Supercop, Super Activist, Super… Is politics the next cause that Dr Kiran Bedi will embrace? For her taking up politics would be just a continuity of causes that she espouses. The magic she had wrought with her ‘kindly baton’ as a career policewoman and continued as social activist with her NGOs stand testimony to Dr Bedi’s power to reform. India sure could do with such reformist social crusaders at the helm. As Kiran contemplates her next step, we reconstruct her journey so far…
Dr Kiran Bedi needs no introduction. Yet, all books and biographies on her apart, there is still something about her that defies easy description. She carries an aura, a charisma about her but she greets you with an ever present easy smile that bowls you over. How can a person who has reached the heights of excellence in every field choose to be so humble and humane? You wonder. Her twinkling eyes meet each one of her people, the Navjyoti India Foundation community, and soft hands touch extended hands with such gentleness. It’s a genuine humility and tenderness. It’s so endearing. Where is the tough as nails iron woman, hardened with years of service in a police force that is infamous for its insensitivity and dehumanising effect, you wonder again? “It’s my training and upbringing,” says Dr Bedi. And she does not mean the training that she received at the police academy alone. Rather, it is a conscious effort at self-discipline that has been a life-long exercise. It is an attitude that she received as a family legacy—simple living, high thing and hard work. “My parents never strove for anything less than excellence. That was always our goal. It was an attitude that permeated our home ambience.” The other thing that was inviolable for the Peshawaria family from Amritsar was their sense of justice and uprightness. It was this unshaken faith in the rights of his daughters that made Prakash Lal, Dr Bedi’s father, withstand the wrath of his own father, Lala Muni Lal. He chose to support his daughters Shashi, Kiran, Reeta and Anu, in their quest of selfhood rather than buckle down to Muni Lal’s pressures. The headstrong patriarch, Muni Lal, had stopped allowances to Prakash’s family. But Prakash remained undettered.
This unyielding spirit Prakash passed on to his daughters who walked 5 km daily to catch their bus to attend Sacred Heart Convent in Amritsar, which was 16 km from their village. All in a bid to save their family pecuniary hardship inflicted by their grandfather’s injustice. Prakash also bequeathed his sports talent to his daughter while mother Janak nee Prem Lata gifted Kiran her academic excellence. The family’s struggles also left an indelible imprint on little Kiran’s psyche, albeit a very positive one—it created a streak of determination in her. She vowed that every paisa invested in her by her parents would be optimally utilised. Dr Bedi’s search for justice spanned the whole sub strata of humanity that she perceived was being denied this human right. When she joined the India Police Service in 1972, she came with reformist zeal at heart. “I saw policing as an instrument of social justice and empowerment.” For her it stood for a powerful means to an end, a tough and uncompromising mechanism that could be used rightly to command and ensure justice and welfare for those who deserved it.
Her ways were new and detractors many. But Dr Bedi had not learnt to bend, not when she was sure of being “morally, ethically and legally right.” She found herself on a morally high ground during such situations and drew courage from it. The audacity of her actions left a nation, used to fawning at political leaders’ feet, gasping. Like at the time of 1982 Asian Games in Delhi, the then DCP (traffic) Bedi towed away Indira Gandhi’s car that was wrongly parked in Cannaught Place! Her disciplinarian actions earned her the sobriquet of “Crane Bedi” from Delhi’s undisciplined traffic.
Dr Bedi’s crusader zeal has many thinking that she sees herself on a mission to cleanse the world of corruption. But for Kiran, “it is all in a day’s work—doing my work to the best of my capabilities, which if done well, will make a difference in the world.” If in 1982 she earned the ire and a transfer for her zealous service as DCP (traffic) at the personal cost of the health of her daughter suffering from nephritic syndrome; she only went on to set her next goal, “a little higher and further so that it hurt. I had to put in extra effort to achieve it, there were personal losses, so when I achieved it I knew I had put in hard work and it was well worth it.” Frustration and disillusionment have no place in her life. In Goa in 1983, she exhibited exemplary performance during Commonwealth Heads of Government Meet (CHOGM). Faced with inadequate traffic police, she did the impossible with the help of NCC cadets— maintained smooth flow of traffic from airport to the meeting place. Venerated as an icon of bravery in India, Dr Bedi has many firsts to her credit. She is India’s first woman IPS officer who is also a national and Asian tennis champion, a Ramon Magsaysay awardee, the first woman head of Tihar, the first police officer to introduce revolutionary prison reform concepts as Vipassana in jail and her renowned 3C model that changed human mindset—corrective, collective and community based. Dr Bedi worked with the United Nations as the police adviser to the Secretary General, represented India at international forums on crime prevention, drug abuse, police and prison reforms and women’s issues. Accolades never moved her though.
The rehabilitation of drug addicts that she began as a police officer in 1987, has today scaled up to encompass a wide ranging community welfare programme. The NGOs, Navjyoti India Foundation (founded in 1988) and India Vision Foundation (established in 1994) she founded, are implementing revolutionary models of social service in the bylanes of Yamuna Pushta and the patriarchal villages of Sohna in Gurgaon. Dr Bedi has never shied from taking up a cause she wholeheartedly belived in—be it Anna Hazare’s movement against corruption or her defence of Prime Minister Modi. Her volte-face on joining politics surprised many and drew vociferous criticism. But Dr Bedi remains steadfast and calm: “I was an activist-cop…For me, it’s a continuity of espousing causes.”
Kiran has always challenged the status quo. She turned her ‘dump’ posting as IG of Tihar jail from 1993 to 1995 into a stint that made the world stand in attention. The series of correctional measures initiated by her turned the jail into a welfare model. Beneficiary schemes and skill development programmes for prisoners and staff, participatory management and programmes for mental development brought about a drastic change in attitude of both prisoners and personnel. Her book It’s Always Possible capturing these efforts became a model for study and implementation across the world. Dr Bedi has embraced many causes over the years and still carries on working on them effortlessly, while picking new ones that call out for attention. How do you keep yourself positively charged? What is the secret of Kiran’s unflagging spirit? She replies with her trademark nonchalant smile, “I do what I choose to do. Nothing is an imposition; worthwhile work energises me.”
Corrective politics is now a burning cause for Kiran and she is open to offers. “Life is for creative living! As long as there is life, remain worthwhile and remain creative.” For her it is time to try her creative and constructive measures on a larger platform, picking a far bigger and a more worthwhile cause whose impact will be felt far and wide. The people are waiting for her ‘kindly baton’ to weave its magic once again.