Pune Blasts and India's Policing Woes

Here's an OpEd on the recent Pune blast and the policing woes published in Pioneer on August 11, 2012.

When will India have a police force worth the name? A recent study, shelved as usual, exposes the glaring lapses which were exploited by the planners of the Pune blasts last week.

Following the Pune blasts, India’s Home Minister, Sushil Kumar Shinde, gave the usual assurance about the “serious” nature of the incident and how the Government of India has launched “investigations.” One is used to hearing such statements after terror attacks but what do they mean? More pertinent is the question, what is the government doing about some of the institutional reforms so badly needed to stop such attacks.

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Various reports have brought out the inadequacy of the police forces, including that of the paramilitary, in terms of both quantity and quality of men and officers. The training capacity is woefully inadequate too. A study done in 2010 by Observer Research Foundation for the Integrated Defence Staff, Government of India, Navigating Near: Non Traditional Security Threats to India, 2022, highlighted the huge deficiency that India faces as also made recommendations to address some of the gaps.

India’s low police-population ration — a major indicator of law and order infrastructure — is low at 130 policemen for 100,000 as against a global average of 270:100,000. Mexico has 491.8, Saudi Arabia at 386.5 and Belgium at 357.5 per 100,000 persons, these countries fare better than India even if we do not compare with the world’s best.

While the quality of policing is critical, not having enough personnel is far worse. India’s sanctioned police strength has remained at pretty much the same for decades. In Gujarat, for example, the sanctioned strength has not been upgraded since 1960; the shortage has been dealt with through ad hoc appointments.

Constables recruited in Gujarat in recent years have been taken on as “lokrakshak” and are paid a meagre salary of `3,500. The Government cannot expect very much with such an approach.

The situation remains the same in many other States. As of 2008, the sanctioned strength of police personnel in India was 17,46,215 whereas only 14,78, 888 have been recruited, leaving a critical gap of 267,000. The then Home Minister, P Chidambaram, stated that India faced a shortage of 400,000 policemen and promised to remedy the situation by 2012.

Training and capacity building represent similar depressing scenarios. For a 2.8 million-strong police-paramilitary force, India has only 62 training institutions for central police forces and 170 for state police forces. And India has a total of 9,589 instructors in states, central police and paramilitary organisations; 4,989 for indoor training and instructions and 4,600 for outdoor activities. This would correspond to not more than 50,000 policemen who can be trained per year, meaning that the recruitment needs of 2012 cannot be met for almost a decade.

The reality is also that Indian policemen do not go through any training during their whole career. The basic instructions they get at the time of joining service is about all the training they get in their entire careers. The basic training programme does not last more than three months, including weapons training, dealing with law and order problems, rioting, terrorism, radiological accidents, cyber-crimes, financial scams, illegal money transfers, disaster management besides learning how to write FIRs, investigate cases, prepare court documents and brief public prosecutors, and dealing with the media. Worse, the trainers at the state training institutions are the most demotivated lot who normally treat training assignments as punishment postings.

A status check on police commando forces is equally pertinent. The National Policy on Police Training demands that every state is tasked to train a minimum of 8.5 per cent of the total force as Quick Response Teams (QRT) and Commando units. QRT are meant to be vital given that they are the first respondent to any terror attacks. The Mumbai Police now plans to have “Response Ten” units — three to four commandos armed with bullet-proof vests and assault rifles — at each police station in the city. The Response Ten units are essentially culled out of the existing QRTs and commando units and with India having barely 4,300 such personnel, this is going to be a tough call. India’s capacity to impart training in this regard is also limited with only four training centres available run by the paramilitary forces.

Shortage of force is not a new phenomenon although the government has handled the issue in an ad hoc fashion. In terms of strengthening the quantity aspect, the central government has been sanctioning and creating new battalions of central paramilitary forces. Additional companies and battalions offer no real solution. This is because local police forces are familiar with local surroundings and the people are more efficient than the CPMFs. Hence, strengthening of police force, both in quantity and quality, is the need of the hour.

Another issue particularly relevant in India’s fight against terrorism is intelligence. While the state intelligence agencies are not adequately equipped in terms of training and therefore not suitable, there is also the issue of lack of technical support and resource availability that affect the intelligence-gathering capability of the state intelligence agencies. The value of human intelligence cannot be overemphasized, but technical intelligence is beginning to assume a particularly important role in the backdrop of advancing technologies which the terrorists are using today. The central government has no shortage of resources although this cannot be said for the state agencies.

In addition, there are problems with communication, connectivity and information sharing, which was once again a glaring weakness exposed through the Pune blast. One, there is the absence of an information grid linking up state and federal police forces with police stations as the lowest common denominator. While NATGRID serves to address some of these issues, the formation of a Crime and Criminal Tracking Network System is long overdue. While giving the IB Endowment lecture in 2009, then Home Minister Chidambaram brought out some of these issues saying “there is no system of data storage, data sharing and accessing data. There is no system under which one police station can talk to another directly. There is no record of crimes or criminals that can be accessed by a Station House Officer, except the manual records relating to that police station.”

Three years later, the situation is not significantly different.

Lastly, political interference, lack of autonomy of the police and utter absence of police accountability are serious hindrances to developing a professional force. The current police functioning under the grip of state government has led to gross abuses, resulting in erosion of the rule of law and loss of credibility as a professional organisation.

For instance arbitrary transfers and suspensions have affected the function of intelligence gathering. Meanwhile, the police should be made more accountable to the rule of law and the people through State Assemblies and the Parliament and not to the ruling political party. In an effort to insulate police from the political masters, the National Police Commission recommended that similar state-level bodies be set up. This is yet to be implemented given the strong resistance from political parties.

Unless the new Home Minister becomes live to some of these issues, India’s preparedness to deal with internal security would continue to be weak.

Pune Blasts and India's CBR Security Challenges

Here's an article of mine on CBR security challenges in India published by The Diplomat on August 28, 2012.

The use of ammonium nitrate in the recent Pune blast signifies yet again India’s vulnerabilities in the Chemical-Biological-Radiological (CBR) security domain. Trafficking and trading of chemicals such as ammonium nitrate, which are used in explosives, have become common among terrorist groups and criminal gangs.

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Amending India’s Explosives Act is long overdue. The law must take into account the changing circumstances and the more challenging ways in which state and non-state actors are aiding and abetting terrorism. One of the major shortcomings of the act is its sole focus on the safety of these materials in terms of managing the handling and storage. The security of such materials is often overlooked.

India’s small- and medium-scale industries have continued to argue that any theft of chemicals is done only for pecuniary reasons, which would mean that the security of these materials – the material falling into the wrong hands – is often overlooked. Pilferage is often rubbished as stolen material for commercial purposes; simply put, to earn some extra money. But they do pose serious security threats to India’s internal security, as was evident in the Pune blast. India has now witnessed several recent incidents of such security breaches, including the July 2011 Mumbai attacks.

In an effort to arrest criminal use and to control the easy and unrestricted availability of the chemical, the government in 2011 categorized ammonium nitrate as an “explosive.” However, the catch was that ammonium nitrate is in large-scale use in the agricultural sector and therefore, the government loosened the regulation to say that “its possession and use would invoke penal action only if the composition had 45% or more ammonium nitrate content.” Terrorists and criminal groups have been able to exploit this loophole effectively, which has allowed them to repeatedly use it in major and minor terrorist incidents in India.

Recently, a committee set up by the central government to look into the distribution and handling of explosives suggested that the Home Ministry may be better suited to regulate the flow and trading of these chemicals instead of the Department of Industries, Policy and Planning, as is the case currently. However, the Home Ministry’s already much too overstretched to be assigned additional tasks. Regardless, one agency must be invested with the sole responsibility to lead on this issue.

A separate internal security ministry with a department focused on CBR security with adequate manpower is truly needed. With India’s expansive and expanding network of educational institutions and associated labs as well as private industrial units, the use of ammonium nitrate and other chemicals is likely to grow manifold.

Consequentially, India should be monitoring and addressing the weaknesses in the current approach of controlling the material technical know-how of the product. The need for an integrated approach cannot be overstated.

India’s ancient rules are another set of issues that need urgent attention. The Explosives Act of 1884, which was last amended in 2002 need to be overhauled again in the face of new challenges.

A recent study by ORF and RUSI on the subject, India & Non-State Actors: Chemical, Biological & Radiological Threats, which was largely based on primary research, highlighted some of these loopholes while also suggesting ways to remedy some of the gaps.

While the central government-appointed committee is looking into some of these recommendations, it appears to be focusing a great deal on coordination between different departments handling these chemicals. This is by no means unimportant; indeed, as noted above, a whole-of-government approach is needed to properly address the threat. Nonetheless, a host of other issues also require greater attention.

For example, transportation remains a significant weakness. Additionally, industry rarely considers the dangers of these materials from falling into the hands of terrorists, criminals, and third parties who may sell the materials to terrorist groups.

The huge variation between the large, medium and small-scale industries in their approach to security of these dangerous materials is significant. The government has to devise innovative measures to control and streamline the production and distribution of such materials. The wide-scale disparity in the training and security provisions and the lack of standardization of private security agencies puts India at serious risk. An accreditation and audit mechanism, with periodic security audits and a reporting structure for audit findings to be signed off by a designated regulator, should become standard practice in industries. Industries also have to be alert to insider threats that go undetected by and large because of inadequate background threats.

A related issue is the lack of threat communication and training at the grassroots level among ordinary security agencies. While senior-level officers may be aware of CBR threats, the forces that form most of the front-line security layers are not adequately aware of the dangerous materials they deal with. In cases where they are alert, moreover, they are not adequately equipped with in-house security forces and certainly cannot afford to pay for a Central Industrial Security Force (CISF) contingent. Also small, profit-driven units are not as concerned about the security of these materials. Addressing this effectively could be done by encouraging greater resource-pooling among smaller units to employ good security outfits as a way to reduce costs while strengthening the impact of security spending.

Lastly, India’s mindset about having precedents before strengthening measures needs to undergo change. We have to become sensitive to threats as they evolve rather than wait for incidents to happen and react thereafter.