Alexander Lee offers a compelling and insightful political analysis of the structural factors that have perpetuated impunity within India’s policing institutions. Rather than attributing police dysfunction to individual corruption or moral failings, Lee situates this problem within the broader framework of India’s distributive political economy and the concentrated control exercised by political elites over coercive state forces. The book reveals how democratic institutions, instead of restraining lawlessness, have paradoxically facilitated selective protection and impunity as tools of political control and patronage. His work attempts to explain why Indian democracy has allowed criminal impunity to spread. It is the result of two independent policy choices: first, the Indian police are severely under-resourced; second, lowest police- population ratio in the world. He explains how nations can find themselves in the ‘policy trap’ of low police resources and low police autonomy and why it is so hard to break out of this equilibrium.
In spite of boasting a robust democracy, India has inadvertently entrenched criminal impunity through centralized political structures and deliberate under-resourcing of the police. This duality is not an unfortunate accident but is enabled by politicians to wield law enforcement agencies as a tool for patronage, often used to their advantage and denying the same to their adversaries. This approach treats policing as a distributive good: protection is not a universal entitlement but a scarce resource allocated via political networks. Lee’s theoretical framework builds on distributive politics theory; he explains that at least in theory, the distributive politics literature is optimistic about the relationship between democracy and public services rendered by the elected government. However, updating David Bayley’s foundational work with insights from modern political economy, Lee demonstrates how elite-driven strategies and persistent structural incentives, rather than cultural factors, perpetuate policing dysfunction and politicization.
Lee’s work begins by highlighting the stark contradiction of impunity prevailing over democracy: despite being a democracy, nearly half of its elected representatives face criminal charges, exemplifying the deep-rooted nature of impunity within its political system. Each chapter then dissects a dimension of this problem—from systemic underfunding to bureaucratic centralization, elite manipulation of postings, and the lack of accountability mechanisms. Empirically, Lee combines archival research, electoral data, and field interviews with police officers and politicians across several Indian States. The combination of statistical evidence and ethnographic insight allows the book to bridge the gap between macro-level institutional theory and micro-level lived experiences of policing.
The book utilizes a mix of qualitative and quantitative methodologies. The qualitative portion is based on interviews conducted in Bihar from 2010 to 2018. The Introduction is followed by a chapter on institutional background, context and history, and the structure of the Indian police as an instrument of colonial rule, a highly stratified career structure that concentrates power at higher levels.
‘The Police’s Constraints: Low Resources, Low Autonomy’ describes the environment in which the police operates, providing evidence of the low levels of resources and autonomy possessed by the police. The challenges vary from State to State; and they are also found in States that are relatively economically developed and provide high levels of other public services. He explains that the police are so under-funded that they are forced to ration provisions, either through charging informal fees or by favouring those who wield political influence.
‘The Politics of Impunity’ is about the consequences of the choice made, where many possess impunity for the crimes committed. It describes all those who obtain these privileges: it varies from senior politicians to local elites and how they are linked to the challenges of low autonomy and low resources.
In ‘The Political Origins of Low Autonomy and Low Resources’, Lee explains why politicians over-manage and under-resource the police institutions. Based on a set of interviews conducted with senior police officers, the chapter talks about the details of why and how policy choices about policing are made. Lee also discusses the politics of law and order in Bihar where levels of police autonomy and capacity have increased during the last three decades. Even though Bihar has been regarded as a showpiece of police reforms in contemporary India, the autonomy granted was only partial, while much of the law enforcement efforts focused on a few types of crime and certain networks of criminal politicians.
In ‘The Political Origins of High Resources and Low Autonomy’, Lee discusses the politics of law and order and how they have skewed the resource allocation of the Indian police towards the policing of crimes against the state and the policing of religious minorities. The experience of Uttar Pradesh under Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath has been highlighted to show what such a campaign looks like and envisages future police reforms.
‘Is the Indian Police Reformable?’, the last chapter, talks about the prospects for police reform in India, highlighting the importance of autonomous investigative units and political consensus to achieve meaningful changes. It warns against specific kind of reforms that aim to centralize power in the IPS bureaucracy. He further goes on to say that police is one of the features of India’s democracy that has nothing to be proud about, but at the same time reform is necessary and possible.
Lee talks about four reforms that would help to move Indian police out of its low autonomy/ low resource trap. These reforms have already been implemented at different levels across the country. They are: Mandatory registration of cases; Separating Investigation from officers handling law and order situations (this has been announced by Punjab and Bihar, but in Bihar the shortage of personnel has kept the separation from being implemented in practice); Increased Resources for Investigation (strengthening the middle ranks especially by increasing the number of Inspectors and Sub-Inspectors, increasing their salaries, equipping them with modern tech facilities and better transport facilities); and last, Internal vigilance (setting up of a dedicated unit within the police to fight corruption, just as the CBI which has a dedicated wing dealing solely with internal vigilance).
Lee envisions reform not as administrative modernization but as political reconfiguration. De-centralizing control over police appointments, creating independent service boards, and increasing fiscal autonomy are proposed as steps toward democratizing coercion. Crucially, reform must also address incentive alignment: as long as political careers depend on patronage over law enforcement, impunity will persist. Lee’s contribution lies in reframing India’s police failures not as aberrations but as integral features of its democratic system. An incisive blend of political economy, historical sociology, and institutional theory makes the book indispensable for scholars of governance, law, and South Asian politics. It is a sobering reminder that democracy without accountability breeds not rule of law but rule by impunity—a condition that threatens the very substance of India’s democratic experiment.
Shams Afroz, Additional Superintendent of Police (Govt. Of Bihar), is currently posted as Assistant Resident Commissioner, Government of Bihar, New Delhi.