India's so-called Dalit Queen, a former schoolteacher who has become the country's most powerful untouchable politician championing the poorest people, was revealed on Tuesday to be on track to earn 600 million rupees (US$15 million) this year.
Income tax records show that Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mayawati Kumari has amassed the fortune through political contributions from supporters in her Bahujan Samaj (Majority People's) Party. She has demanded gifts from loyal followers and elected politicians have been asked to donate a minimum of 300,000 rupees a year.
Mayawati's earnings -- the 19th highest in India -- will be more than 56,000 times the average income of one of her voters this year. With a population of 175 million, Uttar Pradesh is India's most populous state and also one of its poorest.
Mayawati's victory last year was the first time a dalit-led party had won a state election single-handedly, but with eight of India's 13 prime ministers having come from Uttar Pradesh, Mayawati now talks openly of becoming India's next leader.
Her rapidly increasing prosperity -- four years ago her annual income was US$1.9 million -- has led to a slew of corruption allegations, all of which she denies and none of which have dented her popularity.
According to the Central Bureau of Investigation, when officials raided her New Delhi home last year in response to one of those allegations they found documents showing 72 properties and 54 bank accounts.
But pollsters say that Indian voters -- especially those at the bottom of the pile -- have become inured to politicians' opulence. There was little objection when Maywati, born one of nine children to a postal clerk, celebrated her 52nd birthday last month at a five-star New Delhi hotel and was photographed draped in gold and diamond jewelery being fed mouthfuls of cake by high-caste officials.
"Dalit voters, like the rest of the electorate, know that politicians are amassing huge amounts of wealth. They reason why should not one of their own do the same," said Yogendra Yadav, a fellow at New Delhi's Center for the Study of Developing Societies.
"In many ways [Mayawati] is being honest about declaring her wealth. It is visible and for everyone to see," he said.
To stamp her presence on Uttar Pradesh's state capital, Mayawati is building a US$100 million park in honor of her party's founder, Kanshi Ram. Statues of her are also popping up all over the state and, unburdened by modesty, her autobiography has a chapter entitled: "If People Call Me A Super Chief Minister, What Can I Do?"
Although she remains popular among voters, many analysts say that something needs to be done to curb the rising cost of politics in India, which in turn fuels a dangerous "money culture."
Laws which prohibit election spending in a single parliamentary constituency of more than 2.5 million rupees are widely flouted.
"You have to spend at least 100 million rupees to fight a parliamentary election in India these days. Mayawati is showing a fortune in her income tax returns but it is a small amount in the Indian context," said Jayprakash Narayan, president of Lok Satta, which campaigns to clean up politics.
"Money is spent on buying votes, buying liquor, hiring thugs for muscle power. Candidates do this so that they create an aura of invincibility and inevitability. But then the people who can give parties for this sort of money will just end up controlling policy," he said.
But India's social hierarchy still exists. Only last week a dalit boy was boiled to death in oil for daring to argue with his boss in an Uttar Pradesh candy factory.
NEW STORM: investigators dubbed the attacks on US telecoms ‘Salt Typhoon,’ after authorities earlier this year disrupted China’s ‘Flax Typhoon’ hacking group Chinese hackers accessed the networks of US broadband providers and obtained information from systems that the federal government uses for court-authorized wiretapping, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported on Saturday. The networks of Verizon Communications, AT&T and Lumen Technologies, along with other telecoms, were breached by the recently discovered intrusion, the newspaper said, citing people familiar with the matter. The hackers might have held access for months to network infrastructure used by the companies to cooperate with court-authorized US requests for communications data, the report said. The hackers had also accessed other tranches of Internet traffic, it said. The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs
STICKING TO DEFENSE: Despite the screening of videos in which they appeared, one of the defendants said they had no memory of the event A court trying a Frenchman charged with drugging his wife and enlisting dozens of strangers to rape her screened videos of the abuse to the public on Friday, to challenge several codefendants who denied knowing she was unconscious during their actions. The judge in the southern city of Avignon had nine videos and several photographs of the abuse of Gisele Pelicot shown in the courtroom and an adjoining public chamber, involving seven of the 50 men accused alongside her husband. Present in the courtroom herself, Gisele Pelicot looked at her telephone during the hour and a half of screenings, while her ex-husband
EYEING THE US ELECTION: Analysts say that Pyongyang would likely leverage its enlarged nuclear arsenal for concessions after a new US administration is inaugurated North Korean leader Kim Jong-un warned again that he could use nuclear weapons in potential conflicts with South Korea and the US, as he accused them of provoking North Korea and raising animosities on the Korean Peninsula, state media reported yesterday. Kim has issued threats to use nuclear weapons pre-emptively numerous times, but his latest warning came as experts said that North Korea could ramp up hostilities ahead of next month’s US presidential election. In a Monday speech at a university named after him, the Kim Jong-un National Defense University, he said that North Korea “will without hesitation use all its attack
Scientists yesterday announced a milestone in neurobiological research with the mapping of the entire brain of an adult fruit fly, a feat that might provide insight into the brains of other organisms and even people. The research detailed more than 50 million connections between more than 139,000 neurons — brain nerve cells — in the insect, a species whose scientific name is Drosophila melanogaster and is often used in neurobiological studies. The research sought to decipher how brains are wired and the signals underlying healthy brain functions. It could also pave the way for mapping the brains of other species. “You might
RSS