India, Dec. 2 -- 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 police and policing need to change in radical ways. There have been baby steps at reforms, but mostly piecemeal or superficial: Justice KT Thomas committee set up to monitor progress on police reforms after the Prakash Singh case in 2010 said no state had fully complied with the court's instructions. PM Modi, soon after assuming office in 2014, had advocated that the police turn SMART - strict and sensitive, modern and mobile, alert and accountable, reliable and responsive, techno-savvy and trained. Much has changed, surely, but more needs to be done. The public perception of the police as a brutalising force is rooted in the reality of everyday experience. The police are yet to shed their colonial inheritance and become a force that guards the neighbourhood and serves the citizenry. The political executive has been content with the police sticking to their old ways and doing its bidding rather than being a force that acts fairly and in accordance with the law. For the force to uphold fidelity to the law and resist corrupting and criminalising influences, it must have true functional autonomy, which state governments are reluctant to allow. The police also need to be staffed better, trained in the use of technology and analytical tools of crime detection, and provided with quality equipment. According to 2022 data, the ratio for police personnel per lakh persons across India is 196.23 as per sanctioned strength and 152.80 as per actual strength, suggesting a 22% vacancy. A well-staffed, trained, and rested police force is likely to be more sensitive to citizens' concerns than the current understaffed, overstretched, and politicised one The colonial-era criminal laws have been replaced; it is now time to reform the law and order machinery....