JULY 14, 2019 • THE WEEK 23PMO BEAT
R. PRASANNAN[email protected]W
ho coined ‘aam aadmi’ as a political
phrase? Arvind Kejriwal may claim
political patent but, strictly speaking,
Sonia Gandhi should have got the political cop-
yright. When Atal Bihari Vajpayee was going to
town, as also to the polls in 2004, claiming to have
made India shining, she cocked a snook at him
and asked: “Aam aadmi ko kya mila?”
It became the catchphrase of the 2004 election,
and the Congress romped home. But later, when
Sonia asked her partymen to fl y economy class,
Shashi Th aroor scoff ed at the suggestion as having
to fl y cattle class. It was much later that Kejriwal
fi led a patent with the Election Commission and
appropriated the phrase for
his party. Smart Alec!
All the same, give the
devil his due. Even as a chief
minister, the guy has been
trying not to behave like a
VIP. He still dresses like a
clerk, and drives a Wagon-R
with no red beacon on its
roof. Can you believe, the
car almost got stolen once?
Th e aam aadmi or the
common man had been
there much earlier, too. Th e British had put him
on a London bus and got him accepted as a legal
phrase across the Common Law countries. Th ey
call their aam aadmi the Man on the Clapham
Omnibus. R.K. Laxman portrayed him as an
elderly clerk in a government offi ce who sees
everything but never speaks.
Now Narendra Modi is beginning to speak and
act for him. Four years ago, Modi had got Nitin
Gadkari remove beacon lights from most VIP cars
and, in a Mann Ki Baat address, called for an end
to the VIP culture. Th e problem was that he came
up with some other funny acronym in place of VIP,
and no one took it seriously.
Now Modi is walking the talk. In his fi rst address
to the NDA leaders in the Central Hall of Parlia-
ment after his re-election, Modi asked fellow-poli-ticians to learn to stand in queues like the com-
mon man and Manohar Parrikar. (To be fair, Modi
should have mentioned Gadkari, too, who has
often been caught standing in queues.) “Th e coun-
try hates VIP culture,” Modi told fellow-politicians.
Yes, prime minister! If there is one thing that the
Indian middle class resents more than having to
pay income-tax, it is having to suff er the VIP cul-
ture. People resent being stopped on the roads for
VIPs to pass, and hate to see them jump queues,
delay fl ights, and behave boorish in public places
as did the brat of an MLA in Indore recently. Th e
guy, son of one of BJP’s topmost leaders in Madhya
Pradesh, was caught assaulting a civic offi cer with
a cricket bat and obstruct-
ing a lawful demolition of
a building. Obstructing an
offi cer from doing his duty
itself is an off ence. Assault
compounds it.
What compounded the sin
was that the guy has since
been bragging about it, and
so has been his father. Th en,
when he was released from
custody, his chelas organised
a gun-salute for him. Cheek!
Th at really got Modi’s goat. He came down heav-
ily on the MLA, as also on his indulgent father and
his gangsters. “Don’t care whose son he is,” Modi
fumed at a parliamentary party meeting, and even
called for such brats, their patrons and their lump-
en cheerleaders to be thrown out of the party. Way
to go, prime minister!
But beware of the contrary, too. Th e PM’s ges-
ture shouldn’t be seen as empowering the bureau-
crats vis-a-vis the elected reps. After all, babus can
be worse boors than netas.
Tailpiece: Roads in Communist Moscow were
said to have had separate lanes for VIPs to drive
hassle-free. Th e apparatchiks justifi ed them as in-
tended for keeping the common man’s lanes free
from VIP roadblocks!
Can you fault the logic?Brat with a bat & other VIP boors
ILLUSTRATION BHASKARAN