If he had a grave, Sardar Patel, the father of the All India Services who threatened to resign when his vision of the civil services was challenged in the Constituent Assembly, would be spinning in it by now. He and our other founding fathers, by including constitutional provisions safeguarding the position of the civil services, had expressed a hope that the virtues for which the ICS and the IP were justly famous — intellect, integrity, impartiality and industry — would in their new avatars as the IAS and the IPS, be put to the service of our nascent nation. In the 60th year of our republic, seeing unfold the sordid saga of Saji Mohan — an IPS officer of the 1995 batch who stands accused of running an international drug trafficking ring — it is difficult to appreciate the faith placed by Sardar Patel and his peers in the All India Services.

What makes a policeman? Whether we like it or not, we are supposed to be braver, more patient, more enduring, more impartial and more upright than your average man on the street. We are also held to a different standard of accountability than other public services. But for a while now our citizens and the media have believed that the rot in the police is far greater than it is made out to be and this recent episode would have confirmed their worst suspicions.

The alleged activities of Saji Mohan are sufficient to make every proud police officer hang his or her head in shame. In recent times we have had IPS officers arrested for murder, fraud, extortion, corruption, dowry death and even rape. Now drug trafficking is also included as a new category in our hall of shame. The credibility of the police in general and the IPS in particular — that had captured the imagination of a grateful nation in the wake of our sacrifices during Mumbai 26/11 — has taken a serious blow. This narrative is woven into the wider tale of the general corruption, incompetence and insensitivity that characterises the entire spectrum of our public services. It seems that it is in our cultural DNA to do all we can to exploit public office for private profit.

... contd.