Books written by retired police and intelligence officers often fall into one of two categories: memoirs that recount extraordinary careers, or institutional defences that justify the system from within. Yashovardhan Azad’s Policing the Republic attempts something more ambitious. It uses a lifetime spent inside India’s security establishment to ask difficult questions about the Republic itself—its policing, governance, intelligence architecture and, ultimately, its democratic character.
An IPS officer of the 1976 batch who rose to become Special Director of the Intelligence Bureau before serving as Secretary (Security) in the Cabinet Secretariat, Azad writes with the confidence of someone who has occupied the highest levels of India’s security apparatus. Yet the authority of the book comes less from the positions he held than from his willingness to acknowledge the institutional weaknesses that continue to haunt Indian policing.
Rather than offering dramatic accounts of intelligence operations or counter-terrorism, Azad turns the spotlight on structural problems: political interference, corruption, the criminalisation of politics, fragile investigative mechanisms and the widening gap between constitutional ideals and administrative realities. His central argument is that these are not isolated failures but symptoms of institutions that require deep and sustained reform.
A Timely Intervention in an Old Debate
The book arrives at a moment when the question of police reform has once again acquired public urgency. From the India Against Corruption movement of 2011 to recent Gen Z-led protests against examination paper leaks, public anger has repeatedly exposed a larger concern about institutional accountability. Questions over political influence on investigations, unequal application of the law and the independence of policing have surfaced across governments and across states. Without reducing these movements to a single demand, they have collectively revived the debate over whether India’s police system requires greater operational autonomy and stronger institutional safeguards. Policing the Republic enters this conversation not as a political manifesto but as an informed insider’s assessment of why reform has remained elusive—and what meaningful change might look like.
One of the book’s greatest strengths is its restraint. Azad neither romanticises the police nor dismisses the institution altogether. Instead, he recognises the pressures under which it functions while arguing that professionalism, accountability and institutional independence must become central to any meaningful reform agenda. His policy prescriptions are measured rather than ideological, making the book useful for policymakers, civil servants and students of public administration alike.
The prose is clear without being simplistic. Azad succeeds in translating decades of administrative experience into an accessible narrative that explains how the machinery of the Indian state functions in moments of crisis as well as in ordinary governance. The foreword by former National Security Advisor MK Narayanan further underscores the book’s significance within India’s strategic discourse.
At a time when debates on policing are often reduced to partisan binaries, Policing the Republic offers something increasingly rare: perspective. It does not claim to provide definitive answers to every institutional challenge, but it asks the right questions—and, drawing upon decades of experience, offers thoughtful and practical directions for reform. In that sense, the book is not merely about the police. It is about the health of the Republic itself.
