Inspiring Journeys: First Indian Woman IPS Officer
In this edition of Inspiring Journeys, let’s explore the Journey of Dr. Kiran Bedi, India’s first woman India Police Service (IPS) officer. Dr. Bedi is an inspiration personified. Through her illustrious career she has donned many hats, and excelled in every one of them. She joined the police force in 1972, and served for over 35 years before taking VRS in 2007 as Director General, Bureau of Police Research and Development. During these 35 years, she played many different roles and received several national and international awards in recognition of her work. She was awarded the President’s Police Medal for Gallantry in 1979, the Ramon Magsaysay Award for government service (highest service award in Asia) in 1994, and the United Nations Medal in 2004. After retiring from active service, she has continued to be involved in the operations of Navjyoti India Foundation, an NGO she set-up in 1994, and while dedicating her time towards other social causes and writing. She served as the 24th Lieutenant Governor of Pondicherry from May 2016 to Feb 2021, and is currently writing her book titled ‘Raj Nivas’ about her experiences during this time.
Three things standout when we look through her career. First, the courage to make your path rather than follow the beaten path. She believed anything is possible if we are willing to work hard enough for it. Two, she is a living example of living life through the philosophy ‘how we play the cards that are dealt to us determines our life and not merely the cards that are dealt to us’. Three, she believed in leading from the front. Throughout her many leadership roles, she has always been there working side by side with her teams.
Nothing is Impossible: Courage to make your path
Dr Bedi was born in 1949, and grew up in Amritsar. Inspired by her father, she started playing tennis at age 9, and went on to become an ace tennis player. She was the national tennis champion for many years, and also won the Asian Championship in 1972. During her student days, she would travel alone the length and breadth of the country participating in tournaments, and balancing her studies while doing so. Her confident and independent outlook towards life, resilience to bounce back from difficult situations, and resourcefulness to anticipate and plan for the next move can be traced back to her sports career.
Her interactions with the senior civil servants at the Service Club in Amritsar (where she played tennis), inspired her to pursue a career in public service. In 1972, the same year she got married, she cleared the civil services exam. Instead of choosing the preferred lines of Foreign service or Administrative service, she chose the unconventional path of pursuing a career in the Police Force, becoming the first woman Police Officer in India. In her training batch she was the only woman officer in a batch of 80 men. One of highlights of her early career was leading the Delhi Police contingent in the 26th January Parade Republic Day Parade in 1975.
She says “ My motto in life is that nothing is impossible, no target is unachievable - one just has to try harder and harder. Tennis taught me the value of hardwork and perseverance and how important it was to (and is) to be both mentally and physically strong.”
How You Play Your Cards Determines Your Life
Throughout her career, Dr. Bedi has exemplified resourcefulness and resilience to adapt to the situations she found herself in rather than lamenting about the situations itself. This approach, together with grit and unparalleled work ethic, has helped her turn seemingly difficult situations into an opportunity to get etched in history. There are two such situations that talk to her character, and carry lessons for each of us to imbibe in our journeys.
Asian Games Episode:
Asian Games were to be held in India in December 1982. Dr Bedi was posted as the DCP of Traffic in October 1981. Though this responsibility was awarded to her far too close to the event and she had no prior experience in traffic management, she showed great courage and fearlessness to make this happen during this time.
Nicknamed ‘Crane Bedi’ at the time, she took up the mantle of fixing the congestion and parking problem in Delhi by having 16 tow trucks constantly working round the clock to clear out things irrespective of who the offender may be. It was a common sight to see her patrol the streets of Delhi with a microphone fitted to her jeep. She would typically work 19 hr days. This kind of field work by a senior official was unheard of at the time. She further replaced the challan system with on the spot fines, something the Delhi’s elite were not used to.
Realizing the fast pace with which things needed to move for the games preparation, she came up with a plan to gain sponsors for the event. She developed an audio video presentation for a group of sponsors for fundraising, a first at the time, detailing the traffic control plans for the Asian Games. The results were remarkable. Sponsors contributed generously towards road safety and educational material. She was able to invest in getting traffic police jeeps with saved money. This was the first time 4 wheelers were being commissioned for the traffic police teams. Asian Games were a big success, and her efforts were recognised. She was called upon to receive the Asian Jyoti award for excellence in her work. She declined to accept the award for herself alone, and requested it to be shared with the team.
Making History at Tihar Jail:
Throughout her career she was known for not backing down, standing up for what she believed in, and ensuring she executed what was entrusted to her with utmost honesty and integrity.
During her career, she didn’t always get the postings of her choice, yet she made the most of what she got. Her posting to Tihar was one such instance. After completing her stint in Mizoram in 1992, she had to wait for eight months before her next assignment. Finally, she was assigned as the Inspector General (IG) of prisons at Delhi in May 1993. At the time, in IPS a prison posting was considered a career hiatus.
Not one to be deterred by the cards dealt to her, she dedicated herself to the job at hand. She worked towards turning Tihar Jail into a model jail using the concept of ‘correction through a collective and community based’ approach. At the time she took over, Tihar Jail housed 9,000 prisoners. She recognized that the system did not invest anything in corrective action, often meaning that on release the prisoner would return to a life of crime.
She started out by meeting with the prisoners on a frequent basis, implementing petition boxes where prisoners could post their complaints and suggestions (only she had the keys to it). Having understood the perils and the challenges of the system, she set in motion a set of reforms that would make history. She arranged for prisoner education, getting prison schools recognized as government schools, offered vocational training to prisoners enabling them to earn a living and equipping them for a new life after their release. She introduced meditation, sports, and other cultural activities in the prison. She was recognized globally for her contributions to reforms to the prison system in Tihar, and awarded the Ramon Magsaysay in 1994. Governments of many countries, including the US and UK, invited her to share her fresh approach to corrective behavior. After receiving the award, she founded the India Vision Foundation, an NGO focused in the fields of prison reforms, drug abuse prevention, and empowerment of women.
Leading From the Front
Dr. Bedi has been a firm proponent, right from her initial years in IPS, of leading by doing. For her it has always been about “Leading from the front and not directing from the rear”.
There are countless examples throughout her work life that talk to her being on the ground and working shoulder to shoulder with her teams. This hands-on-approach set her apart. It ensured she always had a firm handle on the situation at hand, empathy for her teams, and provided her a vantage point to look for innovative solutions.
One such instance came to the fore during her first posting itself. After completion of the training program, she was posted in ChanakyaPuri subdivision of Delhi in 1975. This was an affluent area that housed the Parliament building, foreign embassies, and the residence of the Prime Minister and the President. While crimes were few and petty, there were frequently turbulent political protests and demonstrations that she had to navigate. During one such violent clash between two differing factions, one of the demonstrators charged at her with a nakes sword. Instead of backing down, she charged forward towards him as well as the other demonstrators with a cane. She was awarded the President’s Police Medal for Gallantry in 1979.
During her second posting to West Delhi, she was confronted with challenges of bootlegging with smugglers getting liquor from across the border and selling it in the streets of Delhi. She spent the first few months roaming the streets of Delhi at odd hours to understand the magnitude of the issue. She soon realized this wasn’t something that could be solved through police stations. She needed something more decentralized. She introduced the system of beat boxes. Each constable was allocated a beat box of his own, to be used as his office to oversee the local area under his jurisdiction. This ensured the local residents didn’t have to come to the Police Station for any urgent matters. The beat box constable became the community leader in many ways, reducing the distance between the public and police. She supported her team, coming for patrols with different constables everyday of the week including accompanying them for night patrols. To ensure the system was working well, she would also have random checks where using a microphone fitted to her jeep she would go to localities and ask if the locals knew who their constable was and if the officer was accessible.
The same techniques followed during her groundbreaking work at Tihar. She would directly meet with the prisoners to understand their challenges and concerns. Even today, the same mantra continues, and in her role as the Lieutenant Governor of Pondicherry she maintained an open door policy for the public and her teams.
