Police Reforms: India
Police Reforms: Too Important to Neglect, Too Urgent to Delay

CHRI's Initiatives

The CHRI's Police Reforms programme aims at creating a public demand for police reforms through policy level dialogue and public education on the subject. We have been trying to do this by generating an informed public debate on important issues concerning the police organisation and its work by organising workshops, bringing out research based publications on emerging problems, providing inputs to expert committees and analysing their main recommendations for public education, and harnessing the support of strategic groups to break resistance to the idea of police reforms.

During the first phase of our work, which was during the period April 1998 to May 2001, we focused on organising general workshops, mainly to educate people on basic issues of concern and importance to the police. Eight general workshops were held during this period, at national and regional levels, educating different groups about:

• civil society's perceptions about the police
• the recommendations made by the NPC and the reasons for their non implementation
• initiatives for reforms
• best Practices in other jurisdictions, particularly about the model structures of control and accountability

Our advocacy for policy level reforms is based on research. We did two major field studies during this period:

• Police-Public Interface
• Awareness and Attitudes of police personnel about human rights issues

The second phase of the programme started in May 2001 and is continuing even now, though the major initiatives were taken by September 2002. During this phase, the initiatives shifted from being general to specific, in terms of both jurisdiction and contents. We carried out our educative activities and policy level interventions around specific issues and in limited jurisdictions. We worked mainly in three states- Madhya Pradesh, Chattisgarh and Gujarat. In Madhya Pradesh, we critiqued the Police Bill drafted by the MP Government and advocated for changes in the Bill. In Chattisgarh, initiatives were aimed mainly at strengthening the State Human Rights Commission to make police reform a core issue of their work and sensitizing the police personnel as well as the staff of State Human Rights Commissions on human rights issues. In Gujarat, we worked with the victims of communal riots to ensure police accountability.

This was also the phase when we expanded the police reforms programme to East Africa and started doing research on policing issues in the three countries of East Africa- Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania. Details of initiatives taken there are shown separately in this website.

On October 4, 2002, we organized a national Roundtable Conference on Police Reforms in New Delhi. The Conference organized in collaboration with the Editors Guild of India and the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry focused only on two themes:

• Control and Superintendence over the police
• Police Accountability

The Conference evoked a very good response. Click below to study the background note prepared for the conference and its proceedings:

• Roundtable Conference on Police Reforms, 2002- Background Material
• Report of the Roundtable Conference on Police Reforms, 2002

This was followed by a similar conference organized in the southern states, the first in Trivandrum, Kerala on June 26 & 27, 2003, and the second in Chennai on August 30, 2003. Click below to study the reports of these two conferences:

• Report of the Roundtable Conference on Police Reforms, Trivandrum, Kerala
• Report of the Roundtable Conference on Police Reforms, Chennai, Tamilnadu

The Government of Kerala has taken the lead in establishing a Police Performance and Accountability Board in the state. This recommendation was made by the RTC, Trivandrum as well. To study the details of this initiative, please refer to the section on initiatives taken by state governments.