Addiction is bad, be it to drugs, alcohol, tobacco or sex. But what if your crutch is something you don’t even consider an addiction? Like entitlement? What if you’re compulsively attached to the belief that you are first among unequals and owed special treatment by the world? What happens when you buy into the myth that you are untouchable and misuse of power is second nature to you?
The dictionary defines “entitle” as “give (someone) a legal right or a just claim to receive or do something.” In a perfect world, that right would be given only to those who had earned it, and knew how to respect it.
That’s what you’d like to believe about the special privileges awarded to our parliamentarians. But what happens when a lawmaker is of the moral timbre of Ravindra Gaikwad, who was caught three years ago forcibly stuffing a roti down the throat of a fasting railway staffer, to protest against the quality of the food?
By now, pretty much all of urban adult India has watched/read/ heard about the Shiv Sena thug-MP’s latest misdeed. In case you’ve been in outer space and missed the action, let me introduce you to the man of privilege, who—riled by having to travel economy in an all-economy plane (imagine!)—refused to deplane when he reached his destination, to indicate his displeasure with the airline.
When an airline staffer tried to reason with him, the parliamentarian tore the man’s shirt, broke his spectacles and tried to push him down the disembarkation ladder when, fortunately, others intervened, and saved the 60-year-old official. After delaying the next flight by nearly an hour, the Hon’ble Member of Parliament finally got off the plane and went to watch Badrinath ki Dulhaniya to “de-stress”.
But not before proudly telling reporters that he had hit the official “25 times under the ear, with a sandal.” Not a shoe, not a slipper, it was a sandal that he had used, he took pains to clarify. Asked if he would apologise to the official, certainly not, he said; it was he who deserved an apology from a man who was old enough to know better.
While Gaikwad’s barbarianism crosses all limits, blatant displays of entitlement are not new to us in India. Which one of us has not seen high-ranking members of the privilege hierarchy misbehaving with people they perceive as inferior to them?
I remember taking a flight from Mumbai to Delhi years ago, where a politician—already angered by having got the middle seat in a packed plane—abused the stewardess who asked him to pass his empty meal tray to her.
The plucky girl, a regular on the sector, was startled by the language but stood her ground. She smiled grimly and just repeated her request. This went on for a while till the man, almost apoplexic by now, started shouting. Fearing for the girl, I reached over from my aisle seat and handed his tray over. That scene ended there but the next week, travelling in the same sector, I asked about the girl and was told she was “gone”.
The Gaikwad story promises to end differently, with all Indian airlines banding together against the misbehaved MP. But, for the long-term, is there a way to send all entitlement addicts into a cold turkey detox?