'Don't you know I am a VIP?'

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Representatives of "the people" are outraged that former president APJ Abdul Kalam was made to pass through security checks on a flight from New Delhi to the US on the American airline, Continental. The government of the aam admi is indignant that khaas admi priveleges are not being maintained. In fact, irony of ironies, just a day after Hillary Clinton's feel good "atmosphere-defining, optic-resetting tour of India where the people to people contacts between the world's oldest democracy and the world largest democracy were renewed and set on course for further closeness, both houses in parliament erupted in anti American nationalism over the "treatment" given to former President Kalam. Never mind that Kalam himself seemed to have experienced no such "humiliation" of his "national honour" and "insult" to his national pride. Kalam's aide has said as far as he was concerned, it was no problem at all. Bless that wonderful aam admi.

A curse on these VIPs! Their cavalcades, their red lights flashing on their white ambassadors, their offensive security staff, their refusal to stand in queues, their refusal to obey traffic rules, their constant demand for special privileges, our republic is blighted by VIP culture. That great jurist of modern India, Fali S Nariman has often written about the VIP syndrome in our country and the need to get rid of it. I remember as a student in Oxford, my History professor telling me that he had observed that the poorer a country, the more ostentatious and pompous its diplomats and politicians. He said American diplomats and politicians routinely travel by bus or taxi in London. But Indian politicians and diplomats abroad, always have to have a chauffeur driven Rolls Royce!

Why should anyone be exempt from security procedures during air travel? Particularly because a hijacked or a bombed plane is such a favourite terrorist target? Should the honourable minister for civil aviation Praful Patel who has called the frisking "unpardonable" at least realise that is better to place Mr Kalam under a frisk rather than expose him to risk? Is India's "national honour" so fragile that it is undone simply because a former head of state is checked at an airport? Our politicians seem to think so. An FIR has been filed against the airline staff and Continental Airline has had to apologise.Our national honour should rest on fighting poverty and illiteracy, not on the empty ridiculous rituals of official importance and hierarchy.

A personal anecdote. On a flight to Sri Lanka a year ago, I saw a very familiar looking British gentleman and a friend standing a few places behind me in the security queue. After the gentleman's bag was checked, the rather brusque staff at IGI airport even asked him to open it. He did so without demur, packed all his things away afterwards, smiled at the staff and stood in the queue again to board his flight. The gentleman was none other than former British prime minister Tony Blair! A lesson for our VIPs?