These are snapshots, all, from a government that proclaims loud devotion to the aam aadmi while ensuring that its privileged and powerful don’t ever actually have to rub shoulders with him. But these instances also speak about the stubborn persistence of an older culture. It is a culture of subservience and prostration to authority, especially governmental authority, which feeds the arrogance of the VIP who wears his many privileges and exemptions as a badge, demands them as his due. As Sharma’s inelegant midnight tryst underlines, India’s minister is not yet reconciled to the humbling of government in New India, and he gets away with it.

But this attitude and mindset is not just out of place in post-liberalisation India. It has an equally pronounced lack of fit with a democracy that has drawn the admiration of the world. Democratic politics in this country has proved to be a space of equal opportunity, it has accorded upward mobility to minorities and marginalised groups. As Sharma et al prove over and over again, India’s government has a long way to go before it can fulfill the radical promise of its politics.