TRAINING STRATEGY FOR

INDIAN POLICE

The major problem that confronts extant police is its attitude to work,
responsibilities, profession, organization, government and the public. It is
confounded about its goals, objectives, loyalties, professional ethos, job culture,
procedures and practices that carry it forward in the field in attending
professional duties. In the wilderness of undefined roads, Indian police grope
for perspicacious directions to reach professional ends. Popular phrases like
maintenance of order, enforcement of law, prevention of crime, investigation of
offences, protection of security interests etc are too generic terms to carry any
meaning and significance during the process of actual policing. Perficient policing
is possible only in the ambience of well-rounded and clearly defined specific
guidelines for action that help molding professional attitude in the organization.
Police develop wrong attitudes in its absence by erroneous interpretation of the
situation around. This is what happens to Indian police now: wrong attitudes and
concomitant confusion about performing legitimate duties.
Professional ideals of police are rooted in the terra firma of the rule of law,
justice, order and the security of the country and its citizens. Police organization
is basically responsible to the constitution of the country and the government
constituted and the laws enacted in accordance with the constitution. Police lose
its relevance to the country when its professional attitude goes against the cardinal
ideals of the profession. The challenge of a police organization lies in molding
professional attitude as required by the ideals of the profession. Wrong attitudes
inveterate in extant practices and procedures of policing are shaped by self-
interests, misconceptions, ignorance and tendency to pursue easy and shortcut
methods: they are hard to be broken and survive under most odds. Only
efficient, honest and highly motivated leadership alone can crack the etui
encompassing it. Once it is done, building a new set of right professional attitudes
is relatively a simpler job to a committed leadership. Basic to these efforts is a
realization among the top brass about what constitute right and wrong attitudes.
The crux of the problem of Indian police lies here. It is distressing to note that

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the top leadership of post-independent Indian police is responsible for the

prevarication of the organization from its professional attitude of absolute
commitment to public order and safety, justice and rule of law to easy and
shortcut avenues of selfish interests. The change percolated downwards. In the
rush of Indians replacing the British to sensitive government positions on the eve
of independence, men of inadequate caliber and merit occupied key government
posts. This happened in police as in other government departments. The result
was corrosion in leadership qualities, traits of excellence and high personal merits,
so essential to run public and national affairs at the top. It was during this period
that Indian police lost its track in professional policing and exposed itself to the
luxury of dancing to the easy and soft tunes of convenience by yielding to
pressures of political and other vested interests. Policing powers served as a tool
of maximizing self-interests and personal comforts at the cost of professional
policing. In the process, the country suffered and police lost its face.
WRONG ATTITUDES APLENTY
A profession like police naturally has its own goals, objectives and ideals to
pursue. They get clouded in the smog of practical turn-around in the field and
ultimately lose their edge in the spin of attitudinal aberrations. The consequence
is clashes of loyalties, adoption of immodest vectors in policing, the issue of
excesses and inactions, tendency to bend rules and laws to achieve perceived ends
in the hour of need of upholding the rule of law, urge to cash-in on the ignorance
and weaknesses of the ignorant people around and indulgences in unprofessional
works in the name of discharging legitimate police duties. Performance of any
profession depends upon three factors: professional ideals, job culture and actual
practices and procedures. Job culture is spawned of constant interaction of
professional ideals and actual practices and procedures in the field. Though
basically is a product of the past, it considerably affects the future performance
of an organization. Practices and procedures being the primary vehicle of
attitude, they help molding job culture a la immanent attitude in the job. The result
is a pollent hold of attitude in deciding the direction of an organisation. A
profession loses its raison d’etre while attitude in the job prevaricates from
professional ideals.
People caught in the web of criminal laws deserve sympathy and kindness
until they are proved guilty beyond doubts. They need to be treated with
gentleness and courtesy that behoves to interpersonal relationship in a civilized
society while the process of investigation continues with all efficiency and ruthless
exactitude. Police as investigator is not invested with powers to punish for the
crimes committed. Fair chance to persons under investigation to prove their

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innocence goes a long way in unearthing truth and solving crimes justly. This has
to be the attitude of the police during crime investigation. Truth and justice have
to be their goal. Indian police lack the maturity and poise.
A serious Achilles’ heel of Indian police is its perverted attitude towards rules
and laws. Bending rules and laws to suit self-interests is one dimension of the
spiel. Another dimension is its blind application sans sense of proportion and
discreetness while self-interest is not an issue. It is seen in enforcing laws and
maintaining order. Police forget that rules and laws are just tools in the larger
cause of peace and order of the society and sadly handle laws for law’s sake. Rules
and laws are invested on police like weapons as the dernier ressort while all other
avenues are shut. Discreetness is their constraint. Objectives are primary. Rules
and laws must follow them only as tools to that end. The realization is rarely
found in the present police. It operates laws for law’s sake by relegating
organizational objectives to oblivion. Professional objectives suffer and police
become an object of detestation consequential to this perverted attitude.
Mechanical enforcement of gratuitous rules and laws constrict the freedom of
people for no specific purpose and weaves an unnecessary web of constraints
around them for nobody’s good. The attitude is fatal to fair and professional
policing practices and needs to be corrected on priority to make application of
rules and laws need-based in reaching professional targets.
Another field where police need to change its attitude is its contempt for
human values. Policing is just an instrument to the cause of protecting human
values. Police oblivious to this fact, subject human values to immane policing
methods in the name of policing. Third degree methods are the point.
Malfeasances do not behove to the cause of human values. Means are as
important as ends in policing. Pursuing unjust means for the cause of justice is
the spiel of the Frankenstein, the story of an offspring eating its creator. Inviolable
commitment to human values and rights is the foundation of good policing.
Human touch is sine qua non for professional policing. Human concern is the
raison d’etre of good policing. The shift in attitude needs to be from blind and
blanket policing for the policing’s sake to discreet and enlightened policing to
reach professional objectives. The shift has to be from the use of policing powers
to maximize professional goals. The shift must see police taking risks in the
interests of the profession and doing intelligent policing rather than indulging in
maneuvers of personal security. The process warrants massive exercise in
attitudinal change.

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AFFECTING ATTITUDINAL CHANGE

Forcing police away from vicious practices and procedures and undesirable
job culture through the attitudinal change is an arduous and time-consuming
exercise even for experts in the field. The exercise has to be a multi-pronged
attack on inveterate misconceptions and wrong notions in extant policing by
extensive exposures to talks, discussions, seminars, briefings, studies, researches
and in-service training involving analyses of policing, its ideals, objectives,
methods, means and ends, social relevance, pressures, policing environment,
psychological aspects of policing etc. The exercise has to be intended to provoke
police personnel to think about their profession without dogma and arrive at
desirable conclusions about professional policing and impress them on the
ingredients of good policing by constant exposure. A few ideal cases as models
have tremendous impact on the cause of creating right attitudes. Studies and
researches on policing and policing methods provide a sound foundation to
these exercises. A police organisation interested in improving its quality and
performance cannot go without sound study centers and research projects on
the issues of policing. These attempts provide both inputs and insight to the
behavioral pattern of the police in field under different situations and stress
patterns as differentiated from what are desired. They bring both gestalts to
contrast in terms of their perficiency, professional needs and relevance to the
environment of policing to affect attitudinal change in right direction by way of
conviction. The immediate need is inducing doubts about the soundness of
existing attitudes to encourage discussion on the topic. Deliberate guiding
through structured mental exercises to desirable end forms the latter part of the
task. Indeed, the whole exercise has to be planned and executed in detail by highly
efficient leadership in the police. The conundrum is who behoves to handle the
highly responsible job while the leadership of the police itself is mired in wrong
attitudes to the job of policing.
RIGHT RECRUITMENT
Character is nascitur, non fit. Sound character is the materfamilias of right
attitudes. The principium of right training strategy is the realization that character
and attitudes cannot be created. Character is an immanent element. Any
discussion on right training strategy sans discussion on right recruitment is like
building an edifice on sand-bed, like watering a dead plant, an exercise in futility,
an intellectual wanze. Right training is nothing more than perficient seedling of
a seed or precocious flowering of a blossom. It is more so in issues of character,

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attitude and behavior, the three being entwined into one with character spawning
attitude and attitude in its turn defining the behavior. This brings us to the intricate
issues of character and character building. The triste state d’ affaire of the Indian
police of the post-independent vintage and its degringolade after independence
can be attributed tout a fait to this single factor: lack of character. That is
recruitment of wrong people, recruitment of people lacking in character,
integrity, honesty, human sensibilities, service motive and Rhadamanthine
attributes.
The corner stone of any perficient training strategy is right recruitment. The
emphasis should be on sound character reflecting on integrity, human sensibilities
and service motive. This necessitates creation of a character profile of each
applicant imprimis in the process of selection and recruitment. Once character
is in place, other needs follow by the fundamentum relationis and secondary to the
need hierarchy enface crucial character in professional policing. Ability to
envision and see things in broader perspective also needs to be tested for final
selection.
Indeed, practical problems are mind-boggling if not impossible to manage.
First of all, drawing the character profile of eligible applicants is easier said than
done. It calls for complete overhauling of the extant selection procedures and
evolution of psychological processes as the prime mechanism of the selection in
place of present highlight on answering abilities. Competence of the present
psychological processes in drawing right character profile is another issue. And
the ever-presence interference of political and influential lobbies and the greed
of the selectors at all levels are the grave hurdles for this process to be feracious.
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
are 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.

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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 carrier-life cannot turn out eximious work. It is a tragedy
that India neither spawned a police force of its own 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.
ACADEMIC TRAINING
It is euphemistic to nuncupate extant Indian police training cap-a-pie as a
maelstrom. It is in utter disarray and directionless. Emphasis is on information,
which is not a big deal in this age of Internet and competitive marketing of all
kinds of information. What is required is blossoming of the potential right
character, attitudes and requisite skills. This is the field where complete
overhauling of the training system is called for. Save the constabulary for which
spoon-feeding of the rudimentary criminal laws are must, other where wanze the
precious training period on basics while prime issues like character building and
behavioral and attitudinal evolutions remain untouched is criminal offence per
se. What is required is laying a sound foundation for character building as a
powerful base for passions for righteous policing, and motivating the young
recruits in that direction. This aspect is completely forgotten in Indian police
training now.
Basic police training course at all levels should begin with exclusive exposure
in the first month to the sine qua non of sound character, integrity, honesty,
humility, human sensibilities and the Rhadamanthine attributes as the
springboard of the right attitudes in policing. Policemen as the custodians of the
rules and laws of the country and the agents of the public sittlichkeit in uniform
how stand out from the public must be deeply etched on the young minds to
guide them all through their career and light their path with the flambeau of
righteousness thus lighted. The need of right public relations and image building
in perficient policing cannot be over-emphasized at this stage of the adsorption
of the young recruit to the fold of the police setup. The young recruits should
be impressed on the importance of means in achieving targets and how
malfeasance leads to utter disaster in the end. And also how right policing stands
on the bedrock of the human rights.
The subjects to be covered during this period of one month at all levels should
cover in-depth study of human values and their philosophic foundations,
policing philosophy, objectives and ideals of right policing, the locus standi of

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the police and policing in a democratic setup and the requisites of adjustments
with the political and other leaderships and the degrees to which the police should
maintain its own space and balance, the place of rules and laws in the overall
scheme of the criminal justice system of the country and the shortfalls, the
supremacy of the constitution of the country, the true meaning of the loyalty and
its extensions in a democratic setup, the field realities of the less than perfect
society with which police constantly remains engaged in performing its duties
and how to maintain an adjustment mechanism in diverse situations in the overall
interests of the peace and security of the society. The period must cover also
diverse case studies from the field about the success stories of right character and
attitudes in policing and analyses of the inner dynamics therein. Indeed, these are
intangible topics lacking suitable textbooks for police studies at all levels now. It
means earnest measures towards writing of suitable textbooks to this end for
various levels must find priority.
While the first month of the academic training exclusively covered the
character and attitudinal issues, the remaining period of nine months too should
have the subject covered in addition to conventional police subjects. The telos
is to build characters that approach policing nec cupias, nec metuas. Here too,
case studies from the field about success stories of right character and attitudes
must find priority.
Other measures during the academic training at all levels must cover
recognition and ample rewards for development of right character and attitudes
even to the exclusion of talent and technical skills in the training scheme, and right
people as the models in the training staff unlike now when it is only unwanted
mediocre stuffs are fed to the police training institutions at all levels. Excellent
initiatives can do the tricks. There is an instant of a police officer in a police training
academy whilom a few years since for a batch of PSI recruit trainees rubbishing
his allotted law classes and in place briefing on practical tricks from his field
experience about making maximum at the earliest to recoup the bribe paid for
obtaining their recruitments. This is ovem lupo committere.
FIELD TRAINING
Field training is the phase at which an entrant truly comes in contact with the
true policing and begins to form his own impression about police and policing
in the field. There are any numbers of instances in police department senior police
officers at the eve of their retirement recalling with fondness the contribution of
a PC or HC they came in contact at this phase of their career and actually trained
them in the intricacies of policing in the field in drawing the road map of their
whole career. This is just to map out the significance of this phase of one’s career

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in policing. A wrong trainer at this stage, and a career wanzes. Ergo, it is of

paramount importance that only right people in the field should be carefully
selected and nominated to assist and train probationers. Any wrong choice will
result in irreparable casualties and should be avoided with maximum caution.
This principle should be applied to trainers even at higher levels including the
district Superintendents.
In addition, the district Superintendent should be made statutorily
responsible for imparting right and effective training particularly forming right
attitudes in those under his charge with mandatory provision for his
performance in this regard figuring in his Annual Performance Reports. There
should be provisions for removal from service at this stage of the probationary
period for failing to develop right attitudes and character even after repeated
detailed warnings, indeed with checks and counterchecks in place to avoid
misuses.
IN-SERVICE TRAINING
Repeated exposures to the need of sound character and right attitudes do
help in instilling the qualities. A refresher course of five days on character building
and right attitudes in police training institutes should be made statutorily
mandatory once in every five years at all levels up to the ranks of IGPs. In
addition, every promotion up to this rank should be provisional until the
concerned official passes a written test on character building and right attitudes
conducted by the concerned police-training institute.
RESEARCH ON RIGHT POLICE ATTITUDES
Higher police training institutes should take up research projects on right
police attitudes on priority on a continuous basis by partaking in the services of
both eligible police officers and non-police academics from the relevant fields.
Every higher police-training institute of the country should have an exclusive
department for research and producing textbooks on character and attitudes in
relevance to police and policing.
JOB CULTURE
Learning is a continuous process. It is so in police and policing also. All
advantages of the right recruitment, right academic training in police training
institutes and right field training face serious reif if field realities become
inconducive to the ideals. Field realities with their positive and negative elements
truly constitute the nidus of the attitudes one is compelled to adopt and adapt.
Therefore, field realities of the policing warrant utmost attention in the process
of breeding right attitudes in the service. It is only through the right job culture

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that the police environment in the tide of high morale turns the leaf and policing
s’orienter to build up a set of right attitudes among its personnel.
It is the sacred responsibility of the top brass of the police to ensure that right
means gets precedence over achieving targets somehow. Shortcut methods at
the cost of right means should be discouraged. Exitus acta probat should not be
the only and ultimate motto of the policing. Right attitude should be amply
rewarded in the usual course of the policing. Further, a culture of senior officers
briefing their juniors on the need of right character and attitudes in every possible
opportunity should be created in the organisation. Repeated stresses do have
their own impact particularly in a disciplined organisation like the police.
It is just the opposite of what is prolate in Indian police these days. Wrong
values are encouraged. Corrupt and caste-ridden elements see vaulting spots.
‘Yes, Minister’ tregetours win the rat race. Corruption is swept under the carpet
on the specious claim that there is a separate organisation to deal with the matter
and it is none of the responsibility of the organisation to keep itself clean. For,
if one resorts to the cleansing process, he is certain to be unceremoniously kicked
out by the political leadership. The situation has reached such a rien ne va plus
pass in India that it is often visioned that if an fonctionnaire is overlooked for
promotion or transferred to an undesirable post, more than often he is surmised
and hailed as a four-square and outstanding person and those who corner
desirable posts are looked down upon as part of the coprophagous rot. It is a
grave vicious circle. There is no point in discussing right attitude unless this
pythogenic vicious circle is broken.
Problem of attitude basically is a problem felt at higher wrung in top brass
of the force. The stiff hierarchical order and command-obedience pattern of
functioning make the lower wrung irrelevant in matters of job attitude. Those
down the ladder are loyal followers and obedient operators in the path and
policy laid above them. Their attitudes change shape from case to case to meet
the demands trickle from above. When the demand is to let out a rich and
powerful criminal with royal honors, those down the level do just that with
vengeance; when the demand from above is to frame an innocent man and
obtain his confession by subjecting to torture, they just do that with dedication
for the sake of a well earned pat of their omniscient superiors. It is again a
question of ill-conceived job culture and attitudes, which need to be corrected,
as it is tangible to the standards of policing as all organizational matters are. The
primary target of attitudinal change is the higher wrung and the top brass. Others
follow and fall to place. The key lies in the realization that something is wrong
in the present mode of policing. Demolition is the beginning of the construction.

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Once the realization of wrong dawns upon, reconstruction becomes possible.

Police being an extrovert and action-oriented outfit, self-analyses and inward-
looking tendencies do not come easily. While things go wrong, introversion
becomes sine qua non for healthy growth. This is what is required in Indian police
now.

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