#9 The State of Violence and Order
Notes from the book 'Internal Security in India - Violence, Order and the State' edited by Amit Ahuja and Devesh Kapur
Providing security and maintaining order is the core job of the state. Looking at long term trends, violence in India has declined. But this has not necessarily translated into reduction of fear. Strengthening of state capacity has also come at the cost of reduction in civil liberties. This is a good time for us as citizens to reflect upon what freedoms we are ready to compromise for the sake of security.
As I write this, we have been reading news about ethnic violence in Manipur, riots in Haryana and the Jaipur-Mumbai train incident. At times like this, it feels like so many things have changed over the past two decades and yet nothing has changed.
Already a lot is being said and reported (and mis-reported) about these incidents. Anything I write about it will be futile, so I direct my attention to a book that examines the question of how has the Indian state managed violence and order over a long arc of time. There are very few books that examine this topic from a state centric point of view which makes Internal Security in India: Violence, Order and the State an essential read. It is a compilation of essays examining the various aspects of maintaining internal security, written by noted journalists, experts or academicians in the field and edited by two brilliant academicians Amit Ahuja and Devesh Kapur.
The book is packed with trends, insights and numbers and will be quite difficult to summarize in a blogpost. I can only attempt to bring out a few broad takeaways. We also got an opportunity to talk to the editors of this book on Puliyabaazi Hindi podcast— I am linking the episode below for those who want to dive into this further.
Providing security is the core job of the State
In public policy, there can be a lot of arguments about what the state should or shouldn’t do. But there is one undisputed consensus that providing security is the main job of any state. We can say that providing security and maintaining order is pretty much the primary justification for the concept of the state itself. We as citizens form a (tacit) contract to abide by the laws of the state and give up some of our freedoms in exchange for order, security and protection of our remaining rights by the state.
We often under appreciate the importance of order in enjoying our rights and liberties. Without order, we will not be able to enjoy any of our freedoms in any material sense.
“The primary problem is not liberty but the creation of a legitimate public order. Men may, of course, have order without liberty, but they cannot have liberty without order.”
- Samuel P. Huntington
Hence, both external security (provided by the army) and internal security (provided by the police and enabled by the law and order mechanism) is considered a classic public good and the most essential function of any state.
The book examines three main questions:
What has been the record of the Indian state in controlling violence and preserving order?
How has the state capacity evolved to meet this objective?
What have been the implications of these on civil liberties and the quality of our democracy?
First, the good news — Violence has actually decreased over the long term
This may come as a surprise to many of us, especially at a time like this. The book examines different categories of violence over a long arc of time and finds that various kinds of violence seems to have peaked in the 1990 and then gradually plummeted. There are declining trends of violence in a number of categories and each may have a different reason for the decline. The book has detailed charts on all of these—I will just list out a few over here:
Homicide deaths have steadily declined over the past three decades. While homicide rates have declined worldwide from 6.8 per lakh in 1990 to 5.8 per lakh in 2018, India’s decline is steeper—from 5.1 to 3.1 per lakh in the same time period. Interestingly, related indicators like police-to-population ratios and percentage population of young men have more or less remained unchanged during this period. What was different is that India’s economy grew at an unprecedented rate during this timeframe.
Insurgencies and terrorism related violence has declined as the state capacity has improved in tackling them. However, there seems to be a lack of long term political settlements that would ensure that no new cycles of violence erupt.
Incidents of communal violence are relatively stable. The number of people killed and injured peaked in 2002, but have been on a slightly declining trend up until 2017 when MHA has stopped providing data on communal violence.
Electoral violence has generally declined between 1989 and 2019 mainly due to a closer supervision of the polls by ECI and extensive use of police forces to secure elections.
Reduction in violence does not mean removal of fear
All the above listed indicators signaling towards an overall reduction of violence may take us by surprise precisely because our daily experiences do not reflect the same. Violence may have reduced, but a sense of fear remains. This is revealed in the ratio of the number of private security providers to public security providers being at a staggering 5:1—for every public security provider, there are 5 private security providers in India.
I will list out some reasons for this phenomenon as I understood from my reading of the book and our conversation with the editors:
While there has been strengthening of the state capacity in this domain, it has come about through an increase in centralization. This centralization has occurred as more and more states have underinvested in the state police forces and over relied on the center to manage and control violence and order. State police forces remain understaffed, poorly trained and overworked. Politicians also have vested interest in keeping the police force under their control and recommendations on police reforms have largely been ignored.
The capability of our state and central police force to maintain order and control violence has increased. However, this is often done through the use of brute force. On the other hand, the investigative capacity of police forces remains poor, which combined with snail-paced courts leads to a weak justice system.
Amplification of fear due to easy propagation on social media is also one reason. However, this has two sides to it. While fear can get amplified on social media, so can awareness. It is not so easy to perpetuate violence at a large scale with media glare. So, we should be wary of internet shutdowns because cases like Manipur violence against women would have come out in light much earlier if there was no internet shutdown.
Some forms of violence such as lynchings have a terrorizing effect. While the number of persons killed may not be high, such crimes spread fear and distrust in the society.
The cost of security
Whenever there is a threat to national security, the urgency to curb the threat gives the executive an opportunity to expand their authority through stricter laws. Over time, national security has been used as a justification for introducing draconian preventive laws in different forms like TADA, POTA and UAPA. Quoting from the book—”Under UAPA alone, 5111 cases were filed and 6009 arrested between 2015 and 2019.”
We must remember that the protest crowd that had gathered at Jallianwala Bagh in Amritsar in 1919 was there to protest the Rowlatt Act—an act that allowed indefinite preventive detention. Today, we have pretty much accepted similar laws without much challenge from citizens. With increasing adoption of facial recognition and surveillance technologies implemented without due checks, privacy concerns remain ignored. Almost anything can be justified in the name of internal security and it will pretty much go unchallenged.
No substitute to finding political solution
The role of army and central armed forces in maintaining internal security has also increased over time. Now the primary role of the army is to maintain external security. Deploying the army may be necessary to squash incidences of violence in cases such as terrorism and insurgency, but this is an option to be used judiciously. While the army is quite effective at controlling violence by the means of sheer force, it is no substitute to creating long term political solutions. Amit Ahuja who has co-written the chapter on the role of the military in internal security emphasizes this in our conversation too that a fall in violence must be used as an opportunity to create a long term political solution because only that can bring lasting peace.
“A nation is not governed which is perpetually to be conquered.”
- Edmund Burke
The role of Samaaj, Sarkar aur Bazaar
The book comprehensively covers the various aspects of internal security such as public finances, the role of MHA, the role of central armed police forces, and intelligence organizations. It is not possible to dive into each of these in this short post, so I strongly recommend you to read the book.
While concluding our puliyabaazi, we asked Amit and Devesh on how the state, market and society can contribute towards keeping a check on violence. I quote Devesh verbatim on this:
Sarkar - “Do no cause harm. Strengthen your first line of responders, make them professional and politically independent.”
Samaaj - “Do not have prejudices towards our own fellow citizens. If we do not treat them equally, it will come back to bite us.”
Bazaar - “We need to solve our unemployment problem. If the youth has a job and they are not on the street, violence will stay under check.”
The concluding remarks by Amit stayed with me:
“It is important for citizens to think whether we should be seeing everything from the lens of security and what rights and freedoms are we ready to sacrifice in the name of security… when the violence subsides, we must use it as an opportunity to think and talk about what kind of state, market and society we want to create.. ”
With these thoughts I leave you with this beautiful prayer-song in Marathi that goes like this —”This is our only prayer and this is our only demand. Humans shall behave with others, just like humans.” I am linking a version with marathi lyrics and english subtitles. I think this is the prayer our country needs at this moment.
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Links:
Internal Security in India: Violence, Order and the State edited by Amit Ahuja and Devesh Kapur