A Member of Parliament has a salary that is only slightly more than he would pay his driver or cook. But, add up constituency allowances, free telephone calls, free travel, free electricity and free accommodation in the best part of Delhi and a single honourable MP ends up costing taxpayers more than Rs 32,00,000 a year. With millions of their constituents on the verge of starvation, our MPs must be made to give up their perks. And, if Soniaji can persuade those who live in bungalows in Lutyens’ Delhi, on land that is worth more than Rs 100 crore an acre, to move to lesser dwellings, she would have made a revolutionary change in our ‘socialistic’ political culture. There is not another country in the free world that reserves its most expensive real estate for the exclusive use of its officials.

There is probably no other country either that allows government to make such wasteful use of public land. Think of the absurdity of a government dairy farm sitting on land worth hundreds of crore rupees an acre on Mumbai’s Worli sea face. Think of how much land the railways occupy without making commercial use of it or how much is reserved for the defence services and you begin to get the picture. If all this land was used more sensibly by government, it would release hundreds of thousands of crore rupees that could be invested in irrigation so that we never need to fear another failed monsoon.

NDTV had a heartbreaking story from Sonia Gandhi’s constituency last week of a village that is on the verge of starvation although it sits on the edge of a river. All it needs is the smallest investment for water from the river to be made available for irrigation but this small investment has never been made in the most VVIP parliamentary constituency in India. If we cannot prevent the ravages of the drought from affecting people in Rae Bareli, how can we begin to think of doing it in lesser places?

On account of a very bad policy decision made by P.V. Narasimha Rao, our legislators now have huge constituency allowances. Ask any honest MP and he will admit that at least half of this money ends up in his pocket. This theft of money meant for ‘development’ is so easy that smaller political parties make a practice of giving tickets at election time to those who can pay for them from their constituency allowances. Is it possible in these times of drought to ensure that MPLAD (MP’s local area development) funds are spent on irrigation schemes? Can we do the same with employment offered under NREGA? It is beyond shameful that after 62 years of Independence, the vast majority of our farmers continue to be so dependant on the monsoon.

It is even more shameful to hear the stories of farmers’ lives that TV channels bring us from areas of drought. Shameful that most Indian farmers live at such a subsistence level that one bad season can destroy their lives. What happened to all those wondrous schemes that were supposed to have brought food processing and other industries to rural India? What happened to all those plans to help farmers get out of the trap of subsistence farming by offering them better opportunities?

A drought year is a mirror in which we see the face of the Indian state. How sad that in that mirror we see only broken promises, failed anti-poverty schemes and an absence of investment in agriculture that amounts to criminal neglect. The only good that can come from this drought is if we manage to force the Government of India to acknowledge the failures and do something permanent to rectify them. So, well done, Sonia Gandhi, for talking of the need for sacrifice, but we need more. We need to ensure that wasteful public expenditure is curtailed so that the money saved can be spent where it is really needed today. Irrigation. Unlike when there was that last bad drought in the eighties, there is plenty of money available today. It must be spent on more than just temporary drought relief.