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With campaigning for the last phase of the Bihar Legislative Assembly polls drawing to a close today, and the results due on November 24, the wind seems to be blowing strongly in favour of the ruling coalition. In addition to Nitish Kumar’s ‘SSS’ policy of sadak, shiksha, suraksha, the pro-Nitish sentiment can be attributed to the overall clean reputation of the JD (U) government. The fact that the JD (U)’s MLA candidates’ average assets have spiked from Rs 19,71,998 in 2005 to Rs 64,60,088 in 2010, a three-fold increase, does make this claim look a bit hollow. But it doesn’t necessarily imply corruption; a possible explanation for this is that new and richer individuals are being put forward as candidates.
Interestingly, the rise in asset values isn’t restricted to Bihar, with the average assets of MLAs seeing an upward swing in almost all states across India. The hikes range from 141% in Chhattisgarh and 283% in Rajasthan (the states that bring up the lower order) to 1,000% in Haryana and 1,170% in Andhra Pradesh between 2003 and 2009. Not surprisingly, Andhra Pradesh is home to the richest MLAs in the country, with average declared assets worth Rs 22.6 crore per candidate.
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Back at the state level, a closer examination reveals the performance of individual states and parties. Haryana has some of the richest MLAs in the country (save for Andhra Pradhesh), whose average assets range from Rs 3.87 crore (for the Congress) to Rs 16.28 crore (for independent candidates). This not surprising, given that Haryana has one of the highest per capita incomes in India (excluding small states and Union territories like Goa and Delhi) and, on average, its MLAs declared assets worth Rs 7.74 crore in the 2009 assembly elections.
Chhattisgarh, where MLA wealth has gone up on average by about two times, from Rs 44 lakh to 1.08 crore between 2003 and 2008, still has one of the lowest average MLA asset bases. This is despite the fact that the state has been one of the fastest growers in GSDP terms, averaging about 20% in the same period. In contrast, although Madhya Pradesh’s per capita GDP is about a fourth less than Chhattisgarh’s and its GSDP growth rate 11.6%, its MLAs are 1.5 times richer than those from Chhattisgarh. Similarly, the assets of the MLAs of Uttar Pradesh—a state notorious for lawlessness and slow growth, with one of the lowest per capita incomes—weigh in at Rs 1.46 crore, about 1.5 times that of Chhattisgarh.
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So is being rich a factor of importance in predicting election outcomes? It appears not. In Karnataka, the richer Congress-JD(S) alliance was voted out in the 2008 assembly elections. There are other instances of richer candidates being defeated—in Rajasthan, the BJP lost out to the Congress even though its MLAs were 1.8 times as rich as those belonging to the Congress. In Andhra Pradesh, the TDP candidates were almost 10 times richer than the Congress candidates and still lost out. So money cannot buy all; it’s parties that matter, not their assets.
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So, is it fair to say that MLAs are truly representative of their states’ progress? The answer, contrary to popular perception, is yes. For the most part, anyway. The same, however, doesn’t hold true for MPs. By and large, the poorer the state, the richer the MP and vice-versa.
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