For Delhi Elite, a Glut of Police Protection

Prakash Singh/Agence France-Presse â€" Getty Images Delhi Police personnel in New Delhi, Jan. 20.

When Nandita Mukerjee, a suburban mom, joined the throngs protesting in New Delhi in December, hours after a gang rape victim died, she said she came in part because she feared for her young daughter’s safety. Every single day.

Ms. Mukerjee raises her family in Gurgaon, a sprawling suburb of New Delhi, and anxiously awaits her grown children’s return as they make their daily jostle by public transport to and from the city. “We can’t think of traveling at night,” she shuddered. What makes her blood boil, however, is watching government officials glide by with beefed up security while ordinar families like hers are forced to brave the perils of an unsafe city.

A recent government report on the police in India offers insight into Ms. Mukerjee’s outrage, and the vast public anger about politicians’ sense of entitlement and privilege in the country, particularly in the capital region, which has witnessed back-to-back protests and violent clashes in recent months.

While a single police officer covered 253 residents on average in New Delhi last year, a dozen police officers  were tasked with guarding each individual government official â€" bureaucrats, ministers, judges and legislators. In India, which loves its acronyms, they are referred to as “V.I.P.’s” or, for the extremely powerful, “V.V.I.P.’s.”

India has one of the lowest police officer-per-capita ratios in the world. It’s the second lowest among 50 countries ranked using 2010 data from the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime.

But even by India’s averages, New Delhi stands out for its prioritization of limited public resources. It had 427 government officials flanked by the protective muscle of 5,183 police officials last year. That’s the second biggest overall police force deployed for the security of government officials after the state of Punjab, which has a population of 36 million, compared to the New Delhi national capital region’s 22 million.

Critics frequently point to New Delhi’s obsequiousness to political privilege to explain why leaders are described as tone deaf. Scores of protesters in the wake of New Delhi’s Dec. 16 gang rape directed their rage at politicians, saying they are cocooned from the reality of living as middle-class workers in the capital. The government has responded by saying it will increase policing to make the city safer.

The central government has asked the  Delhi Police to mke female police officials available at all the 180 police stations in the capital and also appears poised to hire 2,508 women for the city.

The Supreme Court on Thursday directed the Delhi Police to reduce V.I.P. security and instead deploy their work force to ensure the safety of women in the city.