India, Feb. 28 -- I don't think I'll ever forget my sense of shock when I heard Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor has been arrested. I belong to a generation that used to refer to him as Prince Andrew. He was said to be the late Queen's favourite child. More importantly, he's the younger brother of the reigning monarch. And at the time of the Falkland's War, he was a national hero. As Mark Antony said in a different context, "O, what a fall was there, my countrymen!"

Something similar would be unimaginable in India. We treat the privileged, the wealthy and the influential as special people. The laws and rules that apply to ordinary mortals often circumvent their lives. The police protect them - often from the rest of us - and rarely, if ever, a...