The Hindu : Karnataka / Bangalore News : I get no perks as a politician: Neeraj Patil

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Thursday, Mar 20, 2008
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I get no perks as a politician: Neeraj Patil

Special Correspondent

Neeraj Patil

Bangalore: Neeraj Patil is getting ready to contest on the Labour Party ticket from Surrey in the British Parliamentary elections due to be held in May, 2009, even as he continues to work full time as a consultant in Kingston Hospital in South-East London.

“That’s because I do not get any perks as a politician unlike in India,” says the councillor of Lambeth in his late 30s. “It is from my job that I earn my bread.”

Born in Kamalapur in Gulbarga district, Dr. Patil has spent 14 years in the U.K. practising medicine. He achieved significant recognition as a Labour Party representative after he was elected as councillor of Lambeth council in London in 2006. Ethnic minorities constitute 38 per cent of Lambeth’s population.

Dr. Patil admits that the ascent in any mainstream political party is not easy for ethnic minorities. “There is a glass ceiling, no doubt, and you have to be twice as good to break it,” he says. The ethnic population of England makes up 10 to 15 per cent of the total numbers. “But this ratio is not reflected in Parliament,” he says.

But the biggest strength of the British system, unlike the Indian one, is the existence of a mechanism for political funding and recruitment. “In India there is no system in place to determine how political parties should generate money for campaign. That is the root of corruption in the system,” says Dr. Patil. While the rest of the world is all praise for the “biggest working democracy,” the Indian people themselves feel let down in a big way by the democratic system, he adds.

Election prospects

The prospects of the Labour Party in the coming election, says Dr. Patil, are bright “because of the economic policies of Gordon Brown.” Carefully choosing words, he admits though that the “evidence to support Iraq war was not strong enough” and it may have alienated a section of the British-Asian community.

The other big strength of the party, he says, is the bouquet of welfare schemes. Dr. Patil is proud of National Health System, of which he is part, which is the “baby of the Labour Party.”

It is the only system in the world where “the beggar on the streets of London and the British premier will get equal treatment.”

Contrary to projections of the British media, this system is alive and going strong, says Dr. Patil.

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