VIP to EPI: ‘Laal Batti’ GO BACK!

Have you learned to turn a blind eye and started ignoring the jams and blocks for a VIP movement, it seems similar to a curfew. Your movement is stopped and freedom in that area is curtailed. You remain stagnant to the place, you are in, unless the VIP passes the other route smoothly. The VIP culture started by the English rulers has been continued for years now.

There have been multiple occasions when the courts have tried intervening but have had minimal effects, with result of the missing will in the administration. The current cabinet seems keener on ending the VIP culture. In his sixty minute long ‘Mann Ki Baat’, the Prime Minister of India spoke about the cabinet’s decision to step ahead in this direction, putting an end to this age old practice. PM Modi also addressed the key concern to the waiting citizens amidst the kingpins’ movement.

Having to end this assuage, he clarified the age of Very Important Person (VIP) is fading, to the rising age of Every Person is Important (EPI). In his monthly talk show, Modi disclosed the cabinet meeting’s discussion that happened in the month of ascending summer over this crucial topic. The decisions taken in the meeting are likely to be implemented from 2017, May1. The decision instructs a removal, of the alerting, red beacon (Laal Batti) off the vehicles of highest order of people including the President, Prime Minister, Union and State Ministers, judges of the Supreme and the High Court etc. down climbing the ladder to the bureaucrats as well. The decision to scrape the Red Beacons will still be inapplicable for emergency vehicles like an Ambulance or a Fire Engine, to commute its smooth motion on the roads.

“The exit of the red beacon (Laal Batti) is part of a system. But we have to make efforts to cleanse it out of our minds. If we collectively strive to do it with eternal vigilance, it surely can be flushed out” said PM Narendra Modi in his Mann Ki Baat address. There being an atmosphere of discern over the growing VIP racism in the country, the step can ensure greater sense of the much-needed equality amongst the citizens of this huge democracy.