EDITS | Friday, November 6, 2009 | Email | Print | 
Nepotism as embezzlement
Sunanda K Datta-Ray
All those tales of how frankly Devi Lal justified promoting his son also promoted the view that nepotism is an Asian vice. China’s ‘princelings’ dominated the news until the world tired of a phenomenon that explains the political succession from Syria to North Korea. But India is still thought to offer the ultimate example of family solidarity.
It now looks as if Britain might steal our laurels. Oh, there’s no equivalent yet of the Nehru-Gandhi clan or of the dynasties that assume an unquestioned right to power in some States. But as an addict of historical trivia, I remember my schoolboy surprise on reading that when England’s 16th century Queen Mary Tudor asked the Holy Roman Emperor who she should marry, the Emperor replied he loved no one better than his son, Philip of Spain, whom she subsequently married. The reply made clear that Devi Lal did not invent the ‘blood is thicker than water’ concept or saying. Men of power acted on that principle centuries before Haryana existed as such.
So, it should not occasion surprise that about 200 members of Britain’s House of Commons employed their wives, husbands, children and other relatives on their official staff, their wages being paid by the state. That may have nothing to do with the disclosure that MPs’ staff costs went up by eight per cent to £ 59.96 million in 2008-9. But the parliamentary expenses scandal makes it impossible not to link the two.
This aspect of the controversy came to light when it transpired that Mr Tony McNulty, a former Minister in the Home Office, who represents the London suburb of Harrow East, but whose ‘main’ residence is in London, claimed expenses for a second home in his constituency. Harrow East being only eight miles from his London home, there was no need to maintain a second home there at the taxpayer’s expense. He could have taken a taxi whenever he wished to attend to his constituents.
What made matters worse was that though Mr McNulty claimed £ 72,500 for the Harrow house between 2002 and 2008, he did not spend more than 66 nights there in a year. Finally, and to everyone’s outrage, his elderly parents lived in the house free of rent. Mr McNulty, who has issued what many regard as a grudging token apology (one columnist called it a “pseudo-apology”), would disagree. He maintains he did nothing wrong, and Prime Minister Gordon Brown supports him.
In India, he would qualify as a dutiful son. But the House of Commons Committee on Standards and Privileges says he breached official rules for “subsidising the living costs” of his parents. The Parliamentary Commissioner, Mr John Lyon, thinks it inappropriate for an MP to subsidise the living arrangements of anyone other than a wife, husband, partner or children under the age of 18 who still live at home. That was the principle we grew up with. We travelled free on my father’s railway pass until the age of 18 when we were no longer deemed dependants.
I remember that when my grandmother came to stay with us, my father paid back to the old East Indian Railway a small portion of the notional rent for the bungalows to which he was entitled and where we lived in Benares, Lucknow and Kanchrapara. His rationale was that he was in effect subletting a portion of the Government property that had been assigned to him. While he, as son-in-law, may have owed a duty to my grandmother, the Government did not.
Such hair-splitting accounting may have been rare even then; it would be very strange, indeed, to find it today in Lutyens’ Delhi where Ministers and civil servants and their extended families occupy official bungalows.
True, no British MP has as yet been accused of renting out a portion of his official accommodation as some Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha members have been known to do. But several allowed grown-up daughters, all professional women, to stay on without paying any rent in houses for which they claimed expenses. One MP, Mrs Julie Kirkbride, asked for and received permission to extend her flat in a Georgian country house and increase her mortgage for her “growing family”. She used the money to build a separate bedroom for her brother who lives rent-free in the extended flat. It sounds like adding a barsati in Delhi except that Mrs Kirkbride’s flat is in a gracious mansion set in rolling lawns.
The question of employing spouses and children is more complex. Some wives and daughters are trained office workers. Some have given up other jobs to work for the related MP. Asking them to quit recalls Mrs Indira Gandhi demanding querulously why Sanjay should be penalised — meaning denied the business opportunities he sought — for being her son. In Britain, Lady Thatcher similarly felt her son was discriminated against.
An MP’s wife pointed out another dimension of the controversy. If she had just been living in sin (“shacked up” was the phrase used) with him instead of being bound in holy matrimony, there would have been no objection to her working as his secretary. Some partners — the contemporary word for a live-in girl friend or what would once have been called a ‘mistress’ — do, indeed, work in MPs’ offices. No one accuses them of corruption. Being married makes the difference.
Some of these aggrieved wives are working on a scheme to find a way round the difficulty. Their spouses will swap wives. It’s not quite as titillating as it may sound for all it means is that each working wife will work for an MP who is not her husband. It might work in some cases but it all depends on finding enough people with matching jobs to change with. Obviously, changes will have to match not only personality but also party: A Tory MP’s wife cannot work for a Labour member. They must both hold similar jobs to exchange. Geographic convenience is an important factor. Even if all the out of work wives are catered for, there will still remain the husbands, children and more distant relatives who work for MPs.
It’s a difficult matter that the law cannot solve. The British dilemma confirms that civilisational values alone can decide when family loyalty ceases to be a virtue and becomes a form of embezzlement.
sunandadr@yahoo.co.in
Email | Print | Rate:
|