Black or White?

Black or White

As discussed in my previous post , I’ll now be writing a bit more about socio-economic issues.

And what better to write on than on our respected (ahem!) politicians.

Well, this post is not about my subjective views. This post is about knowing few facts about politicians i.e. criminal cases against them, their assets etc.

First a big disclaimer – all this data was obtained from a website called MyNeta.info. They have all the details about all the MPs and MLAs, their assets, details of the criminal cases, their education etc. I strongly recommend everyone to go this website and get to know more about politicians in respective constituency.

However, a big flaw – all this data is only a self-declaration by the politicians. So anything you see there is only what was disclosed. Hence, the situation is almost definitely grimmer than what this data reflects. Keep this in mind while reading through this data.

So lets get started:

I. Criminal Cases

A1. Of the total 543 MPs- 163 are facing criminal cases against them which makes 30% of the parliament

A2. Criminal Cases Party-Wise

This graph shows %age of MPs facing criminal charges

Some noteworthy points

• ·         Shiv Sena’s 9 MPs out of total 11 are facing criminal charges against them.
• ·         Congress looks cleaner than BJP on the basis of this data
• ·         CPM looks like cleanest of the lot
• ·         Of the smaller parties (not shown in the graph) – RJD, JD(S) and JMM have 75% (3 of 4),67% (2 of 3) and 100% (2 of 2)  resp. of MPs facing criminal charges

A3. Number of Criminal Cases

Now lets slightly dig down more on criminal charges. How about looking at number of criminal cases.

As discussed 163 MPs of 543 MPs are facing criminal charges.

Lets look at these numbers party wise-

Average number of cases per MP

SHS again tops the list with their MPs facing more than 4 cases against them on average

II.  Assets

Average assets of the MPs is INR 5.38 Crores

A1. Party-Wise Assets

Surprise Surprise!

Average Congress MP has an asset of 7.3 Crores. The cleanest party (CPM) is also the poorest

Average assets (in Crores)

A2. More Crime more assets?

This analysis might be a bit of overkill on data. But probably not.

So the question is-  Does crime pay – literally for Netas? From data it seems that if done in moderate proportions- it does. Again a disclaimer – these are criminal cases and not convictions.

Average Assets v/s Criminal Cases

Politicians having 6 criminal cases against them command more than 15 crore of assets each!

III. Education

More than one-fifth of our esteemed parliament is not even graduate. A quick fact – even for becoming a clerk, you need a graduation and pass a few exams. Imagine these MPs muscling their controls over highly educated and experienced IAS officers, CBI, policy makers and other Govt departments which require high competence and qualification!

My Conclusion

Though data still reflects majority (>50%) of politicians to be clean, educated with moderate wealth; given the fact that this is a self-declaration grossly undermines the actual wealth and unlawful activities conducted by them. Hence, I’d be safe in making the conclusion that -

Netagiri is perhaps the only profession where you don’t need any education, have criminal cases against yourself, have immense power, get to make laws, earn obscenely and still brag about doing a service to the nation!!