The Tribune, Chandigarh, India

Retreat on FDI
Politics prevails over economics

Bowing to pressure from allies and the Opposition, the UPA government has suspended its decision to allow international supermarkets in the country. Though it did not yield to the Opposition demand for a rollback of the Cabinet move to allow 51 per cent foreign direct investment (FDI) in multi-brand retail, the suspension is expected to continue at least until the assembly elections in Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand and Punjab are over. If the UPA waits for a “political consensus”, then reforms would never happen. A related decision to permit 100 per cent FDI in single-brand retail, however, stays.

The biggest gain from the end of the political impasse is the resumption of work in Parliament. The UPA perhaps could not afford to get stuck indefinitely with one issue and allow important pending bills on Lokpal, food security, land acquisition, pension fund, insurance and aviation to remain in the freezer as an adamant and disparate Opposition was determined to stall all legislative work until its demand was conceded. If it was a half-defeat for the government, it was only a half-victory for the Opposition as a “holdback” is different from a rollback.

But the common man is the major loser. There is a strong economic case for allowing global retailers in the country. Half the FDI coming in retail would have gone into building an efficient supply chain to move farm produce from growers to consumers, cutting waste in transit (which is an exorbitant 40 per cent) and softening prices, eliminating exploitative middlemen and bringing international agricultural practices in the country. Foreign retailers who the opposition parties see as a threat are already operating in the country in one form or the other. Indian industry has unanimously and vocally pleaded for FDI, while the Opposition has chosen to back the middlemen, largely responsible for manipulating prices. There is no threat to neighbourhood shops as they are easily accessible and economical for day-to-day shopping. The country has missed an opportunity to boost its sagging growth. Politics has, once again, prevailed over economics.

Troubled Zardari
Paying for his unhappy ties with army

The rumours that have been making rounds following Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari’s sudden departure for Dubai on Tuesday, ostensibly for medical reasons, may well have a basis. There may not be efforts for a military coup, which is suspected to be the real reason for his controversial Dubai trip. But the truth is that his relations with the military top brass are strained. Army Chief Gen Ashfaque Parvez Kayani has been feeling upset after the “memogate” affair in which Mr Zardari’s name figured prominently. They began to suspect each other more than before when the media reported that Pakistan’s Ambassador Hussain Haqqani had submitted a note to a top US official through an America-based influential Pakistani national, allegedly on behalf of President Zardari, asking for US help to prevent an army takeover of the administration in Islamabad. Mr Haqqani has been removed as Pakistan’s Ambassador in Washington DC, but this has not ended Mr Zardari’s troubles.

The Pakistan army, in any case, wants Mr Zardari to be out of President’s House in Islamabad, though it may not say so openly. After the “memogate” episode Mr Zardari is suspected to be closer to Washington DC than any other individual in Pakistan. The army, Pakistan’s most powerful institution, cannot find a better opportunity than now to force an unwanted President to move out. Few may shed tears over Mr Zardari’s removal at this stage with anti-Americanism being at its peak after the killing of 24 Pakistani soldiers by US-led NATO troops in Mohmand agency recently. There has been a strong anti-US sentiment in the Pakistan army, too, after the elimination of Al-Qaida founder Osama bin Laden in Abbottabad, near Islamabad, in May.

If Mr Zardari loses power even without an army coup, Pakistan may be forced to go in for mid-term elections next year. With his party being the most well-knit political organisation, he can give a new twist to the development, putting the army on the defensive. The public in Pakistan no longer holds the army in the same esteem that it did before the Lal Masjid episode in Islamabad and the military operations in Waziristan. The unending US drone attacks in Pakistan’s tribal areas have also affected the army’s image. Mr Zardari, a seasoned political fighter, cannot be written off so easily as he has survived many a crisis earlier.

Thought for the Day

The good life is one inspired by love and guided by knowledge. — Bertrand Russell

ARTICLE

Winds of change in Myanmar
Huge importance of Hillary’s visit
by Inder Malhotra

TWO striking facts underscore the immense significance of United States Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s two-day visit to Myanmar (Burma) and her talks with President Thein Sein. First, the last time a US Secretary of State was there was in the 1950’s. Dwight Eisenhower was President then and the iconic leader of the democracy movement in Myanmar, Aung San Suu Kyi, was 10 years old. Secondly, and more importantly, around this time last year, President Barack Obama, on an otherwise highly congenial visit to Delhi, was remonstrating with this country for its engagement with Myanmar instead of imposing sanctions on the Generals ruling that country.

What they have realised, and acted upon, now is a vindication of something India had done in the 1990’s. Until then - since the annulment of the 1988 elections in which Ms Suu Kyi’s party, the National League for Democracy (NLD), had won hands down, and the imposition of military dictatorship in Myanmar - New Delhi’s policy, too, was to shun the military junta and extend full support to the movement for the restoration of democracy. But then consciousness dawned that this policy was counter-productive because it was driving Myanmar more and more deeply into the arms of China that was gaining an excessive grip on a neighbour so important to us geo-strategically and otherwise.

Maybe, the US has caught up with this reality so late in the day because its focus (“pivot”) has shifted only now from West Asia and Afghanistan to Asia-Pacific (or rather Indo-Pacific) where most countries have concerns about China’s rise and rising assertiveness. Myanmar itself has become painfully aware that, in the absence of competition from the Western countries, China has “plundered” Myanmar’s massive natural resources of hard wood, jade, gas and oil, often without any regard for the environment or the well-being of the local people. It was not accidental that in September, Mr Sein suspended the construction of a Chinese dam on the upper reaches of the Irrawady that was very unpopular. The Kachin minority living in the area and threatened with being rendered homeless was particularly furious.

This apart, another major factor behind the changing international attitude towards hitherto isolated Myanmar is the reform process in that country. It had begun last year rather slowly but has gained momentum since August, when Ms. Suu Kyi travelled to Naypyidaw (the new capital) to meet Mr Sein for the first time. Since then she has decided to take part in the election to 40 seats in Parliament that have yet to be filled, and the government has lifted the ban on the NLD to facilitate its return to mainstream politics.

This is indeed of the utmost importance. For, the people of Myanmar have witnessed many a false dawn during the two decades through which the country has been under the jackboot and Ms. Suu Kyi, along with thousands others, in jail. They are, therefore, sceptical. Quite a few have complained that of the 2,000 or more political prisoners languishing in prison, the government has released only 200. Mr. Sein, though a former general, is perhaps sincere in his desire to transform the isolated, impoverished and one-party state of Myanmar into a democracy. But it is Ms. Suu Kyi’s obvious decision to take his reform process at face value that lends it credibility.

However, since the proof of the pudding is in eating it, ultimately everything would depend on the results Mr. Sein produces in a reasonable timeframe, which should explain the conspicuous note of caution in Ms. Clinton’s remarks at the end of her visit after she had had a one-to-one exuberant meeting with Ms Suu Kyi also. According to American sources, there was great “cordiality” at Ms Clinton’s talks with President Sein, but the discussion was “businesslike”.

Ms. Clinton was more forthright in describing her Myanmar visit as “a first date, not marriage”. Asked whether the US would lift the sanctions on Myanmar, she replied that this would depend on “real progress” towards democratic reforms that included “an unconditional release of all political prisoners”. Another demand she made was that Myanmar should cut off “military ties” with North Korea.

Yet, the concessions to Myanmar she announced are not to be sneezed at. There are to be, as a first step, “full, broad-based missions” by the World Bank and the IMF to assess Myanmar’s “economic needs”. She also announced projects worth $ 1.2 million in education and health sectors. The amount may be small but the symbolic value of the gesture is great. American restrictions on international financial assistance to Myanmar have also been eased. Surely, the international community, especially the US, needs to lift the sanctions sooner rather than later. Otherwise, Myanmar’s economy cannot be rescued from the very low depths to which it has sunk. India too needs to heed the advice that it needs to make “fresh and bold” efforts to assist both Myanmar’s development and political reforms.

Given the salience of China in the push behind the US policy change, Washington’s desire to re-engage with so close a neighbour of China as Myanmar and thus close a major gap in its chain of engagements in Asia-Pacific makes sound sense. No wonder, China is watching the situation carefully. Though the Chinese media’s coverage of the Hillary visit was on a low key, earlier comments by state-owned newspapers were sharp. A typical example: “The West has seized the opportunity to pull pro-China Myanmar off the ‘China track’.”

No wonder then that there is already some talk of a new “Great Game”, this time around over Myanmar. This is something to be avoided. The old Great Game over Afghanistan is one too many. Myanmar seems well aware of this. Three days before Ms Clinton’s arrival in Naypyidaw, Myanmar’s army chief was in Beijing to be received by Xi Jinping, China’s likely next President. Strengthening the “comprehensive strategic partnership” between the two nations was the subject of their discussion. In Yangon, at her meeting with Ms. Clinton, Ms. Suu Kyi declared that her country wanted “good, friendly relations with China, our very close neighbour, and not just with China but the rest of the world”. This is entirely unexceptionable and on the same wavelength as Indian policy.

MIDDLE

Fudging the DNA
by P. Lal

MD. Supari had held high positions in the party and in the government. He had been the Chief Minister of two states and the Governor of one. Though 85-year-old, he was strong, in all sense of the term.

Of late, he had been in trouble. One Romesh Shanker had claimed that he was sired by him through a lady of repute named Vaarwala. The court had ordered a DNA test.

He was in a fix now. If he gave his blood sample for DNA profiling, the cat would be out of the bag; if he didn’t, he could be hauled up for the contempt of the court.

A crony suggested to him to send for the trusted SHO of the local police station. He could be depended upon to find solutions to knotty problems.

The SHO appeared and smiled.

“No problem, sir”, he said. “Please look for a look-alike.”

“A look-alike!”, Supari gasped. “ What would a look-alike do in the situation?”

“Yes, a look-alike,” the SHO emphasized. “ Saddam Hussein had many in Iraq. In our own country, look-alikes occupy the cars preceding and following the PM’s car, in the convoy.”

Supari and his cronies looked doubtful.

“Don’t worry, sir”, the SHO assured them. “If I can switch fingerprints at a crime scene, I can fudge DNA too.”

So, a search was started in right earnest for one who looked like M.D. Supari. To his good luck, one was found soon enough.

The SHO was informed.

“Now go missing, sir”, the SHO commanded Supari. “ Go into the Himalayas, be a hermit or whatever, but don’t show up for the next five years.”

Supari did as he was told.

A “missing person” report was recorded at the local police station. Frantic search yielded no result.

A fortnight after Supari’s disappearance, a highly decomposed body of the look-alike was found in the bush beside a rivulet. People identified the body to be that of M.D. Supari. Even Romesh Shanker and his mother Vaarwala were taken in by subterfuge. The ‘murderers’ could never be found.

The DNA samples from the body did not match with those from Romesh.

He confronted his mother: “Who is my father?”

She was dumb; she didn’t know how to answer the question. After all, “maternity is a matter of fact; paternity is a matter of opinion.”

Eventually, the son became insane and died after two years. The mother committed suicide.

Supari re-surfaced after five years. All records of the case had been destroyed by then in accordance with the extant practice.

M.D. Supari had been spared the ‘disgrace’ of owning up his son. Only Rs 5 crore changed hands in arranging things.

OPED GOVERNANCE

Community policing in India
the vastness and variety of work are daunting
Rohit Choudhary

The Indian Police Act, 1861, provides for the appointment of special police officers to assist the police. The National Police Commission Report (1977) and the Padmanabhaiyah Committee have made recommendations favouring community policing as an integral part of policing activities in India.

Community policing is not new to the eastern cultures as Japan has for long practised the concept of 'Kobans' under which police officers live within the communities to solve their problems. China has the traditional practice of household registration system and an extensive surveillance system of mass-line organisations.

While the Indian police is still experimenting with the concept and implementation of community policing, the Japanese and Knoxville (US) police can be seen as viable role models.

A large population and over-stretched police

There are certain differences in the Indian social, economical and political environment and that of the Western nations, where community policing is practised successfully.

Countries like the UK and the Netherlands are entirely homogeneous units. By contrast, in India the vastness and variety of work is enormous. The local conditions change drastically, sometimes from district to district.

Then in terms of numbers there are 429 people per policeman in the UK, while there are 712 people per policeman in India, making community policing an additional burden on an over-worked and over-stretched police force.

Moreover, practically community policing does not develop according to a single one-dimensional process and several factors such as lack of political and management support, administrative priorities, internal communication problems, a shortage of police capacity and resources and an emphasis on emergency situations may hamper, or even set back the development of community policing.

Systemic and cultural resistance to change

Then within the police organisation there are systemic and cultural issues such as a conservative police culture that resists the intrusion of civilians; a rigid paramilitary structure that discourages initiative; resistance to change and natural suspicion of untested social experiments; manpower shortage and under-trained staff; multiplicity of police wings with community policing becoming a new "specialisation" within the existing police force and the attitude of 'we (police) know what they (people) need'.

In implementing community policing in Holland, Denmark and Belgium there were issues of beat officers being perceived as being too soft and alienated from the rest of the police, and their work was derided as not real police work, both by the public and peers in the department.

Not surprising, therefore, the community policing has been difficult to implement and sustain in the police departments despite the attention it has received from the policy elites, the police leadership and the public.

Very often the community policing programmes fade away with the shifting of the initiating officer and sometimes they continue to run at the periphery. Any police department that plans to introduce community policing will have to look beyond initiating some public-police programmes. Taking mutually complementing department-wide measures only can ensure its success in the long run.

The writer, IG Railways in Punjab, is a former Director, Punjab Police Academy, Phillaur. He is also the author of "Policing: Reinvention Strategies in a Marketing Framework"

It is time to replace the traditional top-down approach with a bottom-up strategy
How they do it abroad

The modern concept of community policing emerged in the US as a counter measure to the decline in public interaction between the police and citizens due to the introduction of motorised patrols that were primarily responding to emergency calls.

The turning-point came in the early 1990s when life in major cities became intolerable because of seemingly unstoppable crime. Then the new-style mayor Guiliani and police chief Bratton of New York adopted new policies combining community policing with the concept of 'zero tolerance' leading to a considerable improvement in the 'quality of life' of people in communities by reducing nuisance and petty offences.

Making it a success
n People and the police interact to form a service process called community policing, which inherently is a philosophy of policing and cannot be seen as a separate branch.
n It requires competing for the "hearts and minds" of police officers.
n The police departments should not limit to special unit/specific programme-based strategies.
n Strive towards making every officer a community policing officer, genuinely accepting the idea that crime prevention and service functions are just as important as law enforcement work.
n The community members must also be committed in realising their essential role in crime prevention.
n Community policing brings to focus basic dilemmas such as hard/repressive/reactive versus soft/preventive/ proactive policing.
n The traditional crime-fighting culture does not regard problems between people as real police work but as "social work".

Not surprisingly, the movement is most pronounced in the US, where a federal agency was established ("COPS" — Community Oriented Policing Services) to encourage the development of community policing programmes. But the movement did not remain limited only to the US; the community policing philosophy has taken root throughout the developed world. From the UK to continental Europe to the Far East, everywhere innovative community policing programmes have emerged over the last ten years.

Training and appraisal

In developing strategies for implementing a successful community policing programme, lessons can be learnt from the experiences of nations such as the US, the UK, Holland, Japan and Canada that have invested their time and resources in developing community policing in the past few decades.

Experience from different cities in the US shows that it is vital to re-engineer other components of the organisation for a department-wide adoption of community policing by the integration of the philosophy with mission statements, training, crime analysis, department policies, procedures and performance measurement systems.

The San Diego Police Department adopted an organisation structure and a training and appraisal system to support community policing. The Boston Police Department changed the organisational process to support a new patrol strategy and create neighborhood beat teams.

The Chicago police department was decentralised in 1996, giving more discretion to sergeants and district commanders to solve neighborhood crime and disorder problems. This bottom-up planning process ensured that police resources were focussed on problems that were of utmost concern to the community.

Political support crucial

In Canada, using the strategic map as a guide, scorecards have been developed for the implementation of community policing by the Royal Mounted Canadian Police. These scorecards have measures, targets and initiatives required to execute community policing. An excel spreadsheet has been developed to enable the reporting of progress against the objectives and targets identified in the scorecard.

The government and political support to the community policing programme can be crucial for its acceptance and sustainability. In Britain the document 'Building Communities, Beating Crime', presented to Parliament by the Secretary of State for the Home Department in November 2004, sets out the current direction in policing. The document says community policing efforts are to be central to policing in Britain with their integration in the regular policing and with solid financial support from the government. This programme of investment and reform has achieved real results such as recruiting 25,000 CSOs (Community Support Officers) and wardens by 2008. Fully trained officers using modern techniques and updated powers, working with CSOs with a minimum set of powers, make up neighbourhood policing teams. They take an intelligence-led, proactive, problem-solving approach to enable them to focus on and tackle specific local issues.

Problem-oriented policy

The most recent step in the development of community-oriented policing in Holland has been the introduction of the new-style community beat officer during the 1990s. Unlike the beat constables, who usually operated on the margin of the organisation, community officers are supposed to aid in directing the work of others. This means that the traditional top-down approach in setting police priorities is, to some extent, replaced by a bottom-up approach. Significantly, now community policing is no less than the 'pivot' around which the rest of the force is organised.

A highly decentralised Japanese police recognises the permeability of the boundary between the police and citizen roles and the police is accepted as an integral part of the Japanese community. They routinely engage in "problem-oriented" policing, counselling, advising and mediating functions. The Knoxville police, US, throughout the 80s worked internally to change their infrastructure and improve their officer deployment strategy. They do not have a separate community policing unit. Rather the whole department is committed to practising community policing at all levels.

— R. Choudhary