Supreme court judges say public servants' use of lal batti to ease their way through Delhi's congested roads promotes elitism

They are the scourge of the Delhi's congested streets, the final irritant that drives stressed road users to distraction: the red flashing lights on the white government car signifying not just the arrival of a Very Very Important Person but angry policemen, a jam and a long wait.

For years the lal batti, as the red lights are known, have proliferated and cars bearing senior politicians and bureaucrats have used them to force a way through the bumper to bumper – or sometimes elephant trunk to rickshaw wheel – traffic. Now India's supreme court has criticised public servants for their obsession with such perks of office and ordered all abuses to end.

"We think you can remove the red lights … straight away. One thing is there in the mind of people that they dislike the red light. Why not reconsider removing it? That will be a great signal for bringing everybody at par," the bench of judges said in a judgment.

In a dramatic gesture of solidarity, the supreme court judges suggested that even they could, possibly, do without flashing lights.

The move is part of a broader mood in India where a style of government little changed since the middle of the last century is looking increasingly out of touch with the demands and values of a more educated urban population.

India inherited an obsession with precedence and hierarchy from British colonial rulers that has remained unchanged over nearly seven decades of independence.

Even the legacy inherited by the newly freed nation owed more to the values of the mid-19th century, carefully preserved in far-flung corners of empire, than the complex reality of British society in 1947.

Some analysts even point to the centuries-old influence of the courts of Mughal emperors or even the millenia-old caste hierarchy to explain the all-pervasive interest in status.

Others say the culture is "totally Indian". "This is about a very Indian desire to say 'look who I am'. There are 1.2 billion people in this country who all want to be someone important," said Vinod Mehta, one of India's best-known journalists.

The culture is especially strong in Delhi, a city of bureaucrats.

"Someone once called me saying he was the private secretary of the private secretary of the minister and was very proud of it. It's absurd and I'm heartily sick of being hooted or stopped or having to pull off the road to make way for these people," the Delhi-based former editor said.

But beyond the one-upmanship lie practical benefits. VIPs, VVIPs or even VVVIPs – almost all government officials – can receive perks ranging from free housing in listed villas with staff paid by the government, bodyguards who act as personal assistants, free flights, unobstructed passage through airports or train stations as well as a significant degree of de facto legal impunity.

The use of the red lights is theoretically restricted to only the top ranks of the list of precedence and only then when officials are on official business to help them accomplish their public service.

"Our day is packed with public functions and meetings. Beacons and hooters help us move without difficulty through the traffic," explained Harun Yusuf, the minister of power, to the Times of India, a newspaper which has launched a campaign against the red lights.

Regulations are minutely scrutinised. The vice-chairman of the National Disaster Management Authority recently gained the right to a red light "with flasher" though the eight "members" of the authority will have to make do with lights "without flasher".

Only last month, a new edict allowed sub-divisional magistrates to use flashing blue beacons, though it insisted that only divisional and sub-divisional commissioners would be allowed to use red beacons. It provoked uproar.

A recent crackdown prompted scores of applications by government departments for exemptions to existing rules.

Ordinary parliamentarians have repeatedly requested that they be upgraded from 21st to 17th on the precedence list – a position which would allow them to use the red lights – but without success.

Such moves have caused widespread resentment among city dwellers, who suffer poor public services. The gang rape and murder of a 23-year-old woman in a bus travelling on Delhi's roads on a Sunday evening highlighted the difference between the security enjoyed by India's political elite and ordinary inhabitants of an often lawless and violent city.

"The worst examples of these excesses are seen with the kind of privileges seized by the political class. Every MP and MLA [member of the legislative assembly] is surrounded by an average of three policemen at the taxpayer's expense. The ratio for ordinary citizens to police protection is an appalling 700:1," wrote Shahanu Basu Kodia in the Mail Today newspaper.

Mehta said the culture was deepest among the "old elite" in the public sector while few of India's hugely rich businessmen appeared bothered by such outward signs of status.

"The bureaucrats are in old white government cars. The billionaires are in luxury SUVs imported from the west. They don't need a red light," he said.