A Presidential holiday that entailed the felling of trees in an environmentally fragile zone in the Andamans — and the disruption of the plans of “ordinary” holiday-makers — is more evidence of a pernicious syndrome which has become so intrinsic to the system that it is never questioned. Neither by its intended beneficiaries, nor by those who suffer as a consequence. But this easy deference to authority and the never-ending privileges attached to it, needs to be understood for what it is — a serious undermining of democratic functioning. Democracy is not just about voting in representatives every once in a way. Historically, it was about overturning aristocratic privilege and ending the exercise of arbitrary power. Now it has also come to mean instituting procedures of accountability in day-to-day administration. This is why we are not inclined to perceive the extraordinary measures taken to facilitate the president’s three-day family trip to the Andamans with great equanimity.There are, of course, constraints that people in the highest echelons of government experience have — vulnerability to terrorist attack, for instance. India has a well-established system of grading threat perception and extending the necessary protection. Most of us understand this, provided it passes the test of rationality. Therefore, while a degree of inconvenience caused by VIP movement in our cities, for instance, may be condoned; elaborate “santisation” procedures for hours on end rightly cause resentment. Credible public administration reforms necessarily seek to abolish, or at least set limits, to the culture of extraordinary privilege. Unfortunately, so entrenched is the self-importance attached to being a VIP in India, that the constant effort by those in power is to expand, rather than whittle down, such entitlements. We had, not so long ago, the minister of state for external affairs demanding that airport security procedures be waived for him. This was followed by the recent verbal skirmish over whether the three service chiefs should be exempted from airport frisking. Responding to the debate, this newspaper had argued that such procedures undermined neither the authority nor status of those subjected to them. If it is of any consolation, other countries too have a suffocating VIP culture: the People’s Republic of China, according to one estimate, has about 20 VVVIPs, 700 VVIPs and innumerable VIPs, each of whom are entitled to a set of privileges. But then China, unlike India, never claimed to be a democracy.
