The resignation of Chhagan Bhujbal as the deputy chief minister of Maharashtra adds one more twist to the unfolding drama of stamp-paper scam. Earlier, some of the senior officers of Mumbai police, including its chief, R.S. Sharma, had to bite the dust and face arrest and criminal prosecution. The special investigation team is also quizzing the former director-general of Maharashtra police, S.C. Malhotra, for his direct or indirect involvement in the scam. Taint is thus spreading from the top cop to the former deputy chief minister. The scam exposing the nexus between the venal police officers, corrupt politicians and notorious criminals confirms public perception of the prevalence of corruption in all ranks of the police administration.

However, corruption in the force is not an isolated phenomenon; it has to be viewed against the backdrop of corruption in all spheres of national life. India has become one of the most corrupt countries of the world. Transparency International’s corruption perception index for 2002 placed India in the 71st position in a list of 102 countries. India’s score of 2.7 on a 10-point scale shows hardly any improvement from its past score of 2.9 in 1999 and 2.8 in 2000.

A recent empirical study of corruption in India done by Transparency International’s India chapter shows that many citizens view the police as the most corrupt sector of the government, though the impact of corruption is on a much larger scale in sectors like health, education and power, which involve a larger number of people. Corruption among the men in uniform tends to get highlighted because in most of the other departments, corruption is essentially of the collusive type and there is seldom an aggrieved party to lodge a complaint. But the people, quite justifiably, feel more concerned about the high incidence of corruption among the custodians of law and order.

Though Indians readily associate dishonesty with the police, the integrity of the police is suspect in many other countries too. The Royal Commission on the Police in Great Britain in 1962 found that 43 per cent of the respondents thought that there was some truth in the suggestion that the police sometimes take bribes while most of the rest thought it unlikely, and only 1.2 per cent thought that they took bribes too often. A national survey done for the President’s Commission for Law Enforcement and Criminal Justice in the United States of America found that 58 per cent of the population thought that the police were almost all honest, 30 per cent thought most were honest and only 3 per cent thought almost all were corrupt. The depth of suspicion against the police is thus much greater in India than in the United Kingdom or the US.

Incidence of corruption in the police has been highlighted by different police commissions. Referring to severe stricture against the police by the police commission in 1902-03, the Uttar Pradesh police commission of 1960 observed corruption to be rampant among the non-gazetted ranks of the police, but not as having assumed serious shape among the higher ranks, namely the gazetted officers.

The fact of the matter remains that the police are constantly subjected to temptation. Their job keeps bringing them in touch with the dregs of the society. Even the lowest-ranked police officer has enormous power. When greed, poor pay and power to harass are combined, corruption is the inevitable result. But the disturbing phenomenon of corruption among the senior officers acting in concert with the political masters was not in evidence even three decades ago. In the early Sixties, when I joined the police service, the number of corrupt officers in the all-India services could be counted on one’s fingers, and interference by the local politicians in day-to-day police administration was limited. The authority of the inspector-general of police and the chief secretary has not been seriously eroded. But during the last three decades, political interference in the functioning of the police, particularly in the transfer and posting of officers, has become more pronounced. Most of the senior officers are posted in sensitive posts on considerations other than of merit, and they toe the line of the political masters. Upright officers are marginalized, as they are not easily amenable to pressures.

Corruption among senior officers has devastating consequences. Once it starts, it spreads like cancer through all levels of the organization. It also has a pre-emptive quality. It prevents the seniors from exercising control over their subordinates and makes corruption systemic and organized. For the citizens, it becomes obviously futile to refer complaints to the higher officer, who is profiting from the practices about which complaints have been filed and who, because of his own complicity, dares not crack down upon other forms of wrong-doing. Where corruption pervades, complaints about it are used by corrupt supervisors as a means to identify “leaks” in the system. (This is precisely what happened in the case of the Mumbai police.)

Police corruption cannot be contained unless effective institutional mechanisms are put in place to insulate the force from external pressures and influence. The structural reforms recommended by the national police commission — giving a fixed tenure to the police chief after careful selection and setting up a state security commission to act as a forum for police officers subjected to illegal pressures in carrying out their duties — are necessary to depoliticize the police and allow it to function according to rules and laws.

Unfortunately, both the Central and state governments are totally unwilling to implement the core recommendations of the national police commission. The present home minister of Maharashtra has reportedly said that he will decentralize the posting of police officers and not allow political interference in the placement of officers in police stations and other sensitive posts. However, it is doubtful whether he will be able to restrain local party members, who have got used to misusing the police to serve their partisan ends. The chief minister of Kerala, A.K. Antony, in sincerely trying to insulate the police from political pressures and giving it a certain amount of autonomy, has landed himself in a great deal of trouble.

Normally, posting of officers incharge of police stations should be left solely to the district superintendents and likewise, the police chief should have the exclusive responsibility of selecting superintendents in charge of the districts. For this, statutory provisions have to be built into the police acts, conferring powers of transfer and suspension of personnel to authorities within the department itself, so that orders from outside have no effect. For obvious reasons, political leaders across parties are dead against this kind of change.

Besides insulating the police against external pressures, some in-house measures are necessary to contain and reduce corruption in the police. First, disciplinary action against corrupt police personnel has to be swift and severe. At present, disciplinary proceedings initiated against police officers involved in corruption cases drag interminably and reinforce the belief that one can get away with corruption one way or another. The Santanam committee in its report strongly recommended a simplification of departmental proceedings and held that protection given to the services in India is greater than that available in the more advanced countries. The committee called such protection “one of the major factors behind the growth of corruption”.

Second, the provision of service rules advising compulsory retirement after completion of 20 years of service should be resorted immediately to weed out officers with a history of corruption. Right now, this is not the case at all.

Third, action against corrupt officers can be taken by utilizing Article 311(2)(c) of the Constitution. Clause (c) should be amended as recommended by national police commission, to permit action against corrupt officers in the interest not only of national security but also for maintaining the integrity of the public services. Fourth, there is urgent need for a law to offer protection to police officers who dare to complain about their colleagues or superiors, ignoring official channels if they consider the matter to be of overriding importance. At present, those who dare to expose malpractices within the organization risk retributive action by senior officers and ostracization within the force. Fifth, the public must be encouraged to report any attempt by the members of the force to solicit bribes or any other instances of corruption. But the people must also be prepared to withstand harassment by the police for the sake of probity in public life.