Satire | VVIP culture is Indian culture

What is a VVIP? They are nothing but a humble person who, by erecting a high security cocoon, glides through life with minimal friction
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It was reported the other day that a 66-year-old former vice chancellor was arrested for impersonating a VVIP. Being a VVIP myself, the news made me very sad. Should we be penalising people for pursuing the second biggest achievement open to Indians? I don’t need to spell out the biggest — escaping from India (and not getting deported). But for those stuck here, their best hope for a good life is to become a VVIP.

There is a rationale to this: if you can’t get out but still want to escape, being a VVIP is the only way to keep India at bay. What is a VVIP? They are nothing but a humble person who, by erecting a high security cocoon, glides through life with minimal friction, at a safe distance from the pullulating swarms of fellow Indians.

Being a VVIP also enables me to do public service, such as having my security guards loitering outside a barber shop, intimidating passers-by, while I get a free head massage with sesame oil. As a VVIP, I get to meet other VVIPs in luxury resorts and exchange views on issues of mutual interest, such as hawala, real estate, and vandalism. Above all, nothing can beat the sense of safety I feel on the streets of Delhi when I realise that the police won’t stop me if I break the speed limit, or break the red light, or someone’s leg or head. If my body guards and I accidentally bash up someone from the wrong community, the cops will take one look at the blue beacon on my car and automatically arrest the person we beat up.

Free-floating aristocrats

Contrary to popular myths, VVIPs are not an arrogant lot. Maybe at a superficial level, someone like me might seem unapproachable. But deep inside, I am a nice person. Deep inside my security cordon, to be precise, I think of myself as a nobody, just like you.

But I am a nobody who needs crowds to magically part for me wherever I go. I need traffic jams to melt when I travel by road. Whether it’s the bank, the airport, the toll booth or the temple, queues must auto-dissolve when I approach, and reconfigure themselves after I have passed. The word ‘queue’, nay, the letter ‘Q’ itself, is banned from my dictionary.

This column is a satirical take on life and society.

People often seek me out for tips on how to become a VVIP. It’s simple. You need two qualities: an unshakeable conviction that you are the exception for whom the rules shall be broken, and a profound lack of shame. If you are shameless enough, rest assured you’ll make a great VVIP one day.

Indian society is founded on a fixed hierarchy, aka the caste system. The higher rungs have always commanded an exclusive set of perks and privileges. VVIP culture is merely a modern iteration of this ancient set-up. If tomorrow all of India’s VVIPs were to disappear, millions wouldn’t know who to kowtow to, and who to lynch. VVIPs are a ritual class that performs the critical role of offering guidance to the primeval Indian reflexes of sycophancy and obedience. They are the free-floating aristocrats without whom Indian democracy would implode, and the justice system would flail about blindly, unable to distinguish those who’re above the law from those who aren’t.

India’s USP

Some say India should have a system of annually auctioning a fixed number of VVIP ‘tags’ to a select pool of cronies, just like we do with public assets and government contracts. But this is a bad idea because India’s billionaires are already accused — falsely, in my opinion — of owning India’s politicians. So having them gallivanting around with personal bodyguards paid for by the tax-payers not only makes for poor optics, it could even lead to accusations of ‘suit boot ki sarkar’, etc.

The greatest strength of India’s unique VVIP system is that a VVIP doesn’t need to contribute anything of value. All you need is alphabetic security of your choice: Y, Y+, Z, Z+, C, C+, along with a capacity to feel sadistic joy as thousands of commuters bake patiently in the sun for hours, waiting for your cavalcade to zip past.

Brazil produces dozens of soccer geniuses every year. China has an assembly line of Olympic class table tennis players. India’s USP is an unending pipeline of VVIPs. All those Soros-funded doomsayers who go on and on about India’s stagnating per capita income never give us the full picture: we have the world’s highest CAGR of VVIPs per capita. Why isn’t that something to celebrate?

The author of this satire is Social Affairs Editor, The Hindu.

sampath.g@thehindu.co.in