Poila Baisakh, the Bengali New Year, heralded new beginnings in the City of Joy. The Raj Bhavan opened its doors to the public on a nudge from the president, Droupadi Murmu, to the governor of the state, C.V. Ananda Bose, during her recent visit to Calcutta. The other development was the inauguration of a resplendent conch-shaped Dhana Dhanye Auditorium by the chief minister, Mamata Banerjee.
While the heritage walk through the stately Governor’s House will hopefully have few hiccups, the pictures of the auditorium that were circulated indicated it to be a VIP enclave that the common man will barely have access to. Built at a cost of Rs 440 crore, the infrastructure grandly touted as a stellar achievement should not be the sole preserve of ruling politicians.
Even airports and railway stations are not kept out of the purview of VIP clutches. Special lounges that list the scores of categories of VIPs who may enter, use of buggies even by those not remotely disabled, the best seats, not to mention the total insouciance towards security checks are the privileges granted to the powers that be. Since the Constitution allows those in jail to contest (and win) elections, should there not be a modicum of restriction by implementing pre-boarding checks, especially since politicians have been known to misbehave and even try to open emergency exits?
The prevailing trend in India is to deprive citizens of what should rightfully be theirs. Why is traffic held up for VIP convoys? The red beacon may have been brought to book, but the ubiquitous blue ones still try to flex muscles whenever the opportunity arises. When India adopted the term ‘socialist’ in its Constitution as an afterthought, it was a way of stressing the sovereignty of the people — the common people, the electorate, the wooed majority every five years at the time of franchise.
Who are the VIPs in a democracy? If equality is a constitutional right, why should a critical patient on the way to a hospital have to die in an ambulance just because a chief minister or a parliamentary delegation is passing through that route and is given right of way?
Such a parliamentary delegation, led by the Union minister for road transport and highways, Nitin Gadkari, was in Srinagar in the Union territory of Jammu and Kashmir on April 9. Roads were clogged for hours as convoys beeped their way along the city. With Srinagar being readied for a smart city project, half the thoroughfares are dug up. When the minister, accompanied by the lieutenant-governor, Manoj Sinha, decided to inspect the Z-MORH tunnel in the Ganderbal district, hundreds of tourists were prevented from accessing Sonamarg. They had come from all over India with bookings made months ago. With invitations being issued for G20 meetings slated in Srinagar and Gulmarg next month, heaven help the tourists who have booked those destinations on those dates!
This is the way the ‘VIP culture’ operates across the world’s largest democracy. It is only at election time that the politicians come groveling, because they have so much at stake. Losing in the polls would imply not just a loss of face but a total cessation of unending VIP ‘perks’.
Is it any wonder, then, that young graduates nowadays are beginning to eye not the civil services but politics as a career option? After all, they see vividly that while most bureaucrats have to kowtow to corrupt and sometimes unlettered ‘leaders’ who win elections, if they opt to become a politician, they can sail through five-year phases of inactivity, the easy acquisition of unholy wealth and satiate their souls with the privileges of VVIPs without an iota of responsibility or accountability.
Time for more political parties to launch campus drives perhaps?
