It all began with a statistic: Over 70 per cent of people, in the absence of any interaction with the police, turn to gossip for information on how the system works.

Bothered by cliched images of corrupt policemen in films and poor public perception, in a quiet room in the police headquarters behind the Hawa Mahal in Jaipur, a plan was set in motion. Under the initiative of Rajasthan DGP A S Gill, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and IIMs were sent a letter asking them if they could help in the first “systematic” study on the functioning of the police and measure the extent of poor public perception.

“We wanted an objective agency with no baggage,” says Nina Singh, IG (Personnel). “We wanted to address the fact that human resource management is not given enough importance in the police. The goal was a sustained, doable intervention to improve.”

So when MIT’s Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab wrote back saying they were interested, a pre-pilot project was undertaken in 10 police stations across three districts. For three months, all policemen in these stations were given a weekly off, ensured no transfers for a year, put on rotational duty and under the glare of a volunteer community observer.

The “experiment” with the five sets of reforms paid off. Today, in 150 police stations across 10 districts of Rajasthan, the small intervention seems to be going a long way to ensure more efficient policing. The five-pronged approach is slowly changing the way the beat constable in Rajasthan functions.

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