Of late, there is quite some hue and cry about pension and perks given to former Indian lawmakers mainly because they keep making laws for getting fatter salary and benefits every now and then.
Even the LAD funds scheme needs to be scrapped as there are allegations of the public money being abused and eaten up by unscrupulous MPs who constitute the majority. The Indians are now inspired by the Swedish political practices and culture. A May 2019 article by Claudia Wallin published in the Mail & Guardian makes clear how Swedish lawmakers, members of the executive and the judiciary are treated publicly: Sweden does not offer luxury or privileges to its politicians.
Without official cars or private drivers, Swedish ministers and MPs travel in crowded buses and trains, just like the citizens they represent.
Without any right to parliamentary immunity, they can be tried in a court of law like any other person. With no private secretaries at the door, their bare-bones parliamentary offices are as small as 8 metre square. The ordinary Swedish citizen too is conscious of the citizen’s rights as well duties.
“I’m the one who pays the politicians,” says Joakim Holm, an ordinary Swedish citizen, adding, “And I see no reason to give them a life of luxury.” Politicians, who dare to spend public money on taxi journeys instead of riding the train, end up on news headlines. Even the Speaker of Parliament receives a card to use the public transportation. Only the Prime Minister has the right to use a car from the security forces on a permanent basis. Swedish parliamentarians live in tiny apartments in the capital, where they wash and iron their own clothes in communal laundries.
This may seem meagre for such eminent people, but it actually is much better than it used to be. Until the end of the 1980s, all parliamentarians slept on sofa beds in their own offices.
No Swedish in public life earns a multi-digit salary which is considered obscene and horribly vulgar. The take-home pay of a member of the Riksdag (Parliament) is about two times more than that of an elementary school teacher.
At the municipal level, any desire to work in politics could be seen by their counterparts outside Sweden as a case for requiring psychological assessment: Swedish Councillors do not even earn a salary, nor do they have the right to an office. They work from home. Sweden’s experience subverts the unhinged concept that politicians should be accorded reverential treatment worthy of a higher caste, consisting of ladies and gentlemen who are more illustrious than the average citizen and therefore deserving of an almost divine right to benefits and privileges that those living below the political Olympus could never attain.
Sweden treats its government officials and political representatives as ordinary citizens. Formal titles of addresses have been abolished since the 1960s. Everyone is called simply ‘you’ and not ‘Sir or Your Excellency or Your Honour’.
According to the Swedish values system, nobody is above the ordinary citizen. The Swedish Ministers, including the PM, pushing shopping trolleys in supermarkets of Stockholm is common sight. The Stockholm Mayor is often seen standing in a queue at a bus-stop. The Parliament Speaker travelling in underground train goes invariably unnoticed. Sweden is undoubtedly a safer and less violent country than India. There, politicians and wealthy citizens alike do not travel in bullet-proof cars. Politicians, who remain in touch with the day-to-day realities and pains of citizens, get elected.
Politicians are not allowed to place their personal interests in any manner. Political power can be exercised only within the boundaries of decency. Even the judges of courts have no right to official cars, private secretaries or perks.
In Sweden, those in authority must be held accountable and all information has to be made freely available to the public. Swedish openness is reflected in the very transparency of political power, which is governed and monitored by the oldest transparency law in the world. Political corruption at any level is a rare phenomenon.
In 1766, the Swedish ordinary people’s access to Government documents became a Constitutional right for citizens. That got enshrined in a special chapter of the Swedish Freedom of the Press Act. It’s possible to trace the expenditure of Ministers, representatives and judges; to read the Prime Minister’s income tax declaration; to check the expenses of the National Police Commissioner or the Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces; to keep abreast with how public agencies are spending tax money; and to monitor the actions, motions and official decisions made by any of the kingdom’s authorities. One of the most emblematic political scandals of the country took place in the 1990s. Deputy Prime Minister Mona Sahlin bought a bar of chocolate, nappies and some other personal items with a Government credit card.
She had to pay dearly for the blunder. She lost her job. She became an ordinary citizen the next day, more ordinary because she was condemned for abusing public authority for private benefits. This scandal went down in the annals of Swedish political history as the Toblerone Case.In little over 100 years, Sweden transformed itself from an impoverished, agricultural society into one of the wealthiest, most socially just and least corrupt countries in the world, only because no public official is above the lowest-wrung ordinary citizen. India citizens went on fighting for the human right to information between 1948 and 2005.
Despite India having been a signatory to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948, the successive Indian Governments never gave citizens the right to know what was happening and how in the Government systems to keep citizens happy and without being robbed.
Over the years in India, a number of public interest litigation cases challenging the validity of pension benefits to Members of Parliament have come up before the Supreme Court. But the court finally sided with the lawmakers, saying salary, pension, allowances and such other issues are within the jurisdiction of the executive and not challengeable. From May 2009, former MPs, irrespective of the lengths of tenure, keep taking a pension of Rs 20,000 per month. Those who have enjoyed the royal life for more than five years receive an additional Rs 1,500 per month for every year they have been in Parliament.
These former MPs can travel free in AC first class of any train when travelling alone and in AC second class with a companion, both for free. On the demise of an ex-MP, their spouse or dependent receives a family pension which is half the pension to which the ex-MP was entitled.
Ex-MPs are also entitled to receive medical treatment under the Central Government Health Scheme. Lastly, they can borrow books from the Parliament library by paying a security deposit of Rs 500!
The shock part of the whole issue is the Supreme Court having sided with the political executive. No wonder, CJIs are rewarded Rajya Sabha membership. No mandatory cooling period applies to some self-serving law interpreters.