Beacon Blues

India in general and Maharashtra in particular have long waged a rhetorical war against VIP culture. Yet every few months a small incident reminds the country that the old habits of privilege die slowly. The recent controversy over flashing lights on the official vehicle of Mumbai’s mayor, Ritu Tawde, offers another glimpse into the stubborn afterlife of political entitlement.

Social media posts earlier this week showed red and blue flasher lights mounted on the bonnet of the mayor’s official vehicle and its escort car. The images quickly spread online, prompting activists and citizens to question why such lights had returned to the streets. The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation soon stepped in, announcing that the lights had been removed and even the designation plaque on the vehicle covered.

The explanation offered by the civic body was procedural in tone. Vehicles, it said, are allotted to office bearers by the administration once they assume office, and the lights were removed as soon as the issue came to public attention. Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis, defending the mayor, suggesting she was being unfairly targeted for something she had not personally authorised.

Yet the controversy is revealing precisely because of its banality. Nearly a decade ago, the Union government took a clear decision to abolish the red beacon culture that had come to symbolise the distance between India’s rulers and its citizens. In 2017 the cabinet amended the Motor Vehicles Rules, banning the use of red beacons atop government vehicles except for emergency services. The reform was widely hailed at the time as a symbolic blow against a culture of entitlement.

For decades the red beacon had functioned as a badge of power. Mounted on the roofs of ministerial cars, it parted traffic like a royal standard. Drivers were expected to yield, police to salute and citizens to step aside. In a democracy that prides itself on egalitarian ideals, the spectacle sat uneasily with the rhetoric of public service.

The abolition of the beacon was meant to change that psychology. The reform had a theatrical flourish to it, but symbolism in politics often matters. Removing the red light was meant to remind officials that authority flows from the people, not from flashing bulbs on government vehicles.

When a mayor’s car is seen sporting the very symbols the law sought to abolish, it suggests that the instinct to mark status visibly still lingers within the machinery of governance.

India’s struggle against VIP culture has always been about more than traffic privileges. From airport queues to police escorts, public life still carries traces of an older hierarchy in which the powerful glide past rules that bind everyone else.

The removal of a few lights on a municipal vehicle will not transform that culture overnight. Yet the episode is a reminder that vigilance matters. Laws abolishing symbols of privilege are only the first step; ensuring that officials internalise their meaning is a longer battle.