By Manavi Kapur
And yet, the death of George Floyd happened in a context that was entirely different from that of the alleged custodial deaths of J Jayaraj and his son, Bennicks Immanuel. While Black Lives Matter protests across the US called for defunding the police, in India, these reported killings asked for a complete reform of the police forces.
The call for police reform is not new, and the government has enabled several committees to create a roadmap to modernise the forces. This call has also been intensified when gangster Vikas Dubey was allegedly killed by the police in an encounter. And yet, change has been slow to come. Most of the Indian states, for instance, only spend 3% of their annual budgets towards maintaining the police force, and have widespread human resource shortages.
But simply more funds for the police is not going to reduce cases of brutality, according to Maja Daruwala, senior advisor for Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative, and editor of the India Justice Report. “It’s important to see if current spending is enough and properly utilised before reaching any conclusion on what better-policing costs,” she said.
In an interview with Quartz, Daruwala speaks of the problems with budgetary allocations for the police force, why it hasn’t been modernised, and what states can do immediately to improve the level of sensitisation among officers. Edited excerpts:
Read article: Quartz India
