Parliament Track

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How much does India pay its legislators?

PRS | Parliament Track | Vital Stats | How much does India pay its legislators?

Politicians should be asked to work for free

http://www.thesundayindian.com/article.php?category_id=22&article_id=10040
http://www.thesundayindian.com/article.php?article_id=6733

The Sunday Indian - The Nation's Greatest News Magazine - Musings - MPs should work for free!

MPs should work for free!

Nation building cannot be a paid job!

I wonder, why don’t people aspire to join politics? At the same time I also wonder as to why do people at large abhor the career of a politician. I can understand that such feelings can emanate from those enterprising people who want to make a difference in life in their own way, but what I don’t understand is why do the lazy and disillusioned ones also nurture similar feelings. What more would anyone want than access to some unwarranted luxuries and perks of life absolutely free of cost! On top of that, there aren’t any defined job profiles or descriptions, no constraint of age, education, no accountability, no discipline, no reporting and voila! – you get paid for all this, and get a raise too!!

Unlike other jobs done by employees under the federal government, work done by MPs neither call for expertise, nor for education, qualifications and the irony is that still people prefer other jobs over politics! Not to forget, in other jobs, there are the risks of recalls, removal, arbitrary relocation, reporting, halt in increment and also face the risk of Annual Confidential Report (ACR). MPs unlike other employees have full immunity for their act inside their offices (Parliament) which can’t even be challenged in the courts!! What more, there are no rules with respect to working hours, no compulsions of participation in parliamentary debates, no mandatory attendance and no objectively-measured-system to find out their productivity. To top it up, there is no promotional and removal clauses. Thus, works done by MPs are neither normatively defined nor is objectively measurable and yet they get paid handsomely and get a raise too, which is comparable and equivalent to bureaucrats, and yet no one opts for politics as a career.

Now the question is that if all this is true then why in the first place an MP should get paid? Call it utopia — But joining politics was meant to be fundamentally a public spirited voluntary decision and less of a conventional mode of not working and yet earning a living. Since the beginning of human civilization, people who wanted to serve the society and transform them, opted for such career without an aim of upgrading their own economic stature. But then, what we observe is just the converse! Today, the biggest entry barrier to politics is the amount of investment that one has to make. And this is a glaring reality of our political system today. Or else how does one justify that the collective assets of 543 MPs elected to the Lok Sabha are worth more than Rs.3,000 crore! This means the average asset size of an MP works out to be more than Rs.5 crores! Going by this again, I wonder why should they be paid as what difference that little money that they get in the name of salary, make to them! And worse, our MPs on an average make nine times the national poverty level which is again too high compared to the US or the UK, where they are just five and three times respectively. In the US, Senators are not allowed to earn more than 15 per cent from outside of their Congressional salary while in India, the average asset value of MPs is found to have increased by a staggering 300 per cent over the last term! In Germany, the elected federal members get enough remuneration to ensure their basics, while Switzerland parliamentarians do not get any salary but just paid leaves from their employers on the days of parliament session. MPs in Mexico can’t practice any profession and be office-bearers of any political party.

As I said earlier, though it might sound utopian, but politics was and should be meant for individuals willing to participate with just public serving spirit! Till the time this remains an utopian dream, at least they should not be paid!

Prasoon S Majumdar

http://www.iipmthinktank.com/asp/Scrutiny.asp?s_id=4936&pageno=1

Why governance is not taught...

Have you ever heard of a school of governance and politics in India?

Yes and no! Perish the forsaken curiosity. The yes, is for the affirmation that without doubt our political arena has witnessed the entry of many young politicians. And the no, is the answer to the question whether they’ve been able to make any sensible difference to the scenario. One reason is that the number of young politicians in India is still miniscule given the fact that the average age of the 13th Lok Sabha has been around 55 years! But learned that we are, allow us to introduce a proxy reason for this problem. Young and talented individuals today do not understand the nitty-gritty of politico-economic debates and simply perceive politics as a criminal’s exercise in drudgery because, ironically, there exist no known institutions in India that teach politics and governance. Even the young MPs who were there in the Parliament participated only in 7% of the debates. And the less talked about their overall attendance, the better. We ergo question the experience and exposure that our young politicians undergo before entering politics. Clearly, what we require are structured and respected institutions teaching politics and governance on a specialised basis to the literate youth.

Think about it. To match top global examples like the John F. Kennedy School of Government (Harvard University), Bulgarian School of Politics, Matsushita Seikei Juku institute in Japan and Colombo School of Politics, what have we? Hilariously named institutions like Netagiri in Ranchi. Without being deprecating, the fact is that if this school, which has more than 200 students, has produced several state, district and community-level politicians, then imagine what we could end up achieving by setting up well financed and supported institutions across the country that teach politics and governance to our empowered youth. Well, if even a thoroughly non democratic and autocratic country like Kuwait can have a National Democratic Institute, why can’t the world’s largest democracy?