Policing is not a spectator sport

A few days back, newspapers in Chennai had pictures of a motor cyclist and a traffic head constable locked in a freestyle wrestling match on one of the busiest roads of the city.

For all his training, the policeman could not have claimed even from the most partisan referee, a technical ‘take down' against the motor cyclist.

True, he had him pinned down on the road. But the motor cyclist's back and the shoulder were clearly not exposed to the mat of macadam.

While the policeman had one of his legs coiled over the man's hip or thereabouts, he too, lay sprawled on the road. In the event, it was hard to say that the policeman had scored even a technical victory.

As a wrestling contest, it didn't perhaps rise up to the standards of an episode of WWF action on Ten Sport, but there was no doubting its public appeal.

I mean it is not everyday that the public get treated to a full-fledged gladiatorial contest involving a solid citizen (the offender was reported by one newspaper as a professor at the local university) and a member of the police force.

I would never ever agree to the stereotype of members of the academic fraternity as a timid bunch cowering in fright at the mere mention of the word ‘police'. While they have always come in different sizes and shapes in the past, they do seem now, additionally, to have been cut of a different cloth.

There are conflicting versions as to what led to the public brawl in the first place. One story hinted at some demand for a bribe on the part of the policeman as being the cause of all that followed. No matter, my sympathies in this case are, of course, entirely with the police. Our law makers and now, more increasingly, the judiciary simply make impossible demands on the police.

Police cannot cope

The police are supposed to solve not just heinous crimes such as homicide, kidnapping and burglary. They are also expected to nab people who jump traffic signals, those who refrain from wearing helmets and, in recent times, people driving a car with a sun-control film on its windows.

It is clear that they simply can't cope. This has nothing to do with the size of the police force. Even if one were to increase it ten-fold, a good chunk of perpetrators of offences of a certain kind (motor cyclists without helmets) would simply escape the clutches of the long arm of law, that is perhaps not very much longer than that of a midget.

What should be the ideal remit for a nation's police force? Finance theory offers a basis. Financial data can either offer a ‘flow' view or a ‘stock' measure of an enterprise. The production process may, thus, involve a steady inflow of raw materials and an outflow of finished goods.

The data on purchases and production present a view of the enterprise as a stream in flow. However, if raw materials are put into the production process at a rate faster than are being turned out as finished products, the resultant mismatch can be seen as a net change in the level of inventory, a measure of stock.

Thus, the value of purchases is an example of ‘flow' data while the value of closing inventory captured in the balance sheet is a measure of ‘stock'. The other point to note is that the ‘flow' as a process and, by its very nature, has a short life. It ceases to exist once the cycle is complete. But ‘stock' has a longer shelf life in the sense that it continues to exist long after the production cycle has come to an end.

Flow and stock offences

Transgressions of law too can be seen as having either a ‘short' or a ‘long' shelf life. That is to say, offences — civil or criminal — can be viewed as either ‘flow' type of offence or a ‘stock' type, akin to transactions in accounting theory.

A motorist jumping a traffic signal is no doubt committing an offence. It is obvious that in the process he does put the lives of other road users at risk. But once he crosses the signal, the offence too stands extinguished because it doesn't leave a trail.

In contrast, a crime such as murder doesn't ceases to exist because the murderer has successfully accomplished the heinous act. The body of the victim is a standing testimony to the murderous act. Same is the case with an act of burglary.

As long as the precious objects stay stolen, the crime continues to exist. These are ‘stock' crimes, while traffic violations, given their transient nature, are ‘flow' offences.

No reliable measure

Getting the police to go after ‘flow' offences is an impossible task. For the reason that for any deterrent effect from any police action, one needs a minimum threshold level of success in nabbing the offenders. Here we are up against a methodological problem.

There can be no record of instances of driving without a helmet by all two-wheeler drivers in a given period of time.

It is a basic principle of management control that for any activity to be controlled, one needs, first of all, a reliable measure of that activity. The CEO cannot deliver on his promise to shareholders of a reasonable return on capital employed unless he can measure profits.

Therefore, to expect the traffic police to somehow deliver on the goal of disciplined road behaviour by the public, without the requisite tools to measure the extent of occurrence of such violations is unrealistic and one that is fraught with failure from the very word go.

It is no surprise that the traffic police simply don't have the heart for enforcement and if some of them have reduced it to an opportunity for making money on the sly, it is hardly surprising.

I am not saying that traffic violations are not important. It is just that road discipline is too important a matter to be left to the police alone.

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