Comment

If you haven’t seen it yet, look for the board when you are about to enter the Security Check area at any of our airports. The Exemption List will give the designation of 24 categories of people who have been officially spared the x-rays and metal detectors and frisking that you and I have to go through.

The number of categories keeps increasing every year. These new additions are a result of the VIP Syndrome, which is a very Indian thing. More accurately, it is a result of the VVIP Syndrome, which is a very, very Indian thing.

There is no acronym like “VVIP” anywhere in the world; we had to create it because so many Indians became VIPs that it became a problem for organisers of Big Events. Who amongst the important people was really important and should get first row sofa seats, bigger garlands and prime parking positions than the merely important?

So the Very, Very Important Person was born. That didn’t solve the problem, because a lot of the VIPs thought they were VVIPs.

Such a man is Anand Sharma, Union Minister of State for External Affairs. On April 20 this year he refused to undergo the pre-embarkation security check at Delhi’s international airport. “Don’t you know who I am?” he asked the on-duty security personnel.

Unfortunately Ministers of State (MOS) didn’t figure in the Exemption List. After two months of lobbying, Sharma has managed to get all MOSs on the list, a total of 45 people in all.

This should give us pause for several reasons. The first is the security question. If I am an ordinary citizen today but become an MOS tomorrow, do I suddenly become a zero security risk? This is absurd when a frightening number of our MLAs, MPs and even ministers (especially at the state level), have serious criminal records, with some of them openly linked to the mafia.

Why should we assume that when one of them gets into a plane, it will not be without a loaded gun which he just might use given a combination of circumstances and alcohol? But why go to these extremes? Even a union minister, the redoubtable Mr Ibrahim, just a couple of years ago walked into a flight with a gun!

This is, of course, a direct security risk. There are other risks as we have very recently discovered when some MPs were found to be involved in a people smuggling racket, and got away with it for a long time simply because they were on the Exemption List.

There’s a larger aspect to this, which is that the VIP syndrome is now deeply ingrained in every aspect of our society. In February 2005, the Shiv Sena’s Datta Dalvi was elected Mayor of Mumbai on a Friday, and was slated to take over from the incumbent the following Monday. But Dalvi couldn’t wait those three days before grabbing the perks of office. On Friday itself, he made a dash for the Mayor’s car, (the one with a dinky red light and siren on it), and dashed off.

Even Somnath Chatterjee, Speaker of the Lok Sabha, refused to travel to Australia a couple of years ago because he wasn’t given immunity from frisking. And Chatterjee belongs to the CPM which prides itself on being the most egalitarian party of all!

The Australians, in this case, weren’t being their usual rude selves. They were only being consistent: they have legislation to ensure that no exemption is made to security rules, whoever the passenger is.

Australia isn’t the only country: reports say that the US, Canada, UK, France, Japan, Thailand, Singapore and Hong Kong also do not have any special Exemption List.
Perhaps this is what President Kalam should do as his last act before he becomes an ordinary citizen: become an ordinary citizen while he is President. He should insist on going through a security check like everyone else on his next flight. That will send a strong message to the many, many Anand Sharmas that live in our world.