Indian prime minister puts brakes on deadly ‘red-light culture’

It is perhaps the most coveted symbol of power, privilege and status in India — the flashing red beacon on top of a car, which makes city traffic part like someone undoing a zipper.

Ordinary citizens have to resign themselves to missing appointments or even flights should a car with a flashing red light on top appear, causing traffic cops to stop all other vehicles so that the VIP convoy can zoom through unhindered.

There’s no guessing who the VIP might be: a chief minister, or a police official, or a judge, or an income tax commissioner, or even a secretary with special influence. Who gets a beacon is at the discretion of state or federal transport authorities, who can be very flexible, not to say indiscriminate in their decisions. But not any more.

Prime minister Narendra Modi has now ruled that from May 1, governments at the federal and state levels can no longer distribute these lights to dignitaries of their choice. Only emergency vehicles, such as fire engines and ambulances, will now be allowed to sport the flashing red, get-out-of-my-way lights. Even Mr Modi’s official car won’t have one.

So pernicious is this “red-light culture,” in fact, that in 2009, at a gathering of first-time members of a newly elected parliament, the lights were one of the first things they demanded.

India’s political and administrative class is perhaps the most entitled of any major democracy in the world, expecting privileged access to every kind of public service: roads, airports, schools, hospitals and government offices.

This attitude was what prompted Ravindra Gaikwad, a member of parliament, to assault an Air India ground staff worker for not upgrading him to business class — even though the plane only had economy class seats.

In a rare show of defiance, Air India banned Mr Gaikwad from its flights for nearly a month. He was finally allowed to fly again on Wednesday.

Airports are always hotspots for VIP privilege. High-ranking ministers, judges, various bureaucrats as well as their spouses are all exempted from pre-boarding security checks.

Airport staff often also carry their hand luggage and escort them past queues to wait for their flight in comfort in VIP rooms away from the teeming crowds in the terminal.

Entire hospital wings are cordoned off for VIP patients, meaning less space for everyone else. The children of politicians and civil servants get preferential admittance to schools and colleges, thus denying places to other, more deserving applicants.

In February last year, a member of the Shiv Sena party (Mr Gaikwad’s party, coincidentally), hit a woman traffic constable because she had pulled him over for using his mobile phone while driving. A BJP politician hit a guard at a toll BOOTH in Rajasthan last July for not letting him drive on without paying.

Politicians routinely expect to have a phalanx of gun-toting security guards, making their passage through the country even more cumbersome.

But nothing screams “I am SO important” quite like the red-light motorcade, even if it comes at the expense of another life.

In the summer of 2010, a traffic blockade cost an eight-year-old boy his life in Kanpur, in the state of Uttar Pradesh. The boy had head injuries from an accident at home but on the way to hospital, his father was stuck for half an hour because traffic was stopped to let through the prime minister at the time, Manmohan Singh, and his convoy. Also in 2010, businessman Anil Jain, 48, died in an ambulance in central Delhi because of traffic blocks imposed for a prime ministerial convoy.

The previous year, a patient died of respiratory failure after his ambulance was prevented from entering a hospital in Chandigarh. The gates had been closed off for a politician’s visit.

In 2013, India’s Supreme Court called the beacons “a menace to society” that had become “a fashion and status symbol” rather than an emergency signal. The court ruled they should be used only by top officials, but the order is frequently ignored.

In 2015, the chief minister of Delhi, Arvind Kejriwal, announced that neither he nor his ministers would have the flashing beacons, and this year, the new chief ministers of Uttar Pradesh and Punjab banned most state government officials from having them on their cars.

Prime minister Modi’s ruling is fresh recognition of the public’s increasing frustration with red-light culture. But getting rid of the red lights is one thing. Convincing politicians that they are not that important is quite another.