No work, no pay for MPs: It’s only a rap on the knuckle

Seven days, no work. In a private organisation, you could lose your job if you came to office and just loitered around that long or at the least, you could lose a week’s salary. But our honourable members of Parliament don’t have to bother about such a predicament. They don’t work in private concerns and are not accountable to anyone, but themselves. And the poor tax payer is always there to indulge them. Each hour of Parliament’s work costs a minimum of Rs 25 lakh. Each day costs around Rs 2 crore. Imagine the cost to the exchequer in the winter session so far. Take into account the number of days unutilised during the monsoon and budget sessions earlier this year and the washed out winter session last year. The amount involved would be the size of a middling scandal. Of course, scandal is the word we won’t use here. After all, they are honourable leaders. So, let’s stop at the term, wastage of public money. [caption id=“attachment_145104” align=“alignleft” width=“380” caption=“Each hour of Parliament’s work costs a minimum of Rs 25 lakh. Each day costs around Rs 2 crore. And this winter session we have had our parlimentarians do no work in seven days. PTI”]  [/caption] There’s no way the ordinary Indian can stop this wastage. While the rest of the country stands confused and exasperated, the solution has started coming from a section of the political class. “Cut the salaries of MPs for the days they don’t work,” says Omar Abdullah, chief minister of Jammu and Kashmir. Varun Gandhi, BJP’s MP, has made a similar suggestion. Good idea. But is that punishment enough? The basic salary of MPs is just a fraction of their total earnings. Deducting a few days salary might embarrass them, but it won’t hurt them financially. It’s like a rap on the knuckle for a serious crime. Last year, the members gave themselves a sumptuous 300 percent salary hike — from Rs 16,000 to Rs 50,000. They also doubled their daily allowance for Parliament-related work to Rs 2,000 and increased the constituency allowance and office expense allowance to Rs 40,000 each from the earlier Rs 20,000. Conveyance allowance went up from Rs 1 lakh to Rs 4 lakh. According to a rough estimate, the total expense per MP after the salary revision was Rs 60 lakh per year. It did not come tagged with the promise to work more and utilise Parliament’s time better. In fact, their performance has become worse after the hike. Varun says he felt “silly, getting paid to sit around, drink coffee in Central Hall.” Obviously, his elder colleagues in all parties in Parliament do not feel that way. He is possibly too young to understand political mind games or possibly harbours a healthy dislike for it. Whatever it is, it is good that he has been frank in his opinion on the issue. What intrigues one about the wastage is there’s virtually no open criticism of it. People who referred to politicians in unpalatable terms during the Ramlila Maidan rally of Anna Hazare are surprisingly quiet about parliamentarians not doing their duty. The aggressive media have stopped taking notice of it. There are no solutions coming to make things better. It’s unlikely that nobody is aware of the consequences of Parliament not functioning. The political class is too obsessed with itself at the moment to care about the world outside. It is not likely that it would sit back and introspect. Pressure needs to be built from outside. Why not apply the rules for employees in the private sector to our parliamentarians? It’s only fair that you get paid for the amount of work you do. Is civil society game for the challenge?