MPs: Salary hike

When in school, most of us dream of becoming business man, writer, actor, engineer, or scientist. Today the most sought after profession in India is politics (this does not have to do anything with school as most of our politicians have not completed schooling).

A tour of Bangalore would show case pictures of thousands and tens thousands of wannabe politicians. Aesthetics of Bangalore city is no more trees and flowers but posters of these budding politicians (or social workers as they prefer to call themselves). Serving the poor is a noble profession but if collateral damage of serving poor is becoming crorepatis then so be it. No wonder more than 25% of Indian politicians are crorepatis (officially). Only a small percentage of these crorepatis have earned money by business, rest of them have earned money by serving the poor. No wonder, this has become the most sought after profession.

If somebody did an analysis of the owners of the number of Audis, Mercs, Bentleys, BMWs and high end vehicles of mortal brands like Honda, Hyundai, Chev etc in the country, a large number of them would belong to some or the other politician.

Each day, we get to hear of scandals worth thousands of crores. Each of this scandal has politicians right in the middle of it. When the threshold is set to this standard, our Members of Parliament decide to play a rude joke on the people of the country. They demand a salary hike saying that price rise is affecting them. They fight over a salary hike from Rs 16000 to 80,000. There is criminal waste of public money in the name of adjournment. In the end they settle for a salary of Rs 50000. 

Wouldn’t you rather do a Real estate business and earn Rs 50,000 instead of getting into the cut throat world of Politics, where you are have to throw chairs in Parliament or do some other kind of drama to make your presence felt or to remain in public view. Not to forget the bad name its bound to bring you, considering the crowd you belong to does enough to deserve the bad name.

I am not aware of many Rs 16,000 earners, owning cars. Now with their salary hiked to Rs 50,000, they probably will upgrade from Audis/Mercs/BMWs to private helicopters.

NDTV is raising a funny forum: Will higher salaries for MPs help reduce corruption? It may only reduce traffic on the roads if they start using their private helicopters.