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Meet Rahul Gandhi, farmer-MP .........Kartikeya
Mumbai: To many who wonder what their MP does apart from engaging in theatrics in parliament, it may come as a surprise that in most cases, he or she is a plain old ‘social worker’. A little over half of all the newly elected MPs have so far given details of their profession to the Lok Sabha secretariat. Of the 236 who have provided this information, 125 are social workers—the largest contingent from any profession.
Not all of them, however, list social work as their sole or primary profession. Railway minister Mamata Banerjee, for instance, is an advocate first and then a social worker. But UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi, Farooq Abdullah, Jyotiraditya Scindia and Kamal Nath are among those who say public service is their sole profession. Among the social worker MPs is M Jagannadham, the Congress MP from Andhra, who reportedly slapped a bank manager who he claimed was dragging his feet on disbursing loans to SC/ST beneficiaries. MISSION: SOCIAL SERVICE? 125 SOCIAL WORKERS | Including Sonia Gandhi, Lalu Prasad, Priya Dutt, Farooq Abdullah, Meira Kumar, Bhajan Lal, T R Baalu, Kamal Nath
112 AGRICULTURISTS | Including Rahul Gandhi, Mulayam Singh Yadav, H D Deve Gowda, Sushil Kumar Shinde, Sharad Pawar, Gurudas Kamat, Jaipal Reddy, Jitin Prasada, Sachin Pilot
47 INDUSTRIALISTS | Praful Patel, Navin Jindal, Milind Deora, Suresh Kalmadi, Dinsha Patel
42 ADVOCATES | Kapil Sibal, Salman Khurshid, Sushma Swaraj, Mamata Banerjee, P Chidambaram, Asaduddin Owaisi
IN THE NAME OF SOCIAL SERVICE Only 47 out of 300 crorepati MPs claim to be businessmen Mumbai: Roughly half of all newly elected MPs have given details about their profession the Lok Sabha secretariat. The largest number of ‘social workers’ has been elected from Uttar Pradesh, the state that also sent the highest number of tainted MPs to the Lok Sabha. West Bengal, Bihar and Maharashtra too have contributed a fair number to the social workers’ contingent.
The only group that gives ‘social workers’ competition in terms of numbers is ‘agriculturists’, with 109 of them making it to the 15th Lok Sabha. NCP leader Sharad Pawar, Jaipal Reddy and the father-son duos of Deve Gowda-Kumaraswamy and Mulayam-Akhilesh are on this list. So is Mumbai North-West MP Gurudas Kamat, who has indicated it as his second profession. An intriguing absence from the list of agriculturists is Ajit Singh, son of the man who was arguably India’s biggest peasant leader, Charan Singh. Ajit Singh has listed himself as a computer scientist (incidentally, he’s the only MP to do so), social worker and trade unionist—in that order. While ‘agriculturist’ sounds somewhat grand, there are three MPs who are simply ‘farmers’. The most prominent of these is Rahul Gandhi, the Cambridge-educated MP from Amethi who lists it as his only profession. Among the 300-odd crorepati MPs, a mere 47 are ‘industrialists’ or ‘businessmen’. These include Mumbai South’s Milind Deora, aviation minister Praful Patel and steel baron Naveen Jindal. Conspicuous by their absence from the MP fold—at least based on the details available so far—are scientists, chartered accountants, architects, judges, producers, technologists and veterinarians. However, there are four ‘religious missionaries’, including Yogi Adityanath from Gorakhpur and, somewhat perplexingly, Kirti Azad of 1983 World Cup fame. Azad, of course, lists his primary profession as ‘sportsperson’, placing him a category with five others, including Naveen Jindal. There are also six ‘writers’, including Maneka Gandhi and Pranab Mukherjee, and two ‘poets’. Murli Manohar Joshi of the BJP is one of only two ‘professors’, the other being Girija Vyas. Jaya Prada is the lone ‘film artiste’, and Anantha Venkatarami Reddy of Anantapur in Andhra Pradesh the lone ‘economist’. The solitary ‘civil servant’ is Speaker Meira Kumar. ‘Advocates’ have made it to the House in good numbers too—42 to be precise. In contrast, only ten ‘engineers’, seven ‘journalists’ and five ‘medical practioners’ made it to the 15th Lok Sabha.Among the 14 MPs who listed ‘educationist’ as their profession is S Jagathrakshakan, the DMK minister who figured prominently in the recent capitation fee expose by TOI. Indeed, ‘educationist’ is given as his sole profession. |
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| Also see : Democracy, Governance |
