Politicians and Paise-Pinching

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In this period of competitive austerity, there can be nothing more tiresome than a sanctimonious politician. With netas now offering to travel in the cargo holds of aircrafts to save money, a senior minister called up to say," I haven't taken salary from the government of India for the last five years, what greater evidence can there be of my commitment to austerity!" The minister, of course, forgot to add that such is his personal wealth that a government salary was loose change that he could easily forego.

Unfortunately, in the cacophony over our netas' flying preferences, we're ending up engaging in almost farcical paise-pinching. The fact is that if the government and the Congress party is serious about curbing expenditure in times of drought, then flying cattle (sorry, aam admi) class on a low cost airline is hardly the answer. The saving of a few thousand rupees is the kind of effete tokenism we seem to specialize in as a nation. It might make a juicy news headline, but will do little for the financial bottomline.

If Dr Manmohan Singh - himself almost Gandhian in his habits -- was really serious about tightening the sarkari belt then he should begin by downsizing government. After all, why does he need a 78 member council of ministers, including as many as 38 ministers of state, many of whom have virtually no work? Cutting his ministry by half will be a much bigger saving than ensuring that ministers don't lunch at five star hotels.

Moreover, the real hidden costs confronting a government don't come from five course lunches, but from the corruption that is endemic to the state system. If Dr Singh was truly serious about austerity, why doesn't he sack those in government who stand accused of corruption? Why, for example, does a Buta Singh remain the chairman of the SC/ST commission even after the CBI arrested his son for abusing his father's position to amass crores? Why does a minister who is accused of manipulating spectrum allocation continue to retain his ministry?

Then there are those who believe that government privileges are lifelong entitlements. Why, for example, does a Ram Vilas Paswan continue to occupy prime property in the heart of Lutyensland more than four months after his party drew a blank in the Lok Sabha polls? A recent RTI petition revealed that as many as 14 defeated MPs, including eight ministers, from the previous Lok Sabha continue to occupy their bungalows. Why doesn't the prime minister's office act against these unauthorized squatters? Or, for that matter, against those who insist on making lavish renovations to their government houses in violation of all laws?

Downsizing government, acting against the corrupt and snatching away the privileges of the political elite require courage and conviction, qualities that often go missing when confronted with the compulsions of coalition politics. Forcing S.M.Krishna and Shashi Tharoor to vacate their five star hotels, on the other hand, was always the soft option. Neither of them can remotely be described as a mass politician, one a dinosaur, the other a debutante MP , both of whom were easy targets for a political leadership determined to make a point.

In a sense, both Krishna and Tharoor represent a certain class of elite English-speaking politicians who are now an endangered species. One, a tennis-playing Fulbright scholar, who even as chief minister of Karnataka was accused of being partial to Bangalore's beautiful people. The other, a 'twittering' former UN diplomat-novelist who is already a posterboy for the capital's chattering classes. Their 'crime' isn't that they were staying in a five star hotel for the last three months: after all, there is no evidence of their having used public money for the luxury. Their failing, perhaps, is that their lifestyle was seen as symbolic of a certain social elitism which a class-conscious Indian political system is still uncomfortable with.

A Mayawati, for example, can still get away with her grotesque exhibition of opulence (notice how she hasn't said a word on the austerity debate) because she has been successfully projected as a 'Dalit ki beti' whose wealth makes her an aspirational symbol for an entire community. However, an upper class, anglicised politician remains vulnerable to the anger and resentments of those who still see wealth in terms of a class war. In politics, perceptions do matter, and in the Indian context, a neta must always project a certain common man's touch, which is negated by the extravagance of living in the presidential suite of a five star hotel. The 'privacy' argument simply doesn't hold. Once you are in public life, your private realm is no longer clearly delineated.

One contemporary elite politician who has realized this better than most is the Orissa chief minister, Naveen Patnaik. The Doon school-educated urban sophisticate who lived on plush Aurangzeb road, night clubbed in New York with Jackie Onassis and Gore Vidal, wrote books on herbs and gardens and relished his smoke and scotch, is now transformed into a tough and rooted regional satrap. When in Delhi, he stays at Orissa Bhavan, hasn't traveled abroad since becoming chief minister, will happily entertain tribal dancers from his state and is always seen in public in a crumpled kurta-pajama. He may still drink the finest chota pegs in private, but in public he is what his followers want to see him as: an austere, committed mass leader.

Austerity, in that sense for a true Indian politician, is not so much about which class you fly by, which gym you visit and which hotel you stay in:it is about consciously shedding a certain elitism that can at times be incongruous in a country where a majority of the people still struggle at subsistence level.

Post-script: Maybe, some of our 'austere' Indian netas need to follow the British example where in the past few months over a dozen MPs have been forced to resign for claiming all kinds of 'allowances', including mortgages of second homes, maintaining housekeepers, cleaning swimming pools, buying chandeliers and - in one case - putting up the family in a hotel. If that principle of accountability was followed, many of our MPs would be forced out of office!