Joke of Democracy

Adjourned sessions, unhealthy debates, use of abusive language, and not to forget the mother of all entertainment--chair fights are all characteristics of law making forums throughout the nation, but there’s one thing that our legislators have always stood together for –Greater pay. With the 6^th pay commission coming into the picture, the salaries of employees of various government sector organizations and PSUs have witnessed an increment ranging from 12 to 30 %. Even in a situation where the armed forces had to undergo a long legal struggle before being granted a 38% hike, the government implemented a pay hike of 300% to all Member of Parliament against the parliamentary committee’s proposal of 500%.

Well if you feel that this demand is because of the hard time the Swiss banks (which have been long faithful to our politicians) are facing after the recent recession, let me tell you that our parliamentarians have some more logical points to place. If the salaries of our MPs are directly compared with those of the developed world, we find that despite the 200% hike, our MPs are one of the worst paid. In their opinion comparing the percentage increase is a mere sensationalization of facts as they have been underpaid over the years. They urge the people to compare the meager figure of 50,000 to which the salary has been increased from the existing 16,000 rupees. Let’s fulfill this wish of theirs.

Apart from the basic salary our honorable MPs are entitled perks in the form of constituency allowances, office, travel allowances, daily allowances, office, furniture, Internet, electricity, gardeners and what not! Consider the free accommodation being provided to our MPs at upscale localities in the country where the monthly rent goes as high as 2 lakhs . Even when the government run AIR INDIA is facing acute economic crisis, our MPs get 34 single business class air tickets. A rough estimate of the total worth of all these perks by an esteemed news agency sets the figure to a whooping 37 lakhs annually. Comparing not on basis of percentage and takingPPP in USD as the criteria, each MP’s pay and perks together work out to be substantially higher than those of Japan, Singapore, and Italy which are renowned for their highly paid politicians. Well we have not included pension and medical benefits in our calculations and forgot to mention that all this is tax free. Even after all this our MPs who work for merely 151 days a year in comparison to the yearlong effort put in by civil servants feel that giving them a salary less than the cabinet secretary is an insult to the lawmakers and the democracy of the nation. So let’s deal in a different perspective.

Keeping a very much business mindset, we know that an employee in a company is paid a percentage of the worth he adds to it. Extending this to our parliament we find that the hiked salaries are 68 times of what an average Indian earns. Making this kind of disparity in India one of the worst in the world. Well the people who actually are responsible for the kind of average salary that persists in the nation and claim to represent the population feel that their salaries are bigger insult on our democracy than the economic disparity they demand!!