Currying favours with VIPs starts with us

We Indians have a deeply ingrained deference for VIP culture. Not only do we very rarely object to it, we also accept it as an irritating, albeit inevitable fact of life. Daily, scores of Indians put up with the preferential treatment meted out to public functionaries, politicians, and bureaucrats, who in their official divinity lord over us poor mortals, be it on the roads, on the trains, at the airport, in matters of school and college admissions, and on countless other occasions. Under Prime Minister Modi this won’t do, anymore. His decision to rid the streets of cars plying with red beacons is a decisive blow to a smug political class that has come to think of itself as first among equals.

PM Modi has rightly diagnosed the red beacon as a proxy for VIP culture, which “goes to the heads of those using it”, and has urged the citizenry to disabuse themselves of the grip of this toxic norm. Now, UP Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath has taken a step that other BJP leaders will do well to emulate. While addressing a BJP state meeting yesterday, he directed party workers to not welcome his ministers with bouquets and garlands. Instead, he said, party workers could put their time to good use by launching a cleanliness drive, the results of which could then be shown to the ministers.

This direction is completely welcome. Countless productive hours have been lost as government servants proffer banal felicitation and stuffy welcome speeches to politicians and higher-ups in the bureaucracy. Imagine the quantum of work that could have been established, had these officials put themselves to the task at hand. However, the buck does not stop with the government alone.

We must introspect on how and why such a phenomenon has taken roots among us. Tolerating VIP culture is a sticky habit and without a steely resolve to eradicate it from our everyday lives, it will most likely stay put.