Kiran Bedi : Unedited material collected for Effective People by Prof TV Rao

Kiran Bedi 

Kiran Bedi is India’s first woman IPS officer (1972-2007). She joined the Indian Police Service in 1972. Her experience and expertise include more than 35 years of tough, innovative and welfare policing. Kiran Bedi was also Asian tennis champion, lawyer, doctorate and author- Kiran Bedi is one of India’s most accomplished women.  

Kiran Bedi believes that though a man with an ordinary upbringing may attempt any job, it would not be the same for a woman.  She has to be specially trained right from the beginning so that she acquires the right mental and physical standards demanded by specific jobs. 

Since childhood Kiran Bedi was introduced to tough, competitive tennis and conscientious studies. They had filled her with the highest aspirations and imbued in her a burning desire to be OUTSTANDING. This channelized her energies towards two goals- Tennis and Studies. Kiran Bedi had a strong passion for tennis that she inherited from her father, who himself was a talented tennis player. She was always encouraged to be independent and self confident so that she could face challenges and solve her own problems.

The reason Kiran Bedi joined police and not any other challenging vocation because of her urge to be outstanding; the excitement exhilaration and challenges offered by the police service; and her desire to serve the people from a position of authority to serve them the best. In her own words, “I could have ended up work but since I was a political science student I was naturally attracted to the Civil Service.  I opted for the Indian Police Service because it allowed for me to work directly with people, and also gave me the power to deliver”.

Kiran Bedi is a role model that has shaped many of India's current women achievers. She traces her ancestry to a proud and industrious clan in Peshawar, now in Pakistan. They migrated several generations ago to Amritsar.

She was raised to be a winner in everything that she undertook: academics, sports, theatre, debates, etc. Unconnected and unaware, thousands of parents in free India were similarly pulling their girls away from the tradition of early marriage, house keeping and mother-hood. Kiran  Bedi stands out among them.

She was a champion tennis player, a brilliant student and, strangely for times- fancied the Indian Police Service. In 1973 spectators at the republic day parade were shocked to see Kiran, a woman, leading the police contingent. In spite of the gender gap and bias against women serving in police Kiran has accomplished great heights.

Even while in active service in the Indian Police, Kiran Bedi continued her educational pursuits. Her years in the force have been notable for an insistence on implementing what the law laid down. Many postings up and down the country followed. Kiran Bedi was always in the news.

In 1986, she had her first encounter with drugs and its evil hold on society. This appears to have triggered off a pensive phase in her life. The deeper she went into the problem, the more she saw it as something beyond a law and order issue; she began to be moved by the human condition that lay beneath. During her work with the Narcotics Control Bureau, she did swoop down to destroy stock and grab the traffickers. She did that, although was not wholly convinced that was the solution.

Source- http://www.goodnewsindia.com/Pages/content/transitions/tihar.html

 

A subsequent posting in the rarified atmosphere of Mizoram, made her a student of the drug issue, earning her doctorate in 1993 from Indian Institute of Technology, New Delhi. Her thesis was, "Drug abuse and Domestic Violence". Mizoram state was very different from the plains where she was brought up. The state is rooted in tribal culture, with Mizo as its language. Kiran was new to the place, and did not know the local language. Through her Staff Officer acting as an interpreter, she reached her staff and the people. She lost no time in identifying the priorities and systemizing the Mizoram Police. Drugs trafficking, drug abuse and alcoholism were areas of real concern. She addressed their by correcting the basic policing through the police beat system, opening of Beat Houses in far flung areas, police public coordinating forums within the towns as well as the borders, awareness programs; education, inter-agency joint training programs; rehabilitation by involving the organized community groups; and tough enforcement including the problems of terrorist acts of the Hmars People Convention (an extremist group) who later surrendered and signed a peace agreement when they realized that the police would not relent.

Source- (http://www.kiranbedi.com/digmizoram.htm)

Kiran Bedi was posted to Tihar in 1993- 1995; Kiran is known to be and the highest ranking and the only woman to have headed a pre-dominantly male prison of the dimension of Tihar (over 9700 prisoners then). The Prison Administration took path-breaking steps during her tenure as the Inspector General of Prisons. She converted the high security prison into a "Reformatory", a transformation of a magnitude unparalleled in the history of Prison Administration anywhere in the world. Her courageous and holistic approach towards prison governance became a major factor in her earning the prestigious Ramon Magsaysay Award for Government Service in the year 1994. The process of transformation of Tihar is documented in Kiran's book "It's Always Possible".  

 Kiran Bedi developed a new perspective on policing and life in Tihar. The jail was a mad house. Its working was shrouded in secrecy. The inmates were treated like animals, and had come to practice a mob culture. A fear psychosis prevailed. There was no communication between the Inspector General and the prisoners. With no constructive or creative activity, poor hygiene and overcrowding, its unfortunate inmates behaved the way criminals were expected to.

Kiran Bedi began with a simple but 'amazing' routine: walks around the prisons and talking to its inmates for feed-backs. This led to an understanding of the situation and the sacking of unscrupulous officials. Her humane and fearless approach has contributed greatly to innumerable innovative policing and prison reforms. One of her first official acts was introducing a simple innovation like a mobile complaint box that travels directly to the top. Prisoners could lodge complaints about treatment or express concerns on paper. They would then place the paper into a box that was locked until Kiran Bedi unlocked it. She personally read these complaints every day and acted upon them. Unethical and illegal power of guards over prisoners dissipated. Prisoners began to believe that they would at least get fair treatment.

Source - http://www.essortment.com/all/kiranbediindia_rloe.htm

 Kiran Bedi then began tackling the rampant drug problem up-front instead of driving it underground. She enlisted organizations like Navjyoti and India Vision Foundation that specialized in counseling drug users. The NGO reached out to over 10,000 beneficiaries daily, helping the them with issues related to kicking the smoking habit, drug abuse treatment, schooling for children of prisoners, in addition to education, training, counseling, and health care to the urban and rural poor.

Traffic police postings came to Kiran in early years of her service. The challenge was huge; not only to attend the day to day traffic arrangements of the cities, but also organize the traffic planning of the ninth Asian Games in Delhi in 1982 and Common Wealth Heads of Government Meet in Goa in 1983 . In both the cities she and her team of officer's and men rose to the occasion and made her traffic units earn excellence. During the Asiad at Delhi, the team trained 1700 Home Guards and 1500 University students and at Goa, policemen from Gujarat, Maharashtra and Karnataka were trained as they needed special training for handling the VVIP traffic. 900 NCC cadets were specially trained at Goa.  Common people were trained on Sundays by Inspector Sarab Pal Singh, specially called from the Delhi Police for the purpose to Goa.  Kiran found participative ways to deliver the services. The participation doubled her strength of deployment. She was unsparing in enforcing discipline on the roads. Due to presence of large number of cranes to remove wrongly parked vehicles - including that of the former Prime minister, she was nicknamed ‘Crane Bedi’. She reached out to all the sections of the society, whether senior citizens, students or children to understand and contribute to road safety. She rewarded honesty and co-operation to motivate others. She involved the corporate sector in an extensive way to expand the services both in Delhi and Goa, through innovative Traffic Assistance Booths, films, literature, etc. Communication, Strong Vigilance, co- ordination and innovations were the hallmarks of her traffic tenure. The citizens of Delhi still remember her for this posting.

Source- http://www.kiranbedi.com/trafficchief.htm

kiran’s posting with Narcotics Control Bureau was also marked by innovations. She initiated sharing of information on Narcotics through a magazine called “Narcontrol” of which she was the editor. The magazine carried information, which hitherto was considered confidential. To date, this is the only official magazine on Narcotics in the country. On the enforcement side, she spared no efforts in taking up clearance operations of illicit narcotics cultivation. Along with her official duties, she continued working on drug abuse prevention with Navijyoti, - a non-profit organization- she had set up during her earlier tenure, - and thus becoming perhaps the only serving police officer in the country to be working in these fronts simultaneously.

Source- http://www.kiranbedi.com/narcotics.htm

All through Kiran's career one sees a very persistent effort to continuously evolve, both for her and for the organization she leads. This is exactly what she has done with her posting in the Police Training College since June 1998. She has transformed it from a neglected police training school to a fully equipped, techno savvy, innovative and a vibrant institution. The present Police methodology and content are focused on all aspects of training for the trainees. It enhances their physical prowess and equips them in professional and personal skills. Of the many recent additions have been courses on Cyber crimes, gender sensitization, workshops on Human Rights and Vipassana Meditation in which she and her faculty led the program. The bottom line was 'Let us learn to police ourselves first, before we police others'.

Source- http://www.kiranbedi.com/moralforce.htm

Kiran got posted as the Inspector General of Police to Chandigarh. Having been a Postgraduate student there at the Punjab University, she knew the city by heart. The people of the city had great fondness for her, for she had been a known tennis player and an out standing student. Within the 41 days of her posting there (the shortest stint she has ever done), she put the city in order. She brought back the police men from duties outside, strengthened the police stations, re-instituted the beat system, started visiting the police stations herself at 9 a.m. daily herself, got the cranes to stream line traffic flow,   toughened traffic enforcement, removed encroachments from the roads, got people involved in policing, invited student participation, strengthened policing in the slums and the weaker sections of the society, improved police welfare, streamlined the police control room response systems, got all women police officers back to the police stations and got all NGOs of the city dealing with women and child issues participate in crime prevention.

Kiran's posting as Special Secretary to the Lieutenant Governor; Delhi was both prestigious and new for her. Here she was to assist the Lieutenant Governor, Delhi in city management. One of the tasks given to her was to facilitate grievance redressal and ensure that all agencies of the Delhi government delivered. Since this was not a serious concern earlier, there existed no infrastructure to respond in the manner Mr Tejendra Khanna, the new Lieutenant Governor wanted. Kiran in shortest possible time went about to set up a whole new system of grievance redressal which perhaps is a most comprehensive system devised by any governor's office in India. Without an existing law on Right to Information, the new system empowered the citizens to get their problems addressed. A comprehensive interactive system was set up called the Public Redressal Unit. It enabled any one reach the LG office through phone, mail, fax and even personally. Each matter was computerized, acknowledges, responded, and referred, followed up, reviewed, test checked in selective cases and complainant informed of the outcome, before the matter was closed. Thereafter each unit's performance was assessed and circulated. The redressal unit co-opted Citizen Warden's appointed by the Lieutenant Governor's office. They were eminent and concerned citizens who volunteered their time. During her tenure 64,403 matters were addressed to 71% satisfaction. People of the city remember this system. It was a road map to good governance.

Source- http://www.kiranbedi.com/igchandigarh.htm

Kiran Bedi wrote a book on social awakening,-“What Went Wrong?” published by UBS Publishers Distributors. What Went Wrong is a unique collection of uncensored narrations volunteered by individuals who had nothing to declare but their wrong past. The real life experiences provide readers a close insight into the lives they may otherwise ignore, be unaware of or have no access to.

Kiran Bedi was first woman IPS officer and a recipient of the Ramon Magsaysay Award. Kiran has been a path breaker in prison reforms, community policing, crime prevention, drug abuse treatment, spirituality in police training and schooling of street children. Raj Mohan Gandhi called it a motivational book.

 Some of the Kiran Bedi’s popular quotes are:" My motto in life is that nothing is impossible, no target unachievable - one just has to try harder and harder.”; “Whatever be the temptations, or compulsions, let there be no clause for 'ifs' or 'buts'...in principled living."; “As long as women continue to be in a position of receiving rather than giving, they shall continue to bear injustice.”

Dr. Bedi is an author of several books, anchors radio and television shows, and is a columnist with leading newspapers and magazines.

As a long-time member of the city’s police, Bedi is aware of the shortcomings and corruption that plague of the police departments in India. This is especially true in Delhi, where getting the police to issue a FIR – First Information Report – can often be a trying and wasted effort. So, the first thing Bedi did after quitting (retired in 2007) Indian Police service was to launch Saferindia.com which is intended to be a bridge between the police and the complainant, where one can only send in a grievance when it has not been heard by the former. Source- http://www.blogbharti.com/kuffir/india/kiran-bedi-not-retired/

“My Idols are values. My future is developing. The effort goes on.
Let us see where this effort becomes destiny”, says Kiran Bedi.

END