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Time for funding elections
Political corruption, the fountainhead of all scams, has a cascading effect on bureaucracy, police, business and criminalisation of public life.
Political corruption, the fountainhead of all scams, has a cascading effect on bureaucracy, police, business and criminalisation of public life.
Corruption undermines the rule of law and blights rightful economic activities. The vicious circle starts right from the electoral process. The aspiring candidates often buy their ticket and spend ten times more than the legal limit of campaign expenditure. Once elected, they work overtime to recover their investment through bribes, facilitating contracts, transfers and postings and misuse of MPLADS. We have even seen examples of top-secret minutes of the Cabinet reaching industrialists.
Bihar’s fodder scam and Tamil Nadu’s coal scam are among many scandals that have exposed the nexus between corrupt politicians and bureaucrats. Even the poorest of India’s poor have not been spared. According to official estimates 31 per cent of food grains and 36 per cent of sugar meant for the ration shops is sold in the black market. Former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi famously put the fraction of money that reaches the poor from anti-poverty programmes at 15 paisa out of every rupee.
One of the most worrying fallouts of political corruption is criminalisation of politics. Former Union home secretary N.N.Vohra observed that a network of mafias is virtually running a parallel government. He recommended disqualification of candidates with criminal background from contesting polls. The report was tabled and hailed in Parliament but the number of tainted MPs rose to 119 in the present Lok Sabha from 40 in the previous house.
More recently, both the CEC and a Constitution review committee recommended that candidates convicted of offences with a sentence of six months or more (or if the courts have framed criminal charges) be barred from contesting elections for six years. It has also recommended that those accused of criminal offences carrying a sentence of five years or more be disqualified from contesting polls.
The greatest obstacle to efficient police administration also flows from the domination of party politics. The Indian Police Commission has identified cases where politically connected junior officers had their more honest seniors transferred. Last year, barely 71 days after taking over as Mumbai Police chief, P S Pasricha was shown the door after he transferred officers suspected to be involved in the Telgi Stamp Paper scam which had political patronage.
The corrupt today have lost the fear of facing ignominy after being charged. Litigation has become a convenient method for avoiding prompt retribution and dispensing justice takes on an average 20 year. There are 30 million cases pending in various courts in the country and conviction rate is six per cent.
Post liberalisation, the first major financial scandal was the Harshad Mehta scam. The Mumbai high court took seven years to punish him, and he appealed to the Supreme Court till he died in 2002. He raised a furore in 1995 when he made public that he had paid Rs 1 crore to former Prime Minister P V Narasimha Rao as donation to the party for getting him off the hook. Around the same in Singapore occurred the scandal involving Nick Leeson of the Barings Bank. He was punished within two years.
The nexus between the politicians and big business houses is longstanding. Prospects of corporates depend on their degree of understanding with politicians and administrators. For decades, they secured captive markets for their frequently substandard and overpriced products in some sectors by relying on the state’s power to exclude foreign competition.
A way forward to check corruption at the very first stage is state funding for political parties. As the third story suggests, it will help politicians overcome dependence on non-transparent sources of funding and bring in greater transparency.
