How much are MP's worth ?

Recent sting operation by Aaj Tak-CobraPost has, in addition to usual cries of "Bloody politicians", evoked another response, which is whether Indian politicians are poorly paid and their renumerations should be raised by how much so as to remove the incentives for corruption.

Before stating my thoughts, I will like to say this.

Government in India is too intervening which increases the power as well as responsibility of our legislature as well as executive, resulting in corruption and inefficiancy.
However I doubt that whether it is possible to limit goverment to a benign level.
Government will always have a potential to cause mischief for venal reasons

The answer to first question can be yes and no, depending on perspective. For example one could argue that considering annual package of Indian MP which is more than 2 lakhs pa (including allowances), is much more than Indian per capita income, which hovers at around 40,000 pa. This view, however misses the fact that in order to attract best persons , compensation which is comparable to other areas should be offered.

This brings to question, as to what should be the correct renumerations to minimze any incentives for corruption.
IMO, the job of a representative is much more risky than that of a CEO, the reason is that while for a CEO to remain in job has to create wealth and hence satisfy almost the only expectation of stockholders, the voters have much diverse expectations, what is more the expectations are vague , they can be high or low, it could be about economical well being or religious freedom or related to caste identity.
Here I am not going into merits of expectations, for present discussion it suffices that they are not easy. What is more a CEO on losing job can expect another employment, a representative has no such recourse.

This brings to a lemma that a representative must be paid as much as, if not more than a CEO.
However, one difference (in degrees) between CEO and representative is the incentive for corruption, in a government as you climb the ladder the potential to gain from corruption increases exponentially, assuming it is impossible to defang government, there will always be scope for corruption, what is more since the expectations and awareness of voters are much less than stockholders, the threshhold for temptation is set low.

What this means is that regardless of how attractive the numeration there will always be incentive for corruption. One prevention is that law can create enough disincentive to discourage such behaviours. However, in this case our representatives are the law makers, if one is tempted, how easy then to pervert law. One could argue, that as long as system is in general sufficient, such attempt can be blocked, however misfit will always try to weedle through a gap.

The solution for this is to stress the importance of vigilance along with that of institutions.
Institutions can be perverted, and while insitutions may be robust or fragile, none of the them are unbreachable, only our well informed opinions are ultimate guarantee.

This issue incidentally reminded me of another issue that is perplexing me. I will try to write about it soon.