By Maxwell Pereira
In my email traffic the other day I had one from this young couple who wanted to adopt a baby. It was the lady who addressed me, but did not elaborate the reason why they preferred to adopt, just said, “…need some help – my husband and I are going ahead with bringing home a baby and give it tender loving care… required adoption papers also include a Police Verification from the SHO - that we do not have a criminal record… the police station when approached told us this will not be done easily, the application has to be submitted to the DCP Office on a stamp paper; from where after some ground work the papers will be sent to our local police station to work on; ….the run around’s been for some time…. no complaint, but an appeal for help; could you please guide…. the adoption papers have to be submitted within a stipulated time… my husband and I hold valid Indian passports, and both work as managers for good organisations”.
I replied and assured the lady she’d done right, the procedure she’d been told was also right – but to expedite, if in her opinion my ‘superannuated’ intervention would help, I’d oblige by speaking to either the SHO or the DCP. I waited not for her response, but rang up the concerned DCP, apprised him of the lady’s plight passing on to him her particulars, arranged for her an appointment, and then rang her back asking her to meet the DCP the next morning at the appointed hour.
Before the sun could set the next day, I was inundated with quite a few emails of thanks and appreciation – starting from the baby-adopting lady herself and from others she had spoken to about her unbelievable experience. She was euphoric with her delight. She with her husband had been to the DCP’s office that morning, who had heard her out patiently, and when she had finished, just presented her the verification certificate she had sought – with the compliments of the police department. Can any one really measure the mountain of goodwill the DCP earned for Delhi Police that day!?
350 words: 19.08.2005: Copyright © Maxwell Pereira:
For interaction, available at: 3725 Sector-23 Gurgaon-122001;
mfjpkamath@gmail.com & http:/www.planetindia.net.maxwell
Friday, 19 August 2005
Sunday, 7 August 2005
Funding Law Enforcement Infrastructure
By Maxwell Pereira
An American criminologist once told me, that the American media is cautious about criticising or exaggerating inadequacies in the law enforcement machinery; lest this criticism becomes the basis for concerned enforcement authorities to clamour for more personnel, more equipment, vehicles and technology – basically, more infrastructure. Thereby pinching the pockets of a people who have to pay more to the local administration who provide these services.
In most developed countries, people pay for their policing through the local bodies. Police departments function under the local city administration, under a Mayor or whatever other designation the local administrator is called, who hires and fires the person/s employed to satisfy the particular needs of its citizens according to requirement and performance. So a non-performing policeman gets the immediate boot, and a force less provided for gets the additional infrastructure needed without much ado.
So people are also wary of demanding indiscriminately for additional infrastructure, since in the end it is they who have to pay for it through hard cash collected at the local level, and not through indirect or phantom central taxation systems that do not touch or impact most and pinch only a fraction of the citizenry, leaving the majority non-payers of tax also as the major votaries for infrastructural demands. Under the circumstances, it is for the discerning populace to understand and decide which is better, and what they want.
In our own existing system where police as a State Subject for areas of governance is under the control of the State machinery and its budget, supplemented by the Central budget – the onus of deciding whether or not the police infrastructure is adequate, resting solely and I repeat solely on the shoulders of that Ministry or the Secretariat babu, who considers it his birth right to shoot down every new proposal for additional infrastructure that lands on his desk. This, not because there is no merit in the proposal, but because of a carefully cultivated psyche with which he has armed and engulfed himself over decades of sustained brainwashing from the powers that be, to do so!
Hence the perpetual cry of indiscriminate demands, of inadequacies in infrastructure – not only in the police departments, but across the board in all walks of governmental activity. In my opinion, this will continue forever till the present system continues and the burden rests on the vicious babu’s frail and ever burdened frame.
Against this background, comes the Supreme Court’s recent suggestion to the Centre to keep aside a particular sum of money in every law henceforth enacted by Parliament to deal with the financial burden imposed on the judiciary to enforce the legislation. Suggested by the apex court as one of the steps to make the justice delivery mechanism faster and cheaper in matters involving civil disputes, the idea is laudable… and it is hoped the Centre will give serious thought to ensure the judicial impact assessment of every law (being) enacted… Especially to work out in advance it’s financial and budgetary impact, including an estimate of the likely number of civil and criminal cases arising there from – and the courts, staff and infrastructure needed to deal with it!
The court has also urged the Centre, through the Finance Commission, to consider providing funds required to bear conciliation and mediation costs, pointing out otherwise these costs could act as a deterrent to the popularity of the Alternate Dispute Resolution mechanisms already available.
The apex court’s commendable and path-breaking suggestion actually boils down to, and needs to be viewed in the larger context of the adequacy/ inadequacies in the overall law enforcement machinery – encompassing the entire justice administration system, and not just the judiciary. No doubt judiciary is an important and culminating rung in the State’s criminal justice administration system to render justice to its constituents, but what is important is not to lose sight of the fact that the police and the prosecution wings are also the inevitable and crucial channels which the justice delivery mechanism has to wade through before reaching the judiciary for ultimate delivery of justice. Not only that, not to be ignored too are the prison/correctional services that follow a judicial verdict and are so impacted, needing inclusion in the overall impact assessment of a new law (being) enacted. In this context need one to really spell out the plethora of social legislations that also clutter up our basket of laws crying out for effective enforcement?
The infrastructural adequacy of each of the wings in the overall Criminal Justice Administration System, including the judiciary, is crucial for its health. That the adequacy of the infrastructural health of police departments – the first and the cutting edge rung of the CJAS – is a matter of constant concern needs no elaboration.
What needs to be realised is the fact that by virtue of it being the first rung and the visibly impacting strong arm of the government to enforce laws, the police are saddled with inherent powers to enforce every law and new enactment, and especially the penal provisions therein. This, irrespective of whether or not a separate department is created by the Government for the purpose of enforcing the new law. Consequently, it is this fact that needs to be borne in mind and suitably addressed by the government while sending up any new law for Parliament to enact. It is this fact that also needs to be borne in mind by Parliamentarians both in the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha, and ultimately by the President, before finally making any law that needs enforcement.
900 words: 07.08.2005: Copyright © Maxwell Pereira:
For interaction, available at: 3725 Sector-23 Gurgaon-122001;
mfjpkamath@gmail.com & http:/www.planetindia.net.maxwell
An American criminologist once told me, that the American media is cautious about criticising or exaggerating inadequacies in the law enforcement machinery; lest this criticism becomes the basis for concerned enforcement authorities to clamour for more personnel, more equipment, vehicles and technology – basically, more infrastructure. Thereby pinching the pockets of a people who have to pay more to the local administration who provide these services.
In most developed countries, people pay for their policing through the local bodies. Police departments function under the local city administration, under a Mayor or whatever other designation the local administrator is called, who hires and fires the person/s employed to satisfy the particular needs of its citizens according to requirement and performance. So a non-performing policeman gets the immediate boot, and a force less provided for gets the additional infrastructure needed without much ado.
So people are also wary of demanding indiscriminately for additional infrastructure, since in the end it is they who have to pay for it through hard cash collected at the local level, and not through indirect or phantom central taxation systems that do not touch or impact most and pinch only a fraction of the citizenry, leaving the majority non-payers of tax also as the major votaries for infrastructural demands. Under the circumstances, it is for the discerning populace to understand and decide which is better, and what they want.
In our own existing system where police as a State Subject for areas of governance is under the control of the State machinery and its budget, supplemented by the Central budget – the onus of deciding whether or not the police infrastructure is adequate, resting solely and I repeat solely on the shoulders of that Ministry or the Secretariat babu, who considers it his birth right to shoot down every new proposal for additional infrastructure that lands on his desk. This, not because there is no merit in the proposal, but because of a carefully cultivated psyche with which he has armed and engulfed himself over decades of sustained brainwashing from the powers that be, to do so!
Hence the perpetual cry of indiscriminate demands, of inadequacies in infrastructure – not only in the police departments, but across the board in all walks of governmental activity. In my opinion, this will continue forever till the present system continues and the burden rests on the vicious babu’s frail and ever burdened frame.
Against this background, comes the Supreme Court’s recent suggestion to the Centre to keep aside a particular sum of money in every law henceforth enacted by Parliament to deal with the financial burden imposed on the judiciary to enforce the legislation. Suggested by the apex court as one of the steps to make the justice delivery mechanism faster and cheaper in matters involving civil disputes, the idea is laudable… and it is hoped the Centre will give serious thought to ensure the judicial impact assessment of every law (being) enacted… Especially to work out in advance it’s financial and budgetary impact, including an estimate of the likely number of civil and criminal cases arising there from – and the courts, staff and infrastructure needed to deal with it!
The court has also urged the Centre, through the Finance Commission, to consider providing funds required to bear conciliation and mediation costs, pointing out otherwise these costs could act as a deterrent to the popularity of the Alternate Dispute Resolution mechanisms already available.
The apex court’s commendable and path-breaking suggestion actually boils down to, and needs to be viewed in the larger context of the adequacy/ inadequacies in the overall law enforcement machinery – encompassing the entire justice administration system, and not just the judiciary. No doubt judiciary is an important and culminating rung in the State’s criminal justice administration system to render justice to its constituents, but what is important is not to lose sight of the fact that the police and the prosecution wings are also the inevitable and crucial channels which the justice delivery mechanism has to wade through before reaching the judiciary for ultimate delivery of justice. Not only that, not to be ignored too are the prison/correctional services that follow a judicial verdict and are so impacted, needing inclusion in the overall impact assessment of a new law (being) enacted. In this context need one to really spell out the plethora of social legislations that also clutter up our basket of laws crying out for effective enforcement?
The infrastructural adequacy of each of the wings in the overall Criminal Justice Administration System, including the judiciary, is crucial for its health. That the adequacy of the infrastructural health of police departments – the first and the cutting edge rung of the CJAS – is a matter of constant concern needs no elaboration.
What needs to be realised is the fact that by virtue of it being the first rung and the visibly impacting strong arm of the government to enforce laws, the police are saddled with inherent powers to enforce every law and new enactment, and especially the penal provisions therein. This, irrespective of whether or not a separate department is created by the Government for the purpose of enforcing the new law. Consequently, it is this fact that needs to be borne in mind and suitably addressed by the government while sending up any new law for Parliament to enact. It is this fact that also needs to be borne in mind by Parliamentarians both in the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha, and ultimately by the President, before finally making any law that needs enforcement.
900 words: 07.08.2005: Copyright © Maxwell Pereira:
For interaction, available at: 3725 Sector-23 Gurgaon-122001;
mfjpkamath@gmail.com & http:/www.planetindia.net.maxwell
Monday, 1 August 2005
Needed for Gurgaon – A Commissionerate
By Maxwell Pereira
I know I am running the risk of the powers that be and their secretariats – especially those who push pens to assist these very powers to reign and govern – raising eyebrows. And perhaps of also incurring the wrath of the bureaucracy with my conviction that it is high time Gurgaon gets a Police Commissionerate! For I fear the legendary rivalry between the Services – the IAS and IPS, is bound to stand in the way and cloud the real issues. But if all concerned were to sit up and give it a serious thought, I am quite sure they’d invariably arrive at the same conclusion.
The recent violence in Gurgaon involving the agitating workers of a local subsidiary of the Japanese Honda Company, and the countrywide debate that erupted – in the print media, in a cross-section of television channels, and even in the nation’s Parliament – consequent to the projectedly questionable manner in which Gurgaon Police handled the whole episode, has indeed thrown up yet again the issue of the much needed police reforms in the country, and of raising the level of policing in Gurgaon and other satellite townships surrounding Delhi in the National Capital Region (NCR) – to bring it on par with the level of policing available in Delhi.
It was one thing facing television cameras last weekend in NDTV’s media debate “The Big Fight” to counter effectively and answer the barbs and accusations levelled through venom-spewing articulation of a fiery co-panellist Trade Union leader and MP in the ruling coalition Gurudas DasGupta, against police in general and their specific role in handling the Gurgaon agitation and the violence… It is quite another, erasing the adverse public perception of the connected events as was projected and presented by a biased and sensation crazy channel competition.
This, in the face of media reports that very morning claiming admission by Haryana DGP Nirmal Singh that his force could have behaved better, acted more tactfully, and planned adequately in advance. He also did right, in sending a firm message through this medium right down to his rank and file that he did not approve of policemen beating the public, that they should have exercised restraint while controlling agitated workers even in the face of provocation from agitators by taking recourse to violence resulting in the breaking of their DSP’s hands! Is this pontification enough, though?
That the issue of police reforms is languishing for the past fifty-eight years of our Independent existence as a sovereign nation is an oft repeated statement. The Gurgaon incidents have merely highlighted this need yet again. How serious is the current Government in addressing this long festering cancer by taking this bull by its horns is to be seen. But narrowing down to the immediate, as would want to be done by crisis managers, it is necessary for the centre and the concerned state authorities to give an urgent thought to policing Gurgaon in the context of the NCR.
Rapidly growing Gurgaon with a townscape that puts visions of a mini-America on the mind screens of new visitors to the place is fast taking the shape of a Metropolis par excellence. Every conceivable MNC has established shop here or is in the process of establishing. Some of the country’s biggest developers like the DLF (with Five phases of developments already in place), the Ansals with their own including Palam Vihar, Sushant Lok and the like, and the Haryana Urban Development Authority (HUDA) – are all vying with each other to provide the place with internationally competitive housing, office complexes, malls, food plazas, theatres and entertainment places.
More builders and construction giants have acquired all the land surrounding Gurgaon Township and its approach roads, especially on the Gurgaon-Sohna Road, for top of the line luxury condominiums, Hotels and a plethora of projects. Gurgaon already has two major Industrial Estates and InfoTech cities, with more in the offing.
All of which means, there is also simultaneous need to upgrade the services, in this case of the police set up, to meet the challenges thrown up of a bustling metropolis. The fact that this new city borders on Delhi the nation’s capital where the resources far exceed in comparison to its poor neighbour, makes the need for Gurgaon police upgradation all the more glaring.
It is said the Haryana Government has already addressed the Union Home Ministry in this regard. Comparing itself with the level of policing available in Delhi, it has sought for Gurgaon additional infrastructure, manpower, vehicles and equipment in the form of 5000 additional personnel, 424 motor vehicles and 308 motorcycles, more housing and upgradation in telecommunications, and equipment for surveillance and crowd control including the riot-control vajra vehicles designed and fabricated especially for Delhi Police by the DRDO.
The state should not stop at this. For proper law and order management and control, it should also ask for a Police Commissionerate, to do away with the dual control of the police by the DM/SP set up which hampers quick planning and effective execution among other things, in times of need. The Commisionerate confers on the field police officers the executive magisterial powers which is paramount for high density urban policing, unlike rural policing the superintendence of which has been vested with revenue collectors with powers of a District Magistrate. This is what will really bring policing in the NCR region on par with the level that Delhi is blessed with. Police Commissionerate in the NCR Districts of UP and Haryana surrounding Delhi, could start with Gurgaon.
900 words: 01.08.2005: Copyright © Maxwell Pereira:
For interation, available at: 3725 Sector-23 Gurgaon-122001;
mfjpkamath@gmail.com & http:/www.planetindia.net.maxwell
I know I am running the risk of the powers that be and their secretariats – especially those who push pens to assist these very powers to reign and govern – raising eyebrows. And perhaps of also incurring the wrath of the bureaucracy with my conviction that it is high time Gurgaon gets a Police Commissionerate! For I fear the legendary rivalry between the Services – the IAS and IPS, is bound to stand in the way and cloud the real issues. But if all concerned were to sit up and give it a serious thought, I am quite sure they’d invariably arrive at the same conclusion.
The recent violence in Gurgaon involving the agitating workers of a local subsidiary of the Japanese Honda Company, and the countrywide debate that erupted – in the print media, in a cross-section of television channels, and even in the nation’s Parliament – consequent to the projectedly questionable manner in which Gurgaon Police handled the whole episode, has indeed thrown up yet again the issue of the much needed police reforms in the country, and of raising the level of policing in Gurgaon and other satellite townships surrounding Delhi in the National Capital Region (NCR) – to bring it on par with the level of policing available in Delhi.
It was one thing facing television cameras last weekend in NDTV’s media debate “The Big Fight” to counter effectively and answer the barbs and accusations levelled through venom-spewing articulation of a fiery co-panellist Trade Union leader and MP in the ruling coalition Gurudas DasGupta, against police in general and their specific role in handling the Gurgaon agitation and the violence… It is quite another, erasing the adverse public perception of the connected events as was projected and presented by a biased and sensation crazy channel competition.
This, in the face of media reports that very morning claiming admission by Haryana DGP Nirmal Singh that his force could have behaved better, acted more tactfully, and planned adequately in advance. He also did right, in sending a firm message through this medium right down to his rank and file that he did not approve of policemen beating the public, that they should have exercised restraint while controlling agitated workers even in the face of provocation from agitators by taking recourse to violence resulting in the breaking of their DSP’s hands! Is this pontification enough, though?
That the issue of police reforms is languishing for the past fifty-eight years of our Independent existence as a sovereign nation is an oft repeated statement. The Gurgaon incidents have merely highlighted this need yet again. How serious is the current Government in addressing this long festering cancer by taking this bull by its horns is to be seen. But narrowing down to the immediate, as would want to be done by crisis managers, it is necessary for the centre and the concerned state authorities to give an urgent thought to policing Gurgaon in the context of the NCR.
Rapidly growing Gurgaon with a townscape that puts visions of a mini-America on the mind screens of new visitors to the place is fast taking the shape of a Metropolis par excellence. Every conceivable MNC has established shop here or is in the process of establishing. Some of the country’s biggest developers like the DLF (with Five phases of developments already in place), the Ansals with their own including Palam Vihar, Sushant Lok and the like, and the Haryana Urban Development Authority (HUDA) – are all vying with each other to provide the place with internationally competitive housing, office complexes, malls, food plazas, theatres and entertainment places.
More builders and construction giants have acquired all the land surrounding Gurgaon Township and its approach roads, especially on the Gurgaon-Sohna Road, for top of the line luxury condominiums, Hotels and a plethora of projects. Gurgaon already has two major Industrial Estates and InfoTech cities, with more in the offing.
All of which means, there is also simultaneous need to upgrade the services, in this case of the police set up, to meet the challenges thrown up of a bustling metropolis. The fact that this new city borders on Delhi the nation’s capital where the resources far exceed in comparison to its poor neighbour, makes the need for Gurgaon police upgradation all the more glaring.
It is said the Haryana Government has already addressed the Union Home Ministry in this regard. Comparing itself with the level of policing available in Delhi, it has sought for Gurgaon additional infrastructure, manpower, vehicles and equipment in the form of 5000 additional personnel, 424 motor vehicles and 308 motorcycles, more housing and upgradation in telecommunications, and equipment for surveillance and crowd control including the riot-control vajra vehicles designed and fabricated especially for Delhi Police by the DRDO.
The state should not stop at this. For proper law and order management and control, it should also ask for a Police Commissionerate, to do away with the dual control of the police by the DM/SP set up which hampers quick planning and effective execution among other things, in times of need. The Commisionerate confers on the field police officers the executive magisterial powers which is paramount for high density urban policing, unlike rural policing the superintendence of which has been vested with revenue collectors with powers of a District Magistrate. This is what will really bring policing in the NCR region on par with the level that Delhi is blessed with. Police Commissionerate in the NCR Districts of UP and Haryana surrounding Delhi, could start with Gurgaon.
900 words: 01.08.2005: Copyright © Maxwell Pereira:
For interation, available at: 3725 Sector-23 Gurgaon-122001;
mfjpkamath@gmail.com & http:/www.planetindia.net.maxwell
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