‘Had I stayed on, I’d have been a victim of male chauvinism. The fact is I’m going on my own terms’

• COOMI KAPOOR: But was it not very hard to break into a male bastion?

I’d broken into a male bastion even as a tennis player. I think that’s where playing sports makes such a big difference. Competitive sports of the level I played as a tennis player. Therefore, whenever I go to colleges and schools, I tell them, ‘For God’s sake, make them play outdoor sports, competitive games, because then they really open up and get the physical fitness and mental tenacity they need. For me, men weren’t something that had come from Mars; they were part of Venus and were in fact living on Venus.

• RITU SARIN: As a variation to that question, now that you have taken premature retirement, have you been a victim of male chauvinism?

Interestingly, had I stayed on I’d have been a victim of male chauvinism. The fact is that I’m going on my terms. I have not allowed myself to do what I am forced by circumstances to do. Had I stayed on, I would have internally accepted something that I would not have normally accepted. I have refused to be a victim. I have opted out of a status-quoist system. And I’d say it’s a traditional status-quoist system, not chauvinistic. So whether chauvinism is part of the status-quoist system or not is another issue. And I’m not status-quoist by nature. I have gone by what my inner needs were. Had I stayed on, I’d have been victimised by my own nature. I have thrown off all the security and the trappings; I’m going to look for a new house, a new office for myself. I have a whole new design for the rest of the years ahead, with energy still on my side.

• GAUTAM CHIKERMANE: I’ll take that question a bit further. Let us zoom out of Kiran Bedi. So are you saying that the system and the processes by which the country runs have not changed in the last 15 years as the country has changed and reforms have happened? Are the mindsets still the same and likely to remain so?

I wish the mindset of the majority had changed. It has changed only marginally. The day it changes, it will change the dynamics of governance. It (change) has appeared in islands of governance, not in the entire governance. It is individuals who are governing dynamically, who are willing to interpret rules for the people, involving the people, and by the people. If you are looking at real change, it should be the majority who should change and the minority who should hold them back. Here, the mediocre and average majority holds you back.

• ESHA ROY: Do you think there’s a glass ceiling in the police force holding women back?

There’s a blockade and I’ve seen it in the lower ranks, the inspector level too. It’s the traditional mindset, which looks for familiar security, not unfamiliar insecurity. And a woman is not familiar security still. She is the unknown insecurity. Look at the way we deploy women sub-inspectors. Look at the number of Station House Officers who are women? Not many are willing to take the risk. The majority in this country is choosing the safer option; I’m talking about the field of governance, of which I’ve been a part for 37 years, and not of private entrepreneurship.

• C. JAYANTHI: You have said that men get ahead because they are booze buddies. So what do women do?

KIRAN BEDI: If anyone of us in a government position wants to dine out every day, he or she can and there still will be a waiting list of people who want to invite you out. By and large liquor is part of that. I have nothing for or against it. That’s where you unwind, relax, chat, bond. If you do that too often, what are you taking out? Your family time, your rest time, your recovery time, your re-energising time. But when you go home in the evening, you are being with your family, you are looking at the next day. If you are a woman with a child, you are bonding with him or her. I think we all make our choices in life. Somebody balances out the bonding with friends, somebody just wants to bond with family, someone just wants it with friends. I made my choices in my life. I was a mother and during the peak, heavy work hours of my life, I had a daughter, and my husband used to live in another town. So that means I was both a mother and a father to my child. Fortunately my parents were with me at home and thanks to them I could work 24 hours a day. But my child was always waiting for me. She was so understanding and said, ‘My mum is out of home as long as work demands and my mum will come back to me as soon as the work is over.’ And she had this expectation of me and this was my need too.

But in the process, I could neither gossip, nor bond, nor share information. So the bonding that comes from breaking bread, not necessarily booze — for me that quotient could never be nurtured enough. And when it comes to critical sharing — who is who and who is he or she, I was still the unknown, insecure factor. And when it comes to the top position, it is not just security that matters, it is not just your record that matters, it is also what kind of person you are. In the peer group, I had not broken bread much at all. I’d seen them on the sports ground, in parades, met them at workshops but almost never broken bread with them. So they were looking for a friend and I was not a friend. Basically that is where friendship matters also. I was an official, I was a person, I was known for the work I did, but I was not a personal friend. And finally that factor does matter.

• COOMI KAPOOR: Did your seniors back you up when you challenged those VIPs?

Absolutely, but the moment they went, so did I. Why did they go and why did I go so soon when I’d hardly done my tenure? Ask a local policeman and he’ll always say he wants an honest leader. They want to lead a life of dignity and to be led by a courageous leader. But when they get an officer who does not even recognise them, who does not even look at them, meet them, communicate with them, then they all pocket. So he lives a demeaning life but on the edge because whatever he collects, God knows how much little he is getting. Who denies that the traffic police does not collect? Traffic police across the board in the country collects. But whom does it collect for? It does not pocket everything itself. It shares. Who all does it share with? Imagine the kind of money some metropolitan police forces had. Where were the cameras? We should have had cameras all over watching them. But we have few cameras. Getting money from the government for technology is not a problem. But how many were they? Ask for donations, people would say, here is one camera, sponsored by Reliance, sponsored by Tatas, sponsored by Birlas, sponsored by Shell and sponsored by HCL. You have cameras and I will see how traffic violation takes place.

• COOMI KAPOOR: But would there be no merit in the system, which allowed you to reach here? Who allows these islands of excellence to flourish?

Is it the system allowing it, or is it the individual wading through? Because if the system was allowing it, then there would have been many individuals. To me it is the individual — regardless.

• GAUTAM CHIKERMANE: There’s a school of thought that believes that police are not paid enough so they go for bribes. How true would that be? Suppose the scales change, will it stop corruption to some extent?

Absolutely. Our government salaries across the board are very poor. But why have our salaries remained that bad? And why have army salaries gone better and better? Because we don’t have an angry, agitating leadership around the prime minister, the home minister, that speaks up for the police. If you don’t have security (that good pay brings), it impacts your development. That’s why you are not getting teachers in IITs, not getting researchers. Liberal arts have gone for a six because you are not paid well. Another thought is that if this policeman is paid little, he or she will fend for himself anyway, so let him do so. So they got down to fending for themselves and it became a cancerous habit.

But no, it’s not about money alone, though money is vital. The new pay commission will just meet your inflationary change. We have never looked a policeman’s job as three days in a day. We never pay him three times over. Either pay him three times, or let him work only eight hours daily. We do neither. Yet we hit him every time over corruption.

• UNNI RAJEN SHANKER: You had a larger-than-life profile. Did it work against you or in your favour? And how?

KIRAN BEDI: It got me lot of public co-operation and support and it did make my task easier. Because public trust is a very good facilitator for good policing. It enables you to raise resources. All my policing has been about police-public partnership.

• NEHA SHARMA-BAHL: What are your future plans?

Plenty. In fact, I’m already busier and am wondering which was easier — being in a government job or out of it? I don’t want to commit on anything now, but I have plenty to do for the larger good of nation-building. I have two very large NGOs to work with, which together employ 250 people, and one of them reaches out to 10,000 families a day. There’s book writing to be finished. I have a book in hand. I will take this year to finish the book. It’s autobiographical, but it is more on management and leadership. Police and prison reforms will remain a life mission. We need just 1,000 days to police reforms: I can tell you what to do. We need just 1,000 days to prison reforms. The Indian Express is known for speaking the truth and we can speak for police reforms and really have a movement.

• NEHA SINHA: We witnessed the gruesome killing of a schoolboy by two students. You wrote a piece for us saying, ‘Let sunlight into the prisons, they will be the biggest disinfectant.’ How do you deal with a child who has committed a crime? These kids have gone to a juvenile home and we don’t know what will happen. Media have gone to these homes and said the children are better off on the streets.

You have to have better juvenile homes, like in Japan. The children truly get parented there. And the magistrate releases the juvenile only when the magistrate is convinced that the child is recovered. It is an amazing system there. It was one of the finest visits that is etched in my memory.

• AMANDEEP SHUKLA: You were trying new things. How did your peer group look at you? Did they feel they could not do the same things or did they think that you were unwise? How did they react? You also said that in the final anaylsis it was the peer group that was deciding who will be the commissioner of police.

All I can say is yes. I had but a few friends in Delhi and that’s it. They were not many. But then friends need cultivation too. There was an element of envy. I can’t deny that either. There were individuals who always tried to sabotage what I was doing. So I had to cover myself from getting sabotaged, and all kinds of things. But I just went on, because that was the only way. In fact my work became my biggest survival tool. If I hadn’t worked, I would not have survived even this long. Believe me. It was the work, the public goodwill, public support, which was making me survive.

• AMANDEEP SHUKLA: You were also in police research & development. Is the work relevant? Are the studies related to practical difficulties?

Who believes in research? Research is the biggest casualty in the police. Whereas research is the answer. And acceptance and implementation of the research report is the answer. So we neither encourage objective research, nor do we even discuss that research and get into an action plan, nor do we audit the implementation. All the three are missing. That is why we have chaos here.

• COOMI KAPOOR: What would you say were the three most challenging moments in you career?

The first challenge was leading the Republic Day parade on January 26, 1975. I used to practise walking 25 km every day to walk 14 km on that day. To do it right was a major challenge. You are the leader of a whole team and the whole country is watching you, and you got to have your salute right. There is Mrs Gandhi sitting there and so are all the VIPs. You are leading an all-male parade, and you have to walk 14 km from Vijay Chowk to Red Fort, sword in hand. That was brilliant; that was a breakthrough. My second challenge came in 1979, when I handled the Nirankari agitation. None of you probably remember it, but that brought me the gallantry award — the only official award that I have. The first cordon had been broken and the agitators came to my India Gate side. There was fighting — sword-wielding agitators and I only had my baton. I was abandoned, all alone, and if I had not held them back, there would have been mayhem. I won it because of my sports, my stamina, the determination and never say die spirit of sports. The third was undoubtedly the lawyer’s agitation. It was very long-drawn. It started in 1988 and went on till 1993. This time it was legal endurance. I’d almost lost my job and I was almost preparing to move into the legal profession. In the end neither side won or gained. Both lost, both won. No loss, no gain.

• NEHA SHARMA-BAHL: We’ve spoken a lot about gender issues. But we also know that now, every other day, there are arbitrary laws supporting women. Women have also started exploiting them. What do you have to say about that?

Earlier it was 80:20. Now it is 20:80, that is, 80 are genuinely in trouble, 20 are abusing those laws (meant to protect women). Now courts are detecting the abuse and not going along with the woman. So men are also in trouble, but it is 20:80 still. It all depends on which segment of society you are coming from. I deal with poorer segments in family counselling centres: it’s almost 95:5 there.

(The transcript was prepared by Shivani Kapoor)