The Hindu Business Line : VIPs in a democracy

“We hold …. that all men are created equal” is the sonorous beginning of the US Declaration of Independence. Both the American War of Independence and the French Revolution took their inspiration from the clarion call of Tom Paine and Rousseau who, at a time when kings, nobles, aristocrats and landlords were literally trampling, and even driving their carriages, upon ordinary people whom they despised as vassals and lowly creatures beneath contempt, boldly proclaimed the equality of man.

India had the incomparable Tamil poet, Subrahmanya Bharati, who declared four decades before Independence that all Indians were of equal value and importance. The incorporation of equality of status and opportunity in the Preamble to the Constitution is a tribute to a noble and grand precept that had been hailed over the centuries as the cornerstone of a truly democratic polity.

“We, the People”, supposed to be the sovereign masters, who gave to ourselves the Constitution and who, therefore, have the right and duty to safeguard all that the Constitution holds sacrosanct, are becoming mute witnesses to the damage being inflicted on the mainsprings of an egalitarian social order by the political and governing classes. Pyramids of privileges or rank and positions of power and authority, wholly contrary to the equality of status, are rising everywhere.

The very notion of VIPs and VVIPs, and the associated paraphernalia, is anathema to the principle of equality of status as defined by poet Bharathi and as enshrined in the Constitution. Occasionally, the guilt complex in this respect prompts Presidents and Governors to stand in queues in a polling booth during elections, surrounded, of course, by a dozen Black Cats.

Frightful fuss

Otherwise, no end is insight to their obsession with the red lights on the cars, insistence on traffic being blocked, clamour for waiver from the various requirements with which ordinary citizens are compelled to comply and aversion to mingle with the ‘commoners’. In no other democracy is there such a frightful fuss made over the VIPs and VVIPs as the self-serving ruling establishments do in India.

The ruckus raised over the frisking of Mr Abdul Kalam by the Continental Airlines has to be seen in this background. In recent years, there has been a marked deterioration in the quality of public life and holders of public office, and it is becoming difficult to automatically assume that the so-called VIPs will observe the code of values and virtues befitting their station.

Elected representatives have been caught taking cash for questions and votes, Ministers have been booked in criminal cases and God knows what their henchmen and hangers-on are up to. There are no doubt outstanding exceptions, such as Mr Kalam, but rules are made having the worst contingencies in mind.

Hence, exemption from provisions having a bearing on security, especially in respect of air travel where lives of hundreds of other human beings are at stake, should be granted only to those currently holding high Constitutional positions and to no other. There is no rationale for extending it to past holders of such positions. They should not mind if they are also put through procedures to which millions of fellow human beings , are subjected.

As regards security too, minimum essential security protection could be made available at taxpayers’ cost only to serving high Constitutional functionaries, and not to those, such as party persons and public figures, who are not holding any official position in the Government. They should be trusted to take care of themselves in the way normal citizens do, and if any security is provided to them by the Government, the entire cost should be realised from them.

B. S. RAGHAVAN

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