Chandigarh, Aug 4 (PTI) A former Haryana police chief has proposed a five-point plan to equip police personnel to work in front of a generation that films and broadcasts everything, emphasising reforms in the selection and training process of the constabulary.
Former Haryana Director General of Police O P Singh, in an essay published on his newsletter, said the arrival on Indian streets of a young, connected and constantly recording public had changed the work faster than the systems that recruit and train for it.
India’s median citizen is 29.2 years old, and with more than a billion internet users, a gathering today turns into a “broadcast” instead.
He said the policeman standing in front of it has acquired three duties nobody trained him for — to explain himself in advance to strangers, to work while being recorded, and to separate a handful of troublemakers from a peaceful majority “quickly and visibly”.
Explanation, which used to be a courtesy, has now become the most valuable minute of the day, he wrote.
Citing the recommendations made by the committee on police training constituted under Professor M S Gore on November 10, 1971, he said the training should be continuous through a career, with refresher, specialist, promotion and orientation courses at every rank.
According to Singh, the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Home Affairs also asked for soft skills and behavioural change in February 2022.
“What has changed is the cost of waiting. The street now records the consequence,” he said.
On the reforms in the process of selection of constabulary and sub-inspectors, who remain at the plan’s centre of gravity, he called for incorporating situational exercises in addition to the reasoning, general knowledge, quantitative aptitude and English comprehension in their recruitment process.
The force numbers about 20.3 lakh and some 86 per cent of it is constabulary. He said, “It is a constable at a barricade and a sub-inspector across a desk whom the citizen actually meets.” Selection at that level does not test for judgement or the ability to explain, he said, proposing the addition of a short structured interview or a written situational exercise asking a candidate “How he would explain a police action to an unhappy citizen, and one line to the appraisal record for community engagement and public communication”.
“It need not lengthen the process by a day,” he wrote. “This is the one measure that reaches 86 per cent of the force.” Both changes required a state government decision rather than expenditure, he said.
According to him, the three measures a Director General could order on his own authority were practising facing hostile questions on camera in the state police academy, a weekly ninety-minute debrief in every unit held in the open and without punishment attached, and a standing instruction that senior officers carry junior ones through the ordinary working week.
Citing the Status of Policing in India Report 2025, a survey of 8,276 personnel across 82 locations in 16 states and Delhi, he said 74 per cent had called training on human rights and the prevention of torture very important, while 56 per cent had said tough methods were needed to create public fear.
“That is not the public demanding reform of the police. That is the police asking for it,” he wrote.
“Men who have not been given a method will use the one they have.” The shortfalls were “nobody’s mistake”, he said, but the ordinary result of a job description that changed faster than the system that staffs it. PTI SUN SHS
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