30 TheEconomistFebruary 8th 2020
1T
he pupilsat Shaheen School in Bidar, a
big country town in the state of Karna-
taka, are learning some unusual lessons. In
recent days a group of police inspectors has
taken over a classroom. They are not there
for educational outreach. Rather, the offi-
cers have been interrogating dozens of 9- to
12-year-olds. The focus of their inquiries is
no grisly crime, but a play that the students
wrote and performed on January 21st.
The trouble started when a proud par-
ent posted a recording of the performance
on Facebook. In one part, about a contro-
versial new law on citizenship, a nine-year-
old girl draws applause by waving a slipper
and declaring she will hit anyone who asks
for her identity papers. This scene angered
a Hindu nationalist, who tipped off police,
who raided the school. They have arrested
both the head teacher and the girl’s mother,
an illiterate widow, charging them with se-
dition, endangering social harmony andinsulting Narendra Modi, the prime minis-
ter. The women remain in jail. The slipper
has been held as evidence.
The story is symptomatic. India’s po-
lice, despite being woefully stretched—re-
cent surveys suggest the average officer’s
workday is 14 hours, and that the national
force is 23% understaffed—nevertheless
devote inordinate energy to tasks far re-
moved from their core duties. All too often,
as in Karnataka, a state currently run by Mr
Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (bjp), they
seem to put pleasing politicians aboveserving the public. And as at the Shaheen
School, which happens to be owned by
Muslims (but says that 45% of its students
are Hindus, many from disadvantaged
backgrounds), the police often appear to be
guided less by the law than by gut prejudice
and popular sentiment.
Police shortcomings are not limited to
remote places such as Bidar. In the capital,
Delhi, a pistol-wielding youth, pictured
above, recently shot into a crowd protest-
ing the citizenship law as a line of police
looked on. Delhi’s finest have also mysteri-
ously failed to apprehend a single one of
several dozen masked raiders who savagely
attacked protesting students at one of the
city’s main universities in early January,
despite evidence that includes eyewitness
testimony, incriminating social-media
messages, reams of film footage and even
televised confessions by some of the al-
leged perpetrators.
“There is a police culture of capitulation
to politicians,” explains Devika Prasad,
who heads a programme on police reform
at the Commonwealth Human Rights Ini-
tiative, a pressure group. Although the po-
lice are notionally independent, elected of-
ficials control budgeting and recruitment
and can reassign officers to the back of be-
yond. In a survey last year of some 12,000
officers, almost two-thirds said they hadLaw and order in IndiaPish cosh
DELHI
The police are overworked, badly trained, wildly prejudiced and deeply politicisedAsia
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