As of January 1, 2009, there were 530,580 vacancies in the state police forces. 116,903 personnel were recruited after this, till November 30, 2010. It is not clear what proportion of these simply replaces personnel lost to superannuation, disability, death, pre-mature retirement and other factors. Central force allocation to the states remains meager, particularly in the Maoist-afflicted areas. Just 62 battalions of CPMFs, yielding a mere 24,800 personnel on the ground (400 personnel per battalion), are currently allocated to the six worst affected States, which account for an area of 829439 square kilometers and a population of over 446 million.
The leadership gap in the Police also remains crippling. Of 4,013 authorised posts, as on January 1, 2010, in the Indian Police Service (IPS), just 3,383 were in position, leaving a deficit of 16.7 per cent. It is widely acknowledged that authorized strength is a fraction of what is actually needed. The annual intake into the IPS was to be enhanced to 150, from the present 130, from 2009, but the proposal has been blocked by technical objections from the Union Public Services Commission.
The capacity augmentation measures that have been initiated will, of course, begin to have an impact in time. No significant gains in any theatre of insurgency or terrorism have, however, been registered over the past years as a result of a strategic or policy re-orientation. India continues to benefit through the sheer inertial advantage of its size and diversity, as a range of movements succumb to exhaustion. This can, however, provide only very qualified satisfaction, as the wider environment shows signs of continuous deterioration, and as capacities for governance and particularly for security and justice administration, fail to keep pace with the growth of population and with the increasing discontents unleashed by uneven processes of modernization and rapid transformation of the economy, within a political ethos and culture permeated by corruption, nepotism and stifling stratification.