It's the season of scams in India. Barely had the dust of the Commonwealth Games scandals settled, the country has been rocked by a series of scams and scandals of gigantic proportions. Although scams are nothing new to the Indian public, the sheer scale of the recent 2G scam (flawed spectrum allocation) and the leaked conversations in the Niira Radia tape exposing the alleged role of money and fixers in deciding the nature of Cabinet formation has come as a rude shock to everyone. But surprisingly, the public response to scams of such scale and propensity has been very muted. In the earlier eras, scandals of such scale and proportion would have created mass outrage including violent protests and likely collapse of the ruling government. The public seem to have reconciled that the wrongdoers would never get punished in this country. But a growing public despondency and cynicism about the state of republic is a dangerous thing as it blurs the boundaries between the wrong doers and good doers. Reviving public confidence in the body polity is an urgent call and the incumbent government has to take the lead in this.
Acknowledging the challenges, the Congress Party president, Ms. Sonia Gandhi, in recent Burari party session, outlined a 4-point agenda to cleanse the political system. Among other things, she vouched for urgent reforming of election funding. She cited election funding and election-linked compulsions as the key source of political corruption in the country. What she said is nothing new but the formal acknowledgement coming from the highest level on the role of campaign finance at a time like this would be good beginning for this vital but neglected policy issue. As studies after studies would tell us, globally electoral or vote bank expediency is what facilitates most of political corruption. India is no exception to this phenomenon. One need not have to go through a mountain of empirical evidences to see the negative consequences of unaccounted and illegitimate funding of election. The following is a brief sketch of the causal relation of illegitimate campaign finance with corruption and its implications to development and good governance.
Campaign Finance and Corruption: The Conjoined Twins
While elections at regular intervals act as the most lethal weapon for a large majority of the people, particularly the poor and marginalised in India, to discipline their representatives and alter the character of power structure from time to time, one should not overlook the multitude of problems emanating from the way currently elections are being funded and run. It is common knowledge that election in India is about mobilising gigantic vote banks. This is largely accomplished through money power. The political parties and candidates routinely spend huge amount of money on intermediaries to buy votes. While the upper limit of election spending for candidates contesting for MPs and MLAs are Rs. 25 Lac and Rs. 10 Lac respectively, the current trend as captured by several studies and acknowledged by the Election Commission that candidates spend 20-30 times more than the limits. According to an estimate from Centre for Media Studies (CMS), political parties and candidates spent a whopping Rs. 10,000 crore (including Rs.3,000 crore by the Election Commission) in the last Lok Sabha elections. The 'National Election Watch' a coalition of 1,200 civil society organizations working across the country has come out with the figures similar to CMS. In contrast, the total money spent in 1991 Lok Sabha elections was Rs. 359 crore. This itself sums up how expensive has it become to fight elections or how money power has emerged as the key determinant of the outcome of elections. How and where from the political parties and candidates raise such a huge amount of money to fund election campaigns? Who finance campaign funds and with what consequences?
Campaign finance is raised through various means but mainly through private donations in India. Given the situation that there are number of restrictions or limitations on contributions under Representation of the People Act, 1951 (company contributions to political parties were banned in 1969) and poor or near absence of auditing of party funds/donations, political parties and candidates tap funds from every available source which are mostly unaccounted and illegal sources. It is a known fact that a vast portion of India's election expenses is fueled by the black money and political parties compete with each other to get the bigger pie. The growing influence of black money in the outcome of election has been well captured by the famous N.N. Vohra Committee Report (1993) and reports and studies undertaken by several government and non-governmental bodies including the Law Commission of India. Apart from political parties raising from illegitimate sources, the other vital source of raising funds to support an expensive campaign is by auctioning seats to the highest bidders. As has been reported by media and research studies from time to time, nearly all political parties resort to allotting certain percentage of party tickets to candidates who can pay right amount or can run his campaign on his own. In other words, the expensive nature of election and absence of legal framework or state provisions to support election expenses, has pushed political parties and candidates to seek funds by any means and from anyone. But the implications of an expensive election are far reaching.
First, excessive expenditure incurred during elections lead often elected officials to look for all options to raise a bigger sum. Since the state looms large in India and elected officials have enormous discretionary powers at their disposal, they use these powers to promote their goals including the collection of rents. Rents take the form of votes, and the state resources that are auctioned or 'sold' typically include jobs, livelihood through poverty alleviation programmes, access to water irrigation, credit, land titles, subsidies and so forth. Bureaucracy, being the instrument of execution becomes the chief weapon for the elected officials to collect rents and fill his individual kitty and party coffers. But as has been reported in recent scams (Adarsh Society, 2G spectrum), this happens both ways. Officials too take advantage of politicians and their compulsions.
Second, special interest groups and individuals who fork out a huge amount of money to parties and candidates do this for no altruistic purpose. For them this is a kind of investment to reap a richer return. Once elected, the candidates have to concede illegal favours, allow kickbacks and commissions to vested interest groups (private enterprises, black marketers, contractors, etc). And this is the chief source of all kind of political corruption and subversion of governance in the country. However, the end product of such election-linked corruption is non-performance and compromised governance having negative consequences on development. The most dangerous implication of illegal or tainted money is the threats that it poses for national security. The Vorha Committee Report has vividly brought out criminal-politicians-mafia linkages to 1993 Bombay serial bomb blasts. Same was further vindicated from the Jain dairies (Hawala Scam) which established the funding linkages between the politicians and Kashmir militants.
Third and most important consequence of an expensive electioneering process is the growing criminalization of democratic space and governance institutions. Since money becomes the prime mover, political parties desperate for victory are compelled to nominate mostly those candidates who can generate big money to fund the election expenses. Consequent of this trend is the influx of a large number of criminals and people with dubious records to the high seats of power. Since criminals have money or easy access to such resources (including use of coercive means) required to win elections, political parties are not shying anymore to field them in good numbers. According to the Association of Democratic Reform (ADR); a premier election watch body in India, 28% of elected Indian MPs have criminal cases pending against them (more than one in five), while 14% have serious criminal records. This is a net increase of 31% since 2004 elections. Of course, there are many whose criminal records are never known to public. The impact of large number of criminals occupying high seats of power is the progressive subversion of democratic institutions for narrow and divisive gains, distortion of political culture and erosion of legitimacy of governance institutions. However, the worst consequences of such a trend is competent and capable candidates find it extremely difficult to get an entry into the fray.
Finally, in money driven elections, if the price is right, a legislator conveniently forgets the mandate and least hesitates to cross over to another party or government in direct conflicts with the interests of those who elected him in. No wonder, that the country is full of growing instances of open horse-trading, blackmailing of individual representatives, money changing governments and so on. The recent Karnataka Assembly imbroglio was the finest portrayal of this trend.
To sum up, election funding is the mother of all corruption in India. Without much needed clarity in regulation of election funding or consideration of state provision of election expenses, driving out corruption in public life would be an impossible dream. With Congress Party President highlighting the bane of the current mode or approach to campaign finance, one hopes to see some movement on this neglected public policy arena.
(Dr. Niranjan Sahoo is a Senior Fellow at the Centre for Politics and Governance, Observer Research Foundation)
The views expressed above belong to the author(s). ORF research and analyses now available on Telegram! Click here to access our curated content — blogs, longforms and interviews.
PREV
