There is no dearth of scholarship on police reforms in this country. Everyone seems to know what is wrong and how to fix it. On paper, there is everything about how to make the police force effective and accountable. On ground, the image of police is anything but.
Most analysis and comments rely on reported data, though a rough guess is that the crimes that do not get reported far outnumber the ones that do. The people seem to have lost all trust in the police who have failed completely to maintain law and order, detect or prevent crime.
Whether it is lack of accountability, torture, extrajudicial killings, lack of training in investigation methods and forensics or, from the police’s point of view, the lack of resources or political interference, we have often seen the macro picture. The mention of a plethora of problems in one breath becomes a self-defeating exercise.
So we at TNS decided to have a microcosmic view of the problem. A thana remains the ordinary man’s first point of contact with the police -- the institution that represents the most basic and significant unit. It is here that the problem begins and it is this unit that one would like to see reformed.
What makes a thana what it is? What is the thana culture which is found impossible to improve? What is the potential of a thana in preempting and investigating crime and what stops it from being realised? Why is torture accepted as a matter of professional compulsion by the entire police force? What is the budget available to a thana and is that enough for its needs?
These and other related questions are addressed in today’s Special Report.