BUT VIP-hood is not so much a matter of avoiding inconvenience as of flaunting status. What is the point of becoming a minister if I am taken so lightly that even a CISF sub-inspector can give me a pat down? Also, we extend VIP courtesies to ministers and diplomats of foreign countries when they visit us. Similarly, we are given the full VIP protocol when we go overseas. So why should we be denied the same privileges at home? The problem often, and it may have been in this case also, is the minister’s personal staff. It is the envy of the PA that feeds the pomposity of the VIP culture. Bhala mera mantri tumhare mantri se chhota kaise (how can my minister be lesser than yours)? I, for the life of me, cannot imagine how a civil, regular guy like Anand can get caught in this. And finally, and this is the most disappointing of all from a government headed by a man as simple and unassuming as Manmohan Singh, the fact also is that it is considering amending the rulebook — to extend airport VIP courtesies to ministers of state as well. This is the wrongest possible way to respond to Anand Sharma’s little problem one early morning (rather than midnight, the only inaccuracy in the Express report). This will enable another 45 people to use these ceremonial lounges and stroll past security and immigration while you and I, fare-paying, tax-paying citizens, wait for hours sometimes, if you are arriving in Delhi, in immigration queues that back all the way up on the infamous escalator that once swallowed a child.

... contd.