Police dishonesty and inefficiency however feature most prominently in public perception for the prevailing situation. Many despair that these are irremediable features of our police establishment. Given the situation prevailing for so long, such despair may be understandable. But the attributes of corrupt, inefficient and ineffective, need not be the permanent characteristics of an institution provided the roots of the maladies that afflict it are properly identified and the right kind of remedies are applied. The reform needs of the police and the areas of reforms have been well identified. Expert Committees have reported, seminars have debated and high-ranking police officers have pronounced themselves on the necessity and contours of the area of reforms. I may not add anything to the work already done. Yet as a citizen I felt like airing myself on the subject. One fundamental obstacle to reform, that of lack of finance seems to be no longer an obstacle with donors coming forward with offers of generous assistance. The need of the hour may be a reinforcement of the will to reform.

Let it be pointed out that to be effective, police reform must be supplemented by reform of the relevant laws and the judicial system. Laws that are easy for the citizens to understand and abide by are easily enforced and the maintenance of law and order is that much easier. It is recognised that many of our civil and criminal laws are ancient; are obscure in many instances; are confusing to both abiders and the enforcers, and are therefore fit subjects for reform. The court system is part of the enforcement machinery. The job of the police is prevention, detection and investigation of crimes and other violations of the law. They prosecute the violators where appropriate. The courts adjudicate on the basis of evidence produced. One major flaw in this process has been the lack of independence and hence of impartiality (real or perceived) of the lower echelon of our judiciary that exercises both executive and judicial powers. The lower judiciary thus becomes subservient to the executive hierarchy and is likely to be subject to executive fiat and to lose its impartiality. The separation of the executive and judicial powers of the lower echelon of the judiciary has been a long pending reform.

The above issues are highlighted to put the role and functions of the police and their performance in some perspective so that the failure of the police is not viewed one sidedly. As stated above, consensus has been reached on the vital areas in which police reforms are called for. Training of police personnel, providing the police force with modern equipment and logistics, separation of investigation and prosecution through the formation of an independent public prosecution service, and general policing and crime control are among the most important areas identified. Mr MN Huda, an ex-IGP has added to and elaborated the list further pointing, among other things, to the lacunae in the recruitment process at the lower ranks of the police force (DS, December 20). As a life time practitioner and finally in overall charge of the whole establishment for a period of time he knows best. He has not explained however why he could not implement some of his ideas when he was in charge. He has attributed the inadequacy of police training to lack of finance even within the available police budget. Inadequacy of finance has been frequently cited as the reason for the inadequacy of personnel strength, modernisation of their operational modes, and the poor pay and welfare benefits of housing, health and education of police personnel and their families.

Mr Huda has however pointed out one very pertinent fact. That is that "for a long time we have failed to treat the policeman as a human being. It is time to restore his dignity." I remember scenes at the Dhaka stadium of police personnel patrolling innocently round as a measure of preventing any untoward incidents and the public throwing banana peals at them totally unprovoked and uncalled for. The police bore it with equanimity. Such public behaviour may be seen as an expression of the adversarial attitude to the police as an agent of colonial oppression. That is also how police often behaved in colonial days. Unfortunately the image and perception persist even today.

While on the subject of dignity of the force I wish to dwell a bit on the uniform our police wears and the ranking and designation of our police personnel. These may appear to be trivial matters in the context of police reform. In my view these are important matters. The Police Department has recently announced that it will change the khaki uniform that our police personnel have been wearing since the British colonial days. A correspondent in the letter column of the Daily Star (8th December) has opined in a despairing tone that this cosmetic change will do nothing to improve the effectiveness of the force that is inherently inefficient and corrupt to the bone. According to him the black will take no other hue howsoever one may wash its surface. This need not be so. Human beings are capable of responding to the right kind of stimuli. The need for more substantive changes is undeniable. The change of the uniform can be an important useful part of the reform process at relatively small cost. If the Police Department has adduced the private security guards wearing similar uniforms as a reason for the announced change, as the letter writer points out, that is rather naive. There is truth however in saying that the existing uniforms contribute to public perception of corruption and inefficiency. The Department should know better.

A child who has been nurtured in tattered rags and worn out outfits can never develop self-respect and command respect of others. It is unnecessary to invoke that Shaikh Sa'adi story of him being poorly dressed and poorly served at a feast and putting food in pockets after being smartly dressed and deluged with the goodies. As the advertising slogan hones in 'dress makes the man.' Building up of a sense of self-respect and dignity, and be able to command respect, are important preconditions for the efficient performance of one's duties. The proper dress-up can contribute to giving one that self-respect and dignity. The khaki has been the colonial inheritance and with it the symbol of oppression. The relationship between the police and the public has continued to remain adversarial. The public attitude must also have something to do with the poor physical image of the police draped in poor outfits. The police must be feared by those who have reasons to fear and respected all over. The uniform can produce the aura to generate both fear and respect.

Certain anomalies persist in the ranking and designations of our police officers. At the Thana we have an Officer-in-Charge(OC) for common understanding. An OC tends to signify some kind of an ad hoc arrangement. No other office throughout the realm has an OC as the head of an office, an important office like the Thana for that matter. Only in the case of a temporary absence of the real boss some one functions as an OC or OIC. I wonder whether we could reverse the order of the two letters to make it CO, a commanding officer. The ranks and designations from ASI up, all our police officers are Inspectors (with an interlude of a superintendence) right up to the top where sits an Inspector General. Are inspections and supervisions the only functions the officers perform? It is perhaps necessary to bring the rank and designations of the officers to more closely reflect the actual functions they perform. It may be proper to designate the IG as DG, the Director General, with his subordinates as deputy, assistant directors and so on, as most other government departments have. One may invoke the sayings 'what's in a name', or 'whether the cat is black and white does not matter if it catches the mouse.' But it seems to matter.

The catching of the mouse is the crux of the matter. It has to do with the honesty and efficiency of the agency and the agents concerned. And this matter has evoked the most concern. Honesty is a matter of will that is not wilted by the lure of improper rewards. Mala-fide use of official power and privileges is a travesty of the honest will and leads to corruption. Rewards for honesty and punishment for corruption are ways to promote an honest cadre. In matters of reward the first and foremost is the need for the pay and perks of the police to be comme-nsurate with the arduous tasks the police are called upon to perform. Such is perhaps not the case at the present. Punishment requires guarding the guards. If that requires too many resources it may not be affordable or effective. Yet a credible deterrence must remain in place. There is a larger dimension to honesty and integrity. Police are human beings. They are brought up in a cultural milieu that sets few examples for them to stick to their honest will. The lower ranks that are most directly in contact with the public in course of duty come mostly from the poor background and environment. That environment is full of expectations of 'Upori' or extralegal earnings from a job especially in this age of rising expectations for a better life. In the work environment one may find a lot of precepts and preaching of honesty but little of practice. In such an environment it may be too much to expect angelic behaviour from the policeman, but that is not condoning him for dishonesty.

Efficiency is a function of ability of the physique and the intellect. The lower ranks, especially the jawans, are generally born poor and grow up poor physically and perhaps mentally also. The recruitment process seeks to pick up the physically and mentally best-equipped ones unless of course the process is unduly interfered with about which Mr Huda seems to be complaining. Once recruited, the building up of the physical and mental faculties further is a matter of training. Nutritional food, comfortable housing and proper medical facilities with the exercising of the physique are ingredients of physical abilities. Imparting skills and motivating to honestly use both the physical and intellectual skills are vital areas of training. There seems to be a serious dearth in most of these areas.

There may be other fault lines in the organisational and command structure of the police force. Our politics is a spoiler of many things including the law and order and its guardian, the police. The police perforce have to obey the political command at many levels for good or for bad. Within the bureaucratic structure there may be needs also for improvement of the systems of command and control with degrees of decentralisation of responsibilities with accountability. In federal states policing is a provincial (state) function that also percolates at least partly to local level. In unitary states like Bangladesh, police function is often performed at some level of local government. In our present state of social and political development such decentralisation of police function may be far too much to expect. Our local government system has been a nonstarter even with more than a century of experience and experimentation behind it and vociferous current demand for reinvigorating them as instruments for the delivery of vital public services close to people's home with opportunities for community participation.

Now that there is assurance of finance from the donor agencies, to hopefully remove one of the most critical bottlenecks to implement reform, let us look forward to reforms to begin in earnest within the current milieu. Let us hope that a visible improvement of law order will come about sooner than later that will ensure a peaceful environment for development that we as a nation aspire.