The recent initiative of the director-general of the Bureau of Police Research and Development (BPR&D), Kiran Bedi, to tie up with prominent universities in the country to focus research on issues related to the police comes at a time when the Indian police force is in the news for reasons good and bad. On the one hand, the Indian government has been mulling over police reforms and the possible replacement of the Indian Police Act, 1861, which continues to be the statutory foundation of the police even six decades after independence. On the other, the Supreme Court, reacting to a PIL has set a deadline for the Union and state governments to implement specific proposals for police reforms.

Although the ministry of home affairs, which has so far policed the clearance of such proposals with a negative mindset — rejecting most of them — will continue to be an important entity in the success of this laudable initiative, the upgrade of the BPR&D’s research wing could significantly energise the reform process. The Indian Institute of Public Administration does have a designated division on research and training of police. But since it has not made a noteworthy contribution to the discourse of police reform in the over five decades of its existence, its focus apparently has been on training. The Delhi Police too has been contemplating setting up a police university, whatever its scope.

But the path of police research needs to be trodden with caution, despite its undoubted importance. State-funded research into the police and criminal justice system, wherein legal, systemic and behavioural aspects are reviewed and critiqued continually, is an established practice in many Western countries. Research that reviews and critiques is important to any reform process, particularly in an institution like the police. For example, despite reports of several state police commissions, which mostly remained confined in a few bureaucratic hands, the seething dissatisfaction within the police ranks was not widely known until the police unrest of 1979. Although insurgency had long afflicted the Northeast, the police force was not prepared to deal with terrorism when it broke out in Punjab in the 1980s, and later in J&K in 1989. The methods that proved successful in Punjab (although human rights bodies still question them), have not helped in Kashmir. The police has totally failed in checking the spread of Naxalism and its continuing battle with Maoist insurgents is a story of hits and misses. It has consistently been unable to make a difference between the people and the Maoists. Internet crime is another emerging area. Police methods, too, need to be updated in order to respond to the advantages that modern communication networks and mobility have given to criminals.

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