post-26/11, is India safer? By Kiran Bedi

Kiran Bedi, Former DG, Bureau of Police Research and Development:

We have more than a million policemen. I don't know whether any assessment has been made on their training, welfare or personnel policy. We invest nothing and have no objective assessments. I have not come across a single objective police assessment on police performance and their impact on us. The real intelligence, tackling of terror is actually done by the footsoldiers. I don't think that Chidambaram has reached the footsoldiers. Chidambaram has only reached the Central Police Organisations (CPOS). He has at least met the Intelligence Bureau (IB) chief and the NSA, but why didn't he meet the state DGPs? The BSF and CRPF should be a part of his meeting and he should start involving others CPOs.

I don't think the responses are truly corrective, they are still only reactive. I want to see Chidambaram grooming leadership. I doubt if he is doing it. I don't see impatience in him. We all have to be in a hurry to be good leaders. If Chidambaram says police is a state subject, it is not acceptable to me because he can groom leadership. Maybe our expectations from him are high.

There is a big difference in the way we are responding to this meeting and the last one; the last one was one of total helplessness. Today, we may be over the moon but we should not be satisfied. We expect Chidambaram to spread good practices, structures, systems, responses and human resource policies down the line.