Monsieur the Marquis's chariot has come to a halt, having run over and killed a little child. He asks about the distraught father: "Why does he make that abominable noise?" And adds a little later: "It is extraordinary to me that you people cannot take care of yourselves and your children." He throws the father of the dead child a gold coin. Another gold coin is tossed out to someone who philosophises about the accident. Then, after checking that his horses are all right, the Marquis drives off "with the air of a gentleman who had accidentally broke some common thing, and had paid for it, and could afford to pay for it." Only, a coin came flying back into his chariot as he drove away, and rang on the floor.
Those familiar with their Dickens will remember the vivid scene from A Tale of Two Cities. The parallels with what happened on the road from Dausa to Jaipur will be evident too. Someone living a life as gilt-edged as the Marquis, a representative of the people to boot, is being driven in her Mercedes at great speed down the road from Dausa to Jaipur. The chariot hits a car, killing a child. The lady drives away. When the media makes an abominable noise, the equivalent of a gold coin is offered. Later she says what the Marquis had said: Why couldn't the father of the child take care of himself and his family, and not come in the way of her chariot? In another contemporary episode, the family of someone who has died in the spreading Vyapam scandal is offered financial help; it throws back the gold coin.
There are moments of clarity when we see ourselves through the words in literature. The Marquis had looked at the people crowding together as "mere rats come out of their holes". Do our elected representative of the people do that, and can they afford to? When Parliamentarians ask that their income be doubled, that they be served heavily subsidised food in Parliament, and that special facilitation services be laid on when they pass through airports, the attitude is not very different from that of the plutocrats of old. In fact, many of our parliamentarians and state legislators have become plutocrats. If you study the speed with which the wealth of many in their number has increased from one election to the next, it would seem that there are few (if any) careers in which you can grow your wealth quite so fast as being in the service of the people.
No, India is not in the stage of pre-Revolution France, far from it. But it bears pointing out that sometimes a relatively small episode can speak to the public more than our parliamentarians might want it to. The minister who dismissed the death of a journalist investigating Vyapam as a "silly issue" and reportedly claimed that he was a "bigger" journalist needs to be reminded of the basics: India is more than a democracy in which the majority rules through elected representatives. It is a republic, and the spirit of republicanism militates against many things that are now commonplace - like the assertion of unequal status, and the flaunting of wealth. A member of Parliament driving away from the scene of an accident where a child has been killed is simply unacceptable in a republic, which rejects pretensions to aristocracy. That rejection extends to inherited political power - which is why the existence of so many single-leader political parties and of so many dynasts in Parliament should be a matter of concern. The next time parliamentarians ask for special facilities for themselves, or act as though they are a special breed, someone should remind them about the basics.
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