MUMBAI -
Former Indian Law Minister Ram Jethmalani has a book
collection worth Rs 4 million (US$91,297). Mayawati, the
acerbic chief of the Bahujan Samaj Party is the daughter
of a lowly peon and belongs to the economically
marginalized Dalit caste. But she has in her name a
whopping Rs 97.8 million in different bank accounts. Ram
Naik has generally been considered that rarity - a
member of parliament with a clean image. Yet he owns a
house in south Mumbai worth Rs 6.3 million, from which
he earns a rental income of Rs 30,000 every month.
Jethmalani, Mayawati and Naik are among the
thousands of eager politicians vying for the 543 seats
in the Lok Sabha - lower house of the Indian parliament
- election campaigning for which is currently under way.
And these juicy tidbits about their personal wealth are
now in the public domain thanks to a recent diktat from
the Election Commission of India. Aspiring members of
parliament now have to declare via affidavits the
details of court cases pending against them as well as
the breakup of their and their spouse's movable and
immovable properties, including bank balances, financial
investments, real estate, vehicles and jewelry.
Local politicians have always been known to
hoard assets, to use a quaint Indian expression,
"disproportionate to their known sources of income".
Nevertheless, the novelty of the declarations and the
nuggets of trivia springing from them continue to be the
topic of conversation in many coffee shops. Thus,
Srikantadatta Narasimharaja Wodeyar is the richest
aspirant for a Lok Sabha seat, having declared assets
worth Rs 15.2 billion. The portly scion of the erstwhile
royal family of Mysore state in south India claims the
Mysore and Bangalore palaces among his personal
possessions. But the ownership of the two world famous
properties is under dispute and the matter is presently
before the Supreme Court of India. According to the
affidavit filed by the former prince, he also owns seven
other large properties in south India, including three
palaces.
The plunge from royalty to commoner is
sharp, with the next wealthiest, actor-politician Sunil
Dutt, declaring his total assets at Rs 220 million. A
two-time MP belonging to the Congress party, Dutt's
wealth is largely derived from some shrewd real estate
investments made when he was a popular film star of the
seventies. His party's president, Sonia Gandhi,
opposition leader in the last Lok Sabha and widow of
former Indian prime minister Rajiv Gandhi, pegs her
wealth at Rs 7.4 million. Among her assets are an
ancestral home in Italy, bank deposits, gold and silver
jewelry and two plots of land.
What has raised
eyebrows is the declaration by Rahul Gandhi, her son and
the Congress candidate from Amethi in Uttar Pradesh
state. He has made shrewd investments worth Rs 700,000
in the Indian money markets, owns jewelry worth Rs
125,000 and has deposited Rs 1.1 million in Indian banks
and about $65,000 in banks abroad. "All this while, we
were told that Rahul Gandhi is a student at Trinity
College, Cambridge. Then how did he acquire these
assets?" asks Bhavesh Sisodia, a Mumbai-based
office-bearer of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP),
which, till the Lok Sabha elections were announced, was
ruling in New Delhi.
But the BJP's leaders,
including some of the leading lights of the party, have
also not escaped scrutiny. Prime Minister Atal Bihari
Vajpayee's assets are worth over Rs 5.8 million. This
includes Rs 20,000 in cash and Rs 382,886 in a bank
account. He also has a term deposit account of Rs 2.5
million and has made investments worth Rs 120,782. He
owns a flat in New Delhi, worth about Rs 2.2 million. He
also has a share (worth Rs 600,000) in an ancestral
house in the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh.
Deputy Prime Minister L K Advani, often praised
for his modest ways, is worth Rs 11.8 million. External
Affairs Minister Yashwant Sinha's wife Nilima Singh owns
a house in New Delhi worth Rs10 million. She also has a
bank bond of Rs 800,000 and jewelry worth Rs150,000.
Minister for Non-Conventional Energy Sources Karia Munda
owns three buildings valued at Rs 1 million and
agricultural land worth Rs 450,000. Finally, Rabindra
Pandey, a MP belonging to the BJP, owns three apartments
in New Delhi and one each in the east Indian cities of
Patna, Kolkata and Ranchi.
There are similar
other surprises from the declarations of candidates
belonging to other parties. Wrestler-turned-politician
and Samajwadi Party leader Mulayam Singh Yadav owns land
worth Rs 3.1 million. Newspaper delivery
boy-turned-politician Vasant Davkhare, the NCP candidate
for Thane constituency, whose mother was a vegetable
seller even when he was the mayor of Thane, has declared
assets of Rs 31 million.
An interesting case is
that of underworld don-turned-politician Arun Gawli, who
is fighting as an independent candidate for the Mumbai
South Central seat. He has declared assets of Rs 20
million. A school dropout, Gawli has often been booked
on several cases of murder and extortion and even spent
a stint in Yervada Prison, four hours away from Mumbai.
Apart from land and investments in various financial
instruments, Gawli possesses ornaments valued at Rs 1.8
million, vehicles worth Rs 1.4 million and Rs 700,000 in
cash.
Three topics of conversation have
repeatedly turned out to be great ice-breakers at Indian
social gatherings: the performance of the national
cricket team, the off-screen sex lives of film stars and
corruption among the political class. "Apart from
providing great entertainment value, these net worth
reports have proved what we knew all along - our
politicians are among the most corrupt in our land,"
asserts Aveek Saha, a Pune-based collegian who has just
turned 18 and will be voting for the first time in his
life next week. "They do not earn great salaries, then
how do these politicians end up building such huge
assets?" he asks indignantly.
India has the
dubious distinction of figuring 83rd in the Global
Corruption Index, a survey of 133 nations recently
conducted by Transparency International. Media exposes
have often pointed fingers at the corrupt ways of Indian
politicians and some of the celebrated cases have even
gone to court. However, most of them have got entangled
in the over-burdened Indian judicial system and the
cases have dragged on for years. In the interim period,
some of the accused have died and the political careers
of others have run their natural courses. But in most
cases the politicians involved continue to enjoy the
fruits of office and, it is sniggered, do what they are
best at - making money by way of bribes and commissions.
It has now been 13 years since Rajiv Gandhi was
assassinated in a bomb blast, but the ghost of the
Bofors guns scandal continues to tarnish the former
prime minister's name as well as that of his Congress
party. The grandson of India's first prime minister was
alleged to have pocketed Rs 640 million by way of
commission from leading Swedish armaments manufacturer
Bofors AB. The jury is still out on that case. His
successor, Narasimha Rao, was hauled to the Indian
courts by Lakhubai Pathak, a London-based pickle
manufacturer, on charges of bribery. Pathak died last
year and Rao's political career is more or less
finished, but the case drags on in the courts.
Communications minister Sukh Ram fell from grace
in 1996 when federal authorities uncovered wads of
Indian currency totally worth Rs 350 million from under
his mattress. The money, it was alleged, was part of the
bribes paid by a leading New Delhi-based telecom
company. But Sukh Ram went on to float his own political
outfit, the Himachal Vikas Party, which in turn became a
key ally of the ruling BJP government in his home state
of Himachal Pradesh. Ram has now switched allegiance to
the Congress.
A R Antulay had to quit his chief
ministership of Maharashtra in 1982 after an intensive
campaign by the Indian Express newspaper proved that he
had accepted illegal political donations from Mumbai's
builder lobby. But the scandal did not finish his
political career and he is now the Congress candidate
for the Kolaba constituency in the ensuing Lok Sabha
elections. Former cine star Jayaram Jayalalitha made the
usual rounds of the courts after figuring in a series of
corruption-related cases but she is now the chief
minister of the south Indian state of Tamil Nadu.
Whenever an Indian politician is faced with
corruption charges, he always comes up with the favorite
line: all this is the handiwork of my political
opponents. This is the pat explanation that Laloo Prasad
Yadav, the silver-haired supremo of the Rashtriya Janata
Dal party gave to the press when he was accused in 1998
of siphoning out funds meant for cattle fodder in the
north Indian state of Bihar, of which Yadav was then the
chief minister. Yadav's is the perfect example of the
scant disregard that Indian politicians have for
corruption charges against them. He faced a short jail
term while the investigations were on. But in a brazen
act that had no parallels in India's political history,
he appointed his wife Rabri Devi, an illiterate mother
of 11, as the state's chief minister before setting off
for jail.
Yadav is now standing for elections in
the Madhepura constituency. This son of a poor farmer
has bank deposits worth Rs 500,000 against his name. His
collection of precious stones is worth Rs 25,000. In
addition, he owns jewelry worth Rs 28,000.
Housewife-turned-Chief Minister Rabri Devi, meanwhile,
owns 50 cows and 31 calves valued at Rs 520,000. The
reluctant politician also has bank deposits totaling Rs
400,000, jewelry worth Rs 260,000 and land estimated at
Rs 1.4 million.
In all these cases of asset
revelation, the initial disbelief gradually gave way to
extreme skepticism. Political pundits insist that most
candidates have grossly under-declared their assets. It
is a well-known fact that in order to escape scrutiny,
many politicians transfer their assets to the names of
their kith and kin. It is believed that the Yadav kids
own assets totaling Rs. 9 million. Others appoint close
political associates as benami (bogus) owners of
their properties or businesses. Thus, the owner of a
well-known chemical firm is believed to be fronting for
an important politician who has often played key roles
both at the state and central levels.
The
affidavits also fall short of presenting the correct
picture because in many cases the politicians have
declared the purchase prices of their real estate
possessions and not their higher, prevailing market
rates. This is particularly true in metropolises like
Mumbai some areas of which fetch the highest real estate
prices in the world. Doubting Thomases point out the
case of Manohar Joshi, who came to the city in 1951 as
an impoverished lad of 14 and later rose to become an
important leader of the local Shiv Sena party, mayor of
Mumbai, chief minister of Maharashtra, the country's
minister for heavy industries and public enterprises and
finally, the speaker of the Lok Sabha.
Alongside
his political career, the witty Joshi made a name for
himself as the owner of the Kohinoor Technical Institute
(KTI), which has branches all over the city imparting
technical education. He is now seeking re-election from
the Mumbai North Central constituency and has declared
as his assets eight properties in Mumbai's prime areas
of Worli, Dadar and Matunga, totally valued at Rs 26.4
million. "Nearly every KTI branch is a three-storied
structure. His property in up-market Worli alone must be
worth around Rs 12 million," says political analyst
Deepak Marathe.
Congress leader Salman Khurshid
has, after a great deal of prodding, partly spilled the
beans on how his fraternity goes about making such
obscene amounts of money. "There is no real source of
income in politics, so most try to find opportunities of
becoming sleeping partners in businesses, or own petrol
pumps, or are obliged by the private sector," Khurshid
has been quoted as saying. And then, as expected, he
defends politicians by saying, "How can you blame them?
A politician's legitimate source of income is a pittance
compared to his counterpart in any other profession."
He is partly right. On paper at least, the
salary of an Indian MP is only Rs 12,000 per month. But
add the various allowances and privileges he enjoys, and
a MP's take-home every month ends up exceeding that of
even a senior-level manager of a multinational
corporation. Every MP gets Rs 20 million per annum
ostensibly for development work in their constituency.
The government takes care of all medical expenses. An MP
is entitled to free air travel in business class, three
telephone connections and a fully furnished bungalow.
He/she gets a daily allowance of Rs 500 for attending
parliamentary sessions and a monthly constituency
allowance of Rs 10,000. Finally, the privileges extend
beyond an MP's tenure in the form of a monthly pension
of a minimum of Rs 3,000 (the amount can increase,
depending on the number of years the MP has put in as a
people's representative in parliament).
Of
course, nowhere on paper are the intangible benefits of
being a politician mentioned. These include lobbying for
moneyed groups and getting legislation enacted in their
favor. Then there is the advantage of getting your near
and dear ones appointed on lucrative government
corporations and committees, both at the central and
state levels.
With all of these resources to
make money on the side at their disposal, the figures
declared by the politicians seem highly unrealistic.
Nevertheless, the common Indian feels that making it
mandatory for Lok Sabha candidates to declare their
assets is a good first step towards bringing greater
probity in public life.
It is now important for
taking the process forward and as a next step, perhaps
the next time around, the asset figures should be
cross-checked by the Election Commission so that their
veracity is established. Only then will the Indian
politician stop taking the rest of his countrymen for an
unnecessary and long ride.
(Copyright 2004 Asia
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