The scourge of VIP security-crores wasted on the unworthy

The scourge of VIP security--crores wasted on the unworthy

The statistics on guarding our politicians, administrators and other VIPs have run completely amuck. Countless crores are being spent conferring astoundingly wasteful security blankets around the people’s representatives and senior bureaucrats, past, present and future. It starts with gun-toting guards and expands into building fortresses, converting hundreds of cars with armour plate and bullet proof glass and even air-freighting them hither and thither to provide round-the-clock-safety from Behmai to Berhampore to this privileged caste. Planes are chartered in the name of security. Trains are diverted and roads are blocked, also in the name of security. The costs are spiralling out of all proportion but the juggernaut of VIP security lumbers on oblivious.

In addition, the process of hanging about protecting these people and lining the route of their meanderings, dehumanises and trivialises the police and para-military forces. They are reduced to being glorified gate-keepers as opposed to the upholders of the law and justice they were meant to be.

The matter has reached comic proportions in the present era of raft like coalition governments and multiple parties. The concern for the poor does not manifest itself in one effective austerity measure applicable to our rulers. That this ludicrous security apparatus with its “blue” and “red” books and its “Z” category big wheel is an intrusion on the freedom of ordinary people and a waste of resources, does not bother anyone in power.

It is true that the law and order situation is somewhat shaky. But that applies to all of us. Why should the privilege of safety be the perquisite of an exalted few when the rest of us are paying for it? Unwarranted use of the police force and other para-military outfits to guard our rulers flies in the face of our own requirements. The cake is certainly not big enough to go around. So, our rulers have cynically relegated the public to third class status. I say third class because the bosses of the private sector inhabit the second class in the security pyramid. They emulate their counterparts in the ministries and government, keeping and maintaining the private security industry in the pink. Only the public gets next to nothing. Only the public is given short shrift by the police. The public has no voice when even scribes are beaten up by the “guards” and consequently no power. The public is nobody and of no count.

This was not what our constitutional fathers wilfully begat forty-seven years ago. This is a subversion of their intent and purpose. This is not a flowering in the traditions of Westminster and Capitol Hill but inspired by the antics of banana republics and the dictatorships of more “proletarian” countries. Democracy in a secular republic has been hijacked by the few masquerading as the saviours of the many. Why should this process not be checked now? What would be the fallout of an open-style of government? Has the ruling caste decided to live only for itself?

The feudalism of centuries past has reared its recreated head in an orgy of self-importance. There is no more need to protect our rulers. If they are vulnerable to attack let their political parties fund their protection, not the national exchequer. Let bureaucrats take on private security agencies at their own expense.

The categorisation of security threats and its manifestation among the political elite has become a rampant status symbol. This may serve aprodisiac purposes for the jaded beneficiaries but how does it help the public whose money is being squandered?

Only the government can do something about its own profligacy. The answer is political will at the top. Only the politicians themselves can shed this security cover. Only they have the power to bring about a change. They should not worry about their lives any more than the next man. The fact that they seem to do so is a reflection of the hubris that has set into our body politic. Hubris is not substantial and certainly no answer to mortality. We are a nation of karmic souls. Nobody is going to die unless it is written. So why not strengthen the police force and let it create a safe environment for all instead of fortresses for the political classes?

(725 words)
Gautam Mukerji
February 24, 1997

First published in The Pioneerwww.dailypioneer.com as "All for security,or security for all?" on Sunday, March 2nd, 1997 under Perspective