Police work casualty of politicisation

There is a natural authenticity to what the high-ranking police officers have expressed at the annual crime control or law and order conference in Dhaka about the various ways of meddling with the police administration, including recruitment on political considerations, because it is coming from within. This has to stop if we want the police to be the efficient and disciplined force that they are capable of becoming and yet cannot because of the constraints they are having to face.

The most important factor behind good and effective police work is the chain of command. Undue political meddling not only causes the breakdown of the system of command, it weakens the establishment from within by sapping the morale and de-motivating the members of the organisation across the board. When the OC of a thana assumes more importance than the SP of a district it is time to sit up and take note of the harmful effect of political interference.

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The induction of manpower into the force through political backdoors has a telling effect on the professional standards. The police force being the public face of the administration needs to be manned by persons of presentable moral and ethical standards apart from being competent and spartan in outlook. It is in any government's interest that they be so. But what we see instead is that they are used as the political tool of the government of the day whose interest they are impelled to subserve.

Now that senior police officers have basically reiterated what they had been saying in bits and pieces in a coherent fashion, about political interference holding sway over their work, the government must act to bring about depoliticisation of the police force's work atmosphere. It must be part of an overall administrative reform process.