MAN MANAGEMENT IN POLICE

Man management is the point d’ appui around which all organisations revolve.
Among man, material, machine and money, it is man with his skill and creative
ingine, with his wisdom and capacity for ceaseless labour, with his thinking faculty
and intelligence, manifests in excelsis in any organisation structure as its real spine.
The strength, vitality, quality and real test of any organisation depend upon its
human stuff and the process of its man management. For, man in an organisation
stands for totality of his motivation to the organizational objectives and totality
of motivation a toute force depends upon the grade of man management in the
organisation. Ergo, man management is the fulcrum of any organization’s
process of survival. This is more so in a police organisation where policing a fond
is a human resources orientated profession with boundless need of motivation
for successful operation and therefore sub structured tout a fait on the merits of
man management. A police organisation sans right man management policy is
bound to crumble in a welter of discontentment and demotivation. Salient
parameters of a sound man management policy in police organisation though
vary e re nata, more prominent of them can be discussed to lay the matter in right
perspective.
HIGH MORALE
The present Indian environment of ruthless competitions impleached with
the degringolade of values made human resources management a farce in India. The
Wherewithal of human resources management like recruitment, promotions,
transfers, rewards, punishment etc, is no more employed for the maximum
benefit of the organisation. Self-interests have undermined quality and character
and organizational interests are subordinated to personal behoofs. Though this
proclivity is prevalent in all fields in India of late, its adverse effects are kenspeckle
in police organisation as the line-system of the organisation makes the ingenuity
of human resources management, a factor having direct bearing on the quality
of the policing. While is becoming a dynamic part of the governance in urban
areas, with the rise of urban pockets, the damage done by egregious management
of human resources in the police cannot be exaggerated. The declension may go

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patulous with the passage of time if frack measures to arrest the depravation in
human resources management are ignored.
Diligent efforts at the highest level in the organisation to create a force
characterized by integrity, commitment and intelligence may be the foremost
need of a police organisation of the coming age. The prevalence of police
administration over the general administration in the survival of a nation as a
democratic and orderly country may necessitate future changes in recruitment
and service condition rules to attract the very best talents of the country to the
police organisation with extraordinary care to ensure that anything less than the
best with clean antecedents does not step into the organisation.
WARMING-UP PROCESS
The period of initiation is the most important and impressionable period in
the career-life of fresh recruits to the police department. The process of
warming-up is based on the psychological needs of human nature. New entrants
must be handled with utmost care to give them confidence and a feeling of
belonging at the incipient stage itself. A sense of confidence and belonging to the
organisation and an ingenerate love and respect for the higher-ups are the
substruction on which discipline grows. Efforts to inculcate discipline in a void
a like waiting for rain from the autumn sky. Indian police impresarios failed to
understand such finer nuances of administration when they copied the system of
the British Indian police. And so we now have a police system where discipline
is insisted on subordinates sans the conditions requisite for the discipline. The
recruits, who enter the fold with open sensibilities and high expectations, wither
after braving for a while the brusque and insensitive conduct of their higher ranks.
These recruits continue thereafter to be constant enemies of the higher ranks and
the department for which they must continue to work for the next three to four
decades. A police department constituted of such members, thanks to the
shabby approach of the insensitive higher ranks in this most impressionable
period of the former’s career-life, cannot turn out eximious work. It is a tragedy
that India neither spawned a police force of its ain superior values nor copied
the police force of the British vintage in its entirety with its finer points, but
cultivated instead a burlesque of the rough and mediocre aspects of both.
WORK PRESSURE
All creations in their beginning and the nature’s bounty are kind and tender
and elegant. The strains of the environment cause inquietude in nature’s balance
and leads to the obfuscation of a few precious sheens from its innards. It
manifests in loss of human factors in man and his mental space turns intenible
of human qualities by environmental strains such as work-pressures.

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The Indian police are weighed down with an impossible quantum of

responsibilities and tasks. This work-pressure adversely affects the mental
balance apart from depriving those tasks from the due attention. It is impossible
to expect a man bogged down with responsibilities and tasks to spare his time
for the niceties of human qualities.
An important measure in humanizing the police is to scale down the work-
pressure on it to a bearable level. An element of lightness in work makes the work
environment dulcet and provides an adequate mental space to devolve on the
exuberances of human compotation.
HUMAN ASPECTS
The human aspect is the fulcrum of policing. Human comportment teethed
with authority to compesce the human mass from undesirable activities forms
the essence of police activities. Policing essentially is human interaction, latitant in
unending luctation to smite criminal and anti-social elements. It is the human
quality in the force that determines its effectiveness and vitality. Therefore, human
resource policy in a police organisation needs careful and gritty handling at the
highest possible level. People can afford the luxury of humaneness when they are
insulated from the quotidian diversions of their occupational hazards. A
delectable service atmosphere mellows their responses to those around them.
They begin to see the world in a better light, in conformity with the atmosphere
around them and try to share these pleasant feelings with those they come in
contact with. The levity of the environment and the absence of strains from the
service-front facilitate their opening-up to give vent to their latitant human
contents. An effort to humanize the police cannot ignore the need to improve
service conditions to make the police proud to be enraced in the vocation. The
sense of contentment generated by the service atmosphere devolves to the public
that interacts with the police. In addition, the public learns to hold the police in
esteem in conformity with its improved service conditions and sophistication.
The interaction between the police and the public can be a sound substruction
for humane policing.
GOOD LIVING CONDITION
A reasonably good standard of living helps the police to rise above the
physical and security need-levels to social and higher need-levels in the need-
hierarchy outlined by McGregor and have the mental space for wider interests
like human concerns of kindness, tenderness, elegance and civility. A low living
standard retards the police image and esteem in society.
The police organisation functions effectively only when a reasonably good
living standard is made affordable to all ranks, so that they can deal with anti-

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social elements from a level of strength and confidence sans the lure of easy
booty, thrown en revanche to a let-off. A low living standard retards the police
image and esteem in society that are the essentials of successful policing. It is more
so in future while more and more of the so-called elite jump into the fray of
criminal activities in an increasingly complicated society. It is necessary to make
the police financially bein by adequately compensating for the risks and hazard
factors of their jobs to attract the best men to its fold apart from securing them
against financial distractions. A feeling of condign compensation and
contentment is certain to raise the police above physical and security need levels
to give free expression to natural human tendencies. It may be necessary to make
police officers financially bein in comparison to their counterparts in other
services with risk allowance and hazard allowance to compensate job factors.
This helps to attract the best to the fold of the police organisation, apart from
protecting them from financial distractions. A feeling of condign compensation
is certain to boost the commitment and efficiency of the police.
HOUSING
Policing is a risky profession that draws antagonism and hatred by its very
nature. It involves round the clock duties, often at odd hours, at odd places in
odd circumstances. Retaliation by criminals is a constant risk under which
policemen live. Their work constantly exposes them to danger. The very nature
of their duties necessitates their being treated on a different footing to others in
the government. The security of housing and other facilities being generously
available to them is de rigueur. Indeed the spirit of the ancien regime remains
undisturbed in matters of housing facilities for the police. However, a much
more liberal attitude in providing housing and other facilities to the police is
necessary to strengthen the Indian police and make policing more effective.
WELFARE ACTIVITIES
Police forces administer welfare funds for the benefit of their members. The
current approach of disbursing money from these funds to needy applicants
needs to arouse a sense of pride and dignity even in receiving help from the
establishment. Much thought has to go into this aspect to make the welfare funds
useful to them without giving the impression of charity. If the funds go to them
as their rightful share, they would be put to better use than as a charitable
contribution. A newly structured police for the new age certainly requires a fresh
approach to the utilization of police welfare funds.
TOUGHNESS
The Indian police are not paying sufficient attention to the need for physical
prowess, sturdiness and skill in martial art. The need for attention to these factors

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during recruitment, basic training and in-service challenges is tout a fait ignored.
A healthy and sturdy police requires healthy and sturdy men and officers, capable
of taking up gauntlets and defending themselves when exposed to
comminations. The need can be sidelined only at the risk of weakening the
organisation. The police are often required to defend it in circumstances when
unarmed and undefended. Policing involves performance of tough and
physically trying jobs that can only be performed when policemen and police
officers are physically and mentally fit. The police, aspiring to a bright future,
must attend to this need for its own good health with genuine seriousness.
UNIFORM
A change in the existing police uniform is an issue to be deeply probed to
improve the police image. The present khaki uniform of police inspires
resentment, as it is psychologically associated with repression and violence. A
change of police uniform to white or pleasant colours may prove to be a measure
for the better in removing the negative image of the police. The overall strategy
in selecting a new police uniform should be to infuse a sense of oneness and
quality among the ranks of police and inspiring a psychological disposition of
friendliness, confidence, dignity, respect and healthy fear in the public with a
compulsion to see the police as their own people, but invested with the
responsibility of a noble task.
HUMAN RESOURCES FROM THE PUBLIC
The performance of the Indian police in utilizing the services of the public is
far from desirable. Most parts of the country are yet to avail of the services of
the people as special police officers, as is provided by police regulations to assist
in policing. Wherever the services are availed, the potential is not made use of to
the full. The system of village police officers also is yet to fledge to take off. The
use of people as traffic wardens to assist traffic police is limited to major cities
of India. No police can be tout a fait self-contained. Involving the public and
obtaining its cooperation in policing is a necessary art that needs to be carefully
cultivated for making policing a success story in India. There is no shortage of
people among the public who would volunteer their services. Only, the police
must open its doors to such services and organize a system to make such services
really effective and useful.
WEAK LEADERSHIP
A factor that seriously affects the morale of a disciplined force like the police
is weak leadership, often affected by disorders of inferiority complex, in posts
from where it can affect the career of subordinates. This is a very serious situation
wherein weak and insecure leadership holds reins of the career of thousands of

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subordinates with many at very senior levels. The feeling of insecurity in them
colours their interpretation of normal conduct of subordinates from their
pusillanimous standpoint to interpret foursquare qualities of subordinates as
surquedry; normal reporting or explanation appears like an intrigue and tough
posture appears like insubordination. A desire to teach a lesson to the forthright
subordinates who make the leadership feel inferior is a natural outcome of this.
This makes retaliation an ever-pensile threat to the career of the subordinates.
And the threat, sine prole is true in the police. This makes people of sound mind,
a must in responsible positions in the police. For an organisation like the police,
the need of sound mind is more basic than any other faculty. Should the prodigies
of virtues like sufferance, intrepidity and foursquare qualities in face of odds
constitute the bedrock of the police organisation, the force make meaningful
impact on the society.
The basic tenets of man management in police organisation discussed above
are that a person happy, contented and proud of himself makes his work
situation happy, contentful and something to be proud of, and ipso facto
enriches his work and himself; that man au fond is good natured, trustworthy
and tends to take responsibility and if he is treated as such, he certainly turns out
his best work that if he is convinced that fairness is the rule of the game, he is the
easiest social animal to be handled. It is left to the police leaders to infuse these
tenets in their man management policy to get most out of the human stuff under
their charges. But the conundrum is that the police leaders need to be motivated
towards the end, and who is to motivate these police leaders to the task by own
man management programmes?

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