The Locust Effect: Why the End of Poverty Requires the End of Violence by Haugen Gary A. & Boutros Victor

Author:Haugen, Gary A. & Boutros, Victor [Haugen, Gary A.]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Published: 2013-12-09T06:00:00+00:00

SAME HAT, DIFFERENT FACE

Across much of the developing world, the instruments of law enforcement failed to evolve because the authoritarian regimes and political elites that came to power in the developing world found that the colonial forms of policing very conveniently served their interests. Indigenous political and economic elites found that modern law enforcement models (with their emphasis on accountability to the community and general public) would be threatening.

Of course, the difficulty of re-engineering the administration of justice was exacerbated by the swiftness and lack of preparation with which the colonial powers departed the developing world. Imagine: One day in 1947 Sneh’s father was a lawyer and Freedom Fighter on the run from the violence of Partition—the next day he was occupying the palatial residence of the British administrator who had fled the India he once ruled. Similarly, I remember perusing, one by one, the dusty portraits of the successive police commissioners of Kenya lining the walls of the staircase to the latest commissioner’s office. Starting from the beginning of the colonial era, it was one white face after another—each looking serious and determined under his commander’s hat. Then suddenly, under the same commander’s hat with the same serious expression: a black face. Just that fast. Same hat, different face. In fact, the “history” of the Kenyan police force posted on the official website inadvertently describes the nature of the transformation quite perfectly:

After Kenya gained her independence from Britain on December 12th, 1963, there was a need to make some drastic changes in the Administration of the Force. This led to the replacement of the expatriate officers in the senior ranks by Africans.13

End of description. That’s it. That was the drastic change—“replacement of the expatriate officers in the senior ranks by Africans.” This was indeed drastic, but without transformation of the police force from a colonial force serving a centralized power elite to a post-colonial force serving (and accountable to) the common citizenry, the replacement of the senior officers would prove to make little difference in protecting the common Kenyan from violence and crime.

In India, Dhillon described the Indian political classes as merely “step[ping] into the shoes of their British predecessors” as power transferred from the British to Indian elites, while the practical administration of the law “remained frozen in the mid-nineteenth century enactments, rules and regulations.”14

And for this Indian scholar, decorated police professional, and patriot, the impact today is clear for India and the rest of the post-colonial developing world:

Unsurprisingly then, the Indian police failed to evolve into a citizen-friendly force. Indian police are probably the most reviled government agency in India. Ordinary Indians consider brutality and corruption its most familiar features. The colonial image of a jackbooted agent of oppressive authority, rude and abusive, often acting unlawfully and sloppily, soliciting free eats and drinks, still clings to Indian policemen, despite substantial political and constitutional changes occurring since independence.15

Similar historical narratives across the developing world have provided powerful lenses through which to understand the systematic dysfunctions and brutal absurdities that might otherwise seem so inexplicable to outsiders.

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