The aberrant politician who slapped an Air India official on board an aircraft has been allowed to go scot-free, with the government buckling under an ally’s pressure. The people’s representatives in Maharashtra even threatened to stop all Air India flights in Mumbai and New Delhi if Ravindra Gaikwad wasn’t removed from the “no-fly” list, put into operation for the first time in this country in the wake of the MP’s crude behaviour, after assaulting a senior Air India staffer with his slipper 25 times and then boasting of it on video clips that were widely telecast. This must rank as another sad day in our history, when privileged people like MPs, far from setting an example on appropriate behaviour, acted like goons and get away with anything, including equivocation in Parliament, where the MP said quite the opposite of what he boasted of in public. Far from calling the Shiv Sena’s bluff, the NDA government showed rank weakness in not standing up to the strongarm tactics of a difficult ally owing allegiance to the same saffron outlook.
The Speaker may have voiced concern over how MPs could attend Parliament if banned from flying. But Mr Gaikwad was flying that day only as a passenger on Air India, and not on a special flight earmarked for MPs. He was subject to the same rules that all those who fly or travel in public transport must observe. If he couldn’t contain his rage or overcome his “brain fade” moment, he has to face the same consequences of such public misconduct after undergoing the same procedures of police inquiry. In this case, police complaints were filed by the airline and FIRs registered. How long should we pander to this pathetic VIP culture that has become the bane of this country, where all services are aggrandised by so-called important people, who are given every privilege only for some to abuse it like this Sena MP? He is said to have sent an apology of sorts in a letter to the civil aviation minister, who faced attacks in Parliament and had to be protected from physical assault by the home minister’s intervention in stopping the parliamentary rage of a like-minded Sena MP from getting out of hand. The message that goes out from such a facile exoneration of an MP is that a VIP can flout any law and defy the norms of good behaviour, more so if he comes from a party that adopts the tactics of the street. Everyone involved in the process of this gentle act of forgiveness must introspect on whether what they have done is right. The people of the country, quite clearly, are not impressed with this compromising of principles to humour a vicious politician.
