New Delhi: Nagaland Governor and former top cop Nikhil Kumar said that IPS officers, barring few individuals, have "failed" to meet the expectation placed upon them. "My friends, please forgive me for saying this, we have failed the IPS. We have not been able to improve the image of the IPS and of the police. There may be some individuals in his own individual capacity, somewhere, doing extremely good work but the sum of the whole is that we have not been able to do what was expected of the police," Kumar said, while delivering the annual founding day lecture of the Bureau of Police Research and Development (BPRD) on "good governance". Kumar, a 1963-batch retired Indian Police Service (IPS) officer, has held top positions in various prestigious forces like NSG and Delhi Police. He was appointed as the Governor of Nagaland in 2009. BPRD is the apex police research organisation under the Union Home Ministry which undertakes studies and scholarly works for improvement on a wide variety of policing subjects from security to health of police officials.
"The fact (is) that the constable doesn`t get his due either from the government or from the public. How you are going to get the constable to improve is what I, in my humble opinion, feel is the key to improve the situation. If that happens, if the constable is in position to hold his own against the people of that area, he has self respect, then I think we will be taking a big step towards improving police leadership," Kumar said. Top officers of central police forces and retired IPS officers listened to Kumar in rapt attention as he, in his over an hour long speech, spoke on various issues which plague development and hinder good governance. PTI