President’s 10-minute Private visit to Mangalore: At what cost?
Daijiworld Media Network – Mangalore (SP)
Mangalore, Dec 24: Her Excellency President of India Pratibha Patil arrived at the local airport at Bajpe on Thursday December 24, on her way to a private trip to her holiday destination, Lakshadweep. She was here merely for 10 minutes, just to alight from her flight and change to another aircraft to take her to Lakshadweep. But the amount of money, manpower and bureaucratic hype involved with her ten-minute sojourn at Bajpe airport on her private visit was mind boggling, to say the least. Apart from the money and manpower her interlude in Mangalore has caused untold misery to passengers as no flights were allowed to arrive and depart one hour before and after the departure of the President’s convoy. And all this at the expense of the tax payer’s money!
The Indian President is on a visit of Lakshadweep to spend holidays. As the airport at Lakshadweep can not accommodate bigger aircrafts, she arrived here by an Airforce aircraft and changed over to a smaller aircraft at the local airport. While she travelled in one aircraft, two other aircrafts accompanied the aircraft she travelled for security reasons.
For her brief touch-down at Bajpe, the entire police force of the district, top brass of Air India and local airport, the district administration and several government officials were on their toes since a week. Security was beefed up, keeping in tune with her VVIP status. No flights were permitted to either take off or land within an hour before her arrival or an hour after she left. Minister Krishna Palemar was there, waiting for the arrival of the President, canceling his prior engagements to ensure that all arrangements were made for the smooth arrival and departure of the President. Deputy Commissioner V Ponnuraj, Zilla Panchayat President Santosh Kumar Bhandary, Additional Deputy Commissioner Prabhakar Sharma, Air India Manager, Chellam Prasad and scores of other officials were there too, setting aside their busy official work.
A large number of police officials were put on duty in connection with this ‘visit’ of the President in Mangalore since last one week. It looked as though the district administration had come to a grinding halt for the past one week just because the President was to set her feet on the ground at the Bajpe Airport, though only for not more than ten minutes. Today, the day of her arrival all the officials put on this special duty including the Bajpe Airport staff had to report for duty from 6 a.m to receive this 10-minute VVIP guest.
One fails to appreciate the necessity for such colossal waste of time, energy and public money to manage to manage a small event, that too when the President is on a private visit. The fanfare, tensions, cancellation of engagements, the amount of energy and time spent by all the people involved in ensuring ‘safe passage’ to the President could have been channeled to address the problems of the people or to create better infrastructure in the form of schools, hospitals, roads, bus shelters etc,. However disgusting tail of tax payer’s money going down the drains is a luxury we Indians can ill afford.
The worst part of this disgusting episode was the servility with which some of the political bigwigs and high ranking officials were seen standing in queue to greet as the President passed by to change to the other aircraft. The entire scene left a sad taste in the minds of spectators who were left wondering whether ours is a democracy or monarchy.
A senior citizen, who looked like a top bureaucrat was heard muttering as to what are the achievements of President Pratibha Patil that demands such respect, servility, efforts and waste of time and money. “If it was someone like A P J Abdul Kalam, we can understand, but for a person who has been elevated to the top gubernatorial post in the country just because of her closeness to UPA chairperson, Sonia Gandhi, is it worth?,” he asked.
This is the question which all Indian need to answer. Agreed, she is the President of the country and needs to be respected. But does it call for setting aside a weeks work by top bureaucrats and officials and spend people's money just to satisfy the whims and fancies of the President during her private visit. We need to ponder over this.