The anti-politician mood that began to build in our country in the wake of the Jain hawala scandal has become one of the most durable phenomena in our public opinion. It shows up everywhere, from our falling voting percentages to popular culture, particularly cinema where a politician is only shown as a crook, a thief, a lech, a mafiosi’s hired gun and, as most famously demonstrated in Rang de Basanti, worthy of assassination.

Initially, when the Supreme Court under Justice J.S. Verma hauled in a whole galaxy of politicians under the hawala scam, the popular contempt was about corruption. In the following years, however, other factors have exacerbated it. And, of these, nothing is more important than our rapidly proliferating VIP culture. The janata identifies anybody political — or powerful — in any way as a VIP and hates him. It can be the white ambassador with red light and two armed policemen bearing down on you at a traffic intersection, a minister accompanied by security men swinging him past airport barriers and security, his motorcade flying past, leaving your village under a pall of dust, and, most of all, people jumping queues all over the place, from airports, railway stations to hospitals.

So deeply has this culture got established now that it even consumes some really decent people. The Indian Express national bureau chief Pranab Dhal Samanta reported last week how Minister of State Anand Sharma got caught in an embarrassing situation, insisting that he be given VIP facilities at the Indira Gandhi International Airport ceremonial lounge to which only full cabinet ministers are entitled. Now those who know Anand know him to be a very decent, accessible, civilised politician. How did he get caught in such a mess? And what was the big deal after all? All it needed was to walk through the metal detector and a little bit of frisking.

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