Doing duty in the hair-trigger zone

Anyone with any sort of a job will happily tell you that work is synonymous with stress. So many of us have lived that reality, sitting in an air-conditioned office, taking out all one’s anger in a forlorn attempt to crush the nearest paperweight. It’s tough; but it doesn’t kill anyone. When you have a gun in your hand, it could. In 2000, the National Crime Record Bureau says, 111 policemen committed suicide while on duty. Thirty were serving in Maharashtra.

Law and order, religious riots, terrorism, insurgency, VIP movement, traffic control: As internal policing duties have mounted so has the pressure on civilian police forces and on the paramilitary cadre who man the internal faultlines of India. One day, unannounced, somebody may blow a fuse. As the examples on this page will tell you, it has happened numerous times — often enough to fatal affect.

Namdeo didn’t walk out of a vacuum. In a sense, his case is a parable of our troubled times. According to the publication Military Balance, 127 of 187 listed countries have paramilitary forces. The top 10 paramilitary-possessing countries have increased their size three to four times in the period 1965-2002. India is high on that list; about half its armed power is housed in paramilitary forces.

What do these statistics prove? They point to a system that plays fast and loose with human resources. Compared to the training given to an army soldier — and even jawans have been known to simply break down in extreme situations — the beat constable or the paramilitary trooper is shortchanged. As Sunil Dasgupta, research scholar at the Brookings Institute in the United States and currently working on a dissertation on paramilitary forces, puts it, ‘‘Countries raise more paramilitaries rather than regular militaries because paramilitaries are cheaper. They are less trained, less equipped, need less logistical back-up.’’ In short, they are less able to cope with the pressures that their job may demand. It’s like handing a raw Ranji Trophy opener a cricket bat and asking him to face Bret Lee. Unless he’s a lunatic anyway, he’ll just crack up.

Being a policeman, especially in a country of such extraordinary inequalities and hierarchies, pressures and influences such as India, can be fairly dehumanising. Whether it’s in the north-east or in Jammu and Kashmir — or, earlier, in Punjab or even West Bengal in the Naxalite days — to be asked to distrust your fellow countrymen, treat them as suspects, with the cynical aloofness reserved for stray cattle cannot but take its psychological toll. Maha Singh’s case from Assam is there for all to read.

In big cities like New Delhi and Mumbai, a different dynamic comes into play. India’s capital is power obsessed; its powerful residents are status obsessed. Good policemen go to seed being reduced to ‘‘guard duty’’, looking after a particular personage’s official bungalow, which usually means playing cards or even running domestic chores. The seemingly eternal vigil each time a bulletproof convoy makes its journey and the rest of the traffic is brought to a standstill is another stress factor.

Mumbai, India’s golden city, sees its own peculiarities. Your humble policeman may travel three hours from his hovel to guard the dandies and the dilletantes of Cuffe Parade and Andheri. Everyday he makes that relentless train journey, that little time bomb in his head ticking away equally relentlessly.

What can be done? It’s a simple enough question with few easy answers. As the case study from Assam points out, the police force there has begun a project focusing on stress management. In New Delhi, vipassanna and other forms of meditation have been recommended and to some degree incorporated into police regimen.

Jitendra Nagpal, New Delhi-based psychiatrist, points to the root of the problem: ‘‘In the forces, there is just one way communication. Orders are issued and subordinates have to abide by them.’’ Yes sir, no sir, three bags full sir. The result? ‘‘People just internalise their emotions.’’ Nagpal suggests ‘‘a little bit discussion in order to enhance the sense of belonging to the organisation.’’

Far away in Bhopal, Dinesh Jugran, director-general of police, Madhya Pradesh, echoes this. ‘‘I write to the constables every month,’’ he says, ‘‘The copy reaches each one of them individually.’’ Such ‘‘direct communication’’ is, to Jugran, the ‘‘biggest de-stresser’’. In the state’s bigger cities, policemen are forced to take a day’s casual leave by rotation.

Namdeo is from Madhya Pradesh. Three years ago, he moved to Mumbai for a better life.