India achieved freedom in peaceful way and created the example of non-violence for the whole world. India and Mahatama Gandhi become the icon of non-violence for the world. If we look back after 65 years of independence, the dream of our freedom fighters, the commitment of self rule made to British during the struggle seems to be shattered. Many of our citizens feel that British rule was better then our government and the government organization's were serving them better then what we see today. As a result so many anti corruption and anti government movement has started. I feel issue is not the corruption alone but the whole culture of these organization's is in question. Some how these organization's does not have empathy to their customers, the citizens of India, to whom they are supposed to serve. Citizen feel these organization are not serving them but only to their masters. Let us try to understand what went wrong in our independence.
Post independence, India inherited most of the institutions (e.g. police, judiciary, education etc.) as is, which in fact were established by British. Every organization had a unique culture which is the result of its evolution over a period of time. Longer the life of organization stronger the culture and interestingly difficult to change. More sudden the changes imposed, stronger resistance the members will put against it.When railway reservation was getting computerized there was strong resistance from employee that it will create unemployment and inefficiencies. But today those fears seems to be baseless.
Let us try to understand the police department, which was build by British and nurtured to fight with India`s freedom struggle. They were trained for more then 300 years to suppress common Indian people. Their whole training was to intimidate people so that they will not raise their voice against the British. They build all spy organization to trace Indian freedom fighters. Now imagine 1947, same police organization with same set of employee but they have to start respecting the same very people, they were opposing. Did the executive of free India thought about it and decided the course of action to change this culture? People of free India expected different behaviour but the organization were not ready for it. Instead the police bosses took the different course to avoid the call for culture change, they became loyal to elected representatives instead of being loyal to country and its citizen. After years of distortion in the culture we can see the output where citizen are loosing very confidence in them.
Now it is a mammoth task to change these organization's culture. Time has gone where we can reform these institutions using the piece meal or small change approach and only way to change these organization is to do their surgery. Now political class has learned how to use these organizations for their interest and it will be close to impossible that politics will bring any change.
My advice will be to start the parallel police organization from scratch which will perform very small subset of police responsibility. Develop the culture of this new organization with citizen as customers. Slowly increase the responsibility of new organization as it evolve. Later when culture of this organization becomes strong, start recruiting people from existing police organization to new organization. But question is, who will put the bell in cats neck? Do we have honest politicians who can raise above selfish interest and think about country first.
My advice will be to start the parallel police organization from scratch which will perform very small subset of police responsibility. Develop the culture of this new organization with citizen as customers. Slowly increase the responsibility of new organization as it evolve. Later when culture of this organization becomes strong, start recruiting people from existing police organization to new organization. But question is, who will put the bell in cats neck? Do we have honest politicians who can raise above selfish interest and think about country first.
