India will, it transpires, honour its military men. Civil Aviation minister Praful Patel said on Thursday that the three service chiefs will now find mention in the warrant of precedence, exempting them from being frisked by security at Indian airports. A fortnight ago it had emerged that the chiefs’ plea for inclusion in the list had been turned down by the government. This had led to much outrage that the men who symbolise the defence of India’s borders were not considered trustworthy enough to be amongst a growing number of persons exempted from a security check. In a debate set in those terms the government’s decision would be unexceptionable.

But, as we had argued in these columns then, that was the wrong way to perceive an important issue. The warrant of precedence was a not a way of separating the soldier from the politician. It is, in a modern democracy, a flagrant separation between the VIP and the ordinary citizen. Therefore, more than the exclusion of the service chiefs, the outrage was the existence of the warrant itself. It is unfortunate that the authorities have taken the lazy — and self-serving — way out of the controversy. To hold on to a dubious privilege, they have simply made it available to a larger number of persons.

As holders of the right to walk right through security, our politicians should consider its implications. Nothing separates the elected from the voter more than the spectacle of unwarranted privilege. The security barrier is a site of particular resentment. At the barrier, individuals submit to all kinds of suspicion about themselves in the interest of the larger public good, that is, to maintain peace. To see others exempted by virtue of their office or connections breeds alienation. This alienation is manifested primarily against the politician. Therefore, the right way of addressing the warrant of precedence controversy would have been to cease this feudal practice altogether.