Law and Order - The missing reform
Law and Order is the first reform that enables all other reforms.
The Indian bureaucracy and judiciary are riddled with corruption. Politicians have been a lost cause for four decades.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his team are not corrupt. However, they have shown extreme reluctance to deal with the bureaucratic deep state, and their mechanism for rooting out corruption is relatively ineffective. In an earlier post, I explained how Modi has reduced the reliance on the bureaucracy, not eliminated or reformed it.
We need Law and Order Reform.
The premise of an exceptional law and order society is straightforward.
The population understands illegal behaviour and clearly knows its repercussions.
The guilty party is caught promptly, and his guilt is established quickly.
The guilty party gets punishment as prescribed in the law immediately and has to bear the full and complete sentence.
The victim does not have to bear the cost and gets compensation or restitution to a degree that is possible.
But the crux of this is the law and order machinery
True reform will come if you set the law and order machinery right and then take on all these contentious issues.
Judicial reform has to start from the Supreme Court, filter to the High Courts and then down to the lowest judicial level.
For starters, we need a Supreme Court that is clean beyond doubt. This reform will be tricky and must be undertaken by the apex court itself.
The reforms should begin with the declaration of criteria for selecting judges at the High Courts and the Supreme Court.
Furthermore, these criteria must include a procedure for removing judges found to be corrupt. This system is currently being operated through remarks made on confidential files using grapevine and other such techniques. Either formalise this system and make it transparent or improve it.
For this investigation, the courts need their own investigative corps.
The government must exercise caution so as not to intervene in the process. The government should allow the Supreme Court to arrive at its own system. The Supreme Court must table its report on the effectiveness of this system every year to the President. I will detail judicial reform in a separate post.
At the same time, we need police reform as well.
Both at the centre and the states.
At the centre, we need a reorganisation of the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI). We can completely abolish it and start afresh. Recruit new personnel, pay them well, and monitor them against corruption. The states should clean the police force in the same manner. Concurrently, begin rationalising the criminal laws of the country. We have too many laws and too little justice.
In Georgia, they fired the entire traffic police on one day and then replaced the entire police force. It may be radical, but sometimes radical reform is a necessity.
A Radical proposal for reforming the State police forces.
Enact a law allowing states to raise a "Special Police Corps" or SPC at the state level. This SPC will sign a document disclosing their personal wealth and face confiscation of all additional wealth if found guilty of corruption. They will also be liable to serve a jail term of at least five years and up to 20 years for each offence, and none of these sentences can be served concurrently.
Raise such SPCs in each state. They should have a separate structure with no overlap or sharing of resources or personnel with the present police.
The SPC should include traffic beat, criminal investigation, anti-corruption, fraud investigation arms, technology cell, anti-terror squad, and quick response units. It is crucial that this group has its own legal prosecution unit that is not hired from the current set of practising lawyers.
Replace standard police district by district (or zone by zone) with SPC.
Fire all the present branches of the police and provide them with salary and pension benefits. [That will cost less than the economic cost of allowing them to work]. This includes the Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB), Indian Police Service (IPS) cadre, criminal investigations, traffic units, and the State Reserve Police Force (SRPF); all should be dismissed.
Start investigating and prosecuting corruption cases against police and other government servants, including government officers (central, state, and local), bank officers, tax officials, bureaucrats, and all employees of public sector units (PSUs).
Concurrently, we need to reform the police infrastructure as well.
The following is taken from the election manifesto I designed for a political party:
Police Reform is the starting point of law and Order reform. It starts with a healthy, capable, and equipped police force. No force will be empowered if appropriate conditions do not exist at work and home.
We intend to focus our energy on improving police housing, improving police stations, improving equipment, recruiting, and restoring sanity to duty hours.
Women's protection, children's protection, and old-age help will be essential items on the agenda. We intend to strengthen protection against domestic violence.
The nature and impact of crimes have changed significantly. We need to strengthen investigations into financial crimes and technology-based crimes, including identity theft, social media defamation, and the inappropriate use of technology to circulate doctored images to damage the reputations of individuals, among other things.
With these will come additional responsibilities and improved training and fitness regimens.
It goes without saying that this aspect was overlooked entirely. Therefore, I do not have much faith in political parties making improvements to the police. Nevertheless, this does not diminish the significance of this reform. Once this reform is underway, you will witness a dramatic increase in public confidence, which will enhance the anti-corruption ranking and bolster trust in the economy.
In Sum
Law and Order is not ONE of the reforms; it is the FIRST reform. It allows for all other reforms to flow smoothly. Modi has done exceedingly well in delivering all the reforms and benefits without reforming law and order. But the time has come when we can no longer ignore it.
Notes:
World Bank Report on Reform in Georgia
Lots of wishful thinking in the post. I am all for reducing government but with respect to law and order, I do think the police : citizen ratio is too low,so is the judge: population ratio. I also disagree that the reform needs to come top to bottom. Perhaps, an inversion is needed where reforms come from those involved in the Nitty gritty of everyday legal as well as police processes.