Corruption development schemes

highest bidder. Candidates are chosen not for their ability to win but their ability to pay the party boss a satisfactory sum of money. I first heard this story a few months ago and discounted it. But too many people have come back with it now for it not to be true.

So as an investigative columnist and in the interests of the 8216;aam aadmi8217; , I spent some time last week finding out how much a prospective MLA was prepared to pay for a ticket to run.

When my inquiries revealed that prospective members of the UP Assembly were prepared to pay between Rs 25 lakh and Rs 40 lakh for a ticket, I asked why. How much did they expect to make on this investment and how? I directed my inquiries to an UP politician from a national rather than a local, caste-based party, and he was puzzled by my questions.

8220;Don8217;t you know that the money will be made back in the first year itself out of the MLALADS money? Out of the Rs 1 crore we get in a year, it is estimated that on average around 40 per cent disappears. You do the math.8221;

I did. And would like to humbly urge the prime minister to seriously consider abolishing both the MP and MLA local area development schemes. They were born out of the cynicism of a prime minister who needed all the support he could get to keep his minority government alive. MPs wanted money to spend on 8216;development8217; in their constituencies and he wanted their votes in Parliament so he gave them what they wanted.

Once MPs got their money, MLAs could not be left behind, and so the scheme was widened to include them. Thousands of crores of rupees in taxpayers8217; money is now allocated for 8216;development8217; schemes that our elected representatives choose. Usually, personal aggrandisement is more of a motive than public good.

A whole new stratosphere of corruption has come into being. Today, these schemes are such a vital source of political and private funds that it is not going to be easy to persuade our legislators to give them up. But they must be persuaded that Veerappa Moily8217;s recently released report on administrative reform is among those that recommends these schemes be abolished.

The report, sadly, seems to be more about political rather than administrative reform, but if the prime minister accepts only this one recommendation, he would be doing a huge service to the nation.

It is my humble view that abolishing the schemes that give our legislators control over increasingly large sums of money will have instant beneficial effects. We will, to begin with, get politicians who are more interested in public service than commercial activity, and that alone would be a blessing of immeasurable proportions.

I write this piece after wandering about small towns in Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh and brooding over how ugly, unplanned and dirty they are and how the countryside in between looks only slightly better because of green fields and the gold of mustard in flower.

Look closer, though, and you see piles of rotting garbage on the edge of green fields that grow ever larger and less bio-degradable because of the ubiquitous plastic bags. These problems would not exist if our elected representatives were more public spirited.

Other salutary effects would follow. In a country like ours where basic amenities of the 21st century do not yet exist, development issues are too serious to be trifled with. We cannot afford schools and hospitals that exist in name only, we cannot afford to build roads that exist mostly on paper.

All of this happens because the wrong kind of people are being drawn into the cesspool that the Indian political system has become. They are mostly people who recognise that it is easier to make money out of a political career than any other line of business.

Before the schemes for local area development were introduced, it was not quite so easy to make an instant fortune in public life. You needed to be a minister, you needed a deal or two to pick up your commission. These schemes give corruption an entirely new dimension since they enable our elected representatives to start looting us from the moment they enter a legislature. Development funds must go back where they belong 8212; in the hands of government.