The perks of power

ARE India's Members of Parliament paid poorly? The desperation shown by some MPs to make quick money through illegal means, which was captured on camera in the latest sting operation, may give such an impression. But the fact is otherwise.

An MP gets a monthly salary of Rs.12,000, besides a host of perks, and has a number of privileges. In addition, every time Parliament is in session, the member gets a daily allowance of Rs.500. The Budget session is the longest of the three sessions and goes on for nearly two months. The monsoon and winter sessions are relatively short.

Members and their spouses or companions are entitled to unlimited, free, first-class railway travel anywhere in the country. Each MP gets 32 free business class air tickets to any destination in India and eight tickets to travel from his or her constituency to Delhi for the Parliament session. An MP is entitled to take a companion along during these trips. Over and above this, the MP's spouse gets eight additional air tickets to travel anywhere in India.

If an MP is a member of a parliamentary committee, he/she gets free air tickets to attend the committee's meetings. The MP can arrive at the place of meeting one day before it is scheduled and leave a day after it is held. He/she gets a daily allowance of Rs500 for all the three days. On all these travels, including the ones undertaken to attend the sessions of Parliament, 50 per cent of the airfare is given as travel allowance.

Each MP is entitled to a fully furnished bungalow or flat in Delhi for a nominal rent of Rs.2,000 a month (these houses are located in prime areas of the capital, where the commercial rent would normally be at least 25 times more); free supplies of water and electricity up to 50,000 units a year; three telephone lines (one meant for matters relating to his/her constituency, one for making calls to Delhi and the third for Internet access) and an optional fourth one with 100,000 free calls a year. The unused free call time of the cellular services of Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) or Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Limited (MTNL) can be transferred to their respective mobile phones.

The medical expenses of MPs and their family members are drawn from the Union government's Contributory Health Service Scheme. Apart from this, each MP is given Rs.6,000 a month as secretarial salary and an allowance of Rs.3,500 a month towards stationery and franking. The Rs.2-crore annual allotment for the Members of Parliament Local Area Development (MPLAD) fund is, of course, not a personal allowance. It was instituted with the objective of allowing MPs to pursue important local projects independently. But, as the sting operation has revealed, this too has become an instrument to make personal gains.

According to Parliament-watchers, the MPLAD scheme, right from its institution in 1993, was used by many MPs to make illegal earnings. Apparently, the cash-for-questions scam is not a new phenomenon. "Right from the early 1960s, Indian industry and corporate houses have employed MPs to push their causes and interests either by putting them on their pay roll by providing a steady retainer money or by paying them for individual services on a case-by-case basis," one observer said. Business and industrial groups pay MPs to raise specific questions, essentially to extract concrete government information, which may not be otherwise available to them.

He, however, was of the view that the cash-for-questions trend was on the decline in the past decade essentially owing to the easing of controls in the dealings of the private sector with the government and on account of the measures taken by successive governments to increase transparency in the functioning of its various institutions.

Yet, MPs cumulatively put up over a 1,000 questions each day before the Parliament Secretariat. Lok Sabha Secretary-General P.D.T. Achary told Frontline: "There are days when there are more than 1,500 questions. The Secretariat brings down the number to 450 questions a day through a process of elimination." Out of this, 20 are selected as starred questions - to be answered orally by the Minister on the floor of the House - and 430 as unstarred questions to which written replies are provided. The MPs and their sponsors get valuable information or commitments even from the written answers.