Should we give more
November 3rd, 2009
When did you guys last see party MPs cutting across party lines for anything? Let me refresh your memories. It was when they asked for a pay raise for themselves. Well, they have come together again. This time they want Member of Parliament Local Area Development Scheme (MPLADS) allocation to be increased from Rs 2 Crore per year to Rs 10 Crore per year. They say that they can’t achieve anything in this paltry amount. It’s far too less. I agree. You can’t really achieve much in just Rs 2 Crores. But no, I’m not in favor of giving any more money to these people either. The reasons are many.
Firstly, if the MPs find this amount to be quite less then how come there are nearly Rs 2200 Crores (as of September this year) lying unspent in this scheme? If they can’t utilize what they have I don’t think they have any right to ask for more. To further amplify this point check out the cumulative amount balance for some major states-
1. UP- 337 Crores
2. Bihar- 219 Crores
3. Maharashtra- 190 Crores
4. West Bengal- 177 Crores
5. Andhra Pradesh- 152 Crores
When I say cumulative amount I mean that these funds don’t get lapsed (Article 4.4 of Guidelines for Expenditure of this fund) which means if this money is not spent in any particular year it is carried forward to the next year and the next. It also means that even if the MP gets changed this money is allocated to the next MP. By analogy it means that this money has accumulated since December 93 when this scheme was initiated. It also means that it is not entirely the fault of current incumbents. All the MPs who have been elected ever since 1993 are to be blamed for this. You can get the figures for all the states on MPLADS page on the govt’s website. And please note that this includes Rajya Sabha MPs as well. Generally it’s the Lok Sabha MPs who get the brickbats on most occasions but in this case the other lot is also to be blamed equally if not more.
Secondly, it is an impractical preposition. Take a hypothetical example of a project which an MP wants to implement. The project costs Rs 5 Crore (Any decent work to be meaningful for a large population would surely cost more than Rs 2 Crore). So what does the MP do? He puts in Rs 2 Crore that he has and can ask the state govt to pitch in for the rest. Now if the MP is from BJP and the govt in the state is of Congress or vice versa you can be rest assured that this will not happen. Welfare of the people be damned. I mean politics does come before welfare. Doesn’t it? 
As a result most of this fund is quite likely getting used for doing small favors to people depending on their personal equation with the MP. And that’s a fact. Any one still feeling that this fund is being used in any other manner is just being naive.
Thirdly, putting so much money in the hands of one person can result in only one thing- CORRUPTION. 
Going by the reputation of our politicians this is more often than not the case. As a corollary the money which is actually used for the purpose it is meant for is negligible. To be precise it’s just 17% of the total allocation- Rajiv Gandhi and more recently even Rahul Gandhi have said as much. The rest goes into fulfilling the greed of stake holders which are far too many in any given enterprise. In fact quite a few scams related to this scheme have already come to light. So much so that if you type mplads in Google toolbar it will give you suggestions such as mplads fund, mplads.nic.in and mplads scam too. I must say that unlike our politicians Google is pretty efficient. And then they say they want more money which only means more CORRUPTION.
Fourthly, there are many states which have given similar powers to their MLAs. If funds for MPs get increased they too will ask for more. And that again means more CORRUPTION only.
Fifthly, this entire scheme actually bypasses the development agenda of powers that be. The govts carry out it’s development activities based on a plan which this scheme may or may not complement. In doing so it circumvents the executive branch of the administration which is wrong.
Quite frankly I haven’t seen this scheme making any material difference to the lives of the people in general wherever I have been to whereas it should have achieved a lot if our MPs sincerely wanted it to. I mean we are talking of tens of crores of money for each district of India, not counting what many MLAs are authorized. In my view we should learn from this experience and scrap this scheme. It’s just not worth it.
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November 5th, 2009 at 8:51 pm
The issue here is not just corruption. It is how each and every one of these mp connive to get money. Isn't CAG or CVC doing anything abt it? If not they should audit each and every one of these accounts.
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November 6th, 2009 at 2:31 pm
Give them more? Actually we should take it back from them. This money is only distributed amongst goons of these MPs who in turn give a portion of it back to MP. Even contracts for small works are only given after the MP has recieved his share. Close this scheme.
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