THE Supreme Court on Saturday rightly ruled that a petition seeking to slash the allegedly extravagant sums of public money spent on the President House, Prime Minister House and the various governor houses across the country is a matter of policy and a political question in which the court should not intervene. In the constitutional scheme of separation of powers and separate domains, the court is charged with interpreting the law and issuing authoritative judgements on legal disputes – not determining whether any given policy is good or bad according to some subjective standard. A court aware of its limitations is a court that is well placed to perform its constitutional duty. Perhaps this most recent judgement will guide future benches in not wasting the court’s valuable time in hearing and authoring judgements on what are clearly politically motivated petitions and will instead dismiss them at the outset.

Yet, to say that the court is not the right forum for hearings on the so-called VVIP culture that has taken hold at the very top is not to deny that there is a problem of the country’s leadership, elected and unelected, having become unjustifiably removed from the people. It is not so much the upkeep of buildings and residences – the presidency and governor houses, for example, are symbols of the federation and steeped in history, so must be preserved for posterity. The problem is rather who makes decisions on issues like security arrangements, protocol and overall budgets. Far too often, rather than independent professionals, those decisions appear to be left to the beneficiaries themselves. Take the case of security, surely something that must be taken very seriously given the terrorist threat in the country. But when does high-profile security start to unnecessarily and unfairly impinge on the people’s rights? Of the hundreds of policemen idling around state residences and the dozens of vehicles in fast-moving convoys on cordoned off roads – how much of that is about pomp and display and how much truly about necessary, efficient and cost-minded security?

At its root, the problem is that those making decisions about VIP lifestyles and security are either the beneficiaries themselves or those who are beholden to the high officials for their jobs. Perhaps a step in the right direction would be to have independent audit and budgeting committees. Rather than, say, the President House draw up its own budget and submit it to the government for approval, an independent committee of relevant professionals should be tasked with drawing up a proposed annual budget. The savings, admittedly, from a national budgetary perspective would be small. But measures that reduce the physical and psychological distance between the people and their elected representatives are worth more than can be counted in rupee terms. The epidemic of so-called VIP culture harms the democratic project. Excess must always be reined in.

Published in Dawn, June 29th, 2015

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