PUBLIC: Re: Just hit a GOLDMINE!!!

[Prabhu.Guptara]

     I understand the compunctions of those who feel that the interests of 
     teachers et al should have come before the interests of MPs.  
     
     However, I would have no compunction in supporting higher salaries for 
     MPs (as well as donations from rich and poor, industrialists and 
     academics, companies and individuals for their support) if I was 
     confident that their declared income was all they had AND that they 
     would act in the best interests of the country and the world, and not 
     act merely in their own interests and in the particular interests of 
     those who supported them. 
     
     No outside authority can guarantee this.  Only a person's own 
     conscience can guarantee this.  In the absence of this conscience, 
     this moral sense or moral structure, the highest possible salary will 
     not be adequate to prevent people making yet more money "on the side" 
     (in fact, it is usually people with the highest salaries who make the 
     most money on the side).
     
     Nor will publicisation of their "sins" make any difference, if 
     everyone else in the country is practising the same "sins", more or 
     less, there will be no sense of shame on the part of the perpetrators 
     and no motivation to act on the part of the public.
     
     As for whether MPs themselves should vote on such issues or a separate 
     panel, having a separate panel will ensure a certain degree of 
     objectivity, but it is always possible to tamper with such objectivity 
     through ensuring that the panel is staffed by people with the "right" 
     views.  A process, you will recollect, that Mrs Gandhi tried to get 
     under way with the judiciary as a whole, in order to tame the 
     judiciary and get it on her side.  So, the question is: who will 
     appoint the panel?  Who will be accountable and in what way for 
     ensuring that the person/people doing the appointing will be 
     objective, enlightened, fair and unselfish?
     
     You can go back and back and back, and create layers upon layers for 
     trying to build in objectivity, humanity, and unselfishness - but 
     these layers finally add only inefficiency.  Corrupt people will 
     corrupt any system.  This is what has happened to us since 
     Independence.
     
     Our political system was not badly designed at the time of 
     Independence.  The increasing corruption of our people increasingly 
     corrupted the system.
     
     One cannot IMO take a corrupt people and a corrupt system and try to 
     clean it up by tinkering with the system alone - though it is of 
     course necessary to get the best system that one can....
     
     Prabhu

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