A Fatigued Frontline: Psychological Burnout and Coping Mechanisms in Indian Policing

This paper examines the structural root causes of police burnout and inaction in India, moving beyond the individualistic reasons to analyse policing as a product of systemic strain. The aim is to understand the psychological strain caused by chronic structural pressures and how they end up affecting the discretion and coping behaviours of frontline police personnel. The paper relies on secondary data collection, drawing its empirical findings from the Status of Policing in India Report (SPIR) 2019 and thematically analyses the findings through the lenses of street-level bureaucracy (Lipsky, 1980), and ways of coping (Tummers et al., 2015), while internally extending the concept of administrative burdens (Moynihan et al., 2015) to the street-level bureaucrats. The analysis reveals that chronic overwork, acute resource scarcity, political interference, and continuous public scrutiny create profound institutional insecurities and occupational burnout among the police officials. Lastly, the paper demonstrates that these pressures force the frontline officers to experience high psychological distress, leading them to often resort to defensive behavioural adaptations that impair policing outcomes in the country.