Parliament voted on the Demands for Grants for the Ministry of Home Affairs on May 02, 2012. During the debate, MPs expressed concern over the status of police forces in different States of the country.  They emphasised  the need to augment the capability of police forces. Though ‘Police’ and ‘Public Order’ are State subjects, the union government provides assistance to States for strengthening their forces.  For instance, the Ministry of Home Affairs has been implementing a non-plan scheme for ‘Modernization of Police Forces’ since 1969-70.  Under the scheme assistance is provided in the form of grants-in-aid towards construction of secure police stations, outposts, for purchase of vehicles, equipment etc.  (To know more about the scheme, see an earlier blog post on the issue.) At the all India level, the sanctioned strength of State Police equals 20.6 lakh personnel.  Though there exist wide variations across States, at an average this amounts to 174 police personnel per lakh population.  However, the actual ratio is much lower because of high vacancies in the police forces.  At the aggregate level, 24% positions are vacant. The table below provides data on the strength of state police forces as in Jan, 2011

State Sanctioned strength Sanctioned policemen/ lakh of population Vacancy
Andhra Pradesh 1,31,099 155 31%
Arunachal Pradesh 11,955 966 42%
Assam 62,149 200 12%
Bihar 85,939 88 27%
Chhattisgarh 50,869 207 18%
Goa 6,108 348 16%
Gujarat 87,877 151 27%
Haryana 61,307 248 28%
Himachal Pradesh 17,187 256 22%
Jammu & Kashmir 77,464 575 6%
Jharkhand 73,005 235 30%
Karnataka 91,256 155 10%
Kerala 49,394 141 7%
Madhya Pradesh 83,524 115 9%
Maharashtra 1,53,148 139 10%
Manipur 31,081 1,147 26%
Meghalaya 12,268 469 17%
Mizoram 11,246 1,112 6%
Nagaland 24,226 1,073 0%
Orissa 53,291 130 18%
Punjab 79,565 291 14%
Rajasthan 79,554 118 11%
Sikkim 5,421 886 27%
Tamil Nadu 1,20,441 178 15%
Tripura 44,310 1,224 17%
Uttar Pradesh 3,68,260 184 59%
Uttarakhand 20,775 211 24%
West Bengal 72,998 81 18%
A&N Islands 4,417 1,018 22%
Chandigarh 7,873 695 22%
D&N Haveli 325 114 13%
Daman & Diu 281 140 6%
Delhi 81,467 441 1%
Lakshadweep 349 478 36%
Puducherry 3,941 352 25%
All India 20,64,370 174 24%

Source: Lok Sabha Unstarred Question No. 90, 13th March, 2012  and Lok Sabha Unstarred Question No. 1042, March 20, 2012

We need your ideas and inputs.  Ideas on how we can inform many more people who are interested in policy about what they can access on the PRS website. The mission of PRS is to strengthen the legislative process by making it better informed, more transparent and participatory. The statement has three important components: (a) Better informed: This implies that legislators and citizens need to be better informed about the implications of legislation.  For us in PRS, this implies producing easy-to-understand non-partisan analysis that can be made available to MPs and citizens.  This also includes our continual efforts to personally brief MPs and political parties on the details and implications of each Bill. (b) Transparent: We mean that all proceedings of Parliament and the work of MPs in Parliament should be easily accessible to citizens.  In an operational sense, this includes the effort we put into creating the Bill Track section on our website where every Bill that is pending in Parliament can be accessed, and the current status of the Bill can be tracked.  It also includes the MP Track section in which we have up-to-date information about the engagement levels of MPs in Parliament.  We also have a twitter page www.twitter.com/prslegislative and a Facebook presence. (c) Participatory: Which simply means that once citizens know the information, and would like to articulate a point of view, they should reach out to policy makers and get their point of view across to them.  To promote this, we have had a number of workshops with NGOs and have produced a primer on "Engaging with Policy Makers". These are just some examples of what we are doing in each of these three areas.  Our website has much more information. But we are increasingly of the view that we need to reach out many more people who are interested in policy -- even if it is sector specific.  We would be grateful for any ideas that you might have, which you can post as responses to this post. If you also have specific ideas on what you like on our website and what can be better, do let us know.  Thanks, in advance.