The police is not the government. The police is composed of people from society - much like the government.

Police are civil servants under the direction and policies of ministries within the framework of government. The government is not just the political elite, rather its the civil service as well and that is who the majority of people deal with on a daily basis. If there isn't sufficient ministerial direction or aren't adequate agency policies in place and very importantly those policies are enforced, then the lower ranks of police (and other civil servants) will largely do as they please. This is why corruption, collusion and incompetence are so very tough to remove from much of India's civil service and society.

I think you miss the point. It is us.

I understand your point. Change can come from the top down (government) or from bottom up (citizens). But if the middle ground (often the government/civil service in India) is stopping change or reform, pressure must be put on it. Usually this is from the top, as from the bottom, its usually only possible via a revolution, and that may not bring the changes the people who lead the revolution want (see Egypt as an example). To change mass opinion in India, not those demonstrating already, but billion plus unable or unwilling to, will be very tough. Many of them do not want or are unwilling to accept change of any kind.

I appreciate your point, but failures by the police are failures by the government. If the government cannot figure out how to rein in its police force, that's a very serious problem and can't be dismissed.

Your point is useful insofar as we recognize that the police are dominated from a particular subset of society--those who condone marrying rape victims to their rapists, for instance, implicitly by permitting it or explicitly by encouraging it.

Thus, it's something that needs to be dealt with, and perhaps that is an avenue to explore to find a solution.