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The Great Indian Freeloader

I love Indian democracy.

The Great Indian Freeloader

Illustration: Sandeep Joshi



Shiv Visvanathan

I love Indian democracy. It is a particular kind of botanical species and it invents its own cast of characters, its own style of life. While other democracies worry about liberty, equality and fraternity, about the rights of citizenship, ours is not too excited by rights or citizenship. These are too bare, too temporary. India’s creativity comes at the other end of the spectrum. It prefers to invent the privileges of caste reward in different ways. While Europe celebrates the citizen, we need to cultivate him. The best of India comes out in being a VIP. 

A VIP is a left over from feudal society, reinvented for modern purposes. The VIP as an act of consumption balances our sense of asceticism. UP, a land without oxymorons, makes sure the sadhus are VIPs. As a nation, we feel conspicuous consumption and conspicuous poverty have to blend. The VIP is our answer to utopia, a perfect blend of spirituality and hypocrisy. One has to accept that the VIP is the only secular character we created. He cuts across caste and party lines, he is above the law and ideologies. He follows rules but rules are specially made for him. He holds office but carries the privileges of office perpetually. As a culture we understand power. Power is a kind of addiction, a habit. I think we have to understand the VIP as a person, along with his sense of entitlements more seriously. 

First, a VIP is not an individual, but a collectivity, a chain of being. To see him as an individual is unfair. One can only imagine him as a retinue. An individual has rights; a VIP has entitlements. Rights provide bare subsistence guarantees. The VIP determines our idea of sustainability. In that sense an entitlement is a personal allotment made for life. Entitlements, like rights, are inalienable. True to this spirit, the UP courts have argued that CMs and judges should be entitled to houses for a lifetime. To abandon a house because you have retired, lost power or has been transferred is ridiculous. A house is a part of one’s persona. It should remain with one. To be forced to lose a house is demeaning. 

The VIP is one transparent person in our society. Even his competition is obvious. We love him. Anyone today is gauged by the VIPs he knows. A man without contacts is a poverty-stricken creature. A VIP is the point of all contacts. Be it Mulayam, Akhilesh, Lalu, Pratibha Patil, all felt that the VIP was the ultimate achievement of socialism, a society where everyone had a touch of class.  

As a society, we love VIPs. Without touts and VIPs, a society would be impossible. A VIP is a fixer. Rights are modest things. It is what we end up with. He is the ultimate goal of our aspirational society, combining power, privilege and status.  

The VIP gives us a sense of continuity with history. The VIP produces the continuity, sublime thread of affluence, consumption and power which tied the Mughals, the Maharaja and the commands of Lutyens’ Delhi to us. Lalu and Mulayam know it as well as Mallya and Nirav Modi. A VIP is a VIP because he is here to stay. A temporary VIP is a contradiction in terms, a spoof. Think of Mayawati, Mulayam, Akhilesh or Rajnath. They differ according to ideologies. What ties them together is their addiction to homes, which according to housing rules they should have left long ago. I think this comes from a lack of understanding of language. Honesty is what socialism produces. It is an allotment. A home is what belongs to you. As a privilege, an entitlement, it is inalienable. To think of Akhilesh with a housing problem is demeaning. The VIPs live in homes; housing is what we poor citizens are allotted. Think of it. Can you even think of Lalu or Rajnath living in a 2 BHK or 3 BHK colony? It sounds crude. Housing is for citizens, houses are for goons and VIPs. Worse, it fails to understand power. Power is above rules and allotments. One becomes powerful in India by breaking rules.  You can have a housing crisis. But a home should never be threatened. 

A VIP and a migrant live at opposite ends of mutual time. Think of citizenship. We are born as migrants. Our citizenship is temporary, a sustenance idea. We have to be regularised by a tout or VIP. We can be displaced. A VIP is a creature of permanence from power to housing. A VIP begins by taking his world for granted and asking for more. For a VIP, truths like housing and power are indispensable. Democracy as a musical chair is for lesser people. We like a touch of hypocrisy. We think every VIP at heart is a chaiwala. Modi would not have wanted to be a chaiwala if he is not ensconced in Lutyens’ Delhi. For a VIP, poverty is only tolerable as nostalgia. India and our courts understand democracy well. Democracy becomes possible when some are more equal than others. Even a VIP knows life makes sense only if there is a VVIP.

VIPness is a combination of power and consumption. It is lifestyle played out in public. Crooks like Mallya and Choksi knew this. Mallya knows he will be remembered more for the calendar. Choksi wants to be remembered for sitting in Grand Hotels in London. 

Recently a friend crashed his car into a bus. As he was coming out, the policeman ran to him asking, “Aren’t you Justice ji’s son?”. My friend headed gratefully as he can proceed smoothly. Smoothness is what a VIP life guarantees. Whether it is politics, life or a home.

It is a pity that such a wonderful news is presented in such a boring way. We should always encourage power to be more powerful. Only then a house becomes a home. 

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