It is hardly necessary to make the point that the Maharashtra government has been as lackadaisical in redressing the genuine grievances of its police force as any other state government. Indeed, in Maharashtra the problem has been compounded by what may legitimately be called the Antulay factor.
The former chief minister, it may be recalled, played havoc with the morale of police officers and their standing with their men. He transferred them on the slightest pretext; he insulted them publicly; he overruled them in respect of postings at important and profitable stations and he put at the head of the force in the state men who enjoyed, rightly or wrongly, a reputation which could not possibly win them the respect of their juniors. Even the then governor, Air Chief Marshal OP Mehra’s remonstrance with him on these issues had apparently no impact on Mr Antulay. He was too intoxicated with power to worry about what others had to say.
Not The End
That, too, was not the end of the matter. Mr Antulay patronised the Maharashtra Police Karmachari Sanghatana, which has spearheaded the present revolt. He patronised Mr SD Mohite, ringleader of the trouble, and had allotted office space to the Sanghatana in preference to another association of policemen, perhaps partly to show the then commissioner of police, Bombay, his place. He gave Rs 50,000 to the Mohite group to enable it to buy furniture for its office and removed Mr MS Kasbekar as Bombay’s police commissioner at its behest. He also attended one of the Sanghatana’s functions without so much as a reference to senior police officials in the metropolis. And why should he have not? After all, he was the self-appointed messiah of the poor and the downtrodden and regarded policeman as belonging to this category.
For all that we know, Mr Antulay’s behaviour was no worse than of many other chief ministers who have not bothered to recognise the self-evident proposition that if you undermine the authority of the officer and disrupt the chain of command, you convert the force into an unruly rabble. But in Maharashtra this was the first time that a chief minister had adopted so cavalier an attitude in his dealings with the police. And so it attracted considerable attention.
It is also possible that Mr Antulay has not been the only chief minister to have made ad hoc promises to policemen which he was in no position to redeem. This can be said to have enabled him to avert virtual mutiny of the armed constabulary last winter but only at the cost of storing trouble for the future.
All in all, by the time Mr Babasaheb Bhosale came to the office of chief minister in Bombay last January, the police force in the state, especially in the metropolis, was in a shambles. He sought to mend matters by, on the one hand, appointing to top positions men who are known to be upright and efficient and on the other, backing them in their efforts to shift corrupt men to less important positions than they had come to occupy during the Antulay reign.
Clearly these steps, however necessary and welcome, could not have sufficed to stem the rot. It had proceeded too far to be so easily checked. He had to do much more by way of attending to the grievances of policemen and isolating the trouble makers among them if he was to restore discipline in the force and eliminate the possibility of the kind of trouble which has now broken out. This he has not been able to do, perhaps partly because he has been under siege ever since Mrs Gandhi chose him to succeed Mr Antulay as Maharashtra’s chief minister.
It is immaterial for the purpose of the present discussion to say whether or not Mr Antulay has been at the back of the campaign of vilification and of the dissidence in the Congress (I) legislature party. The pertinent point is that Mr Bhosale has not enjoyed the kind of authority which could have allowed him to tackle the problem of growing indiscipline in the police force effectively.
The problem itself is complicated. It has almost become intractable due to neglect over the years and the paucity of resources which even the Maharashtra government can possibly divert towards meeting the grievances of policemen. So it is possible that Mr Bhosale would have run into serious difficulty even if he was not the harassed man he has been all these months. In any case, the fact remains that the rot continued to spread in the Maharashtra police force, known or unknown to Mr Bhosale.
The Sanghatana’s decision to ask its members to wear black badges on independence day on Sunday could not have come as a surprise to the chief minister and the officialdom in the Mantralaya (secretariat). The Centre’s, if not the state’s, intelligence agencies could not possibly have degenerated to such a point that they would not be keeping themselves well posted with developments in a police force which they knew to be disaffected. But it is doubtful if Mr Bhosale was aware of the enormity of the crisis he was facing. Or else, having taken or endorsed or at least accepted the decision to crackdown on the Sanghatana and its ring leaders, he would not have left Bombay to come to New Delhi where he had nothing more urgent to discuss with the Central Congress (I) leaders than the proposed expansion of the state cabinet and the possible induction in it of some of the dissidents.
Correct Tip
This paper was tipped off on the proposed crackdown on Tuesday afternoon. So when we discovered that Mr Bhosale was in Delhi, we rashly concluded that our informant might not have been correct about the timing of the action. For we just could not believe that the chief minister would be in Delhi if the crackdown was in fact to take place in the early hours of Wednesday. Needless to say, we were wrong. The crackdown took place at the time conveyed to us.
Mr Bhosale’s presence in Bombay would, of course, not have helped minimise the trouble in Bombay on Wednesday. We are referring to his absence from Bombay mainly because we regard it as an indication that either he was not told how far the rot had spread in the Bombay police or that the intelligence agencies themselves were not properly informed. Either way it would not reflect well on the state of affairs in Maharashtra. There is a third possibility which, if true, would be equally disconcerting. It is that Mr Bhosale has been too unsure of himself to have wished to postpone the proposed cabinet expansion and therefore the discussions in New Delhi.
Since we do not know the compulsions which persuaded the authorities to choose the early hours of August 18 as the time for the crackdown, we are not in a position to say definitely whether or not they should have postponed it till after they had settled the textile mills strike. But we hope that those who decided on the drastic action knew that the presence of so many workers on strike for eight long months in the city would greatly complicate their task.
It has been claimed by unidentified sources that they took advantage of the “jail bharo” (fill the jails) agitation launched by the textile workers on Monday to bring in the necessary BSF and CRP contingents into the city. The implication of this proposition surely is that the timing of the crackdown was determined at least as much by the presence of these men in the city as the gravity of the situation in the police force. It would not altogether be far-fetched to infer from this proposition that those in charge of the operation might not have realised fully what they were up against.
Evil Influence
But the timing of the crackdown apart, it had to come. The behaviour of a substantial number of policemen after the arrest of their leaders cannot leave the slightest scope for doubt on this score. For their actions establish it most clearly that a significant section of the police force had come so strongly under the evil influence of the Sangathana as to be willing to take the law into its own hands and go on the rampage.
These men, it can be argued, have acted under provocation. But sensible men belonging to a disciplined force do not go to the extent of blocking traffic, stoning railway trains and burning public buses and private cars under such a provocation. Only men who have come to believe that they are a law unto themselves resort to such actions. They will have to be dealt with sternly so that others do not fall an equally easy prey to demagogues who are active elsewhere. There is hardly any state in the Union where dangerous men are not busy misleading policemen.
It is almost impossible to believe that any political leader or organisation could have sympathised with, and supported mutinous policemen. But the unthinkable has happened. Some so-called leftist leaders and trade unions have backed the policemen to the point of calling for a bandh in Bombay. This is one of the most dramatic illustrations in the post-1975 period of how far some of our politicians are prepared to go in search of temporary and limited popularity. The Bombay bandh on Thursday bears comparison in sheer irresponsibility with the railway strike amidst food shortages in large parts of the country in 1974. Mrs Gandhi did not shrink from her duty then. She must not shrink from it now.
This is not the time to discuss the genuine grievances of the policemen in Maharashtra. That can be possible only when discipline has been fully restored in the force and the dangerous men eliminated from it for good. For the state government to raise this issue at this stage is to show weakness. Mr Bhosale has been ill-advised to set up a committee to look into the grievances of the policemen. This should have awaited the restoration of normalcy not only in the city but also the police force.
The Times of India, 20 August 1982