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Greek verb ‘logistikos’ meaning compute or calculate, and French verb ‘loger’ meaning
lodge are the roots of the English noun ‘logistics’, meaning supply of supportive
other facilitators in any operation as planned in advance, and accurately trace the true
nature of an effective logistics in terms of computed and calculated planning, and lodging
or infixing the supportive tools as calculated and planned in advance to be lodged at right
time, place and occasion to meet the needs of the operation for efficient performance and
results, ipso facto investing logistics and its execution a managerial edge. Logistics and
logistics support imprimis are managerial tools built on the bedrock of the management
precise time management and efficient space management, made possible with right
foresight, creative vision, incisive planning and accurate execution. Evolution of norms
for logistics in police organisations is byword for the desire for the application of
step and prognosticates the aurora of the scientific age in police organisations. Logistics
norms differ only in details from the Police Station level to the sub-division level to
district level while rest on the same bedrock of broad managerial techniques.
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Prime Vectors
Both Police Station and District Police Administration are the pillars of the policing
structure of India with sub-divisions providing the links between the two. Sub-divisions
derive their sustenance and draw manpower and logistics from the Police Stations, ergo
strong and efficient Police Stations mean strong sub-divisions. In exceptional cases, sub-
divisions can always depend upon the strength of the district police force. Sub-divisions
as such do not have independent existence apart from the Police Stations under them and
the district police administration that guides and controls them. Therefore, discussion on
the logistics requirements of the Police Stations and the district police administration
Police Stations and district police administrations as the basic structures of the policing,
need to be pollent units capable of independently tackling crimes, security and law and
order issues from their own provenances, so that higher units are free to focus on larger
issues of countrywide dimensions sans distractions. For this to happen, the Police
Stations have to be full-fledged units as far as their manpower and logistics requirements
are concerned without the need of asking and waiting for the help extra muros. A sense of
autarchy and autarky is basic here. The change brings pride to the unit and boosts morale
bringing in high motivation and inculcating lofty purpose to the job of policing. The end
result will be quality and often competitive performance of very high order in policing
Police Station setup of present India grievously falls short in logistics and infrastructure
or financial powers. Though district police administrations are in far better position than
the Police Stations in all compartments en face respective requirements, they too are far
from an ideal position in respect of their requirements. While Police Stations must look to
the district police administration for help for manpower and logistics support for every
uncommon situation, the district police administration in turn looks to the state
headquarters for elbow space. Even begging other government departments for transport
and other infrastructure facilities is not unheard of. This is not an ideal situation by any
Both Police Stations and district police administrations should become self-contained
and other logistics requirements. Every Police Station should convert into a nidus of
police functions under an officer of the rank of Police Inspector assisted by scores of Sub-
intelligence, law and order and armed police. Every Police Station must have a unit of its
own armed reserve under a PSI that provides men also for extraneous duties like guards,
courts, summons, orderly services apart from being the striking force. The armed police
units of the district police administration need to be strengthened in most districts and
properly trained.
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Intelligence Gathering
Both Police Station and district police administration setups as far as intelligence
gathering is concerned is in extremely poor shape uniformly in most states of India, save
a few like Jammu and Kashmir where the need of self-preservation perforce dictated
policing and sine qua non for professional policing. Intelligence gathering and analyses
apparatchik is the principium among the core logistics supports that makes difference to
the quality of the policing process in both the Police Station and district police
administration levels. Districts do have structures to handle both the crime and law and
order intelligence, though poorly equipped and seldom made use of, while the same in the
strengthened at both the levels to enrich policing process with relevant intelligence. An
officer of the rank of PSI with adequate staff in a Police Station should be in exclusive
charge of collecting both the crime and law and order intelligence to strengthen the hands
commissionerates sans magisterial powers and treated as such in importance and powers.
Trust begets trust and trust sprouts responsibility. Once Police Stations revive
respectability and importance on par with that of the British vintage, they may regain
their whilom aureole at no time. This is so also with the district police administrations.
Indeed, there are the issues of corruption and misuse of powers that are beyond the scope
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of this discussion and it suffices to state that appropriate checks and counterchecks should
Pollent Police Stations as the centers of police functions justifies fewer police stations
around and irrationalise the present donnert trend among the top-brass of crying wolf for
creating more and more police stations at every possible opportunity and howling hoarse
for many more to create ‘gulli-gulli police station’ situation with most of them weak and
incapable of independent existence and just meant as mere show-pieces for the public
consumption and adding to the welter in jurisdictional and other complications. The
epinosic response is owing to the copycat mindset so prolate among the Indian police
age of hi-tech world, and transport and communication explosions render the world
increasingly smaller every passing day. What is required is quality. The stress must be on
resourcefulness and response time. Fewer Police Stations, each a nidus of the police
functions at strategic locations and self-dependent in its manpower and other logistic
of the hour. Control room oriented policing with shortened response time are capable to
tackle any kind of police emergencies and contingencies within a given area. District
police administrations must function as the custodian and provider of special techniques,
high-tech gadgets and higher counseling and guidance to the benefits of the Police
Control Rooms
This brings the issue of control room oriented policing that suits best in urban areas to the
fore. Shift systems round the clock and response time are the key factors in such a
policing system. Logistics support becomes the crucial issue in the control room oriented
policing system as the effectiveness of the system depends tout a fait on effective
logistics designs, planning and management in place. Police Stations fully self-dependent
in manpower and other logistics supports like transport, communication, weaponry and
other facilitators alone can handle control rooms successfully for perficient policing.
Such a system presupposes committed manpower working on round the clock shifts and
requiring high morale. High morale in turn depends on job satisfaction and right job
culture that are built on perfect man management practices. All these issues need to be
tackled one after the other for efficient policing. Indian police of present days is a far cry
Manpower
In a country bogged down with endemic unemployment, and steeped in cheap labour,
manpower should not be a problem though eurhythmic quality production may often
motivation, competence, discipline and commitment are taken into account. No analysis
Shift System
Policing being a round the clock responsibility, a three-shift system is sine qua non in a
grass-root policing unit like the Police Station. And unlike now, the system must be
statutorily defined and duly moulded and rounded off for effective functioning with clear-
cut division of labour in place. Lack of this clarity and arbitrary day-to-day allotment of
duties on one’s own fancies by lower ranks in the Police Stations is the radicis of all the
maelstrom in man management noticed in police stations these days resulting in low and
inefficient turn-out of work. A well-defined shift system and purposeful man management
policy directed towards high motivation and morale should work as the nostrum to the
malady.
Sound incentive schemes based on the innards of the human psyche and latest managerial
techniques and committed leadership models can do the tricks to maximize the output
with the minimum input and save the criminal wastages in manpower that are common
features of the present man management in Indian police, where a few islands of
manpower are over-worked while most wanze precious man-hours without productive
output. Any step to break this epinosic trend will save Indian police from gargantuan
An important feature of the efficient man management is best utilization of the available
in frittering away and even curbing precious human talents that land on its lap by its good
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fortune. An example is that of a brilliant police officer from an Indian state who made
name as a poet, an intellectual and an original thinker on police and policing subjects
with scores of published books on poetry and policing subjects to his credit and a popular
writer on police subjects on all major English newspapers, and well-known for his
harassed gratuitously for decades, denied promotion for more than twenty-one years
without offering a reason in the ambience of no reasons existing, often denied facilities
normal even for his posts and repeatedly forced to work in the rank of Superintendent of
Police under his far less talented and far less upright juniors from his own batch now in
the rank of IGPs. Such atrocities are possible in Indian police these days. Reason for the
reductio ad absurdum of the man management in Indian police of the present vintage to
this scale is just jealousy and fear among the higher-ups of being overshadowed by his
superior talents. His fault lies in the denial to approach the court of law in propugnation
of own interests in spite of promptings from well-meaning seniors and his preposterous
pride in deciding that what are his, must come by themselves sans promptings from any
quarters and philosophizing che sara, sara. He continues in the plight even now without
promotions. This is an example of the criminal wastage of human talents apart from
cruelty and crimes involved. Just thinking how best and to what advantages an efficient
organisation would have made use of his talents by providing right incentives rather than
curbing and crushing his normal opportunities makes this example of negative norms of
the Indian police an eye opener. Such perversions and prevarications of the man
management norms of epinosic dimensions must stop. It is a different story that he did
not wither away like most in similar situations and made big name and brilliantly
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succeeded in other avenues. It is true that true talents cannot be hidden and even villainy
of the top brass of the police has limits in curbing and crushing the talents of the
Every employee in any efficient organisation is a precious asset. This is not because
labour comes at enormous cost, but because of the presence of innate potentialities in
every person and its mammoth utility were they are adequately tapped. The problem lies
in the need and competence to extract the potentialities and talents. Police organisation
has a long tail of hierarchy of seniors after seniors. The billion-dollar question is whether
this long tail of seniority of the police department has any relevance as far as leadership
and leadership qualities are concerned. The answer is a big “no”. Present Indian police is
least bothered about the need of sound leadership and leadership qualities in its body as
far as seniority goes and sadly leadership and seniority are synonymous in its diction.
That must stop and the organisation must constitute per se a climacteric norm to enable
the resorgimento of the Indian police to draw it out of its present chilling hiems.
None realises the importance of every single human hand available as the USA does, and
the care taken and the investment made on each hand in American armed forces are
legendary. India and Indian police though cannot fully follow the American ideal because
of its financial constraints and other reasons, the model sine dubio deserves avizefull
natura rei is potential of extending and shrinking to any scope created for him. This is so
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the constabulary and other lowly ranks of the Indian police, shrinks au naturel to adjust
to the space created for him, and expands and extends to be der Unsterbliche ubermensch
if he or she is provided for and treated as such. Indian police lacks this insight to the
human psyche and pays heavily in terms of human cost for the grave incompetence. How
Maximum output out of minimum resources is the motto here. Maximum output should
be the norms of manpower management in Indian police at all levels rather than going for
blind increase in manpower strength at every possible occasion. High morale, high
motivation and job contentment, high professional pride, adequate rights and
responsibilities, reasonably sound infrastructure and logistics support are the claves for
productive and perficient policing and make difference to the quality of the policing
whether it is in Police Station levels or district police administration levels. This brings
Logistics Support
Logistics and infrastructure supports are the core of effective policing and also serve as
the multiplier of manpower. Transport and communication logistics are the eyes and ears
of the perficient policing. In the age of hi-tech crimes and criminals, high-level logistics
support is sine qua non for the policing to be successful. Right logistics support has four
dimensions or factors to be useful and effective in policing: quantity factor, quality factor,
relevancy factor and time factor. Quantity factor covers availability of adequate logistics
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support; quality factor covers availability of latest and hi-tech logistics support; relevancy
factor covers the need of logistics support being relevant to the needs of the policing; and
time factor refers to the availability of the logistics support at right occasion and time.
Inadequacy in any of these factors certain to affect the quality of the policing and needs
foremost attention of the police leadership to keep the police and policing in top gear.
In Indian situation, the principium of the four factors namely the quantity factor itself
often is a major hurdle because of financial constraints and other problems though recent
rise in terrorism alerted the bureaucratic and political leadership to awaken to this
problem and make more and more logistics support available to police de grado in
grado. But, the quality factor continues to be a major pain in the spine. Criminals are
often found in India better equipped than the police as far as hi-tech gadgets and even
crucial intelligence are concerned. Indian police lacks adequate organizational strength
and expertise to keep up dated to the research explosions in the world market in hi-tech
effective in defeating crime and criminals in their own games. Whatever done at present
in this field are sporadic attempts sans systemic efforts. This lacuna needs to be rectified.
Relevance and time factors are logistic maneuvers tout court involving human
assessments and decision making in the process of the policing and depends assez bien on
human excellence involved and requires improved human qualities. That comes by
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practice, skill, training, commitment and mature leadership. These factors also need close
Maintenance
weakest link in the mindset of the Indian psyche. Maintenance inherently is the byproduct
of a disciplined mind that is anathema to the Indian psyche. Naturally Indian police is
pathetically poor in maintenance aspect of whatever it does. One factor responsible for
this perilous assuetude is the cost factor involved. The second factor that brings about this
neglect of the maintenance structure in the organisation is the lack of appreciation of the
need of the maintenance in running an organisation and carrying out its operations. This
achilles’ heel of the Indian psyche holds its sway in police organisations also. Sound
maintenance of the logistics infrastructures and other assets is sine qua non for sound
policing and perhaps gets precedence in importance over acquiring new gadgets and
assets. A sound police organisation just ne obliviscaris this crucial need that considerably
Financial Powers
Police Stations as the nidus of police functions with considerable manpower and huge
logistics support means in its possession and responsible for their maintenance perforce
need considerable financial powers for themselves so that they can look after themselves
without waiting for sanctions from above. This investment also boosts the confidence and
self-reliance of the Police Stations as independent units apart from bringing respectability
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and accountability to them unlike now. The advantage here is both physical and
Strategic Location
It be a Police Station, district police administration or any other police unit, its effective
functioning depends very much on small details like its location and building also. They
have to be located at a place decided upon after careful study of the issues involved and
operational facility and convenience considered not only for the easy access to the public,
but also for more crucial strategic reasons of operational considerations like facile
movements, easy logistics support, access to hi-tech equipments, easy access to key
manpower assets, convenience for secret operations et cetera. This important factor is
often ignored in Indian police and it is common to find a Police Station situated in a
locality outside its jurisdiction in urban areas and district police administration being
locality. Easy availability often guides such decisions in Indian police. Such casual
approaches in such key decisions should stop and proper norms should be laid to bring
Norms are mere standards, or more precisely, standard customs to be set or evolved.
Indian police as defined and structured by the British administration more than a century
back served the British administration and its objectives in a far less complex milieu
appreciably for nearly a century and later. But, in a situation of panta rhei, the antianus
reticulation is ascensively becoming unfit and incompetent to the changing trends of the
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crime and criminality and may become entirely irrelevant to the changed complexities of
crime and criminality if immediate corrective steps are not taken and new norms are
evolved and set for the posterity. In a donnert police structure steeped in blinkers and
mental inaction, the very idea of evolving fresh norms for manpower and logistics is a
P.K.Urva
Superintendent of Police
COD, Bangalore