The omnipresent VIP culture!

This reference to the excellent piece "Minimising the misery of common man" (THI 1 July). In this article the author has no doubt brought in the gory incident of a women Covid patient 's death on the way to the hospital during President's visit to Kanpur and rekindled how the leaders from the past who rarely inconvenienced the common people who are now being called by politicians as "Aam Aadmi".

One wonders when the leaders seek votes from the common people are always very close and of late many even have lunch with poorest of poor even in a small hut and then share the photo with media and social media. But soon after they get position and power, they not only rarely give a "darshan" before voters but maintain "Chay Gaz ki doori" (even before corona!) and in fact, go all out to create inconvenience to the same voters whenever they come to participate in public events.

In this context, it was a bit surprising that President of India who claims to be from humble background opted to tour Kanpur and Lucknow at a time when people are still struggling to recover from Covid. In Kanpur, he wanted to visit his village where he was born in Kanpur Dehat, and also wanted to be meet his childhood friend and wish him his wedding anniversary. This visit itself turned out to be nostalgic who was made to travel Maharaja saloon coach only used by President by the railways in order to motivate the common people to travel by train and also, motivate railways staff who it is believed tirelessly worked even during the country-wide lockdown.

The whole exercise would have costed a fortune for railways and government when our financial situation is bad so much so that government is extracting this from people using a personal vehicle that runs on petroleum products and only yesterday LPS cylinder price was hiked by Rs25 resulting in 14.2 kg now costs Rs.835. Moreover, what happened to PM's call to end VIP culture? When he made an appeal to end "red beacons" from 1 May 2017, his cabinet ministers got themselves photographed by removing "Lal bathi" from their vehicles.

PM himself went on air in Mann Ki Baat the end of the beacon lights is to send a message that 125 crore people of the country have equal importance and went coin "EPI" (Every person is important) and made everyone replace VIP with EPI. Though President and few others were exempted against removing, it seems the VIP culture still continues under the pretext of security reasons. Though PM may have never allowed blocking traffic when he is moving around capital when he or others visit other States.

In this context, there is a video which is in circulation widely in social media about former Uruguay President Jose Mujica who even now happens to be the "World's Poorest" President who refused to live in Presidential Palace and was driving his own German-made "Beatles". He even refused even to contest the second term. Whatever salary he was drawing, he was giving away in charity. I don't think India would ever get such a leader even our PM who has come up from humble backgrounds cannot be equated with such leaders.

S Natarajan, New Delhi