These are tumultuous times for the Indian police, especially the Delhi police, in their bid to maintain law and order. After losing the debate inside Parliament, certain elements have regrettably chosen to take some contentious issues out to the streets. Consequently, the floor has been unwittingly yielded to the police and for them to act in the manner they deem fit, and in the interests of public peace. Binary picture Protests and demonstrations no doubt form the core of democracy and are unexceptionable as long as they do not disrupt the life of the common man or cause damage to public property. In an ideal world, we may expect this clear cut theoretical proposition to work perfectly. But in the raw, emotion ridden and violence prone streets of the present times, this clinical allocation of respective space has, however, repeatedly proved to be mere pontification. This is established by events of the past few days in the national capital. Some media reporting has tended to be one sided, tending to portray the police as the villain of the piece and the protesters as harmless and pacifist. This binary picture is deceptive and misleading, because it is blind to the truism that the police do enjoy a measure of operational autonomy, free from the dictates of other state agencies. Shadow of politics Public opinion has been built around a few gross misconceptions about modern policing. It is too simplistic and facile to look upon the police as merely an agency that has been caught in the crossfire between the establishment and protesters. Gone are the halcyon days when life was more orderly and civilized, and the police just received orders from above to be executed as faithfully as they could/can and not necessarily at the speed of lightning. The vicissitudes of politics over the decades have deprived the guardians of law the luxury of resting on the statute book and responding to a developing situation. 

Answer the following questions from the above passage-

1. What are the reasons that the Police have a difficult time?

2. What things have been proved in the present time ?

3. Who has the media reporters portrayed to people?

4. What kind of perception is made about policing from the Shadow of politics ?

5. For decades, what have the people of politics deprived the keepers of law ?