When it comes to chutzpah, no American politicians can even begin to hope to come close to the guys who will no doubt be the reigning world champions for many, many years to come.

Indian lawmakers are all set to award themselves a fivefold increase in pay:

Indian lawmakers currently take home about $372 a month, an amount most say is embarrassingly low. If the raise goes through, they would make about $1,860 a month — a little less than the average IT graduate makes fresh out of college in the big city.
[...]
“All Pay, No Work,” an editorial in the Times of India newspaper said about the proposed raise. Lawmakers’ take-home pay might be low, the newspaper said, but the perks they enjoy — such as free housing, health care, power, water and air travel — add up to almost $88,372 annually.

And that’s in “a country where about 300 million people earn less than $1 a day”. Those perks are positively obscene, and certainly undercut the case for a massive salary increase.

Also, it seems the low salary may be offset by unspecified supplemental income opportunities:

An analysis conducted last year by the Association of Democratic Reforms, an electoral watchdog group, found that of the 258 incumbent lawmakers who ran for reelection, the assets of more than half had risen between 100 percent and 9,100 percent during their five years in office. About 70 percent were millionaires.

Too bad they didn’t identify by name the legislator whose assets increased almost hundredfold. Surely he or she should be lionized and feted, honored throughout the land (if not the world over)?

(In fairness, we should point out that there is some rationale for the pay increase:

A parliamentary committee has recommended five times’ increase in the salaries of our Members of Parliament so that it is at least one rupee more than what a secretary to the government of India gets, as MPs are above the secretary in protocol.

“A secretary to the government” would be the senior bureaucrat who presides over a given government department.)