The respected Prime Minister (accompanied by a bevy of other VVIPs) inaugurated the latest addition to Delhi’s Metro Rail. VVIPs are an endangered species, or so it seems by the security cover around them and the trouble which common citizen has to undergo because some VVIP coincidentally chose to take the same route as him. When such a person of paramount importance is invited to inaugurate something or the other like the Barakhamba-Dwarka metro line, the police cordon off the area, close the shops down. The roadside tea-stall owner loses on his early morning earning because some non Z-category entity couldn’t have possibly inaugurated something like this.

The coffers are filled with the tax-payers’ hard-earned money, so spending a little on avoidable functions and the associated security is no big deal. The tea-stall guy can manage without half-a-day’s earning. Our big projects will perhaps not function to the optimum if someone high up in the order of precedence doesn’t cut the red ribbon. While our chaiwallah and his customers can continue to relieve themselves on the walls of the metro-station and fill the milieu with pee-perfume.

VVIP security and inauguration ceremonies are definitely more important than avoidable expenditure on proper bladder relieving zones. The ones that exist are too few and filthy; those which aren’t demand a price which the common man doesn’t or cannot spare. People smoke publicly with impunity and there exists a law prohibiting smoking in public places; the ‘Do Not Pass Urine Here’ board is not deterrent enough for watering the trees – for free.

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