Bye red beacon

Bye red beacon

The global norm is that only vehicles providing emergency services like ambulances, fire engines and police conveyances are entitled to use beacons. In India a very pestilential norm unfolded instead where the beacon became a symbol of VIP power, with a whole host of public servants flashing it to set themselves aristocratically apart from the public they are supposed to serve. Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the NDA government must be applauded for having firmly put an end to this undemocratic practice instead of merely nibbling away at VIP quotas, which is a way of ensuring they can be reinstated later. From next month no VIP, not even the President or PM or CJI or CMs, will be permitted a beacon. The privilege will be vested with emergency services alone, which is only proper for a post-feudal republic.
The reform follows from a Supreme Court ruling of 2013, where in response to a petition on misuse of the red beacon it was noted starkly that this was “reflective of the mentality of those who served British Government and treated the natives as slaves.“ Feeding the Raj mentality , abuse of beacons makes the roads less convenient and more dangerous for the common citizen.
Of course this reform only marks a good beginning, because Indian public servants continue to enjoy so many other viceregal perks of power, such as grandiose Lutyens bungalows in the heart of the crowded capital of a crowded country where more than 40% households have only one room or less. What needs to be done, as Union minister Nitin Gadkari has suggested, is accommodate ministers and other lawmakers in multi-storey apartments. Even if some of these were to be as sprawling as 6,000 to 8,000 sq ft as Gadkari has proposed, the number of government high-rise apartments that could be built in place of say every 30,000 sq ft bungalow would free up lots of prime real estate ¬ which would power a commercial boom in Delhi as well as state capitals.
Up and down the sarkari pecking order a message needs to go out loud: You are not a superior being. Stand in queues, carry your own baggage, don't throw tantrums at toll plazas or manhandle airline workers, don't lord it over the people you are paid to serve. Empower the common citizen not yourselves, because that is your job.