Police Reforms in Kashmir

First published in daily Greater Kashmir, 9 Aug, 2009

Don’t ignore sticks

It is time Omar initiates police reforms

By: Arjimand Hussain Talib

The show of political clamour in the State Assembly in on. Every day is a battle of wits – fought on regional, ideological, partisan and even communal frontiers. There is little of substance in the debates. Playing to the galleries has become a culture now.

The political and regional divides in the State look the sharpest today. From the ruling coalition to the constituent regions, hardly anything seems to bind things together other than marriages of convenience. There is urgency for a change. And a new thinking.

Rule of law is critical for bringing in a qualitative change in J&K today. Doubtlessly, demilitarisation is beyond the purview of any government in the State. No degree of the opposition’s hullabaloo and the government’s pointless point-scoring in the Assembly would help our crises.

From the infamous sex scandal to the recent Shopian tragedy, there is one clear lesson: J&K badly needs police reforms. The quality of the rule of law and governance in J&K is closely linked to these reforms. Our current right to information law is of little consequence as long as police reforms remain elusive. Omar needs to act now.

Police reforms are a reality in India today after decades of reluctant political pedalling. The Supreme Court of India has already put the central and state governments on notice - to ensure replacement of the old Police Act. We should we delay?

J&K needs police reforms the most, primarily because it is grinding under a twin saw: carrying the heavy baggage of the colonial rule and the Dogra Maharajas’ autocratic legacies. Then we have the laws like the Armed Forces Special Powers Act, Disturbed Areas Act, Public Safety Act and a serious Official Secrets Act. No genuine democracy and such laws can go together.

In our political system, myriad powers and interests of the political executive, police and bureaucracy often converge. The result is a unique power bloc wherein the checks and balances of a normal democratic system simply dissipate. The Model Police Act emphasises law enforcement as the basic role of the police. It advocates impartial service to the law, without any heed to the wishes, indications or desires expressed by the government. That is something that J&K badly needs today.

J&K needs a kind of policing today which is humane and accountable. Undue political interference with its work needs a check. Accountability and performance evaluation need a new approach. Basic police stations continue to be ill equipped. Policemen at lower levels need better salaries and modern gadgets in dealing with hi-tech and cyber crimes. Police stations need to be networked with computers. Filing of complaints needs to be simplified.

Quite a few states in India are today addressing the issue of promotions and transfers of police officers. The Model Police Act recommends a pre-promotion course before promotion to the rank of an SP, DIG and IG, followed by an examination and an objective selection process. This procedure needs to be adopted for both IPS and KPS cadres in J&K. Merit must be rewarded. It is widely recognised that the threat of transfer or suspension is the most potent weapon in the hands of the politicians to bend the police to their will. Such discretionary powers in the hands of the political class erode the rule of law and dents police’s professionalism.

One grave problem in J&K’s policing system is that it is highly influenced by the colonial police law passed in India in 1861. Policing in India is a state subject, yet J&K has little say in its matters. J&K’s original constitution is no more a reference guide. New Delhi wields significant influence in the decision-making process in this area. So, for all practical reasons, it is hardly a State subject for us today.

The extra constitutional laws and colonial policing practices reinforce the culture of impunity. A decent degree of transparency is very much possible, even as the ‘sensitive’ areas are guarded from undue ‘exposure’. The Model Police Act in circulation must serve as a reference guide on that. It takes care of the ‘State sensitivities’ by advocating discretion when it comes to information on ‘areas of operations’, intelligence used to plan investigations, privacy of the individual citizen and judicial requirements. Making these exceptions possible in J&K’s context could help in overcoming the inhibitions.

Another issue concerns the powers of the District Magistrate (DM) in our State. There is lack of clarity in the exact role and powers of a DM here. The complex ‘division of powers’ between the DM, the police, the army, etc. often leads to a situation of flux. We need clarity if our police are accountable to the law or the District Magistrate. We also need clarity on the roles of the army and the political executive. This state of flux often manifests in confused official response to crisis situations. What happened in the immediate aftermath of the Shopian tragedy is an important pointer of that.

The Model Police Act stresses that police performance not be evaluated on the basis of crime statistics or number of cases solved. In our case, police officials’ performance is often evaluated on the basis of the number of ‘militants’ killed/arrested, arms seized, information got on “anti national activities” and so on. This system of performance evaluation is a recipe for gross indiscipline. It blatantly undermines the rule of law. In the past, custodial murders of innocent civilians have often been lured by promotions and cash prizes. There could be better performance indicators. For instance, busting crimes which impact common people’s lives. Motivation and incentives could be more professional.

The serious dearth of women police officers and police stations in J&K also needs attention. The way policemen generally deal with women filing complaints in police stations is little gloomy. The manner policemen treat peaceful women protests on the streets doesn’t make a good sight either.

Governance is undoubtedly one area which needs drastic amends in J&K today. And that could happen only when the supremacy of the rule of law is established with meaningful police reforms. Omar Abdullah continues to have a burden of expectations. Time has come for him to initiate these long-pending reforms. And create a State Security Commission and a State Police Commission. Then he could go further to set up Complaint Cells at district and State levels.

Feedback at arjiamnd@greaterkashmir.com

Zanzibar diary - I

First published in daily Greater Kashmir , 16 Aug, 2009

Zanzibar diary - I

Arjimand Hussain Talib

In the deep blue seas of the Indian Ocean, there is an island called Pemba. The island, popularly known as 'Al Jazeera Al Khadra' (in Arabic, meaning the green island) lies between Tanzania and the Arabian Peninsula. The population of the place is a mix of Arab and the original Waswahili inhabitants of the island. It is part of the historic Zanzibar archipelago, another island, which for many centuries has acted as a launching pad for the Arab and western trade and colonial expeditions in this region. Together, they are known as Spice Islands, since Arabs started spice cultivation here.

Last week, my study of global warming took me to this wonderland land. This island is part of the semi autonomous region of Zanzibar, but technically a part of Tanzania. Pemba sends representatives to the parliament at Zanzibar.

The easiest access to the island is from Dar es Salaam, Tanzania’s capital. It is a 50 by 28 kms island, and has a small air strip. Only small airplanes operate to and from the island, though the sea travel is also a possibility. I, along with a colleague, flew from Dar es Salaam in a tiny Cessna airplane on a windy and cloudy afternoon. It was something of a roller coaster ride over vast seas of the Indian Ocean before we finally landed in Pemba. The island from a distance looks a spectacle of virgin greenery.

As one steps out of the airport building, the only thing one could notice outside is a mosque just opposite the road. There is nothing else. No buildings, no shops, fewer people. It is just exotic greenery all around.

A drive to the town centre, called Chake Chake, is breath taking. One rarely sees the kind of greenery like Pemba has. Variety of fruit trees, like banana, papaya, mango, orange, coconut, etc. are part of the green landscape. Pemba is a very fertile place. Besides being one of the largest producers of clove in the world, the inhabitants of the island grow rice, cassava and red beans, called maharagwe in Kiswahili.

Pemba has a population of over 362,000 of whom 98 per cent are Muslim. In previous years, the island is said to have visitors very rarely, mainly due to its inaccessibility and a reputation for political violence. It is also widely known as a centre for traditional medicine. There is a quite large Arab community on the island who emigrated from Oman many centuries back.

Pemba’s inhabitants are deeply religious. All Muslim women put on Islamic ‘abayya’ and cover their faces, some completely. Men wear the traditional Arab dress. Almost after every 200 meters in towns and villages one comes across a mosque. In the markets, one can only hear Quranic recitation being played through public speakers. And when there is a call for prayer from the mosque, a big majority of the people heeds the call. Markets turn deserted.

In the town centre, Chake-Chake, one can find the Mkama Ndume ruins at Pujini village. This fortification is the only known early fortification on the whole coast of East Africa; dated to the fifteenth century.

Pemba is one of those islands which remain at a high risk because of rising sea levels as a result of global warming. We visited many villages along its coast to understand the impact of the rising sea levels.

In the coastal village of Micheweni, large swathes of agricultural land would regularly swell with sea water now on high tide days. As sea waters bring salt content with it, the land, even up to two kilometres from the coast, has become largely uncultivable. Earlier they used to cultivate paddy here.

I asked a farmer, Omar Ali, who was busy raising an earth bund to prevent sea water from coming into his field, if sea water did not reach their field earlier. He told me that would never happen in the past. Waters did rise in the past but they did not come this far. Waters do ebb too once high tide time is over, but the fact is that waters never came so deep onto the land.

The farmers whose land has been affected have been offered land for cultivation by other wealthy land holders in higher up areas. Such is the community brotherhood; the owners will not charge these farmers anything. But there would be no ownership transfer. It is just an act out of compassion.

Although the intruding sea waters offer an opportunity for producing salt, the local people lack in the necessary skills and tools to make that possible. They say they had tried to harvest salt, but it met little success. As part of the communities’ efforts to prevent sea water to intrude deep into their lands, farmers are today trying to raise earth bunds. It is a herculean task for them, as they do this job for themselves. Moreover, there is no guarantee that such a measure will succeed.

Some local government departments encourage cultivation of mangroves as a protection to prevent ferocious ebbing sea waters sucking out fertile soils from the land. In fact farmers have grown mangroves. This measure too is a piecemeal effort. For now, no one has a real cost-effective and practical solution to the problem of rising seas. The only option for now seems withdrawal. People are vacating their lands to go to higher planes of the island. But the problem with the Pemba is that the land is very scarce here. Its population growth has put intense pressure on the land.

In other coastal areas we saw coconut and other trees close to the seas dying out, the reason being increasing salination of the soil due to intruding waters. We saw swathes of land which had a tree cover losing that fast.

Pemba is surely one of the most unspoilt places on the planet, yet it is threatened by global warming. As I was writing these lines we were about to begin our journey to the bigger Zanzibar island, another very historical place. Zanzibar Island is special to Muslims: it is the place where the Arabs built the first mosque outside the Arab land in the southern hemisphere after the revelation of the Quran.

Feedback at: Arjimand@greaterkashmir.com