My late maternal grandfather V.M. Ramaswamy Mudaliar was a two term MLA from Vellore. He was also a law professor before he joined the freedom struggle. He once told me an interesting story. The factions led by Rajaji and K. Kamaraj dominated the Madras State Congress in the early 1950s. When the Congress leadership was considering him for a ticket in 1952, the faction led by Kamaraj opposed him by putting up a very poor but well-known Congress worker who went to jail in 1942. My grandfather too was a well-known figure in the Congress and had also spent a longish period in prison during the Quit India Movement.
Opposing my grandfather’s candidature, Kamaraj is supposed to have told Jawaharlal Nehru that he favoured giving the ticket to the other candidate as he had nothing else to fallback upon, implying a ticket would protect him from penury. On the other hand, my grandfather was a man of some means and not becoming an MLA would not affect him much. To which Nehru seems to have replied, that he would prefer a candidate who didn’t depend on being an MLA for livelihood. He saw elected office as a service and, hence, whenever possible, preferred qualified persons as people’s representatives.
MPs and MLAs are still not as well paid as others in government service but they do quite well. In 1952, an MP was paid a monthly salary of Rs 300, and a daily allowance of Rs 45. According to the NGO Parliamentary Research Services (PRS), an MP is now paid a base salary of Rs 50,000 per month and is entitled to a pension of Rs 20,000 per month. If an MP serves for a period exceeding five years, this pension increases by Rs 1,500 for each additional year of service. In addition, MPs are compensated for official expenses through various allowances — daily allowance of Rs 2,000 for each day of attending Parliament, constituency allowance for expenses incurred in the constituency (Rs 45,000 per month) and office expenses for staff, stationery and postage (Rs 45,000 per month). MPs are provided accommodation in Delhi, which varies from hostel rooms to two-bedroom flats to bungalows. They are also reimbursed for electricity, water, telephone and Internet expenses, and also for 34 one-way air tickets from their constituency to Delhi. Most may not be very regular about attending Parliament, but they do put their position to good use. Some more than others.
There is wide variation in MLA salaries across state Assemblies. Apart from the usual allowances, some Assemblies give “compensatory” and “sumptuary” allowances to their members. These cannot be directly correlated with official expenses and as such have been included in our definition of salary. Among the states analysed, Gujarat pays the highest salary of Rs 21,000 per month and Kerala the lowest by keeping it at the 1952 level of Rs 300 per month. Other than salary, MLAs also get similar facilities like MPs — daily allowance, constituency allowance, office expenses allowance, provisions for accommodation, travel etc. As is the case with salaries, these too vary across states.
The Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR) was established in 1999 by a group of professors from the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, to improve governance and strengthen democracy by continuous work in the area of electoral and political reforms. With this in mind, it collates data from official sources such as the Election Commission and puts it out for general public viewing. Recently it posed the question: “Does it make sense to seek a career in politics in India?” The answer: “If the annual increment in official assets holdings for candidates contesting for second time in the recent Bihar elections is any indication, then the answer is a definite yes.”
Keeping the recent Bihar elections in focus the ADR put out some very interesting facts. During 2005 and 2010, there were 134 candidates in Bihar, who contested for both these elections. For these candidates, average assets jumped in five years from Rs 32.43 lakh to Rs 70.09 lakh during the 2010 elections, an annualised increase of 16.6 per cent. Party-wise, for the candidates who won in 2010 and re-contested in 2015, the Rashtriya Janata Dal MLAs saw the value of their assets increase from an average of Rs 1.89 crore in 2010 to Rs 3.80 crore in 2015. This reflects an annualised increment of 15 per cent. For the Bharatiya Janata Party MLAs, it was a jump of 23.9 per cent from Rs 79.71 lakh in 2010 to Rs 2.33 crore in 2015 and for Janata Dal (United) re-contestants, the average value increased from Rs 76 lakh in 2010 to Rs 2.67 crore, recording an annualised increment of 28.5 per cent.
The RJD MLAs seem to have earned less as the party was not in government. The BJP and JD(U) enjoyed much higher annualised increments in their fortunes having been on the right side of political power.MPs do even better. ADR analysed the affidavits of 165 out of 168 re-elected MPs in the 16th Lok Sabha. The assets of these 165 MPs have on an average risen by a whopping 137 per cent between 2009 and 2014. The average assets of these 165 re-elected MPs fielded by various parties in 2009 was Rs 5.38 crore and had grown to Rs 12.78 crore, which is a rise of Rs 7.40 crore.
The highest increase in assets among them was that of BJP’s Shatrughan Sinha. According to ADR, the assets of the actor-turned-politician, who was re-elected from Patna Sahib in Bihar, grew by a whopping 778 per cent in the span of five years. Mr Sinha’s assets jumped from Rs 15 crore in 2009 to Rs 131.74 crore in 2014, which is an increase of Rs 116.73 crore. Maybe he did a lot of movies too during this period, which we don’t know about. Second on the list is Biju Janata Dal MP from Puri constituency of Orissa, Pinaki Mishra, whose assets increased from Rs 29.69 crore in 2009 to Rs 137.09 crore in 2014.
Mr Mishra is also a successful lawyer. Former Union minister and Nationalist Congress Party leader Sharad Pawar’s daughter Supriya Sule, who won from Baramati constituency in Maharashtra, is in the third position with her assets increasing from Rs 51.53 crore in 2009 to Rs 113.90 crore in 2014, a rise of Rs 62.37 crore. BJP leader Arun Jaitley’s assets have gone up five times in the short span of time when he was no longer a practicing lawyer but fully committed to the service of the nation. Mr Jaitley’s assets were listed at Rs 23.86 crore in a report published by ADR in November 2011, but he has declared assets worth Rs 113.02 crore in the affidavit submitted during his Lok Sabha nomination in 2014. Which is pretty good going. It is not as if this information is a secret or that the people don’t understand these numbers. The Association for Democratic Reforms (myneta.info) releases information about economic and demographic profiles of all the candidates fighting elections in India. ADR can also be contacted for any data or report by email or their helpline. The question, dear reader, is, do you care?
The writer, a policy analyst studying economic and security issues, held senior positions in government and industry. He also specialises in the Chinese economy
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