Enforced reform?
Perfectly valid is the dismay of the Supreme Court that virtually nothing has been done to implement the directives for police reform that it issued in 2006. There will, therefore, be much attention to what transpires later this week when state governments will be required to explain if there were any legislative impediments to implementing what had been spelt out in what was supposedly a landmark order in the Prakash Singh case. That on the ground there has been only token progress was evident from what the Attorney-General, GE Vahanvati (appearing as amicus curiae) told a two-member Bench on 31 July: indeed it was at his suggestion that the explanatory affidavits were demanded. While the key recommendations made in 2006 would have far-reaching consequences, some of them had actually been made earlier too. For example, separating the investigating staff from those tasked with the maintenance of law and order, a fixed two-year tenure for Directors-General of Police, establishment of police complaints authorities, state security councils etc.
 It is, however, interesting to note that the court queried the legislative constraints and not the financial ones ~ there will be major difficulties in finding men and money to have two streams of personnel at the police station level, does the special central funding for police modernisation cover that or is it limited to the purchase of weapons and equipment?
A more fundamental query pertains to whether reforms can actually be “externally” enforced?  Some token compliance could be assured but unless reform is comprehensive and generated from within the results would be only limited. And in addition to what the court has spoken about, true reform would have to take in pay and allowances, training, weapons and equipment, transport and personnel-related welfare measures such as housing, medical cover, fixed duty hours etc.
It is also high time a thorough study was undertaken of the range of laws a police station is required to enforce: the short point being that while “reform” may have just six-letters it speaks volumes. What no revised manual can address is the manner in which the police are misused by their political masters: if at the central level it is the CBI that is involved in keeping the coalition intact, in the states the cops are required to let the politicians’ goons flourish. It is also a pathetic reflection of the political and administrative leadership that the union home ministry provides that it has failed to carry the states along with it on any initiative. Nor does North Block care to lead by example: the Delhi Police functions directly under it… no need to elaborate on the law-and-order situation in the Capital or the competence of its cops.

Zing-less in Zimbabwe
At 89, Robert Mugabe is a wily survivor. Set to remain the President of Zimbabwe for the next five years, he will have earned the distinction ~ however dubious ~ of  heading the post-colonial dispensation for 38 years, indeed since 1980 when white rule ended. And yet there are no whoops of joy in Harare over the purportedly spectacular renewal of triumph, this time with the icing that the brute majority ~ 61 per cent of the vote ~ precludes a coalition government of his Zanu-PF and his opponent, Morgan Tsvangirai&’s Movement for Democratic Change (MCD). The latter has signalled his intent to move court, denouncing the verdict as “rigged and stolen”. The election has been hotly disputed, not merely in Zimbabwe but in the West as well. Central to the dispute is not whether Mugabe was funded by the diamond merchants, as exposed by The Sunday Times, but the fraudulent conduct of the elections. The country seems headed for a constitutional, political and economic crisis should Tsvangirai fight his next battle in court, insisting on his demand  for re-election. In a sense, the post-election scenario could be as unstable as Afghanistan or Iran under Ahmadinejad; the scale of the fraud has been far wider if the tightness in the throat of the Zanu-PF leadership and the blunt responses abroad are any indication. The fallout could be the recipe for greater fragility.
Mugabe&’s  Zimbabwe has managed to alienate the influential West; and it isn’t a question of post-colonial governance, still less the black-and-white construct which has ceased to be quite so relevant. The US Secretary of State, John Kerry, has dismissed the election as “deeply flawed”. Damningly for Mugabe, the British Foreign Secretary, William Hague&’s expression of what he calls “grave concern” is matched with Australia&’s suggestion for “a re-run of the elections based on a verified and agreed voters’ roll.” Few national elections have provoked so strident an outcry, and the South African President, Jacob Zuma&’s “profound congratulations” is an expression of contrived diplomatic courtesy. As must be the certificate of Olusegun Obasanjo, the former Nigerian President, who  had led the African Union delegation to oversee the elections ~ “I have never seen an election that is perfect.” Notably, there were no observers either from the UN or the European Union.
The election results this time have been radically different from the 2008 vote, in which neither Mugabe nor Tsvangirai won a majority.  This time, the President has won a two-thirds majority, one that will enable him to amend the Constitution without seeking the support of other parties.