Commentary/Vir Sanghvi

Why such security, prime minister?

It is not my case that you don't need security. Of course you do. All prime ministers are under threat. In Rajiv Gandhi's day, some nutcase shot at him on October 2, 1986, at Rajghat. And in the last months of the Narasimha Rao regime, half the Congress was lining up to sock him one.

But I will make two points. One: security of the Indian variety has never saved anybody. Take the Rajghat incident. Even though the Research and Analysis Wing had sent a message to the Delhi Police warning that an assassin would hide in the bushes and shoot at Rajiv Gandhi that morning, nobody found the gunman. Or take the case of the late Beant Singh, one of the most protected men in the country. No amount of security could protect him from an assassin who was willing to give up his own life.

The truth, prime minister, is not just that our security people are not very good, but that no security can be fool-proof. Ask Ronald Reagan. It wasn't the Secret Service that kept him alive when John Hinckley opened fire. It was God.

Finally, if your time is up, then it is up. There is only so much that any security can do.

My second point is that: of course your life is at risk. But are you any more at risk than, say, John Major, who has already survived one IRA bombing? It is hard to argue that any Indian prime minister faces a greater threat than Major does or Margaret Thatcher did.

Consider then, the kind of security that the British prime minister gets. He does not travel in a motorcade of 20 cars. They do not stop traffic in London for half-an-hour till his car has passed -- they don't even do that for the Queen. Thousands of policemen are not asked to line the road in case a pedestrian suddenly decides to open fire.

Why then, do you get this kind of intrusive and overt security?

If I were you, I would question my security advisers very closely. Why should the elected prime minister of India be forced to travel in a style that is more suited to a Latin American dictator or an African despot?

I don't know how well you sleep at nights -- though the available evidence might suggest that you have a sleep deprivation problem -- but if you ever find yourself tossing and turning and wondering why sleep doesn't come, then consider this: perhaps it is the curses and the ill-will of the thousands of ordinary people you inconvenience each time you move out of your house.

Have you any idea, prime minister, of how unpopular ministers have become in today's India? Do you know that there is no filthier acronym in our lexicon than VIP?

It isn't only because of you, of course. It is because of the Rajesh Khannas and the Subodh Kant Sahays who are given scandalously high levels of security cover at tax-payers' expense.

But finally, the buck stops at your desk. If your minders think nothing of making ordinary people wait for hours while you decide whether you should drop in on Surjeet before going off to see Chandrababu, then other politicians will take their cue from you.

There is also the matter of the aeroplanes. In the old days, when Pandit Jawahar Lal Nehru went abroad, he flew Air India on a scheduled flight and the airline kept the seat next to his empty as a mark of respect. Apparently, security considerations mean that such a practice is no longer possible.

But tell me, prime minister, why do you need to commandeer an entire Jumbo jet? Do ordinary people know that one whole section of the aircraft -- which would normally seat 110 passengers -- is completely refurbished to create a luxurious cabin for you, complete with bed and sofa? That junior members of your staff hog the 16 first class seats and feast on Dom Perignon and Sevruga?

I don't want to focus on the unseemly controversy over your holidaying relatives. That is a red herring. Even after they have restructured the plane to give you the equivalent of 110 seats, there are still 307 seats left over and it doesn't make much difference if a few members of the Gowda clan hitch a ride.

My point is more basic: why take the Jumbo at all?

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