The best democracy that money can buy
Economic Times
April 30, 2014
Siddharth Varadarajan
The 2014 election is a reminder of the one big loophole in India’s election rules designed to favour parties backed by the rich: While individual candidates are not allowed to spend more than Rs. 54-70 lakh, there is no limit to what political parties may spend to promote their overall electoral prospects.
Parties are only obliged to report their expenditure on general election propaganda to the Election Commission within 90 days of the Lok Sabha election ending. The EC has the right to verify the reported figures but can levy sanctions only if some of that ‘general’ expenditure was incurred to support individual candidates.
Compare this to Britain, whose election system India broadly follows.
There, a candidate can spend somewhere between GBP 10,500-12,000 (i.e. , Rs 10.5-11.8 lakh) depending on the size and location of constituencies. In addition, a party’s ‘national campaign’ spending is also capped at GBP 30,000 per constituency, or an upper limit of 19.5 million GBP (approximately Rs. 195 crore) for a party contesting every one of the 650 seats in the House of Commons.
In the last British general election, all parties together spent GBP 31 million (Rs 310 crore approximately) in their national campaign. By way of comparison, the BJP alone spent Rs 448.66 crore in the 2009 Lok Sabha election while the Congress too spent a massive Rs 380.04 crore.
While the British and Indian caps cannot readily be compared — India has larger, but Britain has more, constituencies, and the cost structure of the two economies is totally different – India’s failure to limit what parties can spend on general propaganda has given big money power a huge role in our elections.
Indications are that the amount being spent in the 2014 Lok Sabha election, especially by the BJP, runs to a figure at least ten times higher than five years ago. One estimate pegs the BJP’s advertising spend across all media including hoardings at a staggering Rs 5,000 crore. That’s just a bit less than the Rs 6,000 crore — roughly $1 billion the Obama campaign spent under all heads in the 2012 US presidential election! Once other expenses are added, the overall BJP budget will exceed that.
What impact will the deployment of money on this scale have not just on the election outcome and the policies of the next government but on the future course of Indian democracy?
Back in 1974, the Supreme Court in the Amar Nath Chawla case recognised the principle that election expenditure must be limited in order to ensure equality between candidates and to “eliminate as far as possible, the influence of big money in the electoral process.” Though it did not set a limit, it ruled that “some limitative ceiling” on expenditure for general party propaganda during elections “is eminently desirable”.
The court saw the remote, top-down nature of electoral politics as the culprit. “If there is continuous community involvement in political administration punctuated by activated phases of well-discussed choice of candidates by popular participation in the process of nomination, much of unnecessary expenditure which is incurred today could be avoided… Large campaign funds would not be able to influence the decision of the electors if the selection and election of candidates become people’s decisions by discussion and not a Hobson’s choice offered by political parties.”
If election expenditure were not limited, it said, political parties “would go all out for collecting contributions and obviously the largest contributions would be from the rich and affluent who constitute but a fraction of the electorate. The pernicious influence of big money would then play a decisive role in controlling the democratic process in the country.”
This is precisely what is happening with the corporate sector now fully into the act, making both open and hidden contributions. Last month, the Delhi High Court found the Congress and BJP guilty of illegally accepting money from the UK-based firm, Vedanta. Those payments were made by cheque, but cash is still king because it is untraceable. In 2009, cash accounted for 75 per cent of the money raised by the Congress and half of that of the BJP.
In 1943, even before India was free, Babasaheb Ambedkar spoke of the danger posed by the fusion of capital and politics: “These days, with the Press in hand, it is easy to manufacture great men,” he noted caustically — and presciently. “In establishing their supremacy” our great men “have taken the aid of big business and money magnates. For the first time in our country, money is taking the field as an organised power.”
Seventy years on, the influence of big money has grown exponentially. Yet there is little recognition of the damage this is doing to the integrity of our electoral process. The biggest national and regional parties have a vested interest in allowing the status quo to continue. Change will come only when the ‘aam aadmi’ realizes this is what is keeping him out of power.
(Siddharth Varadarajan is a Senior Fellow at the Center for Public Affairs and Critical Theory, New Delhi)
Siddharth Varadarajan 
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All these ” Tam Jam’s ” are worth. if in the process of election, our nation is able to elect a government and a leader , which is acceptable to all sections of our nation, then all the expenses and the so called lop – holes are worth.
If ,we can elect a leader or atleaset a government which take the apsipration of all sections and part of our nation, Then may be, the government can in the intial years of poltical mandate,they can and should show to our nation the true picture of subsidy ( both for the poor and the industrilist).
If the government is able to deliver on infrasturcutre and on social spending,then all the mischeveous ways of attaining power is justified.
Over all lets hope that the people of this great nation truly elect a true Fedral govenment .
If we re-think on Governance & re-write our Constitution without any bias for better India and just ignore 120 Politicians for 120 Crore People, we do not need SO MANY Politicians, by adopting ; Non-Patisan (No Party System) Democracy; Re-organise the Nation like Indian Railway means NO STATES / No State Assemblies or MLAs/ Union-State Lists ; Better Eligiblity to allow only domicile knowledgeable crime-free candidates, Open debates between candidates, Recall System and Government to spend for publicity of candidates. KK
Reform is needed but I don’t agree with a ‘no party system.’ Parties are the lifeblood of democracy, but they need to be democratic and transparent in their functioning.
A good exemplary for what Dr.Ambedkar said is the way Telugu Media channels are behaving !!!!
Sakshi – Y.S.Jagan..
Eenadu & ABN – CBN…
Those who support Jagan they follow sakshi..
Those who support Chandhra babu naidu they follow Eenadu & ABN..
What about people like me those who don’t support ” TDP & YSRCP “
One hopes there is a law of diminishing returns to this spending – each extra crore of election spending yields less and less advantage. Perhaps there comes a saturation point where bombarding people with rubbish means they turn away from a party and extra spending becomes a disadvantage. If so, surely the BJP have passed this turning point.
”पिछले ५० साल की राजनीति पर हम संवेदनशील हो कर गौर करें , तो इस बात से हम चमत्कृत हो सकते हैं कि हजारों आदर्शवादी नौजवान देश के भविष्य को संदर बनाने के लिए परिवर्तनवादी राजनीति में कूद पड़े थे । आज अगर उनके जीवन इतिहासों का विश्लेषण करेंगे , तो मालूम होगा कि उनमें से अधिकांश बाद के दिनों में , जब उनको परिवार का भी दायित्व वहन करना पड़ा , या तो राजनीति से हट गये या अपने आदर्शों के साथ समझौता करने लगे । निजी तथा सार्वजनिक जीवन की जरूरतों को पूरी करने के लिए शुरु में छोटे-छोटे ठेकेदारों से , भ्रष्ट प्रशासकों से या काले व्यापारियों से चंदा लेना पड़ा । बाद में जब लगातार खर्च बढ़ता गया और प्रतिष्ठा भी बढ़ती गई , तब बड़े व्यापारियों और पूँजीपतियों के साथ साँठगाँठ करनी पड़ी । अगर वे आज भी राजनीति में हैं , तो अब तक इतना समझौता कर चुके हैं कि भ्रष्टाचार या शोषण के विरुद्ध खड़े होने का नैतिक साहस नहीं है । पिछले ५० साल आदर्शवादी कार्यकर्ताओं के सार्वजनिक जीवन में पतन और निजी जीवन में हताशा का इतिहास है ।
अगर शुरु से ही समाज का कोई प्रावधान होता कि राजनीति में प्रवेश करनेवाले नौजवानों का प्रशिक्षण-प्रतिपालन हो सके , उनके लिए एक न्यूनतम आय की व्यवस्था हो सके , तो शायद वे टूटते नहीं , हटते नहीं , भ्रष्ट नहीं होते । कम से कम ५० फीसदी कार्यकर्ता और नेता स्वाधीन मिजाज के होकर रहते । अगर किसी जनतंत्र में १० फीसदी राजनेता बेईमान होंगे तो देश का कुछ बिगड़ेगा नहीं । अगर ५० फीसदी बेईमान हो जायें, तब भी देश चल सकता है । अब तो इस पर भी संदेह होता है कि सर्वोच्च नेताओं के ५ फीसदी भे देशभक्त और इमानदार हैं या नहीं ।”- किशन पटनायक ,सितम्बर १९९७
मोदी अपने नामांकन के लिए हेलिकॉप्टर से आए-गए -यह खर्च भी उनके चुनाव खर्च में नहीं जोड़ा गया। मैंने मांग की थी जो आयोग ने खारिज कर दी । 😦
Thanks for homing in on the major and increasing threat to our election campaigns and indirectly to our democracy. High time EC revises its norms.
You quoted Dr. Ambedkar, “These days, with the Press in hand, it is easy to manufacture great men”.
We are witnessing all these in general election.