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International Herald Tribune -
16 October 2007

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Purge of police in India's Utt

LUCKNOW, India: The new government of the most populous Indian state, Uttar Pradesh, has fired 18,000 police officers in recent weeks, charging widespread corruption in the recruitment process. But what has been billed as a bold crackdown on graft is winning little praise.

All of the dismissed men and women were part of a wave of hiring in the past year by the previous administration, and investigators say some of these new recruits were illiterates who bribed senior officers to fill in their entrance exams. Others, they say, fell well short of the physical requirements but paid off officials. Most, investigators say, handed over large sums - 100,000 to 500,000 rupees, or $2,500 to $12,500 - to be admitted into the force.

However, some critics charge that Mayawati, the most influential politician in India who is Dalit, or of the social group formerly known as untouchables, is pursuing a political vendetta as much as a campaign against official corruption. Both she and her predecessor, they say, have used the police in a form of fortress-building. To govern a state of 170 million people, the support of a loyal police force is essential, and Mayawati, who goes by one name and took office in May, is moving fast to dispense with new recruits thought to be allied to the previous administration.

Running the investigation is Shailja Kant Mishra, additional director general of the police in Uttar Pradesh, who has spent months studying hundreds of thousands of entrance examination papers and has consulted handwriting experts to confirm suspicions that dozens of them were filled in by the same hand.

"We are investigating allegations that the recruitment process was phoney, fraudulent and forged," he said in his office in the state capital, Lucknow. "Never in the history of India has such a thing happened before."

He was referring to the enlistment of 20,000 police officers by the previous administration in the months before the May elections. Perhaps sensing vulnerability to defeat, the incumbent state government headed by Mulayam Singh Yadav began a large-scale expansion of the state force. The move was officially described as an anti-poverty effort, aimed at reducing unemployment.

But complaints began immediately. Critics said that jobs went primarily to members of the chief minister's Yadav caste as part of an attempt to build a force that would remain loyal to him and his political allies, even if they were to lose office. Newspapers accused him of building a "private army." Recruitment officers were accused of selling posts.

"This couldn't have been done without instruction from above, given the scale and the magnitude of it," Mishra said, adding that he believed it was both an exercise in "fund-raising" and in packing the force with loyal recruits.

J.N. Chamber, the new Uttar Pradesh home secretary, the civil servant charged with overseeing the police, said "large-scale hanky-panky" had been unearthed. "To my memory I have not see such a large number of bunglings and I have put in 27 years in service," he said in an interview by telephone.

It is no secret that, throughout India, some candidates hoping to join the police pay to secure a post. The starting salary for a police officer in Uttar Pradesh is 3,500 rupees a month - a low wage by Indian standards. But if an officer can supplement his income by taking bribes, the relatively high entry fee could be seen as a sound investment.

Mishra said investigations showed that many applicants under the former administration had handed over hundreds of thousands of rupees to get a job.

"People are ready to sell their house to pay," he said. "Once in, his life is made. Not everybody is corrupt, but there are ways to make money. Those people who get into the police force like this would stand to make a lot of money."

Ishwar Dwivedi, who retired as director general of the Uttar Pradesh police in 1990, said ethical standards within the force had declined radically over the past decade.

"Once you've paid you have to recoup the money in a short time," Dwivedi said in an interview. "There are wide opportunities to make money, by taking bribes. Whatever duties are assigned to one, regulating traffic, criminal investigations, one can make money. By the time they have recouped the money, they are a habitually corrupt person."

There was a clear political dimension to the recent recruitment, too, he said.

"The political executive did this so they did not have to put up with people saying 'I will not do this, it's against the law.' They wanted to have a pliable police force," he said.

But C.P. Bhambri, a political scientist at Delhi University, said Mayawati's crackdown on the police should not necessarily be praised.

"Everyone knows that the police system is corrupt," he said. "It's a quid-pro-quo system. You pay for office, you earn from office. But she has gone about this in a very crude manner."

Rather than throwing out all the new police officers, he said, she should have first dismissed the officials in charge of recruitment.

Those dismissed in the wave of dismissals, which began in September, see themselves as the victims of a political game.

Siddharth Yadav, 25, who was recruited last year, denied paying money to get his job.

"That's totally false," he said. "If we had had so much money to spend we would have gone into business."

Explaining why so many people from the Yadav caste were hired at once, he said that people from his community have an "in-built ambition to be in the forces. That is why there are more there."

His creased khaki uniform hung from the back of his bedroom door, waiting to be handed back to the force as part of the dismissal procedure. On a shelf was a framed photograph, wrapped in cellophane to protect against dust, of the induction ceremony for himself and 25 other recruits. All have lost their jobs.

Ashish Kumar Srivastava, 28, whose proud face is among those in the photograph, also rejected allegations of bribe-paying.

"This is her revenge against the previous administration," he said of Mayawati. "I want to bring back my honor by fighting the case. I want to prove once and for all that I did not get my job by crooked means."

At the headquarters of Muluyam Singh Yadav's Samajwadi party, officials were protesting the dismissals.

"These policemen are pawns in a political game," said Ahmed Hasan, who was a minister in the previous government.

Officials in the current administration insist that the sudden reduction in police numbers poses no threat to law and order, saying that with a total force of around 140,000, "efficiencies" can be found in the system.

However, the fact that 18,000 embittered former police officers are now without jobs has raised fears of a potential security threat. Dismissed officers rioted this month, shouting anti-government slogans.

The methods by which the new administration recruits officers are under close scrutiny. Mayawati's predecessor has already accused her of preparing to use the process to raise money.

Ajai Shukla, an independent security analyst based in Delhi, said: "If she institutes a set of good, clear guidelines, which allow people to be recruited fairly, then this will be a positive step. But if she just throws the old and brings in the new, then nothing will change."

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International Herald Tribune -16 October 2007

Purge of police in India's Utt

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International Herald Tribune -
16 October 2007