In China's parliament, a long list of millionaires

"Membership of the National People's Congress provides wealthy businessmen a powerful platform and secures their support for the Communist Party of China."

The net worth of the 70 richest delegates at the National People's Congress (NPC), the Chinese Parliament and top legislative body, the country's 3,000-member legislative house, rose by a stunning $11.5 billion last year. The Hindu : Opinion / Op-Ed : In China's parliament, a long list of millionaires.

The 70 richest delegates' net worth was $89.8 billion. Their appointment to government bodies handed them a powerful platform in a business climate which values official contacts. The practice of bringing in China's wealthiest individuals into political advisory bodies largely serves two purposes. For the party, giving the business elite a voice in policy decisions was seen as a way of securing their political support. For the businessmen, there was “strong incentive to become ‘within system' due to the relative weakness in the rule of law and of property rights”

The marriage of business and politics that takes place at the highest levels has increasingly become a source of public anger and debate. This has been reflected in the growing resentment towards official corruption and renewed calls for economic reforms, amid concerns about fast-rising inequality.

China must not shut its eyes to the powerful, vested interests that have been monopolising the benefits of China's reform and opening movement, thus impeding deeper reform. The core of reform is not about opening coastal cities to boost the economy but about paying more attention to people's social welfare.

The everyday embrace of inequality

"The institution of paid domestic labour produces cleanliness, meals and childcare, but it also produces and reproduces an unequal home and society."

The Help, a film about the relationship between African American maids and their employers in 1960s Mississippi, and the book on which it is based, is well-meaning, but both patronising and sentimental, while ignoring the inequality between employers and domestic workers in the U.S. today. The Hindu : Opinion / Op-Ed : The everyday embrace of inequality.

It also raises some important issues for those of us who live in servant-keeping societies. It is a reminder of the peculiar nature of inequality in the intimate environment of the home.

Because of the long history of servant employment in India, we often do not reflect upon the institution. We simply assume that we cannot live a middle-class existence without it. But we would do well to reflect on the effect of the institution of paid domestic work on the internal dynamics of middle-class families. The article the focuses on the morale and the ideology that is inculcated in the children seeing a paid domestic help in their home performing certain duties, and the effect that it has on the society at large.

The maintenance of the institution of paid domestic work, leads to the reproduction of hierarchies, even in the 21st century in very many societies, and stands in the way of any move towards a genuinely egalitarian one. Indeed, it produces what we have called a culture of servitude through which relations of domination, dependency, and hierarchy are normalised.