Moonlighting in Politics

Rishad Premji started a debate in India on Moonlighting. He went further and sacked 300 members for moonlighting thus sending a strong message to those who want to do dual employment.  The IT companies who gave the opportunity to employees to pursue moonlighting were the ones who were impressed with the enormous savings to the bottomline from WFH. Many of them did not even renew the leases of the buildings they were renting. While others are debating the ethics question in the IT Industry, on twitter, many have questioned why this restriction is being imposed on them but elected representatives do not have this restriction.  A Twitter user, withthenation questioned “A govt.dr is banned from doing #moonlighting or private practice but a  politician can run their own companies, act in movies, practise the law, be acting CEO&MD of listed companies while taking Salary from GOVT”. 

Interesting question which heroes in many movies have also asked. Very rarely do we see a movie/tv serial showing an honest politician. It always shows the common man rising against the corrupt politician. It reflects the people’s perception of a politician. Politicians are also active businessmen. They further their businesses and enact laws to that purpose. The founding fathers of the constitution had seen freedom struggle being a Calling and rightfully believed that Public Service could be a calling. They never believed that an elected representative would have time for moonlighting but the majority of politicians come into politics only to become rich through exploiting their position. For their business is prime and public service is secondary. No wonder we hardly find any inspiring speeches in parliament from any MP.  Bal Gangadhar Tilak realized that the biggest problem with the British s that the rulers were also traders and hence they adopted policies that would maximize their profits. We are finding same situation where the rulers are pursuing policies that favor their kith and kin. 

In Indian democracy, you need to have hundreds of crores to get a MP seat. Since only a rich person can become MP, it totally cuts off the middle class from electoral representation. Only a few parties have middle class politicians. These elected representatives focus initially on recovering their election costs & save for the next election. The rest is lifelong profits for them. They not only exploit natural resources, but also grab them for 35/99 years long term leases and also force bankers to lend to their kith & kin and carefully ensure the bankruptcy of the firm to pocket that money. So what is the full time duty of an elected representative remains an unanswered question. In a telugu movie "Sarkaaru Vaari Paata", the hero Mahesh Babu finds that politicians with NPAs do not repay even the interest on their bank loans and that half of that unpaid bank loan goes to party fund. Hence no institution focuses on recover and instead writes it off. This practice has now been substituted with electoral bonds. 

A government employee has to resign from his job if he wants to join politics. Yet a private business running person does not have to resign his board position or managing director business. Infact many elected representatives proudly chair their listed company board meetings  & when they give advertisements, they add members of parliament too. Since all politicians do this, no party objects. Some continue their law practice while some continue their services sector &some, even act in movies. This is even more pronounced in Rajya Sabha. No wonder, the attendance and performance of these MPs in parliament is hardly negligible but who cares. No constituency voter so far has questioned ever his elected representative’s contribution to parliament. 

There hasn’t been much study on the impact of moonlighting on Indian Politics. Globally, only Europe allows private practice by elected representatives but North America does not allow the same. In the USA, the elected Congress members or Senators are not allowed to do any outside work which is paid. Some other countries like Canada too have these restrictions.  Since our founding fathers followed the European Constitution, they seem to have not adopted the American constitution in this regard. 

Even in exceptional cases, the outside income is restricted to 15% of annual salary. Board memberships also cannot be paid in the case of U.S. elected representatives and all side jobs need to be shared with the U.S.Ethics body. They are also not allowed to take up lobbying activities for a certain period. With increasing technology access, it has become easy for politicians to manage two vocations. Hence even European countries are coming up with restrictions on moonlighting. 

In France, there is a separate body called “The High Authority for Transparency in Public Life”. Elected Representatives have to declare their interests. Even in India, elected representatives have to declare their business interests and they openly do so that their source of income apart from Salary from Parliament is business too.  The Election Commission of India does not reject such affidavits despite open declaration of dual incomes. Most of the top leaders of India have declared their sources of income from salary as a politician apart from rental, dividends & agriculture income. These are Ethical affidavits but many with businesses openly declare their source of income as business even in their second term of election. This clearly indicates that even after election, the elected representative is allowed by the Election Commission to pursue his own business. There seems to be no rule debarring the elected representative for pursuing his own business. Hence the trust of People in elected representatives is very low in India. 

India needs an authority to continuously monitor the activities of elected representatives on the model of French High Authority. It should seek yearly updates of interests from all elected representatives. Germany on the other hand allows moonlighting. A Study needs to be done in depth on the impact of moonlighting on Indian Elected representatives especially since people's perception is that politicians use power for their personal gain. Legally though, it is impossible to prove that politicians use their power to induce favours to their kith & kin. Many cases thus filed have failed to establish the quid pro quo connection between businessmen and politicians. Most large NPA defaults in the country have political connections behind them and rarely is the entire amount due recovered. There is also no measure of elected representatives productivity. Hence there is no measure to say whether moonlighting has impacted the performance of a politician.  It then begs the question as to what exactly are the duties of a MLA/MP and whether they consider it as a full time job or not. Many MPs have demonstrated their disinterest through their scant attendance in Parliament, rarely participated in parliament debates and hence have more time to pursue their vocations/businesses. There is no full measure to measure the impact of moonlighting and hence it remains just an Ethical Subject. India should take up a detailed study of all elected representatives in India. 

….Uma Desu is the CEO of IntelliIndia.