Letter from Delhi: No work and full pay for many MPs

Indian MPs are notorious for avoiding the House when their presence is most needed. The only time you see them present in strength is when they are up to some mischief - some headline-grabbing acrimony, pandemonium or a walk-out after a nasty argument with the treasury benches.

A meaningful debate over the state of the nation would invariably find the House nearly empty with the parliamentary affairs ministers often reduced to cajoling and coaxing the truant members gossiping in the Central Hall to return to the House in order to meet the minimum demands of quorum.

The story is the same in the case of various parliamentary committees which very conveniently meet during the inter-session period so that our leaders can help themselves to generous travelling and dearness allowances and enjoy the comforts of luxurious living at someone else's expense.

The interest of ordinary MPs is so low in matters of urgent concern to the national well-being that even when called upon to participate in deliberations with a bearing on important policy decisions they choose to play hookey.

The case in point is the meeting convened recently by the Commerce Minister Arun Jaitley of the consultative committee of MPs attached to his ministry to discuss the Indian stand at the upcoming meeting of WTO in Cancun, Mexico.

Of the 40-odd members of the parliamentary committee from both Houses, only one showed up 10 minutes after the scheduled time while another put in an appearance a good 20 minutes later.

All this while a retinue of officials, led by the Commerce Secretary Dipak Chatterjee, and, of course, the minister waited patiently. In fact, the minister is said to have joked with the lone member that if he had known that only he would show up he might have interacted with him in his chamber rather than waste everyone's time in convening a full-scale meeting in the Parliament House annex.

Though the couple of members who showed up were briefed about the Indian stand at the Cancun round of the WTO, expectedly, there was not much interaction, with members present expressing their confidence in the minister's ability to do full justice to the Indian cause.

Kanwal Sibal is unlikely to get the coveted post of India's Ambassador to the US when his present tenure as Foreign Secretary ends later this year. The term of the present incumbent in Washington, Lalit Mansingh, is due to end in March next year.

But the chances are that Sibal might get a few months' extension as FS so that a couple of senior claimants to head the Foreign Office are out of the way. India's ambassador to Spain, Dilip Lahiri, the senior-most IFS officer and a natural successor of Sibal, is being fobbed off with the post of Ambassador in Paris when the extended term of Savitri Kunnadi, ends in April next year.

Shansak Singh, at present Secretary, Economic Affairs in the MEA, too is unlikely to be made the FS and might find himself posted to a relatively minor mission abroad. The man most likely to become the next Foreign Secretary is P.K. Singh, now posted as our representative at the EU headquarters in Brussels.

The RSS generally does not interfere in the working of the BJP-led coalition in New Delhi, but when asked its opinion on matters of concerns to it, it does not hesitate in offering advice.

Thus it was that before the recent nominations to the Rajya Sabha, at the request of the PM and the Deputy PM, the RSS named Muzaffar Hussain, one of its senior members for nomination to the Upper House.

The long-term RSS member hailing from Mumbai is a regular writer in the saffron press, and could well have articulated the nationalist point of view in the Rajya Sabha. But senior RSS apparatchiks were shocked to find his name missing when the list of seven was announced for nomination to the House.

Instead a former communist who has now emerged as an entrepreneur-journalist was preferred over Hussain for nomination to the House of the Elders.

Meanwhile, since no Muslim figured in the list of the newly-inducted members, speculation is that the eighth nomination is being held in abeyance for a member of the minority community who is a woman to boot.