India, Dec. 1 -- Prime Minister (PM) Narendra Modi's remark at the All India Conference of Director Generals and Inspector Generals of Police in Raipur, that the public perception of the force needs to change, points to a disturbing reality. The police in India are perceived mostly as the strong arm of the corrupt and the powerful, and unfriendly to the citizenry.

From the 1970s, when the Janata Party government, in the wake of the Emergency's excesses, appointed the National Police Commission, to the 2006 Supreme Court judgment in the Prakash Singh case that called for an overhaul of the conduct of the force, and from the lived experience of citizens to court orders on encounter and custodial killings, it is well-documented that the pol...