It8217;s always possible with Kiran

The year's 1972. Picture a young woman, an additional superintendent of police, going into a burning building in the Kishanganj area of S...

The year8217;s 1972. Picture a young woman, an additional superintendent of police, going into a burning building in the Kishanganj area of Sadar Bazar during a riot, after dousing herself with water, and forcibly leading a team of extremely reluctant men into rescuing 17 women and children. Two months into her job as the first woman police officer and she8217;s promoted from chokri to sir8217;, from curiosity to career officer. Now picture the same woman as Inspector General of Police IGP in 1999, her shoulder-length hair shorn since and out of the saris she used to favour at formal functions, accusing another woman officer of 8220;raping8221; the police force.

In another woman, such intemperate language would be regarded as sexism. In Kiran Bedi, a woman who has always had to prove herself to be more than a man, it is perhaps to be expected. After all, for most of her career, she8217;s been called sir8217;, dressed in the Rajiv Gandhi fashion in kurta, jeans and jacket briefly and horribly in pathan suits, taken her parentsalong to most postings, and had a supportive spouse with whom she has had a 8220;mental union8221; and whom she meets during fortnightly visits.

One is tempted to call her, in Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones8217; terms, an 8220;imitation man8221; like Indira Gandhi, Margaret Thatcher and Golda Meir. But Bedi is more than that. For a middle class obsessed with itself, she is that rare thing: a reflection of all that it wants to be. A woman with a strong belief in herself and in her responsibilities. Even as she sits by her unconscious mother8217;s bedside in the Post-Graduate Institute, Chandigarh, she doesn8217;t hesitate to take media calls and speak her mind. Her mother8217;s been in coma for 30 days, Bedi8217;s just been transferred out of Chandigarh after falling foul of a system which had systematically eroded the IG8217;s powers, for the third time in her career she8217;s been put on hold for another posting, and as usual, opinion about her is divided. But Bedi is unequivocal as usual: 8220;As an officer my focus is always on my responsibilities, not mypowers. I don8217;t look at my powers in terms of the comforts that are provided. I like to use them to serve better. Greater responsibility can only spur you to greater power. But here there was a complete division of force.8221;

As one of the best known and most emulated women in India, Bedi is a hate object as much as she is a hero. Like T.N. Seshan, everyone has an opinion about her, even if they don8217;t want to share it with her. While no one doubts her ability, not many like her. While no one can question her integrity, few can speak up for camera-chasing. Even Shobha De, that other love-hate object of the middle classes, admits in her Selective Memories, that though she adores Bedi, her weakness is her blindness to her self-obsession.

Which is why if there8217;s one thing Bedi can8217;t abide, it8217;s criticism. Make the mistake of attacking her, especially for seeking the media out, and she goes all prickly. Make the bigger mistake of referring to her support of a lawyer8217;s handcuffing in 1985, or her daughter8217;s quotaadmission in 1992, or even her grant of a typewriter to Charles Sobhraj in 1993, and she clams up. Part of it can only be because as a public woman who believes in transparent governance, she cannot have had an easy life.

She has steadfastly refused to get ahead by what she refers to as 8220;wining and dining8221; in her revelatory second book on transforming one of the 8220;largest prisons in the world8221;: It8217;s Always Possible. But trust her not to keep her opinion to herself. 8220;Kiran is extremely conservative at heart,8221; says Indo-Tibetan Border Police Director-General Gautam Kaul, with whom she did her first stint as ASP. 8220;She8217;s deeply religious, she8217;s a devoted mother and a very good daughter.8221; Bedi is as popular with her juniors as she is feared by her equals. Ved Marwah, who was DIG Range when she was a sub-divisional police officer, says 8220;she8217;s a doer, she takes on responsibility, she gets along very well with subordinates and is very responsive to public needs8221;. Which is why though her lack of actualaction vexed many when she was advisor to Lieutenant Governor Tejinder Khanna, the grievance redressal machinery that she evolved her real brief has actually stood the test of time.

In fact, it is her habit of wanting to set things right which got her into trouble in Chandigarh again. As she says: 8220;I could have easily let things be. It was a preventible situation if those at the helm of affairs had stemmed it in time. But they didn8217;t.8221; Much of the strict discipline in her life comes from her sports training she was a national tennis champ and her yogic routine. She reads voraciously, loves Indian classical music, and has also been a Nehru fellow apart from a very well-publicised Magsaysay Award winner and one-time breakfast partner of US President Bill Clinton. Of late, she has also taken to visiting various swamis for solace.

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But even now, more than 25 years after she came as a young rookie to Kaul8217;s office with a bedroll he had to tell her that she needn8217;t stay the night at the thana, sheremains elusive. What drives her ferocious energy? Is it self-love or is it that rare thing that bureaucratic fat cats leave behind as soon as they graduate from the Lal Bahadur Academy in Mussoorie: the spirit of public service? Perhaps we8217;ll never know. And perhaps that8217;s as it should be, for someone who despite being such a recognisable face, is a very private woman with a very tiny but fiercely loyal set of friends.

8212; KAVEREE BAMZAI