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July 21, 2011
India's post-26/11 police reforms painted stripes on a donkey and passed it off as a tiger.
Policing a country of a billion people, lamented Union Home Minister P. Chidambaram, in a speech delivered last summer, is not an easy task.
Last week, after the murderous bombings in Mumbai, Mr. Chidambaram reassured the city's residents that he was on top of the gargantuan job of modernising India's Mughal-era police infrastructure: ever since 26/11, the police force had become better trained, better equipped and better motivated to deal with terror attacks.
Figures available with Mr. Chidambaram's Ministry, however, show he was being economical with the truth: the pace of betterment has, at best, been glacial. Maharashtra's Anti-Terrorism Squad still has less than half the personnel the government admits it needs; its special weapons and tactics unit is undertrained and under-resourced; its coastal security programme has run aground.
Enormous deficits of resources and capacities like these characterise almost every police force in the country: the much-hyped, multimillion police reform programme initiated after 26/11, it is becoming clear, painted stripes on a doddering donkey and passed it off as a tiger.
Post-26/11 security reforms are painstakingly documented in the reports released by the MHA each year. The latest report, for 2010-2011, is 307 pages long up from the 216 put together in 2009-2010, Mr. Chidambaram's first full year in charge of the gargantuan task of dragging India's security and intelligence infrastructure out of the Mughal era.
The healthy increase in the volume of text might give reason to believe a great deal is being done but a close reading suggests that this conclusion would be wrong.
Read full article...The Hindu : Opinion / Lead : The Indian fine art of faking security
India's post-26/11 police reforms painted stripes on a donkey and passed it off as a tiger.
Policing a country of a billion people, lamented Union Home Minister P. Chidambaram, in a speech delivered last summer, is not an easy task.
Last week, after the murderous bombings in Mumbai, Mr. Chidambaram reassured the city's residents that he was on top of the gargantuan job of modernising India's Mughal-era police infrastructure: ever since 26/11, the police force had become better trained, better equipped and better motivated to deal with terror attacks.
Figures available with Mr. Chidambaram's Ministry, however, show he was being economical with the truth: the pace of betterment has, at best, been glacial. Maharashtra's Anti-Terrorism Squad still has less than half the personnel the government admits it needs; its special weapons and tactics unit is undertrained and under-resourced; its coastal security programme has run aground.
Enormous deficits of resources and capacities like these characterise almost every police force in the country: the much-hyped, multimillion police reform programme initiated after 26/11, it is becoming clear, painted stripes on a doddering donkey and passed it off as a tiger.
Post-26/11 security reforms are painstakingly documented in the reports released by the MHA each year. The latest report, for 2010-2011, is 307 pages long up from the 216 put together in 2009-2010, Mr. Chidambaram's first full year in charge of the gargantuan task of dragging India's security and intelligence infrastructure out of the Mughal era.
The healthy increase in the volume of text might give reason to believe a great deal is being done but a close reading suggests that this conclusion would be wrong.
Read full article...The Hindu : Opinion / Lead : The Indian fine art of faking security
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