The road I take to my workplace every morning traverses a stretch that is favoured by VIP (perhaps it’s VVIP) cavalcades on journeys to and fro the airport. The architecture of the arrangements that mark such occasions is fascinatingly instructive. Once the visual arrangement of scene is examined (in some detail) we can extrapolate from what we can see to try and understand what we cannot.
The first thing that impresses you about the arrangement is the number of police personnel on duty. Apart from the traffic cops, and senior officers stationed at intersections to halt traffic to allow the VVIP to pass without disturbance (or worse), there are hundreds of gun wielding cops in khaki lining the entire stretch of the said personage’s journey. There is a certain logic to the manner in which these cops are lined up. By simply examining the distance between two cops stationed along the road, a person with ill intentions towards the personage under protection can discern who she or he is -- the lesser the distance between two cops, the higher the functionary.
When it comes to a seriously heavy-duty protected person, the distance shrinks to about 100 metres, or perhaps even less. Holding heavy guns, bored to death with having to do little else than counting the blades of grass on which they stand, these police personnel present great studies. There must be a drill for them to follow. But when the sun and the humidity pushes beyond the threshold, the will slackens. Deep in their hearts, these cops know they are for show. If indeed there is an emergency, these cops can do little. So, armed with adequate knowledge about the pointlessness of being baked under the sun to protect one who shall zip past them in less than a second, they devise stratagems.
Just recently, one of these VVIP arrangement stretched beyond Dhaula Kuan (an important cross roads for entry into lutyen’s [ie, VVIP] Delhi from the airport) into the upper ridge road headed for Karol Bagh. Since the stretch is narrower, and since monitoring is a little more difficult because the road twists and turns and impedes observation of posts by supervising officers, these hapless protectors of people in high places decided they were better served by rationalising the extent to which they were willing to fry under the sun for someone who was going to ride past in the comfort of an AC limousine.
One bloke had decided to jaunt across to a mate who had found a thinly shaded (the tree above had spindly leaves) spot in which to wait out the morning. One had literally turned his face on his mandate – he was simply looking the other way, for to look towards the road meant training his gaze at the late morning sun. For a half kilometre stretch I found the gun trotters missing completely. Worried about the welfare of the VVIP whose august drive past had occasioned the scene, I ran my eyes across a 180-degree arc. lo! The blokes had simply shifted to the boulevard where trees provided shade and there was no stone wall (erected to protect the western ridge) behind them. It is sheer madness that while so many people do VVIP duty, there is very little policing of the streets for the non-VVIP citizenry.
The arrangement described might reflect contemporary exigencies (like terrorist threats), but its basis is borrowed for a feudal past. Despite beliefs to the contrary, feudalism and the hierarchical arrangement of society was reinforced by the colonial apparatus under the British and gratuitously embraced by the Congress (in particular) that assumed power from the British. By carefully earmarking territories inherited from the British along divisions first identified by the colonial administrations, the state decided to poach on the favoured geographies of the colonial state — the civil lines and cantonment areas. These areas are sanitised havens among the urban chaos that municipalities create. It is in these areas that VVIPs like to move, and yet, as aforementioned, huge security arrangements are required even here.
VVIPs ought to travel short urban distances by chopper, and spare those on the ground, especially those hapless cops lined up for a display of pointless subjugation. On paper, we are a functioning democracy. In practice however, we are deeply feudal and hierarchical, not just as a society, but more disturbingly, also as a state.