In other words, the ‘best achievements’ were largely in the sphere of the unquantifiable – ‘determination’, ‘unanimous support’ and ‘acknowledgements’ – whereas the cumulative and massive deficits of the system remained substantially where they were. There was some evidence that most State governments were still dragging their feet on what needed urgently to be done. Vacancies against sanctioned strength in the state police, which stood at 230,567 on January 1, 2008, "may have declined to about 150,000", but even this was "too large", the HM noted, articulating the modest objective that the States would work to wipe out this deficit by the end of March 2010. That sanctioned strengths stand at a fraction of what the country needed to confront existing and emerging challenges was not considered worthy of mention. The HM did, however, note that the strength of police stations, especially in rural and remote areas, ranged between 1+8 and 1+12. "This is totally inadequate. For a police station to be effective, its strength should be at least 1+40. State governments may augment the strength of police stations…" But how is this to be done by states that are failing, often dramatically, to meet the personnel requirements of police stations at presently sanctioned strengths?
It is not the intention here to parse the PM’s and HM’s speeches. What requires recognition is that, despite an increasing – though still largely partial – recognition of the rising urgency of the situation, responses have remained sluggish and fitful. In some states, there is evidence of a slow limp in a direction that may prove positive; but it is far outstripped by the hurtling pace of augmenting challenges.
In a brief aside, interestingly, the Maharashtra government – which presided over the 26/11 debacle – had separately made the absurd claim that it had put ‘new guidelines’ in place, which "chart the course of action in the event of a nuclear, chemical or biological attack". A quick look at the response to the Swine Flu crisis in the state would not encourage any extraordinary confidence on this count. This is an increasing part of the problem. Administrators and politicians are picking up the set phrases of the terrorism discourse, but little of the understanding necessary for framing a strategic response.
Leaderships at both the national and state level continue to passionately advocate ‘out of the box solutions’ (usually code for "I have nothing in my head"), but assiduously ignore the overwhelming challenge of creating and maintaining minimum capacities and standards within existing institutions. The disturbing reality is that basic capacities, not just for policing or counter-terrorism, but, indeed, for governance, enterprise and social action, have been allowed to decline to such an extent that the most rudimentary tasks of nation-building, indeed, even of administrative maintenance, cannot be executed with a modicum of efficiency.
Ironically, this has happened over decades of a public and media discourse about ‘bloated government’, ‘massive police force’, ‘gigantic expenditure on the bureaucracy’, the need to ‘downsize government’, and other politically correct slogans based on extraordinary ignorance of fact. A look at the most rudimentary statistics may help pull some heads out of the sand.
Deficits in capacities for Policing have been repeatedly emphasized in the past, and do not bear repetition. The Indian police-population ratio, at 125/100,000 in end 2007 (it is expected to have risen significantly thereafter, though nowhere approaching what is necessary) is a fraction of the strength that is needed. The crisis in the Police leadership is even more acute – with overall deficits in the Indian Police Service cadres alone standing at some 17 per cent, while officer cadres in the states are often worse off. Crucially, the states with the most urgent security predicaments are often the ones with the widest deficits. Orissa, for instance, "has a sanctioned strength of 207 officers in the top Indian Police Service (IPS) ranks, but only 97 officers in position." This is certainly a problem the centre could be expected to address. Against this deficit, however, Orissa was allocated just four IPS officers out of the new batch of recruits in 2009, "a number that will not even account for those who would reach superannuation in the current year." Sanctioned strengths in the Police leadership of most States are, again, no more than a fraction of actual requirements.
But the police are not the only organization in crisis – every governmental institution in the country has been hollowed out by political incompetence and ignorance. A look at the ‘bloated bureaucracy’ is particularly instructive.
The embedded principle in American democracy is that "the best government is the least government". Consequently, the state focuses as exclusively as possible on what are considered ‘core functions’ and minimizes engagement in welfare and in activities that can be taken over by the private sector. The administrative philosophy in India is the exact opposite, with the government’s fingers planted firmly in every possible pie.
That is why the ratio of government employees to population in the two countries is the more astonishing: the US Federal government has a ratio of 889 employees per 100,000. India’s union government has just 295. Canada, which has a larger welfare component in governance as compared to the US, has a ratio of 1,408 Federal government employees per 100,000.
The Railways – no doubt extraordinarily useful, but hardly within the sphere of ‘core functions’ of government – account for the largest proportion of Central government employees in India: 1,398,139 out of the total of 3,320,842 – all of 42.1 per cent. If Railway employees were to be excluded from the strength of Central government Employees, this would leave us with a ratio of just 171 Central government employees per 100,000. Needless to say, the Railways are not the only ‘non core’ establishment under the Central government. Significantly, the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA), including all Central Police organizations and Paramilitary Forces, accounts for just 834,090, less than 60 per cent of the strength of Central government employees in the Railways (all figures estimated as on March 1, 2009).