Podcast transcript
In conversation with Kiran Bedi
Dr Kiran Bedi
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Transcript
- Ernest Raetz
Hello, and welcome to a La Trobe University podcast. I'm Ernest Raetz and today we have with us Dr Kiran Bedi, who has the distinction of having been voted as the most admired and trusted woman in India. At the age of 22, she was an all-age tennis champion. She later became the first female officer in the Indian police service. She went on to set up two major NGOs that tackled big issues like drug addiction, illiteracy, women’s equality and rural development, as well as police and prison reform. More recently, she has been known as a celebrated anti-corruption campaigner and won the prestigious Ramon Magsaysay award, the equivalent of Asia’s Nobel Prize. She starts by telling me about her career as an officer in the police force.
- Kiran Bedi
I think it was just one of the finest jobs I could do in the country. It was in the leadership ranks, the officer ranks, the policy making, the enforcement, absolute leadership. I became the first woman to join the officer ranks of the Indian police service. I think it’s absolutely a privilege. I didn’t join to become the first, because I thought that was the finest justice delivery system for me. You see, it could be negative or positive. For me it was the power of prevention.
- Ernest Raetz
But there were no precedents for women to go into the police force, and Indira Gandhi had only just recently been elected Prime Minister of India, so what gave you the courage, or the determination?
- Kiran Bedi
I was a very great tennis player. You see, as a student, if you were an outdoor and had done competitive and been versatile, you’re not looking for a desk job, you’re looking for something very, very visible, something very effective.
- Ernest Raetz
What did your family and friends say about your choice, and how difficult was it, what were your major hurdles?
- Kiran Bedi
In India you are a product of your family. I am fully a product of my mother and father’s vision. They were ahead of the times. They made us four girls all tennis champions, all very strong academics. I used to enjoy double scholarships, work and sports and I was not looking for comfort work. I was looking for government.
- Ernest Raetz
How long did you spend in the police force?
- Kiran Bedi
35 years.
- Ernest Raetz
35 years. And now, since then, you’ve taken up with a number of different foundations that look after all sorts of things, ranging from drug abuse, prison reform, women’s rights and so forth. How did you make that transition, or is it a transition? Was this always part of your plan to help?
- Kiran Bedi
It was a parallel. I started my foundation while in service. One of the major foundations called the Navjyoti India Foundation. It’s 25 years old, so while I was in service, I started the community empowerment as crime prevention. And these foundations grew as the community work grew as a cop. All this became a pioneering work as a serving cop, I started to do women empowerment and getting people to getting out of poverty by location skills training, by sending children to school. That led to crime prevention for me, setting up drug abuse treatment centres, it led to crime prevention. So I used community empowerment methods to prevent crime. And that became a foundation. And I never realised after my retirement these have become institutions by themselves. But I kept nursing them, giving them my absolute personal time, and involving the community. So I think that is one of the best ways I could do crime prevention, by empowering communities to educate and vocational skills. The second foundation called the India Vision Foundation, came out of the Magsaysay Award in 1994. It’s considered the Asian Nobel Prize. And when I got this in 1994 for forging positive relationships between police and the people, and it came with good solid prize money. You are expected to pass it on and to found a foundation. So I set up a prison reform foundation called the India Vision, where we educate prisoners’ children. It is one of the most unique projects in the world.
- Ernest Raetz
So it started actually, initially as a way of doing effective policing.
- Kiran Bedi
Correct.
- Ernest Raetz
And it has turned into a sort of major social welfare movement, if you like. A non-traditional way of policing at the time, wasn’t it? And did you meet a lot of opposition to do this?
- Kiran Bedi
You’re right. This was an innovative way of policing, but if you taught to prevent crime, then prevention of crime is your strategy. It’s endless strategies. You can decide, it’s so customer based, it’s needs based. You know the heat when you’re on the ground with your feet on the ground, you really know what is needed. So that’s what sensitivity is about. You are aware of your problem and you’re looking for right solutions.
- Ernest Raetz
Did you develop these by yourself, or were you basing this on things that you’d read elsewhere, or models?
- Kiran Bedi
The others were reading about this. I found them. That’s why I decided to document this and that’s where they documented those books of mine, written books on it’s always possible, it’s all about the transformation of the prison reforms, this was totally innovative. Similarly with most of my police innovative practices, where I brought people at least together, were innovative. I’ve written them all in the book I did.
- Ernest Raetz
Can you give us some specific examples of how that worked? I think you said during the talk earlier on, you decided to go into backyards in certain poorer areas I guess, rather than police the wealthy neighbourhoods.
- Kiran Bedi
Correct. That’s true. As a police officer, I'm supposed to be where I'm needed, not just where I'm seen, so I would always every day choose where I'm needed, so I make the difference. I'm there in the police to make the difference, to make the societies and the communities securer. So I would therefore be with vulnerable communities, where I was needed. Most of us seem to choose to be elsewhere, to network, rather than to actually be where you’re needed. That’s where my spirit has been, so that’s where my foundations also do – we are where we are needed.
- Ernest Raetz
You chose really a path that wasn’t about so much, only about visible enforcement.
- Kiran Bedi
Needed enforcement. But these became forefront, these became public news, it became forefront news. Because it was innovative.
- Ernest Raetz
And it was effective.
- Kiran Bedi
And very result-oriented.
- Ernest Raetz
So you travel around the world now and you consult – you’ve been in Australia talking to our police forces I believe in the past. How widely do you consult now?
- Kiran Bedi
This is a year long work. Selectively I choose with my balance with my time and the writings, and my own foundation work. And my own anti-corruption movement in India, so I am into social movement which travels around the country. Therefore I combine a lot of things. I also follow my movie that was made by an Australian called Yes Madam Sir. It’s just been released by Warner Brothers in the United States. It’s also by the way released in Australia, but has yet to reach elsewhere, so I and my producer, Megan Doneman, she’s an Australian. She and I proposed to do a lot of Q and A together with the movie. So to travel around the world.
- Ernest Raetz
The anti-corruption work that you’re doing now. This is something you’ve moved into after the policing and after the foundation work. You’ve now become an anti-corruption campaigner. How big an issue is corruption in India? Is it having much of an impact on India’s development?
- Kiran Bedi
Yes, it couldn’t have gone worse, so we are trying to reverse the trend. It’s working. It should work. We’re putting a lot of pressure on the government in power to give us an independent ombudsman. We have an investigating agency, but it’s not independent of the government. That’s what the whole agitation is about. It’s to give us an independent ombudsman so that high level crime can be fearlessly, expeditiously investigated by an independent agency. The government in power doesn’t want to let go because it will get exposed and it will get investigated and they’d lose elections.
- Ernest Raetz
I noticed at the start of the film, it talked about the link between police, politicians and corruption. You mentioned that in 2013 the next election might make a difference. In what way?
- Kiran Bedi
Because there’s so much more awareness amongst the voters today. India has more than 700 million voters, so the movement is awakening the slumber, making the voter aware of the power of the vote. To choose better candidates, not just vote for a party, vote for candidates, so that you have better people in the parliament.
- Ernest Raetz
And you’ve been crusading quite vigorously, to get that message out?
- Kiran Bedi
Yes. For the last two years we’ve just done that.
- Ernest Raetz
Because of your success and your very high profile in India, people look up to you, and I noticed this today when you were with students.
- Kiran Bedi
They’re looking for a right answer, what could they do for their own country. While they work for the adopted country. And that’s where I'm encouraging them to go, for a higher purpose, is to be a member of the community. So basically it’s back to giving. And trying to link them back with their own villages and towns, where they could contribute to education and vocational skills, networking between Australia and India to set up vocational schools. And what I'm trying to tell every Indian who wants to do it, do a training in Australia program, and I understand there’s your Asian White Paper here, where they want to network within Asia. So I think that would be just the best thing to do – is do an exchange training of trainer program, because India has got about 400 million where you would be needing vocational skills in the coming next years.
- Ernest Raetz
Business you say also has a big role to play in this. I believe one of your foundations is actually trying to set up a business school for the poor.
- Kiran Bedi
We make the bottom of the pyramid. We always hear of business schools for the rich but never a business school for the poor, so we want to partner with Australians to do a proper syllabus degree. We’re even partnering with the Asian Business Council, even the Asia Business Institute is willing to guide us, to provide training of trainer courses spread all over India, through the Navjyoti India Foundation Partnership.
- Ernest Raetz
Right, so this will actually help people run their own small businesses and it will also educate other people to help them get out from underneath things like payday lenders and loan sharks.
- Kiran Bedi
Absolutely. Exactly. And it will upskill youth. Every one skilled person takes care of the family. He gets out of poverty, he gets out of unemployment. He’s a better human being, a more valued human being.
- Ernest Raetz
Big business of course also has got a role to play in this, and you spoke about the corporate social responsibility a bit during your lecture. I think you mentioned that we may have woken up too late.
- Kiran Bedi
That’s why environment is a major issue. Environment is going to be changing. We look at the cost we are paying through these hurricanes and cyclones. It’s huge, huge climate change. We have to go towards more green technology, less of consumption, water regeneration. I think these are the key challenges, where everybody will have to contribute.
- Ernest Raetz
Because so much of what you do involves community change, how do you bring the community along with you?
- Kiran Bedi
To bring communities along with you, they must trust you. You must take them into confidence. You must explain to them what are your strengths and what are not your strengths. What you want to do and why you want to do it. Once you constantly communicate with them, the community comes along with you, because it’s in the community’s interest to work with you.
- Ernest Raetz
I think your PhD thesis in the 1990s was about drug abuse and domestic violence.
- Kiran Bedi
Correct
- Ernest Raetz
Western societies all over the world, there are these issues. How has the situation changed since you did that study, thirty years ago?
- Kiran Bedi
Domestic violence is an offence. Domestic violence in India until a few years ago was not an offence, unless someone had a fracture or a serious injury. But today domestic violence, even insultive behaviour, is an offence. That’s a big leap forward in which the United Nations Convention for Women made a lot of difference. But today, drug abuse too is an offence. Drug trafficking is a serious offence.
- Ernest Raetz
Some people are saying, especially in Western countries, that maybe making it an offence is not necessarily the best way to deal with drug addiction.
- Kiran Bedi
I like the concept of drug courts. I visited one of your drug courts in New South Wales – very successful proposition. I wish India would have that. I think that’s a good idea. This is borrowed from the United States. I remember when the drug courts came up in Washington a couple of years ago, I watched them. Some states in Australia have it. It’s a very good measure.
- Ernest Raetz
Will you try to introduce things like that in India when you get back?
- Kiran Bedi
When I get the opportunities, I speak up on many television programs, I’ll be able to share some of these ideas on the television debates, on crime prevention.
- Ernest Raetz
You’ve got a program, a regular television program in India, haven’t you?
- Kiran Bedi
Yes, I did. It was running for two years. It was an adjudication show. It’s a mediation show.
- Ernest Raetz
So you’re India’s sort of Judge Judy?
- Kiran Bedi
Yes. It was like a Judge Judy show. It became very successful. Many cases got resolved, and they were all authentic. I mean, they were all as they were. It became very popular and spread a lot of legal awareness amongst Indians on those issues.
- Ernest Raetz
Terrific. Can you tell me a little bit about your work also with the United Nations.
- Kiran Bedi
In the United Nations I was a civilian police advisor to Kofi Annan. And I ran sixteen countries’ peacekeeping missions, because those are the failed states. Today things are much better. In ’93 to ’95 when I was there, we had sixteen peacekeeping missions like the Sudan, Congo, Somalia, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Cyprus, Cyprus still continues. But East Timor, very close to Australia. Today it’s an independent country. So we were working on peacekeeping missions, rebuilding policing. Rewriting laws for them, setting up police training colleges, helping them recruit the right people. This was my work, as a civilian police advisor, so I was in those sixteen peacekeeping missions.
- Ernest Raetz
Assuming you ever sleep, when you do go to sleep, you must actually be satisfied or contented with so many of the things which you’ve already achieved. You’ve worked on such a wide front and you’ve achieved such a lot.
- Kiran Bedi
I can’t live on history. I’ve got to keep rewriting history.
- Ernest Raetz
So, what will be your work from now on? Mainly with the foundations, or do you have any other ...
- Kiran Bedi
All the things which are already in my hands – the anti-corruption movement, the foundations, my writings. I do a radio program every Saturday on the internet radio. Days are meant to be well utilised. As long as I’ve got life, keep trying to utilising the best way I can.
- Ernest Raetz
And a lot of mentoring of other people.
- Kiran Bedi
It’s not a conscious mentoring. If somebody picks up an idea, they’re most welcome. But there’s no preaching and there’s no tutoring. There’s no patent on a good idea. Just as I borrow good ideas, I can share good ideas. But as long as I have energy, I think it was meant for a higher purpose and some meaning in life.
- Ernest Raetz
That was Dr Kiran Bedi on a La Trobe University podcast. And you can hear the full lecture of her talk at La Trobe University on iTunes U. That’s all we have time for on today’s La Trobe University podcast. If you have any comments to make, or wish to contact us, you can email us at podcast@latrobe.edu.au.
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