Whose Life is at Risk?

It is an enormous strain on the exchequer to provide security to so many politicians and their kith and kin. What goes into it is the hard earned and honest money of taxpayers; mostly from salaried class. There are some levels of security and it is a status symbol to get the highest. The official figures probably run into several hundreds of crores. Most of the expenses would have been conveniently booked under some other expenses to show smaller figures to public – a normal accounting jugglery. Like the low or even negative inflation figures when all prices double every year.

What one fails to understand is why security at all? In some developed countries politicians and ministers (including Prime Minister) travel without any security and carry their own briefcase to office. Even some Kings, ceremonial equivalent of our President, are known to travel by public transport. Local people who recognize the face of such an important person might leave the seat next to him unoccupied as a matter of courtesy and some visitor, who is not so familiar, might even occupy the next seat.

What are our politicians afraid of? Who are they afraid of? PEOPLE? If so, why do they SERVE people 365x24? If people of the country are out to murder them at next opportunity, what makes them serve the prospective murderers so sincerely? This defies all logic. On the contrary, if they are afraid of their own political rivals, party dissidents, goondas, mafia, smugglers and so on, who are their one-time or current or future bedfellows, coalition partners and allies, why should public pay for their security?

Given an argument that some functionaries are important as they are constitutionally key figures, people will accept some reasonable security for their PM and President and no one else.

In reality, in the name of high-level security to these politicians, few thousands of trained people becoming sacrificial goats and if at all something happens, it is these low paid highly trained security personnel who lose their life and their family gets pittance and virtually die of hunger and without any reasonable means to survive in the absence of bread winner. Public apathy is not understandable as it feels that these security people are paid to die, so what is so great about the lives these people? In our country the lives of politicians, cricketers and film personalities are very important and not the lives of 1.2 billion common people who comprise the real India. In the name of providing employment as security staff, government is putting the lives of thousands of people at Risk.