It is not often that the President of India touches base with ordinary folks. They are imprisoned by security rigours but President Droupadi Murmu decided to buck the trend. At Tura she empathised with the sportspersons who stood in the cold to welcome her and expressed her gratitude in so many words. Later she also interacted with women’s self-help groups in Tura and found out quite a bit about their work and the challenges they face. The President mentioned these encounters in her speech at Shillong Raj Bhavan where she witnessed a cultural event. Just as late President Abdul Kalam was known as the Peoples’ President and he freely interacted with young people and asked them to raise questions which he readily answered, President Murmu too appears to be following in his footsteps.
It is rather unfortunate that in India all ‘public’ servants of which the President is one are embargoed by an overdose of security which keeps them away from the hoi polloi and therefore effectively prevents them from listening to the voices of ordinary citizens. Since the President is also the chief of the armed forces that layer of security cum protocol is also overbearingly protective and is covertly intended to keep the President from hearing anything that she needs to hear other than praises showered on her by ministers and government officials. But there are Presidents that buck the trend. When President Pranab Mukherjee visited Shillong he interacted with invited guests in the dining area opposite the Durbar Hall of the Raj Bhavan. President Pratibha Patil too invited the Padmashree recipients and interacted with them. She perhaps knew that the public voices are as essential to hear as the voices of those in power and their constructs of development. President Kalam couldn’t care less about security protocols.
President Murmu seems to follow a different protocol. Following the cultural programme hosted on her behalf, she was whisked away for a private dinner inside the Raj Bhavan with only top politicians, judges and bureaucrats and the police chief in attendance and of course the top brass of the army and air force. Lesser mortals were told to proceed to the dining hall across the durbar hall. This sort of exclusionary protocol goes against the very principles of democracy. The President is a peoples’ representative at the highest echelon, since he/she is elected by the MLAs of all states, but is a titular head and acts according to the counsel of the government of the day. In that sense there is very little that the President can do to effect any change in governance. Hence the role is ceremonial in nature. While the Government has taken much credit for bringing the President to inaugurate the 5th Meghalaya Games and several schemes virtually, this is also a scheduled visit followed by all Presidents who in their 5-year tenure have to visit every state of the country before they lay down office.
