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Budgeting for the police

Higher allocations by themselves are not enough, the structure of budgetary allocations can have an impact on police performance

As the law enforcement agency of the government and the first point of contact in the criminal justice system, the police is critical for sound law and order, and a good quality of life. There is perceptible dissatisfaction with policing in India today. It is often argued that poor resourcing is part of the problem, and that the police require a higher quantum of budgetary allocations.

While the police need to be well-resourced, higher allocations by themselves are not enough. The structure of budgetary allocations can have a disproportionate impact on the operations of the department, and consequently on police performance. It is, therefore, useful to analyse how police departments structure their budgets, and the manner in which the budgetary allocations are actually spent.

Our first example is that of Maharashtra Police. The data on budgets was collected from the Budget Estimation, Allocation and Monitoring System (BEAMS) of the department of finance under the government of Maharashtra. Our analysis suggests that budget outlays for the police only meet the establishment cost. Salary is the main component of budget, consuming almost 90% of the total allocation. The residual amount covers costs of domestic travel, maintenance of motor vehicles and petrol cost. Budgets, as they stand, barely allocate funds for operational expenses of running police stations, or maintenance costs for computer systems, arms and ammunition.

The analysis suggests that police budgets have focused solely on manpower. On an annual basis, budgets do not have allocations towards capacity building, and are not structured to achieve desired outcomes. The police also suffers from inadequate expenditure management. Expenses on items other than salary are not monitored frequently enough. Maharashtra Police recently launched an internal intelligence tool to monitor expenditure. The tool will track fund allocation and utilization across all units, i.e. districts, ranges and commissionerate under Maharashtra Police. The intelligence tool will also provide comparative metrics like expenditure per crime, per police station and per employee. While this is a step in the right direction and should be replicated by other states, its effects remain to be seen.

Our next example is that of spending on the modernization of police through grants. In the year 2000, an assessment of police infrastructure deficiency by the Bureau of Police Research and Development (BPR&D), a federal agency under the ministry of home affairs, estimated that Rs30,000 crore was needed over 10 years to fill the identified gaps in infrastructure.

Notably, the Modernisation of Police Forces Scheme to fund deficiency in state police infrastructure has been in existence since 1969-70, the cost of which is shared by the Centre and states. Annual allocations to this fund were raised substantially, following the BPR&D study. Since 2000, the focus has been to build secure police stations, increase the supply of police housing, improve forensic laboratory, equipment, training infrastructure, communication systems and mobility of the police force.

The scheme has had limited success. An impact evaluation of the scheme, conducted by consultants EY, for BPR&D in 2010, acknowledged the positive impact of the scheme, but stated that it “has been able to fill very limited gaps compared to the actual requirements of the police forces”. The assessment also pointed to inadequate training and lack of funds for repair and maintenance of assets created under the scheme. Despite the short supply of resources, the study found under-utilization of funds as a result of delays in release of funds and cumbersome asset-procurement processes.

The two examples demonstrate different problems with police budgets. Either funds are spent entirely on salaries, with little left for capacity building, or are underutilized even though they are not enough to begin with.

As with any budget, police budgets too need to be tied to outcomes. Broadly, the desired outcomes of policing are 1) safety and security of citizens; 2) collection of intelligence; 3) investigation of crime; and 4) sound public order. In the current form, budgets only fund salaries, and thus are not fully aligned to create conditions conducive for outcomes. First and foremost, aligning budgets to these outcomes will require outlays to fully cover the office or operating expenses of the police station. It is estimated that office or operation costs for running a police station in an urban area are around Rs5–6 lakh per year, while the figure for rural areas is between Rs4-5 lakh per year. This cost estimate covers expenses on any item of miscellaneous nature, such as stationery, translations, etc., while performing police duty.

The second input to achieve these outcomes is to build capacity within the police. This may be through focused training to keep pace with the changing nature of crime and prevention techniques, or the creation of IT infrastructure for tracking cases to tackle delays due to mounting pendency. It will also require investment in management techniques, soft skills, new technology, and building of databases to allow for seamless access to information, among other heads.

A dynamic process of evaluating the needs of effective policing, and aligning the budgets accordingly is an important step towards achieving a well-functioning police

Batteries developed by Isro may be used in India’s electric vehicles

The government is planning to transfer the battery technology to companies for commercial production

The Automotive Research Association of India (Arai) has successfully tested lithium-ion batteries developed by the Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre for use in two- and three-wheelers, a development that is expected to provide a fillip to India’s electric vehicles (EV) push.

The government is now planning to transfer the technology to companies for commercial production of these batteries, and will also set up a central agency to lead the country’s EV programme. This was decided at a meeting chaired by road transport and highways minister Nitin Gadkari on Friday.

India’s initiatives on solar energy and electric vehicles are closely linked. The country plans to generate 175 gigawatts (GW) of renewable energy capacity by 2022. Of this, 100GW is to come from solar power projects. With storage being the next frontier for India’s clean energy push, the batteries in EVs offer a potential solution.

India’s EV programme would help with grid balancing, besides complementing the government’s push for solar power, which is generated during the day and can be stored in EV batteries.

“The technology should be transferred to companies in the private or public sector or joint ventures for commercial production of batteries. Bhel (Bharat Heavy Electricals Ltd) is interested, but more companies should be roped in,” a government official said, requesting anonymity.

Bhel is exploring the feasibility of manufacturing cells and batteries with technology developed by the Indian Space Research Organization (Isro) for application in electric vehicles, as reported by Mint on 31 March. Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre is part of Isro.

Enthused by the market potential for EVs in India, state-owned firms such as Bhel, Power Grid Corp. of India Ltd (PGCIL) and NTPC Ltd are looking at new businesses catering to the space.

While Bhel, India’s largest power generation equipment maker, wants to manufacture electric vehicles such as buses, cars, two-wheelers and boats, PGCIL, the power transmission utility responsible for establishing green energy transmission corridors, is considering setting up charging stations for EVs.

Also, Vedanta Resources Plc is firming up its clean energy plans for India, encouraged by the opportunities offered by the country’s growing green economy. As part of the strategy, the firm is looking at developing battery storage solutions.

“The need for bringing all issues related to non-polluting vehicles under one agency was also pointed out. At present, there are multiple agencies involved,” added the official cited earlier.

Experts say solar power and EVs are a great combination.

“EV on a clean fuel source is a better option for India. It is very important to have an enabling provision and one agency to spearhead the programme. There should also be continuous innovation to bring the cost of battery down and enabling support for infrastructure such as charging stations. It should be available across the country within a definitive time frame in order for EVs to take off as a mass product,” said Abdul Majeed, partner and national auto practice leader, PricewaterhouseCoopers.

Queries emailed to cabinet secretariat, ministries of road transport and highways, Isro and the department of space late on Sunday evening remained unanswered. Arai director Rashmi Urdhwareshe didn’t respond to phone calls or a text message.

The Friday meeting was also attended by cabinet secretary P.K. Sinha, road transport and highways secretary Sanjay Mitra, secretary in department of space Alur Seelin Kiran Kumar, director of Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre K. Sivan and Arai’s Urdhwareshe.

Any shift to electric vehicles will help reduce pollution and fuel imports. India’s energy import bill is expected to double from around $150 billion to $300 billion by 2030. The government has been trying to push sales of electric vehicles and has set an ambitious target of selling six million by 2020.

Pulitzer Prize: ‘Daily News’, ‘ProPublica’ win public service award, ‘NYT’ leads with 3

Daily News and ProPublica garnered the coveted public service Pulitzer Prize for uncovering abuse of eviction rules that drove many minority families from their homes

The New York Daily News and ProPublica garnered the coveted Pulitzer Prize for public service for uncovering abuse of eviction rules by police that drove many poor minority families from their homes.

The New York Times led all news outlets with three Pulitzers for international reporting, feature writing and breaking news photography. For national reporting, David Fahrenthold of the Washington Post won a Pulitzer for his coverage of the Donald Trump campaign. For investigative reporting, Eric Eyre of the Charleston Gazette-Mail in Charleston, West Virginia, was awarded for exposing a local opioid crisis.

In the Trump era, big newspapers like the New York Times and Washington Post are building vital digital businesses to fend off challenges from tech platforms like Facebook and Google that are taking advertising sales from newspapers globally. The president has railed against both news outlets, accusing them of unfair news coverage of him. But those criticisms, often in the form of early-morning tweets, amount to free advertising and have helped feed the online subscription surge.

At the same time, local papers like the Charleston Gazette-Mail continue to struggle, putting at risk valuable local investigative reporting like Eric Eyre’s prize-winning work.

For breaking news, the staff of the East Bay Times in Oakland, California, won for its coverage of the “Ghost Ship” fire that killed 36 people at a warehouse party, and the city’s failure to take actions that might have prevented it.

The Salt Lake Tribune staff earned the local reporting prize for revealing the “perverse, punitive and cruel treatment” given to sexual assault victims at Brigham Young University, one of Utah’s most powerful institutions.

Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism announced the 101st annual Pulitzer Prizes Monday in New York. A board of editors, publishers, writers and educators voted on 21 categories of journalism, letters, drama, poetry and music. Winners in all categories except public service receive $15,000. The public-service prize, awarded to an American news organization, is a gold medal.

In recent years, the board has expanded eligibility for five categories—investigative reporting, feature writing, international reporting, criticism and editorial cartooning—to include many online and print magazines that publish at least weekly. The board also changed its rules on partnerships, letting news organizations nominate journalists who work at partnering outlets even if those groups aren’t eligible to compete. 

India’s wasted tourism potential

The sector could generate significantly more foreign exchange earnings, if India could get its act together

The World Economic Forum’s (WEF’s) travel and tourism competitiveness index, released last week, showed that India had moved up 12 places and now ranks 40th among 136 nations globally. The report also noted that this was the largest leap made by any country in the top 50, thereby making India, with its rich and diverse cultural heritage and natural beauty, a prime candidate to lead the so-called Asian century in travel and tourism. So much for potential—but will India deliver?

The numbers tell a complex story. On the one hand, foreign tourist arrivals have been on an upward trajectory at least since the turn of the century. According to the ministry of tourism, India hosted 8.89 million tourists last year compared to only 2.65 million tourists in 2000. But when compared with other countries, India’s performance leaves much to be desired. For example, while India hit an all-time high last year, it was still nowhere close to France, which topped the list of foreign tourist arrivals with 84.5 million visitors. The US (77.5 million) was second, followed by Spain (68.2 million), China (56.9 million) and Italy (50.7 million).

Europe’s dominant position on the list can be explained through the Schengen agreement, which allows citizens of member states to travel freely across international borders. The US too has a visa-waiver agreement with most European Union countries as well as a handful of others for easy access. But what about non-Schengen states like China—or, for that matter, Turkey (39.4 million tourists in 2015), Mexico (32.1 million) and Russia (31.3 million), all of which have significantly higher tourist numbers than India?

India’s foreign exchange earning from tourism has followed a similar pattern. In 2015, for example, India earned more than $23 billion in revenue from international tourism, a significant hike from the $3.5 billion it made in 2000. However, the US earned $204.5 billion from international tourists and China $114.1 billion, in 2015—making India’s $23 billion seem like chump change.

However, parsing the numbers more carefully shows that while overall revenue from tourists in India is low because of fewer visitors, the average revenue per tourist is actually quite high. For example, while the average tourist spends about $2,639 in the US, she spends about a comparable $2,610 in India and about $2,005 in China. In France (and this is generally true for other European countries as well), the number drops to $543 per tourist.

This is because a large chunk of the tourists visiting France are other Europeans with Schengen privileges on short trips from across the borders. But while such tourists add to the numbers, they don’t always spend a lot of money. In contrast, when a French or German tourist takes a long-haul flight to India for what is ostensibly a well-planned holiday, they tend to stay longer and spend more money. For India, this is not as much a success story as much as it is an indication of a missed opportunity: When they are here, tourists are clearly willing to spend; but they are simply not coming here in adequate numbers in the first place.

Is this because of India’s many problems, such as cumbersome visa regulations, bad travel infrastructure, poor sanitation, collapsing law enforcement systems and concerns about women’s safety? On each of these counts, India ranks poorly on the WEF index. Five-star luxury—given the high revenue per tourist—may shield visitors somewhat from these issues but it cannot get rid of them entirely. Yet another factor at play here is the large number of business tourists (who expectedly are high-spenders) that India gets vis-a-vis leisure tourists, which somewhat skews the narrative. It is worth asking then: Is India getting its fair share of budget travellers especially since it is otherwise one of the most affordable travel destinations? Are middle-class tourists, who want a certain degree of comfort and hassle-free travel but cannot afford to go the five-star route, staying away?

If true, that is another challenge for India as it will have to prepare for the changing profile of the international tourist. As the WEF report notes, foreign travel is no longer a luxury enjoyed only by wealthy Westerners. The lowering of trade barriers and the rise of the middle class in many emerging economies mean that North America and Europe, which have dominated the travel markets till now, may give way to international travel from Africa, Asia and the Middle East.

Currently, India receives the maximum number of tourists from the US, followed by Bangladesh, while regionally, Western Europe and North America make up for a large chunk of the country’s foreign tourists—at 23.42% and 18.62% in 2015, respectively. South Asia tops the list with 24.25% but that is to be expected given that it is India’s neighbourhood. What is of concern though is that other regions that are expected to send out tomorrow’s tourists don’t seem to have India on their radar. In 2015, only 8.72% of India’s foreign tourists were from South-East Asia while East Asia made up 6.92%, West Asia 5.20%, Eastern Europe 4.12%, Australasia 3.89%, Africa 3.66% and Central and South America, 0.88%.

The silver lining here is that all these regions, except Eastern Europe, have been sending more tourists to India than before and the government is also cognizant of the fact that a lot more needs to be done on the home front. It has started with liberalizing the visa regime which is expected to improve the numbers quickly. But that’s only the first step. Making it easier to visit India won’t do much when being a tourist in India is replete with problems.

How do you think India can become more tourist-friendly?