THE HINDU Editorial Vocabulary-April 21, 2017- Topic 2

Beacons curb: Red, blue, ordinary

In a most welcome move, the Union Cabinet has decided to disallow the use of the red beacon on vehicles on India’s roads. Starting May 1, only vehicles on emergency services, such as ambulances, fire trucks and police cars, will be permitted the use of a beacon — from now, a blue-coloured one. So-called dignitaries will no longer have the privilege of announcing their exalted status on the road by sporting beacons on their passenger vehicles. 

For this, the Central Motor Vehicles Rules of 1989 are to be amended, so that the Central and State governments lose the power to nominate categories of persons for the red-beacon distinction. As a symbol of an assault on India’s over-reaching VIP culture, this is a good beginning. The flashing red beacon has become so closely associated with unchecked official power that in popular culture it is often all that is depicted to establish a character’s place in the hierarchy. In fact, it is seen to be such a symbol of arrival in the country’s power structure that at a workshop for first-time mps in 2009, one of the main demands made was that cars with red beacons be allotted to them. Such demands have also made its very denial a low-hanging fruit for regimes seeking to establish their street cred as men and women of the people. For instance, over the last three years, governments in Delhi, Uttar Pradesh and Punjab, each of a different political hue, have limited the use of the red beacon.

But to meaningfully begin to dismantle India’s VIP culture, doing away with status symbols such as red beacons is not enough. For one, this accessory is just one category among privileges that maintain a colonial-era overhang on the country’s democracy, by publicly enforcing a subject-ruler separation. From pat-downs avoided at the security gate at an airport to a freer pass at the toll-gate on a highway, there are numerous ways in which the culture of entitlement is asserted. Such visible reminders of a feudal separation apart, the power of official proximity is experienced by citizens most intimately while accessing government services — from getting a bed at a state hospital, or a seat for one’s child in school, to cutting the waiting time for, say, a passport or an Aadhaar identity proof. To be, or to know, ‘somebody’ is far too often perceived as a requisite to getting one’s rightful due in a political economy of shortages, sloth and rent-seeking. To refresh Indian democracy, the state needs to stop protecting mps such as Ravindra Gaikwad who coast along on “don’t you know who I am” bullying. But yet more importantly, it must also reform procedures and the work culture to provide a level playing field to citizens to get what is theirs by right.

Vocabulary

Beacon: a fire or light set up in a high or prominent position as a warning, signal, or celebration.

Example: A chain of beacons carried the news

Privilege: a special right, advantage, or immunity granted or available only to a particular person or group of people.

Example: Education is a right, not a privilege

Synonyms: advantage, benefit, prerogative, entitlement, right

Exalted: in a state of extreme happiness.

Example: I felt exalted and newly alive

Synonyms: elated, exultant, jubilant, joyful, rapturous, ecstatic, blissful

Distinction: excellence that sets someone or something apart from others.

Example: A novelist of distinction

Synonyms: importance, significance, note, consequence, renown

Denial: the action of declaring something to be untrue.

Example: She shook her head in denial

Synonyms: contradiction, refutation, rebuttal, repudiation, disclaimer

Dismantle: take a machine or structure to pieces.

Example: The engines were dismantled and the bits piled into a heap

Synonyms: take apart, pull apart, pull to pieces, disassemble, break up

Overhang: hang or extend outward over.

Example: A concrete path overhung by trees

Synonyms: stick out over, stand out over, extend over, project over

Entitlement: the fact of having a right to something.

Example: Full entitlement to fees and maintenance should be offered

Synonyms: right, prerogative, claim, permission, dispensation, privilege

Perceived: become aware or conscious of something.

Example: His mouth fell open as he perceived the truth

Synonyms: discern, recognize, become aware of, see

Requisite: made necessary by particular circumstances or regulations.

Example: The application will not be processed until the requisite fee is paid

Synonyms: necessary, required, prerequisite, essential, indispensable, vital