Power as spectacle: Upbraiding officers in public, the Minister and the MP only undermine their own authority

Deogarh Deputy Commissioner Manjunath Bhajantri was booked after he complained to the Ministry of Civil Aviation about Dubey allegedly entering the Air Traffic Control room on August 31 and obtaining clearance for a flight to take off after sunset — Deogarh airport is not equipped to handle night-time flights. While Dubey’s conduct reeks of entitlement, Sitharaman struck an odd, jarring, note when she publicly lashed out at the District Collector. Her trigger: the absence of the PM’s pictures at PDS shops. Her argument that the Union government is bearing the cost and so Modi’s pictures should be prominently displayed is problematic. Every government attempts to take political ownership for its schemes. At the same time, it’s also true that welfare schemes are not the largesse of individual leaders and nor should they be seen to be so by rights-bearing citizens. But the merit of Sitharaman’s argument isn’t exactly the issue here — it is how a powerful Minister upbraids an officer not for a lapse in governance but to ostensibly further her party’s image politics.

In a society marked by deep inequalities and hierarchies, power fosters the delusion that there are no constraints on its exercise. In the constitutional scheme of things, the political executive may be powerful but the bureaucracy is governed by rules and procedures. Bureaucracy, of course, needs accountability — babus can be as imperious as their political masters — but when leaders throw their weight around in public for something that’s not compelling public interest, they end up losing some of it.