Corrupt MP or BIMARU MP?

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Gosh, what a turbulent winter session of parliament! First the drama over the Volcker Committee report and the exit of Natwar Singh. Then the daily walkouts over the NDA's ridiculous demand for the resignation of Sonia Gandhi. Then Operation Duryodhana, showing MPs taking cash to ask questions in parliament.

Then the bomb scare, followed rapidly by yet another sting operation on MPs allegedly doing crooked things with the money given to them to engage in development work. Phew! Enough to send any MP scurrying for his afternoon siesta.. And now the Pawan Bansal Committee inquiring into the "cash for questions" scam after some foot-dragging and first-lets-see-the-tapes type stalling tactics, has at last come out with a report apparently suggesting expulsion of the 10 MPs.

But here's the tickling question, though. Are those who accepted money for asking questions the villains of our national life? Are they devils from the deep sea, monsters of depravity, immoral creeps, slithery snakes gnawing away at moral values, whose only aim is to bring down our noble legislature? Or are they simply representatives of the BIMARU (Bihar Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh) states, for whom politics, is clearly not about public service the way the educated middle class understands it, but in fact a way of lifting themselves (and their extended families) out of poverty and unemployment. When unemployment is a raging epidemic, isn't politics often the only job available?

Operation Duryodhana is undoubtedly a worthy exercise in exposing corruption in parliament. But lets examine sting operations a little. The difficulty with sting operations is that they violate one basic rule of journalism: providing the context to every truth. Students of History know that context is everything. But sting operators don't care about context. Sting operators are generally canny businessmen on the look out to "fix" someone in order to sell their product to the highest bidder in the media market.

As media becomes big business, naturally there will emerge ancillary industries to serve this mega business and sting operations is one such ancillary industry. The real problem with this ancillary industry is that it needs constant "targets" , "targets" devoid of context, "targets" who must always be important or semi-important people doing shady things on the hidden camera for the few seconds that the camera catches them doing so. The rest of the person's life, his daily realities, the pressures on his job, the background from which he comes, the circumstances before and after he was filmed, are all nullified by that one overpowering single image captured on grainy film in the button camera.

Thus the reasons why Chhatrapal Singh Lodha of the BJP for example (suspended from the Rajya Sabha) took the money are not examined. The only thing we see is someone stretching out his greasy hand for cash and the media screaming, "corrupt MP, corrupt MP, hang him! hang him!" Hang on, folks. Isn't this anarchism? Isn't there a lynch mob mentality at work here? A country that hates its MPs is in danger of falling into a dangerously dictatorial state of mind where the next step might be, (hypothetically speaking) to demand that the army tosses out the cabinet, winds up parliament and rules from the barracks. My old fashioned argument is this: sting operations encourage journalistic and social normlessness, sting operations are the preferred media option for those with attention deficiency syndrome. Perhaps for these very reasons, sting operations always bring big bucks.

So lets tell you what the sting operations didn't tell you.Who were the 11 MPs caught taking cash on camera? Only four of them are graduates. BJP's YG Mahajan has a Bachelor's in Education. Three of them dropped out before their matriculation. However the BJP's Anna Patil has a Masters in Chemical Engineering as well as a degree from Louisiana State University.Four of them got elected to the Lok sabha for the first time in 2004. BJP's YG Mahajan and Chandra Pratap Singh got elected in the last polls in 1999 as well. Chatrapal Singh got elected to the Lok Sabha in 1996. What are the amounts offered to them? Four of these MPs_that is, BJP's YG Mahajan and Chandra Pratap Singh and BSP's Lal Chandra and Raja Ram Pal received thirty five thousand each. And the BJP's Pradeep Gandhi and BSP's Narendra Kumar Kushwaha both received Rs 55,000 each. BJP's Anna Patil asked for 45,000 to raise 15 questions. A fairly sizeable percentage among them are dalits, OBCs and adivasis. The most interesting thing about them is that 5 of them are from the BIMARU states. The other fact about them of course is that they are ignorant of Tom Wolfe and JD Salinger. Shock and horror! Don't they read Salinger in rural Madhya Pradesh anymore? Oh no! How disappointing.

In fact they don't read too much of anything in rural Madhya Pradesh. Nor are there any jobs available for young people to aspire to, so whats the point of reading? Nor is there any drinking water, no medicines for the sick and long queues for daily services. The fact is that, politics is the only avenue, the only means of tremendous upward mobility in those huge vast desperate tracts of our country. Former Maharashtra chief minister, Sushil Kumar Shinde, was a constable in a court. His dalit gradfather had to hide in the shadows lest he pollute the upper castes of the area. But thanks to Indian political system, for better or for worse, Shinde is now Andhra Pradesh governor. Vasundhara Raje may be the chief minister of Rajsthan today but her predecessor was none other than Ashok Gehlot who comes from the mali caste and whose father was a village magician.

So, yes, many of our MPs haven't read Tom Wolfe and many stretch their hands out for money but to understand why they act as they do, its important not to yell "villain!" every time we see a netaji, but to understand the circumstances in which they have joined the political system. Visit an MP's home and you'll see a curious sight. The rooms and verandahs are bursting with constituents, each seeking favours, each being fed with endless cups of tea, samosas (and other fried stuff) and many provided with beds to sleep in or being dropped to various bud stops and stations. An MP's home is a dharamshala for his hometown and he must, if he is seeking to retain his seat, keep everybody happy. The sheer hospitality expenditure an MP is expected to shoulder is massive. Those who are better incorporated in the establishment have discreet ways in getting corporate houses to foot their travel bills or hiding the fact that questions on HIV AIDs often get asked because of facilities offered by a range of donor agencies and corporate houses. But for the MPs of "Un-Incorporated India", there is no social access to the more sophisticated sources of money.

So of course its important that the tainted MPs are brought to justice, that they are punished for what they did, that they are made an example of how parliamentary behaviour should be above influence. But while they are being spurned, banned or expelled, perhaps we might also remember that the reason why they took the cash is not simply because they are Politicians therefore Bad People but also because they are poor vulnerable and socially excluded and not invited to the same glittering gatherings where some of the far bigger deals are struck.