Best staffed and equipped police force in the country? Delhi tops the list

The study of 11,000 personnel in 22 states used available government data to analyse and rank the performance of state police on parameters of staffing, infrastructure and budget.

Business Standard : The Delhi police are India’s best in terms of staffing, infrastructure and use of budget, followed by Kerala and Maharashtra, a new study has revealed. Uttar Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Bihar are the worst and most overworked among the 22 states analysed.

These findings are based on a Police Adequacy Index, derived from national data, part of the ‘Status of Policing in India Report 2019’, released on August 27, 2019 by Common Cause and Lokniti–Centre for the Study Developing Societies, a nonprofit and a think tank, respectively, based in New Delhi.

The study of 11,000 personnel in 22 states used available government data to analyse and rank the performance of state police on parameters of staffing, infrastructure and budget. Researchers also interviewed 11,834 police personnel across 105 locations in 21 states between February and April 2019. The survey covered the personnel’s opinions over adequacy of police infrastructure, their duties and their perception over several types of crimes and different sections of the society. You can IndiaSpend’s full coverage of the study, here and here.

The index

To derive indices, researchers used data from the Bureau of Police Research and Development and the National Crime Records Bureau for the following parameters:

Strength:

Police strength as a percentage of sanctioned strength (2012-16 average)

Infrastructure

Police stations having vehicles (2012-16 average)

Police stations having telephones and wireless (2012-2016 average)

Computers per police station (2012-2016 average)

Budget

Police expenditure as a percentage of budget (2014-16 average)

These indicators are then used to derive index scores on each of the three heads: An index score of zero indicates the worst performing state and a score of one indicates the best performing state.

Overall, as of 2016, Indian police forces were working at 77.4 per cent of their sanctioned capacity, the study said, leading to personnel being overworked.