their jobs to undertake capacity building training and expertise development to conduct professional investigations.Their public conduct deteriorates and trust deficit in police widens and deepens, due to this most often police is seen as corrupt, inefficient and politically partisan. The Report had recommended replacement of the existing system with recruitment of graduates at the level of Assistant Sub-Inspector of Police (ASI).A long list of reforms were suggested in improving service conditions for Constabulary related to their satisfaction level at work, in relation to their families and support for children, assured jobs to their family members and in medical and retirement benefits. This discourse has come to a dead end in a smart city and new inexperienced self-absorbed state governments have started replacing much needed holistic reforms with segmental vote bank led reforms of recruiting more women, purchasing new equipments, building new ‘Thanas’(Police Stations) and changeover to new patrolling vehicles. Rarely could one come across any increase in quality or quantity of capacity building programmes for constables which in-fact should be incentivised training programmes to be conducted in Administrative Training Institutes(ATIs) of states. Some Directors of ATIs revealed in confidence that constables rarely attend programmes designed especially for them as their officers never relieve them citing scarcity of ground personnel as one and the only standard reason.
In 2013, realizing need for implementing the 5th Report of Second ARC, many opposition members across political parties ie; Nana Patil, Harsh Vardhan, Jeetendra Singh Bundela,Rama Subbu and Asaduddin Owaisi had put in a starred question in the Parliament.The MoS for Home Affairs Shri Mullapally Ramachandran had in his reply passed on the buck to the state governments, saying that, ‘As per the Seventh Schedule to the Constitution of India, ‘Police’ and ‘Public Order’ are State subjects and, as such, most of the recommendations contained in the 5th Report of the Second ARC have to be implemented by the States. It is, therefore, important that the views of the State Governments on these 153 recommendation are taken on board before a final decision in the matter is taken.’ The demand never picked up and whatever little the report contained on Constabulary, could not ever be brought centre stage to smart city discourse on police reforms.
CHALLENGES FACED BY STATE ADMINISTRATIVE INSTITUTES
Smart cities are in a hurry for reforms which can glitter irrespective of their ability to feed city’s sustainability needs. In the last few years some of the training programmes conducted for non-gazetted police personnel across some states have focused on women constables and probationary ASIs. These programmes are conducted towards safeguarding women through rigorous commando training in unarmed combat, make them physcially fit and agile at police stations, railways, metro rail, airports and in their postings at special police unit for women, children and PCR units. A constable is again sidelined for his age and gender. This form of patriarchal segregation only deepens with separate training for men and women constables and between young and older ones since behind all such constructions of training modules lies a subtle patriarchy of philanthropy towards women in police. In my interaction with BPR&D during Dr Kiran Bedi’s tenure her frequently organized meetings with police and community stakeholders had repeatedly highlighted this aspect that was growing up within police that senior men officers were becoming self-appointed messiah of women police personnel to guide and plan for them or a tendency to appoint women to resolve women’s problems. A smart city police should shed such patriarchal concerns in training constables which are dictated by senior officers drenched for ages in patriarchy themselves. To be additionally kind to women constables is also a form of ailing patriarchy that places men officers in a seat of provider. Such a psychology spoils objectives of most capacity building programmes which in consequence get confined to physical modes of training about body, equipment and saviour skills not about attitudinal change through exposure to new knowledge and changing contours of modern society. One such ‘exposure training’ such as the initiative of community policing which was introduced in cities after the landmark judgement of the Supreme Court (2006) in a PIL filed by Prakash Singh has not touched reformers in smart cities notwithstanding its increasingly growing need.
CONCLUSIONS
Police reforms are expected to be part of institutional or governance reforms which form the third pillar of smart cities, the other three envisaged pillars being social, physical, and economic infrastructure. However, what fails the vision of smart cities is an embedded intellectual limitation or a technology-determined flight against the grassroots occupied by constables who are the first responders to people’s problems. The Constabulary which builds trust, faith, and communication in governance should reclaim its position in police reforms. The Smart City Mission is expected to acknowledge this neglect and provide governable cities beyond their reduction ad absurdum of perceived smartness.
The author is president of Network Asia Pacific Disaster Research Group, Senior Fellow at the Institute of Social Sciences, and former Professor of Administrative Reforms and Emergency Governance at JNU. The views expressed are personal. This piece is the fourth part of a series of five articles on ‘Grassroots Concerns of Smart Cities Mission’.