Stop taking CRPF for granted & get about how we police our nation

Chalte Raho Pyare Fauj. That is what the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) is fondly called in police parlance. Cynics would call them cannon fodder. The CRPF is the dogsbody of India’s internal security. They are sent to the aid of state police forces; help beef up VIP security and maintain law and order during elections.  

Mao Zedong said, ‘The guerrilla must move among the people as a fish swim in the sea.’ It is the CRPF’s unenviable duty to fish in our troubled waters, tackling Maoists in Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand, insurgents in Nagaland and Manipur, and Pakistan-backed terrorists in Jammu & Kashmir.  

The CRPF is the biggest active paramilitary force in the world, with 246 battalions and a sanctioned strength of over 300,000 men and a handful of women. India’s other paramilitary forces have more defined tasks — the Border Security Force (BSF) and the Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP) guard our borders, and the Central Industrial Security Force (CISF) guards’ airports and sensitive installations. The CRPF is thrown into every breach. In the Kashmir Valley, it is the ‘intermediate force’ that maintains the thin line between civilian and Army rule.  

It was not meant to be so challenging when the force was born 80 years ago during British rule as the Crown Representative’s Police. Our paper warriors rear up in high dudgeon when an outrage occurs — as happened in April 2017 when 26 CRPF men were slaughtered in a Maoist ambush in Chhatisgarh’s Sukma district. But when was the last time somebody really tried to get under the skin of a CRPF jawan? How much has changed since I spoke with exhausted CRPF troopers in Manipur nearly four decades ago about their tough lives?  

The CRPF man in Kashmir is expected to perform some of the most daunting duty—foot patrols in towns and villages bristling in revolt; sitting trapped in vehicles attacked by hundreds of stone-pelters, dawn-to-dusk ROP (road opening party) work; securing highways for Army convoys to roll past. The average posting in a disturbed area is two years.

Poorer Cousin  

Although the CRPF and the Army are ‘garrison forces’ that return to base every day, CRPF encampments are poorer cousins of the Army’s spit-and-polish establishments. There are very few ‘family barracks’— most CRPF men have left their families back in their villages.  

“The CRPF men are always on the move,” a senior officer told me. “They do not even have a place they can call their base. When they are on duty, they are billeted anywhere local authorities can squeeze them in, unlike the Army that always has designated camps.”  

The air is thick with war cries after the Valentine’s Day massacre in Pulwama, and the grieving force has even had to battle rumors, words, and images being spread on social media to foment hatred.

At the same time, there has been an outpouring of public sympathy and support for the CRPF. The home ministry’s ‘Bharat ke Veer’ portal collected tens of thousands of donations from citizens. The next of kin of each slain trooper is entitled to a lump sum of ₹35 lakh and a pension equivalent to the last pay drawn. Jawans’ children are offered financial aid through school and college.  

In October 2010, the UPA government ordered full reimbursement of all tuition and hostel charges for the children of soldiers killed on active duty. On the Seventh Pay Commission’s recommendation, hostel fee reimbursements were capped at ₹10,000 per month. But in March 2018, the NDA government removed the cap and restored full reimbursement.  

Reform Policing  

However, things are not going to get better until we drastically reform our policing systems. Law and order are a state subject, so policing is a messy patchwork dictated by state budgets. The local constabulary is mostly frittered away on bandobast duty or VIP security (including performing menial tasks for the politicians in power).  

It is convenient for the states to ask the central government to send CRPF ‘reinforcements’ every time a disturbance erupts. It also suits the Centre to send in the CRPF so it can wield some influence in state-level maintenance of public order.  

Despite a ratio of more than 600 police for every 100,000 citizens in Kashmir, the situation has grown steadily worse. Data compiled by the South Asia Terrorism Portal shows there were 294 incidents of killing in 2018, up from 163 in 2017. They caused 451 deaths in 2018, including that of 270 terrorists, 86 civilians, and 95 security forces, up from 357 in 2017, which included 220 terrorists, 54 civilians, and 83 security forces.  

Nationwide, our police forces are woefully under-staffed. India has one of the world’s lowest ratios, with 138 police for every 100,000 citizens. One estimate puts the number of countrywide police vacancies at half-a-million.  This vacuum is compounded by personnel shortages in paramilitary forces.  

Eight days before the Pulwama attack, the government launched a drive to fill 76,578 vacancies in the paramilitary forces. The CRPF accounted for the most: 21,566 constable-level vacancies. CRPF troopers are supposed to get at least three weeks’ training every year in rotation. But they are so badly stretched, not least because of our endless merry-go-round of elections, that training is an easy casualty. Something has to change. 

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