LUNCH WITH BS: Kiran Bedi

Being Kiran Bedi

None of her former colleagues are ambivalent about her. India's ex-top lady cop is a bit like America — you either love it or hate it, very few are indifferent

In a country where the president is a woman, the de-facto prime minister is a woman, the chief minister of the capital city is a woman and the most powerful prime minister in its waking history was a woman, can Kiran Bedi's accusations of being superseded due to gender-bias hold any water, asks Anjuli Bhargava.

It is also a country where 50,000 unborn girls are killed every year, where the sex ratio is tilting alarmingly towards the male species and one where women are often burnt for lack of adequate dowry. These are the thoughts that go through my head as I wait for India's most famous lady cop to join me for lunch at the Taj Mahal hotel's House of Ming.

 

A few minutes later, when the moment actually arrives, I fail to recognise her. I quickly realise I have been expecting her in uniform. That's why it takes me a second to place the lady walking towards me, in a burgundy jacket worn over a salwar kameez.

Since, thankfully, I am not a television reporter or anchor, I resist the urge to look her straight in the eye and say, "So, you quit because you were superseded, huh?" I mentally resolve not to bring up the issue till she does.

As we order our soups (her favourite chicken sweet corn for her and a lemon coriander vegetable soup for me and the main course (Kung-Pao chicken with cashewnuts, stir-fried greens with mushrooms, rice for me and garlic bread for her, which we agree to share), I try and make her more comfortable. We have never met before and in all likelihood may never meet again. How did she join the police force, why did the second lady police officer Kanchan Chowdhry have such a tough time (she answers this in one line: "she had no sports background"), what she thinks are her greatest, truest achievements? In the weeks spent researching her and asking everyone what they think of her, I tell her I got no ambivalent response — she's a bit like America, you either love it or hate it, very few are indifferent to it.

A childhood steeped in nationalism, an emancipated father (he loved the way Nehru was grooming Indira Gandhi), and a strong-willed mother stirred in her an "inner need" to join the police force. "Joining the police was for me a continuity and not a break from the way I was brought up," she says. Her training in tennis (she was an Asian tennis champion, the best NCC cadet, an athlete of her college and a volunteer for the Red Cross) and a desire to push herself physically to the limits aided what she saw as a natural next step in her life. She insisted on doing things "as the men do" and sought no concessions. Her job was never a job; it was a mission and a passion — she says she's going to take her passion forward through saferIndia.com, a recently launched website that will help citizens grouses and complaints reach the ears of the police. "I never expected to leave a day before my service ended," she adds.

I break my resolve rather quick. "Why did you leave then," I ask innocently, as if it was the first I'd heard of it. "Many reasons," she says, "it was time to move on. I have never clung on to things. I was now marking time." The work she'd be doing in the Bureau of Police Research and Development was repetitive. "Why should I create a new report when old reports have been disrespected? Why should I waste my time," she asks me so fiercely that for a moment I felt I was making her do it. "I asked my conscience if I could shed the status and the trappings and I realised I could."

I gather courage and ask whether it had anything to do with the supersession. She doesn't hesitate for a second. "That triggered it," she confirms. She left a "fat salary and a high-profile job" as the police advisor to the UN secretary general in 1993-95 ("the first woman and the first Indian ever" to be appointed — "not a nomination, I went through an international selection"), only to return to "her service" earlier than she needed, knowing that she was next in line in terms of seniority to be made the Delhi police commissioner. "Do you know one month's salary there was equal to all that I have saved here all my life," she asks.

What reason was she given? She says no one gave her any reason and the ones she read through the media are false. "I've done district, I've done traffic, I've done training, I've done headquarters, I've done narcotics, I've done police ranges," so when they say she hasn't done real police work, she begs to disagree. When I push her on why she thinks she didn't get what she is certain she rightly deserved, she says she didn't expect anything else from them. "They lived up to my expectations. It's a hypocritical system, full of platitudes." She says she's happy her case has exposed the system (she doesn't realise it but she doesn't mean that one). She is furious with "someone". Who, she probably doesn't know. What she does know is that she deserved something better. It didn't happen and — though she denies feeling hurt and let down — the wounds are still pretty raw.

I gently suggest that maybe her unconventional ways — she had an open door, non-hierarchical policy where hawaldars could walk in to her office unannounced; she would drop in at police stations unexpectedly to run a check just to keep officers on their toes — and her being a darling of the media had something to do with it. "How many times can you be a darling of the media ? I have worked 35 years in the police. Was the media reporting on me because of who I was or because of what I did? Did I invite you today or did you ask me out for lunch?"

I return like a stuck record to what she sees as her biggest achievement — that one thing she'd like to be remembered by. I know she was posted in Mizoram, worked in Tihar (her colleagues say it was her biggest contribution and that she converted it from a prison to a correctional facility), was famous for towing cars ("Crane Bedi") — all pretty regular stuff if you choose police as a career — but what has she really achieved to be called an "icon of Indian heroism" or to get the piles of awards that have been heaped on her? Surely it's not just the fact that she was there first, in the right place, at the right time?

"I don't do things to be remembered or to be rewarded. I just follow my conscience and I do what I need to do," Bedi tells me, her eyes fiery with her beliefs. She says each assignment had its own challenge, she can't single any one out. She has always enjoyed whatever she did; the people she worked with were her extended family.

Then, why are there so many within that family who feel she's more style than content. Is the real issue then not one of gender, but of how far a bureaucracy, controlled by politicians, can digest inflexibility, especially when coated with a sense of righteousness? Has she rubbed people the wrong way with her myriad and fairly radical views, has she expressed these views too freely or is it just professional jealously at play? "Did I make people insecure or did they become insecure? If I intimidated people, am I wrong or are they wrong," she counters.

By now, I'm convinced she's never wrong. I never really ended up figuring out what her true achievements were but by the end of our lunch, I think I understood why "they" did what they did. They couldn't deal with her conscience.