MP's Pay Hike - Justified! *(conditions apply)

There can be only one issue on which our ever so petulant politicians can form a consensus amongst themselves despite their varied ideologies and selfish vested interests,and that is hiking of their own salaries. Never can one see a group of employees fighting so vehemently and shamelessly for a salary hike. In fact under normal circumstances nobody can dare to even think of such an audacious campaign but our ministers being their shameless self can do anything to fill their already overflowing cash sacs. So if an IT engineer,Mr Verma was satisfied with a 15% salary hike; Mr Agrawal working for a leading Investment bank was more than satisfied with a 20% salary hike; and accountant Mr Bajaj who was not so happy with a hefty 25% salary hike switched over his employer for a desired 30% pay hike, all of a sudden felt bad for themselves when they found out that the members of parliament of their regions were not at all satisfied with even a 200% salary hike their employer (government of India) proposed and in fact were far more agitated and aggravated than a hardworking employee working diligently for his employer without any hike for last 5 years.

And this is all in a scenario where a major chunk of the minister cadre falls in the elite bracket of multimillionaires who would hardly get impacted with such salary hikes or for that matter the monthly salary which probably forms only a minuscule of their huge assimilation of wealth. So what is that which our not so beloved politicians will get as remuneration from the Government of India after this astounding hike? A basic pay of Rs 50,000 per month, for which I don't understand the basis at all. A daily allowance of Rs 2000 on each day when the parliament is in session or when the house committees meet, so this is basically for throwing chairs and hurling shoes over each other. A constituency allowance of Rs 20,000 per month in addition to an equal monthly office expenses allowance of Rs.45,000 each month, this one as a reminder that they are all responsible for a particular constituency. A conveyance allowance of Rs 4 lakh, which might be most probably used as a maintenance amount for their hi-tech imported cars. And a revised pension apportionment of Rs 20,000 to former members, who have already looted the people of India to an extent which is beyond any calculation.

But this is not it, apart from such monetary benefits our tainted ministers also get a plethora of other rewards too. They themselves along with their spouse can travel any number of times in first class in railways, no wonder Indian Railways is still struggling to post significant profits, they can also claim road mileage for any of there road travels, no wonder being unaware of the fuel prices they hike it every other month much to the chagrin of a common man. They are also entitled to 150,000 free phone calls a year on 3 landlines and 2 mobile phones, probably to perform all their black deals seamlessly. They are also provided with a rent free housing in the most posh localities of national capital, where rents lie in the range of Rs 25-40 lakhs per month and the real worth of those bungalows (in the Lutyen's zone) is over Rs 100 crores. And over that the government also pays rent on furniture up to Rs 60,000, provides free washing of sofa covers, curtains, bathroom tiles. Gifts them with 50,000 units of free electricity every year and provides them 4000 kilo liters of water to splurge where a good chunk of Indian population is struggling for these basic amenities of water, shelter, electricity and clothings. But probably our government's rationale lies in the premise that unless these ministers are well equipped how can they serve the people of their constituencies. So the current state of living of a common man proves that even with all these unimaginable amenities our ministers are still not well equipped. Alas!

And if we talk in terms of CTC or CTG (cost to government) for each of these ministers it will comfortably overshoot the Rs 60 lakh per annum mark and might even touch Rs 1 crore per annum peak. And if we compare these remunerations and perks globally, our ministers beat the CTG's of their counterparts in the most developed nations too. But on the flip side if we think that these democratically elected members of parliament bear the responsibility for a huge population of people and they take care of the well being of these huge population, they well and truly seem to deserve every ounce of it. In fact if we talk in corporate terms where a CEO of a multinational company who heads say approximately 1 lakh employees receives a renumeration of Rs 1 crore per annum on average, is considered to be well deserved pay package trade off. So by that logic what these ministers are getting is still below standards. After all these ministers are serving and are responsible for on average 50 lakh people vis-a-vis 1 lakh employees in case of a CEO, so by that logic these ministers should ideally receive 50 times that of what a CEO is receiving. But these logics and calculations are all of an ideal case scenario and a lot of star marked conditions apply to them. The CEO of a company invariably takes his company forward by leaps and bounds in terms of turn over and assets year on year basis, in a totally transparent and corruption free environment, which certainly is not the case with the ministers of our country. The ministers in India harp on the very principle of making as much wealth as they can in their tenure of 5 years by means of scams, scandals and corruption of all means and thereby they hardly contribute to a year on year growth, rather by doing so they push back the growth and development of our country every single year. And eventually all this raises eyebrows and questions over the rationale of such a huge salary hike for our ministers.

Though statistically it can be proved that the remunerations our ministers are getting is a well deserved pay off taking into account all the constraints. But these statistics,logics and constraints don't take into account the factors of performance and corruption and hence this is a flawed system. Nobody will question any amount of perk or hike being awarded to these ministers if they attach the attribute of 'Performance' and detach the vice of 'Corruption' from their biodatas but this seems to be a far stretched imagination. So what can work in such a scenario is a performance based pay package for ministers, but the setup and environs in which we live who will decide the parameters on which the performance will be adjudged, because in due course they(ministers) can frame, manipulate and corrupt even that to suit their benefits.

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