Kiran Bedi ahaa

Kiran Bedi Aha

I took it as professional rivalry or our stereotypical disenchantment with challenge to status quo, when some of my bureaucrat friends would sneer when I would hold out the example of Bedi as a good, bold and effective officer. They having seen her more closely, felt she was none of that, but adroit at grandstanding or managing media to hog some limelight.

Tonight she was on TV airing her opposition to VIP’s security. Well this is one subject that I too have blogged enough on, and the bottom line is that the bull bodied safari clad PSO is not so much for security as an announcement of your station or for the purpose of bullying common people.

But while Ms Bedi an ex-Cop herself, sermonized in her typical high-pitched tone, I remembered an incident about her.

It was a flight to Calcutta. She was one of the last one to board and would sit next to me, escorted by a inspector, who departed having ensured she was comfortably seated.

Garrulous as she is, to make conversation, she asked me where I was headed? When I said Calcutta, she was startled as her destination was Mumbai.

On the airport, till you board, there are so many checks, it is impossible to board the wrong flight. But VIPs manage to skirt the checks, and their PSO escorts them unchecked / unfrisked right upto their seat. She had boarded a wrong flight, as her PSO, whisked her past all checks without any encumberance, but being limited by the IQ of a cop, he took her to the wrong aircraft.

The point is not her being on the wrong flight. The moot point is, she was sermonizing on conduct that she herself has been in some measure guilty of.

So if my friends say, she is a fraud, I would not disagree.