it. One more thing: they want their annual quota of free telephone calls to be increased from 50,000 to 100,000. Last but not least, they want car loans for diesel cars at 5 per cent rate of interest. (This last will ensure that diesel prices never go up). Add to this free housing and it turns out that an MP may well cost the taxpayer anything up to Rs 1 lakh per month.
Too much? Who'll pay? This newspaper believes that if this is what it costs, this is what the MPs must get. But the total figure should be transparent and made clear to everyone, not dressed up in the subterfuge of various allowances. The same thing, when practised by the private sector, has been condemned as corporate rascality, which is why there are practically no allowances now which are not taxed. The same rule should apply to MPs as well, so that they cannot claim they are underpaid.
Some of the cost of MPs should be borne by their respective parties (as in the case of the two communist parties) because a good bit of what they do is not government work but mostly party work and, therefore, cannot be charged to the taxpayer. As for parliamentary work, this is already charged to the expenses of various committees and sub-committees. The advantage of getting the parties to pay is that they will grade the payments. A party high command, unlike the government, can be a better judge of which MP should get how much, depending on how active and useful he or she is.