No long-term stimulus for cops, the corona warriors

Vikash Narain Rai
Former Director, National Police Academy, Hyderabad

Fortune favours the brave, but in the case of the police, their leadership must already be wondering, how long? The pandemic fatigue has taken its toll; policemen have faced physical attacks, a big number of them has tested positive for the coronavirus and some have paid with their lives.

The question, however, is not whether but why the police cannot retain their newfound claim for publicised admiration? The short answer is that it was never intended. There seems to be loads of visible publicity for philanthropy and motivational policing amidst their tough Covid-19 duty regimen, but hardly any long-term stimulus in sight. In a nutshell, the police have enjoyed the professional luck and public backing so far. Will they run out of it in due course?

The circumstances of the prolonged Covid-19 lockdown do keep the police in the limelight of a common war against the pandemic, but also, in constant confrontation with the harshest of economic realities facing the country in decades, which even the PM’s Rs 20-lakh crore atmanirbhar package has failed to soften. Police empowerment, a theme absent very much in the follow-up economic announcements of the Finance Minister, has been easily missed by the government’s critics and admirers alike.

Who is calling the shots in shaping the coronavirus time policing across the nation? That would explain the inevitability of a U-turn in the presently witnessed favourable course of police reputation, sooner or later. It is not the temporarily elated police leadership, but the cold calculating politician in power! Serving what interest? The partisan vote bank politics, of course, notwithstanding the Prime Minister himself identifying and thanking police persons as frontline corona warriors in one of his recent national addresses.

For example, the Delhi Police seemed least bothered about losing the trust of the stakeholders while effecting questionable arrests of known activists for their role during student and communal clashes and anti-NPR demonstrations preceding the days of the pandemic, by applying charges of rioting and the draconian UAPA reserved for anti-national activities. Equally bad is the lot of UP police, acting under the Yogi regime’s political compulsions, lockdowning the state borders into a war zone against their own migrant labour, who have been hit by the sudden job losses, closure of transport and are desperate to return in thousands from all over the country.

It is not difficult to fathom that the police effort would continue to look valiant so long as it is pitched directly against the pandemic. That is because augmenting the society’s sense of security in uncertain times would still be a core issue. The key is to come out with specific policing norms to curtail vagueness and infuse transparency, in the absence of which the spectrum around the pandemic will be misled as an extension of the normal police functions.

By far the better performing state police, the Kerala police, has rightly come out with a set of specific Covid-19 SOPs to guide their personnel battling on the untested front. Loknath Behera, the state police chief, has also devised a system to rest 50 per cent of the police force on a weekly rotational basis.

Prof Karl Roberts, a consultant on health security, law enforcement and policing for the WHO, examined the different roles police may have during a pandemic: “In addition to core policing activities, there are a number of activities that could fall within the responsibility of police during a pandemic. These include policing curfews and protecting medical staff and supplies. Clearly, these additional activities add an extra burden. They also expose police staff to increased risk of infection and must be considered in the light of other pressing demands upon police time. Having said that, the open question is that if the police do not carry out these tasks, who else would?

“Policing curfews is a particular challenge. It is important to realise that the task of policing curfews is likely to get increasingly more difficult over time as populations become skeptical of a curfew’s value and bored or frustrated with their freedom being curtailed. If policing curfews is done unfairly or in a too draconian, militaristic or even violent manner, it can result in significant reputational damage to police and loss of public trust.

“As the emergency service of last resort, the police might also become involved in transporting very sick individuals to hospital should ambulance services become overburdened. Again, this presents increased exposure, especially as those requiring transportation are likely to be the most ill. Police may also be asked to transport medical equipment, supplies and samples. Knowing how to safely transport these is important and failing to do this correctly might increase the risk of infection.

“Police may be required to support public health staff in contact tracing and also in enforcing orders such as obtaining access to premises or forced vaccination. Police are rarely involved in such activities and so there may be a need for clarification of role in support of public health, how this can be conducted safely, and clarification of relevant legislation. Contact tracing may also present other challenges, especially in hard to reach populations.”

Haven’t we seen our otherwise poorly rated policemen performing these very challenging roles tirelessly, through one lockdown to the other? Has the weight of expectation transformed them into a different police? Like the virus itself, the optimism also seems contagious.

Let us concede that the philanthropy and motivational aspects of the police response are the inherently rooted response to a calamity, and not a trained response of police that will balance the misery or outlive the calamity. We may also concede that the governments will continue to deploy police for the exercise of greater muscles during the pandemics. In the 1965 Bollywood blockbuster Guide, based on the Sahitya Akademi Award-winning novel of RK Narayan, the circumstances create a spiritual hero out of a worldly mortal, who dies of fasting in the end, answering the prayers of the villagers in order to break the long spell of drought.

That is not how the novel had actually ended and Narayan later penned Misguided Guide to vent his frustration.