- Resistance will keep the thana culture supreme
Senior policeman who are resisting the new accountability mechanism of a regulatory body should realise that a spate of deaths in police custody, and the shocking beating of woman devotee of Baba Fareed, has left the public with little patience at their resistance at a power grab. There has been a perennial tussle between policemen and civil servants (or rather, non-policemen) over who should control the police in the districts. PSP officers have tried to shield the district police from having to answer to ‘amateurs’.
The problem has always been one of accountability. Policemen worldwide have found abuse of power the easiest among civil servants, and in turn have provided one of the best means of political control of the civilian population. Accountability has involved ensuring both independence of the police from political interference, and preventing police from abusing their office. It is this abuse which allows policemen to commit murder, but it is the political protection that allows them to escape punishment. Accountability would allow an improvement in the overall image of policemen, and prevent the political interference they blame so much for the ills bedevilling policing.
Reforms are not to be resisted, but made effective, and improvements may be suggested. The ultimate purpose is to eliminate the thana culture which leads to the torture of a mentally challenged man, and to an unedifying video of policemen laughing while they poke fun at him. Banning smartphones from police stations will not solve the problem. Policemen who have thought about their work should be able best to suggest how to improve it. Let them do so, instead of indulging in kneejerk reactions that have more to do with group solidarity rather than improving the service of policing that they collectively provide society. Policemen should remember that, when they escaped the supervision of the district magistracy (the DC and the area magistrates) in the course of the Musharraf era police reforms it did not show that the thana culture was because of this supervision. If some new form of oversight is suggested, kneejerk resistance must be eschewed, even as reasoned changes must be suggested, with the purpose of keeping policing not so much a tool of control but as a means of keeping society law-abiding.
