Community policing in India – Prospects and challenges

In India, community policing evolved as a response to tackle communal violence in Bhiwandi, Mumbai, and other parts of Maharashtra. Established primarily as civil society initiatives, these committees served as an effective medium to restore communal harmony by facilitating social interactions between different communities. Over the years, because of the initiative taken by each state, community policing in India has metamorphosed into a valuable medium for public-police engagement on core issues relating to policing and law enforcement. However, despite the mushrooming of numerous community policing initiatives across different states in India, it has yet to establish itself as an effective alternative for policing in general. Public perception of the police is at an all-time low, and the police department is deemed to be corrupt, unfriendly, and politically influenced. Nonetheless, community policing has also positively impacted several regions where it was implemented. For example, community policing has effectively brought down cases of communal riots not only in Maharashtra but in other parts of the country as well. While there is still much to be desired in police-public dynamics, some states have seen a remarkable upsurge in the public faith in the police. The establishment of women-oriented community policing like the mahila commandos and police didi have played an important role in preventing crimes against women and in ensuring their overall safety. In other cases, community policing has also emerged as a power tool for police information ( khabri system ) about crimes and anti-social actions. In India, community policing has often been central focus of the debate on police reforms. However, despite the repeated insistence of the Supreme Court (Prakash Singh & Ors vs Union of India (2006) 8 SCC 1 ) and several police reform committees, little has been done to improve the condition of police reforms in India. A significant finding of the paper is that India currently lacks a uniform framework of community policing and this has somewhat stultified its development into a effective system of policing. The present paper explores multiple dimensions of community policing across various states in India with a primary focus on the prospects and challenges surrounding community policing in India. For the purpose of the study, the paper relies on existing scholarships on community policing and the field reports of governmental agencies like the National Crime Records Bureau, the National Police Mission, and the Bureau of Police Research and Development. The paper explores the evolution of communal policing in India, primarily focussing on some major community policing initiatives across different states. The primary objective of the paper is to explore the issues underlying the effective institutionalization (whether through legislation or as a matter of policy) of community policing across different states in India. Given the effectiveness of several state-run community policing initiatives, the paper argues for a uniform and an institutionalised model of community policing all across India. The paper attempts to give a general overview of how community policing in India, despite its ad hoc and non-institutionalised framework, has performed across various states in India. While the main paper is concerned with community policing as a whole, it also deals with different variantx of community policing across India, like community reach projects that were initialised to deal with issues like insurgency, ethnic and religious riots, the police information system, and women’s issues.