Reginaldo Lourenco was not really looking for an answer, nor was Manohar Parrikar thinking of giving one. So status quo prevailed and life moved on. Reginaldo Lourenco’s question though deserves serious introspection more than a quick fix answer. And this exercise should incorporate the following. If a reality check is done, do we really expect that apples will stop getting rotten given the same conditions in which the system operates? It is the system really where the rot has set in. The apples will naturally be diseased. It works on the twin principles that the honest and the upright will never be recognised and rewarded and the corrupt and the criminal minded will never be effectively punished. When the police system pivots around these two principles, it encourages criminality and discourages justice. This will not change through a sudden reform in the minds of policemen or the political leadership.
If the government is serious about a reformatory process, then it must delink from executive control of day to day police functioning by creating systems which keep out political interference. To do that needs courage. The long pending Police bill, which the government had promised to introduce in this session but backed out, could have been the template for this reform. It is significant that since 2008, this bill has been on the fringes of legislation but hasn’t quite got there. It’s not difficult to guess why. The current draft bill, which was supposedly on the verge of being introduced, looked promising, but the fact is that yet again, it didn’t happen. If the real reason is that the government indeed wants to hold wide ranging public consultation on the bill it is welcome, but Goa’s recent experiments with public consultation over the Regional Plan doesn’t exude confidence that there will be any public discussion on the police bill.
The way forward has several signposts like the Police Accountability Authority, envisaged in the now defunct 2008 bill as well as the new bill. The Authority shall forward for further action the complaints of misconduct received directly by it to the Director General of Police and enquire into allegations of “serious misconduct”, against police personnel in all ranks, either suo moto or on a complaint received of a policeman involved in cases related to death or grievous hurt in police custody,
But any reform needs to go beyond that. There has to be a clear independent police authority (which could be a stronger Police Accountability authority) with powers over all police ranks and the freedom to function like an autonomous body. The system of selecting members of this authority, their powers and functions and their role in appointments, transfers and postings of all Goa police officers and the postings of IPS officers in Goa, should be outlined, excluding the Home Department from all such processes. Once the power of posting officers is delinked from the political government, efficiency will immediately be infused. The powers of the accountability authority should be broadened to ensure that its instructions to the DGP is final and binding and enquiries against alleged acts of misconduct against police officers are monitored by the authority. At the same time this authority should be given the powers of appraisal and vetting the annual confidential reports of policemen, to decide on rewards and punishment.
So, how will this ultimately help and what will be the differential. The differential will be that the system will react to processes, rules and merit and not be dependent on personalities and political equations.
It’s another matter that putting these into practice is extremely difficult. On the second last day of this session Reginaldo Lourenco pleaded with the government to “give justice” to the seven year old from Vasco, raped in her school premises while Nuvem MLA Mickky Pacheco spoke about his political victimization in the Nadia Torrado suicide case.
This will continue to happen, as long as any Home Minister has a hand on the levers of the police machinery. A tangible distance between a law maker and law enforcer is the key to effective, humane and just policing.
