A few days ago when a senior Congressman was asked by a section of the media how he felt about the disbandment of the VVIP culture in the form of the red beacon atop Government VIP vehicles, he smugly stated that the diktat emerged out of envy. Perhaps the man has turned senile so his answer can be tossed aside as gibberish. The Congress Party has perfected the art of sycophancy and its political arrogance knows no bounds. When Prime Minister Modi said that the VIP culture has become a mindset problem he hit the nail on the head. Today people who are actually public servants (called ministers because they have to minister, not govern) are so far removed from the public because of the security paraphernalia, that they only know what their sycophants whisper to them. It is only now that elections are nearing that we see politicians rubbing shoulders with ordinary people and coming off their high horses. So yes, the red beacons may have gone but have the sirens been silenced? And what about those who fix designations on their vehicles so much so that even the number plate has become invisible?
Democracy and the VIP culture are incongruous! If power actually belongs to the people then why are people kept off from most important exercise of planning their own development? Does a bureaucrat know more about a particular village than the people who live there? Yet democracy in this country is such that people don’t matter. Only their votes matter! Once the voting is over people are treated like menials who can be summoned at will. That such practices prevail even in hitherto egalitarian tribal societies is the failure of the people themselves to decipher the meaning of democracy. But people cannot be blamed entirely because they have been kept at subsistence level over decades and are now voiceless and powerless. The poorer they are the more voiceless they become. This powerlessness of the citizenry is what keeps the VIP culture alive and democracy gasping for breath!