Discerning observers and cynics are of the considered view that it is high time our society directed its attention towards the paramount need of changing the mindset of the people in authority, in particular, the political masters. For they are the policy makers and the public servants including the police are operatives. We are confident that the Honourable Prime Minister definitely wants our police in democracy to be a provider of service to the community, and not a force to subdue and subjugate people.

Organisational identity and mindset
Our politicians know very well that policing in Bangladesh has been by and large a one-sided affair; with communities having little or no say in local policing plans and strategies that affect them most. The idea that police are people and people are police has not taken root in our country. Our politicians including legislators know very well that the Police Act of 1861, the mother police law, is silent on the issue of community consultation. This law focused on the responsibility of communities to ensure order and should any member step out of line, the whole community would face vicarious punishment. The situation persists to this day.

Therefore, one may very logically ask as to why the politician-legislator is not demonstrably concerned about the necessary amendment in this law to facilitate organisational and operational changes entailing meaningful public-friendly ramifications? Is it not necessary to witness a change in the mindset of the politicians of our country to usher in a modern, progressive and forward-looking police service in line with the enlightened system elsewhere? Whose interests do we serve by remaining bogged down in an archaic Police Act?

The politician's mind has to appreciate that the Police Act 1861 was principally aimed to administer a static, immobile and backward rural society living in villages and small towns. It envisaged exercise of authority without local accountability. It presupposed a society without any constitution, basic and fundamental rights, organised public opinion and mass-media projecting and agitating the public interest. Therefore, we, including the legislator-politician have to change our feudal and colonial mindset as we ask our policemen to be imbued with a service mentality. The need, therefore, is to initiate informed debates and ultimately succeed in enacting suitable act as has been done in a neighbouring country.

Statutory change in the sub-continent
In Pakistan, at least conceptually, the police order of 2002 has a preamble which reads as follows:

"To reconstruct and regulate the police;

Whereas the police has an obligation and duty to function according to the constitution, law and democratic aspirations of the people;

And whereas it is expedient to redefine the police role, its duties and responsibilities;

And whereas it is necessary to reconstruct the police for efficient prevention and detection of crime, and maintenance of public order".

As far as the all important change of mindset is concerned, we can take a cue from Pakistan because whereas the Police Act of 1861 vested the undefined open-ended 'superintendence' of police in the hands of the political executive, the police order 2002 restricts the power of superintendence to ensuring that the police perform its duties efficiently and strictly in accordance with law. The police order 2002 seeks to replace the ruler-driven police with a community-based police through the institutional mechanism of public safety commissions at national, provincial and district levels. These statutory bodies with wide ranging oversight powers for the first time in Pakistan give representation to the opposition parties and members of civil society, including one-third reserved seats for women. Indeed, this arrangement is a major step toward fostering credible police accountability, gender-sensitive policing and operational neutrality of police.

One would definitely agree that the actual taking of such steps by politicians would really change our colonial and feudal mindset as we expect our police personnel to change their mindset.

Mindset and political interference
The police order 2002 of Pakistan has ventured to deal with the vexed issue of political interference in the internal administration of police. It is well-known that the leverage of causing transfer vested in the political executive lower the morale of upright officers and affects the discipline of the service. To counter it the Pakistan police order of 2002 not only lays down a fixed tenure of three years for key police appointments but also requires the authorities to record grounds of premature transfer for independent scrutiny by the relevant public safety commission. Can we in Bangladesh adopt similar measures for a change in the mindset, to start with?

Myopic postures and political aberrations
A clear understanding of the dividing line between state and government/party interests is one of the fundamental requirements of a democracy. Such realisation assumed heightened significance in polities that have been subjected to colonial rule for a long time. A people's republic ought to be different from the governance culture of dictatorship or the colonial administration and the same must be a manifest reality to emulate and to draw lesson from. Unfortunately, however, our feudal mindset has not changed although feudalism is a relic of the past. It is such mindset that demands personalised and partisan attention from the services of the republic and would not let institutions grow to support and sustain our not-very-adult and mature democracy.

Our politicians betray a pathetic lack of appreciation of the imperative that the foundation of a civilised society depends upon the effective and impartial working of some corrective institutions, prominent among which is the public service. They appear to be perilously oblivious to the reality that the regulatory outfit of police must be demonstrably impartial to ensure public confidence in the governance ability of the ruling class. The ruling parties in their misplaced exuberance forget that the police was the dominant visible symbol of repressive imperial alien power and that decolonisation requires large-scale behavioural and attitudinal changes of the political masters and the public servants belonging to this vital organ of the state. Thus while admonitions from the pulpit come in plenty for rational behaviour on the part of enforcement officials, in reality, unhealthy pressures are regularly exerted to carry out the wishes of the ruling coterie in the most expeditious manner. It is the continuance of such regressive mentality that has brought us to the present lamentable scenario wherein the police outfit has been described a lackey of the political government. Nothing could be more sad and frustrating than that.

The image crisis and mindset
There are credible fears that the police image in Bangladesh will suffer a grave damage if politicisation continues unabated. We already have the unfortunate spectacle of a police service in whose investigative fairness the major opposition political parties and a sizable section of the civil society entertain grave doubt. Criminal cases relating to victims of diabolical and dismal murders that are considered as acts of political vendetta are not investigated properly, according to the versions of complainants and relations. There are persistently vociferous demands to arrange for proper investigation of sensational cases by external agencies including international organisation. Without doubt, such appeals and petitioning indicate the deep distrust of the impartiality of the state's investigative apparatus. No sensible citizen would feel at ease in such an unsettling environment.

It must be appreciated very clearly that the regulatory functions of the state like maintenance and preservation of public order and investigation of criminal cases can not be arrogated to private bodies. These functions cannot be performed through contractual arrangements either. Only persons with solemnly sworn loyalty to the state who have been examined, selected and verified in a constitutional process are expected to conscientiously perform the onerous responsibilities without profit motive. If this is accepted as an article of faith and conviction then a serious and sincere attempt should be made to recruit the best type of young persons at grassroots and intermediary levels of the police organisation and train them appropriately. Police officials at these levels come into contact with the common man. Recruitments at this layer, therefore, may be entrusted to a very broad-based committee as against the existing departmental arrangements.

Lack of sensitisation
Our politicians have failed to sensitise our policemen in correctly understanding the rising expectations and aspirations of the people which result from the enunciation of national goals in the political sphere. Our policemen are not made to understand that any gap between the promise of constitutional ideal and the reality leads to strains and tensions which are mobilised for the 'politics of agitation'. There is still not adequate appreciation that the resultant politicisation of the masses and the development among them of a greater awareness of their rights and methods of achievement intensify the ferment and lead to confrontations with authority. Thus our policemen often come into conflict with the forces generated by the political system which they are intended not only to serve but also to preserve. This delicacy and complexity is not adequately understood and impressed upon.

The net result to such a scenario is that the police are cast in to a rigid adversarial relationship. Under such circumstances, the hallowed talks of endearing the police to the community and the lofty ideas of community policing sound hollow. In any venture of promotional efforts the real stakeholders are conspicuously absent. The outcome remains less than desirable.

The desirable way
As of now, many agitations which pose a threat to law and order have a claim to social legitimacy. The police, therefore, have a risk of being cast in an anti-people role. In the changed circumstances of our society, a wholly law and order oriented force has to be transformed into one, which, while retaining a keen appreciation of its legal responsibilities to safeguard life and property, have also an understanding of the larger social issues involved in its day to day work. The implications of this are that police officers must be helped to acquire a high degree of professional competence and develop an understanding of the social purpose of their activity and attitudes in consonance with the concept of social justice with particular reference to the weaker sections of the community.

We need to develop a self-respecting trim police force which is apolitical and professional in its outlook. Let us slow down the recruitment of inappropriate manpower in order to reach a stage in future where we will have the benefit of fuller and socially desirable policing. Policing has been less than a respectable profession in our environment for well-known but less appreciated reasons. Let us make a modest beginning to reverse the process. Are politicians listening?

Muhammad Nurul Huda is a former Secretary and IGP.