With lal-batti, has the Bandobust gone too?
Sandeep Sinha
There was a popular ad by a luggage manufacturing company that said, “VIPs are made and unmade, but aristocrats are born.”
In one stroke, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has lived up to this adage, with his government deciding to do away with the lal-batti culture and defining the pecking order by listing only those who are entitled to this symbol of power and authority.
The Prime Minister was not far from truth when he said the lal-batti had become a part of a person’s psyche in the country. In fact, it had not only become a part of psyche, but also a status symbol, signifying the ultimate aspirations of a wannabe.
And therein lied the problem. Other than the officials and constitutional authorities who could use it, the beacon caught the fancy of even the lower-rung politicians and the proliferation of bureaucracy, which would have delighted a Sir Humphrey Appleby, only compounded the problem with the number of vehicles fitted with beacon atop, increasing in number.
It is a good start. But to be fair, there is no dearth of officials who do not misuse it. There are many men of integrity who do not allow even their spouses to use their official car and the beacon flashes only when the officer himself is aboard.
But in a country where the feudal mindset still prevails, the lal-batti came to denote privileges and facilities as a symbol of power and the clamour for its use increased. Why only this? In mufassil towns, one can find vehicles with “Sarpanch” or “Chairman, Zila Parishad” written on them. It is a manifestation of that mindset.
But the lal-batti is only a part of the VIP culture Mr Modi talked about. The VIP culture also includes putting people to inconvenience. When PM Modi visited Chandigarh in 2015, the city witnessed a complete shutdown putting the citizens to great hardship. All 187 public and private schools were declared shut.
It made Modi tweet: “The inconvenience caused to citizens of Chandigarh, especially shutting of schools due to my visit, is regretted. It was totally avoidable.” An inquiry was ordered.
During the tenure of Manmohan Singh as Prime Minister, in 2009, Sunit Verma of Ambala, who was critically ill, died as his ambulance got stuck in barricades around the PGI. Again in 2011, Surjit Kaur of Mohali died as her ambulance was stopped for the security rehearsal of Nepal President Ram Baran Yadav’s visit.
And these are only the cases which got reported. There must have been many more who must have suffered.
In Delhi, when Inder Kumar Gujral was the Prime Minister, I alighted from a bus at the ITO only to find policemen wildly swinging their lathis and chasing people into the alleys as the PM’s cavalcade was to pass that way.
And recently, there was the instance of a former Union minister, Hukum Deo Narayan, who refused to travel along with the other passengers in the coach to board the aircraft. He wanted the whole bus to himself, a privilege granted to him by the airline.
It is not just those in power who enjoy VIP status in our country. VIPs in our country enjoy disproportionate privileges even when out of power. I was watching TV when David Cameron resigned as Britain’s PM. He left in a different car after meeting the Queen and it was heart-warming to see his car stop at the traffic lights. That’s some lesson for the netas of a country that has modelled its democracy on the Westminster model.
We are a country where people are deprived of even the most basic of facilities. Positions of power appear to be a way out. The lal-batti acts as a social leveller, investing power and authority, which in turn begets perks and privileges. By doing away with it, the government has taken a good initiative.
But the beacon is only a part of the malaise. The cavalcades that keep getting longer and the elaborate security arrangements too are part of the VIP syndrome. That too will call for efforts to rid the representative form of government in this country of VIP culture.