An article on 'indiarealtime', a subsidiary blog operated by the Wall Street Journal asserted in July 2010 that the incumbent Indian Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh was earning an annual salary of approximately $4,106. In the same article it states that Dr Singh's "various cash allowances total approximately 50,000 rupees" per month, which would equate to approximately $12,000 per annum in total, but that a raise was in the offing. The Prime Minister's Office website breaks down Dr Singh's earnings in a downloadable pdf which is dated 31st October 2010 and it can safely be presumed this is still the salary and allowances of the Prime Minister as it stands per month.
- 135,000 INR (Indian Rupees) per month? Sounds a lot - is it?
- How does it compare to the wage of the average tax payer?
If you consider that the average annual wage in India equates to around $6000 then it is six times the wage of the average taxpayer and does start to look a little extravagant in comparison, but when you consider other world leaders such as The President of the United States of America earns $400k per annum, while the average US citizen earns $46k a year (10x less than the leader of their country) then it begins to sound a little more reasonable.
- Are Indians happy to foot this relatively meteoric wage rise?
Well as we can see, Dr Singh was earning a very low wage in comparison to his peers so it would be fair to say that some people in India wouldn't begrudge him earning a slightly better salary than he was on. Whether they would have welcomed such a huge increase is contentious, especially considering that inflation has seen the price of food in India rise 16% since 2010.
