Commentary/Dilip Thakore

Bad law and order could swallow
economic reforms' gains

All over the country the law and order maintenance systems are breaking down as a consequence of decades of neglect and sustained abuse of the police and paramilitary forces by politicians in New Delhi and the state capitals.

The extent to which the nation's police apparatus has deteriorated and become lumpensied was dramatically highlighted by the broad daylight shooting of three businessmen by the Delhi police in a bizarre case of mistaken identity.

The shooting of two (of the three) wholly innocent businessmen to death was not as unforgivable as the Delhi police chief's statement to reporters implied. The police is "sorry but not apologetic" about the incident, he had said.

It is hardly surprising that S C Burman, the retired police commissioner of the Garden City of Bangalore, obliged to comment in a moment of rare candour that "Over 95 per cent of the city's police officers are incompetent" and have been appointed on considerations other than merit.

Indeed, the extent to which the law and order maintenance machinery has been run down and the rank and file of the police and paramilitary forces have been infiltrated by ill-qualified lumpen elements cannot but cause disquiet within the business community and well-wishers of the hitherto moribund Indian economy.

An economy, which after a four-decade failed romance with Soviet-style socialism, is finally beginning to experience an annual GDP growth rate on a par with the tiger economies of Southeast Asia.

A decade after the infamous Bhagalpur blinding of suspects by the police, similar atrocities have come to light in Gujarat recently. And a daily diet of horror stories from the badlands of Bihar and Uttar Pradesh tend to indicate that the law and order machinery in the two populous cowbelt states has collapsed with private armies and vigilante groups assuming justice administration and tax collection functions.

More unnerving is the culture of anarchy and lawlessness which is spreading outwards from these Hindi heartland states into the other states of the Union.

Surprisingly few, if any, economic and media pundits have been moved to emphasise the self-evident connection between economic development and the maintenance of law and order.

Let alone foreign investment, even domestic investors are likely to be wary about doing business in parts of the country where the law, order and justice systems are in a state of disrepair.

It is hardly a coincidence that despite their large markets and wealth of natural resources Uttar Pradesh and Bihar are the most under-developed states of the Indian Union.

Likewise even the relatively more literate states of Kerala and West Bengal are economically underdeveloped because they are plagued by gangsterism, thinly disguised as militant trade unionism.

It is necessary to highlight that the primary function of the government, especially in developing nations, is to maintain law and order and to build credible justice delivery systems.

There is a surfeit of case histories of national governments which have neglected this primary function of government, forcing their publics to pay bitter prices in terms of human suffering and lost development opportunities.

Among the nations which have lost their development drive and opportunities because of their government's chronic failure to maintain law and order are Zaire, Sierra Leone, oil-rich Nigeria and a host of nations in South America. Nearer home, neighbouring Afghanistan and perhaps Pakistan seem headed that way.

Over a decade ago, a National Police Commission constituted by the government, recommended sweeping changes in the wage structures, administrative systems, service conditions and recruitment and training procedures of police personnel all over the country.

Unfortunately the recommendations of the commission have remained a dead letter with most cash-strapped state government (law and order maintenance is a state subject under the Constitution) ignoring its eminently sensible recommendations.

And given the poor quality of the nation's politicians who are only too keen to convert police and parliamentary forces to their own usually dubious uses, the prospect of the NPC recommendations appearing on their agendas is remote.

In the circumstance, against the backdrop of independent regulatory authorities for utilities being the flavour of the season, this is a good time for business representative organisations such as the national chambers of commerce to begin exerting pressure on New Delhi to convert the NPC into an independent regulatory authority with mandatory powers to supervise the recruitment, training and management of police and paramilitary forces all over the country.

As is becoming increasingly apparent, Indian industry and trade has the most to lose when the law and order machinery breaks down. Therefore the initiative for reform will have to emanate from within industry and the ranks of the citizenry. Quite obviously the nation's law, order (and justice) systems are too important to be left to the nation's purblind politicians.

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