Security to secure leaders' lives or leaders' status?

Every time there's talk of reviewing the VVIP and VIP security cover, all the beneficiaries become panicky and begin pulling strings to somehow retain their cover

MOST of our leaders need a security cover not so much to secure their person as to secure their status as leaders. That’s why they insist on having a security cover even when there's no threat to their lives. As most of them are not real leaders but only ordinary men like us, maybe even less than ordinary, they need props like a posse of security men around them or a large convoy of cars in their trail to look like leaders and to be known and recognised as such. They are leaders because they have these props. You withdraw the props and they will become ordinary men like us. This is what they fear most. They fear their ordinary selves as much as they fear the ordinary men about and around them. They are just not used to appearing in public without a security cover, for the security cover is the robe of their selves. To go out without a security cover is like going out without clothes on.

That's why every time there is talk of reviewing the VVIP and VIP security cover to cut costs to the exchequer, all the beneficiaries become panicky and begin pulling strings to somehow retain their cover. Some even go to the extent of organising threats to their lives. Fake threat letters, fake telephone threats, fake attacks on their convoys, and even fake shots fired at their cars. There is no limit to the threats they can concoct to retain their security cover. Even real conspirators cannot think up as many ways of harming them as they themselves can.

Which is why nothing much comes out of the reviews of VVIP and VIP security cover by the Home Ministry. At best, the number of security men assigned to a few VIPs may be reduced, from 200 to 180 or from 30 to 25, which is enough for the reviewers to claim drastic reduction in the overall security cover and big savings on government costs as a result. Union Home Minister L K Advani has now ordered yet another review of the security cover of all the VVIPs and VIPs across the country. They number 270 in different categories. These do not include the large number of present and former MPs, MLAs and bureaucrats given personal 'shadows' and security men out of the state's police force. If they too were to be included in the list, the number would run into four digits

The number of policemen assigned for security duty with senior bureaucrats and police officers in the states must be several thousands more. This is because over the years senior-level posts have proliferated all over with the creation of numerous new districts and new posts. Whereas earlier most states used to have only one inspector-general of police, today they have several of them, with numerous DGPs and joint DGPs above them and many more joint and additional IGs below them. Also, as the size of ministries keeps growing in the states, almost all old ministries and departments have to be bifurcated and trifurcated to accommodate the increasing number of ministers. This means ever more secretaries and joint secretaries, all of whom have to be provided with security cover.

Security cover is as much a question of status for the officials as for the political bigwigs. How important or influential or how high or low on the bureaucratic totem pole a bureaucrat is placed is commonly measured by the number of security men assigned to him. Hence all the strife and struggle to secure as large a number of security men for oneself as one can. It's a different matter that what most of the low-level security men end up doing is carry out the domestic chores of the sahib's memsahib.

Over the years these security men have everywhere become part of the perks of a bureaucrat and of an MLAs post and position. Withdrawal or reduction of security cover means loss of status. That's why it is resented and opposed so strongly by everybody now so used to living in a security culture.

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