Columns: Fifth Column

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India Today, May 24, 1999
May 24, 1999

FIFTH COLUMN
VIP Outlaws

Manu Sharma is the child of pernicious feudal politics.

By Tavleen Singh

The most unfortunate aspect of the media frenzy that followed the horrific murder of Jessica Lall was that it concentrated mainly on Bina Ramani. Had the target been the alleged killer, Manu Sharma, we may have inadvertently benefited from what was the most prurient kind of voyeuristic journalism we have seen in a long time. We now know all about what our society columnists perceive as "socialite" Delhi. But we know almost nothing about the VIP culture that breeds the kind of vile creature Manu Sharma must be if he can walk into a bar and kill an innocent woman for the heck of it.

Manu Sharma is by no means unique or even unusual. Thousands like him have been bred in the homes of our politicians, bureaucrats and officials in towns and villages across India. All products of a political culture built on the fundamental principle that there is one set of rules for our rulers and another set for us. The gossip columnists who reported the murder of Jessica Lall spewed out reams on Bina Ramani's VIP connections. Apparently they didn't notice that while she was an outsider, Manu was very much a product of the system -- one of its many loathsome sons.

The same breed who wander about our villages raping women and usually getting away with it. The same who routinely kill innocent people if they lose their temper. Remember the incident in Raipur University in 1998 in which a 19-year-old girl was killed because she objected to the manner in which the son of a local bigwig was driving? This VIP son knocked the girl's lunch box out of her hand and drove over it. When she protested he reversed his car into her, killing her in the process. As in the case of Manu Sharma, there were a few moments of national outrage and then the story disappeared. There is every likelihood that the killer is now out on bail and will end up getting away with a short sentence.

This is not, though, a piece about our hopelessly lax judicial system but about the evils of a VIP culture that permits a certain group of Indians to believe that they live in another country. Not just the law, everything is different for them. The difference begins with security. So we have a group of supercops who wear grey safari suits or black fatigues and whose sole task is to protect VIPs and their progeny.

The Special Protection Group (SPG), set up after Indira Gandhi's assassination, was originally meant to provide security to the serving prime minister and his family. It was amended, mainly on account of Sonia Gandhi and her children, to also provide security to former prime ministers and their families. At the rate we change prime ministers these days, you can imagine how much the SPG's work has increased.

Who would want to kill H.D. Deve Gowda, Inder Gujral or V.P. Singh? Yet the Government insists that SPG protection is necessary even for Singh, who has been in London for several months now. The SPG men who are ostensibly protecting him from terrorists in London are not allowed to take their weapons into the United Kingdom but they continue to change shifts every couple of weeks. Their very expensive travel and hotel accommodation is borne by taxpayers.

When I last wrote about this in my column, Singh was most upset I had not mentioned the fact that he tried to get his security removed. So I am mentioning now that he did indeed try. But for some reason successive governments have refused to withdraw it. This does not, though, take away from the fact that not only are we paying for Singh's VIP security but also for his VIP healthcare. This column has argued before -- and will continue to argue -- that VIP healthcare should be abolished.

If our hospitals are not good enough for those who built them, why should they be considered good enough for us? We all know they are not good enough, that healthcare in India is almost a myth. But how can these things improve if our politicians and senior bureaucrats travel abroad for their own health problems? Singh's healthcare has already cost taxpayers some $3 million (around Rs 13 crore). Can we afford it? For that matter, can we any longer afford VIP culture?

It does not stop at security and healthcare. We also have VIP housing. In most democratic countries, it is only the prime minister and the president whose accommodation taxpayers pay for. But in our uniquely Indian system of feudal socialism everyone who gets elected, whether to Parliament or to a state assembly, demands government housing as if it were his birthright.

The result is that in our metropolitan cities and state capitals the best real estate is reserved almost entirely for our elected representatives. This is considered such an important perk that Delhi is awash with former ministers and former MPs who spend their whole time trying to get some minor government job in order to be able to continue living in the style to which they have got accustomed.

With Lok Sabhas being dissolved on an annual basis, we have the additional problem of ministers spending small fortunes on redecorating houses that they often do not end up living in. All of this comes out of money that could be spent on providing housing, drinking water, hospitals and sanitation to "the masses" in whose name our elected representatives claim to rule.

Not surprisingly, children brought up within the confines of VIP India grow up like feudal-socialist princes. There is nothing they want that they can't have. Is it any wonder then that when someone says "No" to them they believe, as Indian princes once did, that they have the right to kill?

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