Misuse of privilege

It is not without reason that the world despises politicians. Often, to put a nice spin on it, they are very badly morally challenged. Even so, Babubhai Katara, the BJP MP who was trying to smuggle out a woman and her son on his wife's passport""a diplomatic one to boot""must stand in a class of his own. True, compared to the murderers, rapists and money launderers who have been given tickets by different political parties and been helped by them to get elected to Parliament, a "mere" human trafficker is not very high in the food chain. Nevertheless, the sheer effrontery of it has riveted the nation's attention on what has become an endemic problem: VCPs, or Very Crooked Persons. Since they can be found across party lines""if investigated properly, even the holier-than-thou Communists might throw up a few rotten eggs""there is clearly a systemic problem which only the political parties can solve.

There are three clear elements in the problem. The first is misuse of privilege. It was the Narasimha Rao government that decided in 1994 to give in to the MPs' demand that they should have diplomatic passports. There is absolutely no reason for this, especially because most of them refuse to surrender their dippy passports even after ceasing to be MPs. Further, given how servile government officials can be when faced with superiors, MPs almost without exception bully the lower functionaries around. That is probably the main reason why Mr Katara and his companions were not properly scrutinised. An MP and that too a diplomatic passport""which junior government employee would want to challenge that? So follow-up action number one: don't give diplomatic passports to MPs in the future.

The second element is the manner in which political parties abandon their MPs to their fate once they have been elected. Most MPs and MLAs are not persons of substance. They find it impossible to make both ends meet because their constituency-related costs can be enormous. Their voters turn up in Delhi and expect to be looked after""for weeks sometimes. The same thing happens in the constituencies as well. Indian political parties have not put in place any system for defraying these costs. While they do collect a lot of money, especially while in power, it is usually cornered by a handful of people. This makes the MPs, especially the first-timers, very vulnerable to temptation. The cash-for-questions episode some years ago, again involving the BJP, was a case in point. So follow-up action number two: institute a system of party salary, like the Communists.

The third element of the problem is the criterion that political parties now use for selecting candidates: winnability. As long as they think that the person will win, they ignore all other criteria""such as moral standing, antecedents, education etc. This unhealthy practice has led to all kinds of crooks and criminals entering the legislatures. No party is blameless in this. So follow-up action number three: withdraw the ticket if official or independent investigators reveal that the candidate is a crook and give it to a clean (not less crooked) persons. A single criterion like winnability will always create problems.