The Indian elections will cost Rs 30 billion
Some 814 million voters speaking 1,652 languages will vote in 900,000 voting centres across the country over 38 days in 2019, between 11 April and 19 May. The BJP and its allies are in power in 22 of India’s 29 states. The Congress is now in power in only two big states, Karnataka and Punjab. India’s imminent elections will cost parties a flabbergasting Rs 30,000 crore ($5 billion). That parallels cost of a US Presidential election. The difference is that most of the money spent in India will be in the form of untraceable cash. Much of it will have been brought back into the country from tax havens, such as Switzerland, Mauritius, Dubai and Caribbean islands, where industrialists and politicians stash their illicit fortunes. India, the world’s largest democracy, stands divided into two worlds, the affluent and the poor.
Real power
There is a relationship of direct proportionality between electoral victory and wealth. Money plays an important part in determining the poor voter’s electoral choice. Incumbent Prime Minister Narendra Modi spent $115 million to win the Indian election in 2014. In all, the BJP spent Rs 714.28 crore ($115 million) on the 2014 general election campaign. Congress spent Rs 200 crore ($32 million) less than the BJP during the 2014 polls.
The BJP spent over one-third of all the money on one item: media advertising. The biggest individual recipients of this money were two firms, Madison World and chartered aviation provider, Saarthi Airways. Saarthi Airways is promoted by Delhi-based Gulab Singh Tanwar, reportedly a close friend of former BJP president and current home minister, Rajnath Singh. The party spent Rs 77.83 crore ($12.57 million) on chartering aircraft for its key campaigners, of which Rs 60 crore ($9.7 million) was paid to Saarthi Airways alone.
Political parties mainly nominate those candidates who can raise money for contesting elections.
Elections in India are expensive. Candidates in the 2014 election spent a total of $5billion (The US election in 2012 cost around $6 billion). The longer a party stays out of power, the fewer the opportunities to `raise’ money from a variety of sources, including large donors, small donors and organizational donations.
The BJP is the richest party followed by Congress. The Congress has ruled the country for 49 of its 71 years as an independent nation. It appealed for the first time in its 133-year history for funds, perhaps as a catchy slogan. It had an income of $33 million in 2017! The ruling BJP is the richest with an income of $151.5 million. The Congress income in 2017 decreased by $5.3 million. The BJP’s income has doubled from what it earned in 2016.
No transparency
Although political parties are required to declare their income, their finances are far from transparent. The penalties imposed by the election commission are slaps on wrist.
Preposterous expenditure ceiling
Individual candidates can spend only Rs 70 lakh ($120,000) on a campaign. This amount is too little to meet even poster printing costs in important contests. Key candidates spend between Rs 75 – 300 crore ($12-50 million). Lesser stars spend between Rs 15-50 crore ($2.5-8.25 million) and marginal ones between Rs 1-10 crore ($600,000-1.8 million). Mammoth rallies, where half a million people cheer candidates, cost upwards of Rs 3 crore ($500,000). Every major party holds at least one major rally or counter-rally a day.
Add to it the cost of sending thousands of workers out in cars, trains, planes, rickshaws, bicycles, bullock carts, tractors, camels, horses and boats to woo voters with speeches, street plays and songs.
Financial Contributions to Parties and Candidates
Corporate contributions, up to five percent of a company’s net profits. to political parties are legal. In reality, huge funds are collected from individuals and companies by extortion or as a consideration for past or future favours.
Political corruption has become integral to India’s governance process. The disclosure norms are very feeble and un-enforced.
Inferences
Being the richest party, the BJP is well placed to form at least a cozy coalition. India’s cosmetic progress is most visible in use of cars, aviation, mobile telephony, cable television, outsourcing, and automobiles. Such progress is meaningless when less than 5 percent of Indians can fly, or own a car. Electoral abuses distort the shiny face of India’s democracy. “Elections (in India) are being increasingly seen by people as devious means, employed by the rulers to periodically renew their licence to rule–more often to misrule.( S G Sardesai, Election Results: Writing on the Wall, cited in Grover and Arora (ed.), ‘India’s democracy accepts right of cheats and bullies to rule’).
Regrettably, at all levels of government, the upper castes are holding the positions of decision-making.
Persecution of religious minorities and the so-called untouchables (who prefer to call themselves dalits) is endemic to the social and cultural systems that circumscribe the Indian polity. A four-year-old girl, named Surjo, was boiled in a tub and then beheaded to please gods as part of a religious sacrifice. The police said, “In a country where sons are sold for 25 paisas and women are thrown into fire to please Sati, goddess of chastity, such events cannot be foreseen or forestalled”. (Manoj Joshi, ‘Indian girl boiled alive and beheaded as a religious custom’, Times of India, 13 August 2000). Solution lies in state funding of elections. Reforms suggested by the Tarkunde Committee, Indrajit Gupta Committee, and Dinesh Goswami Committee and N S Gehlot (D L Seth, Crisis of Representation, p. 179) could not be implemented.
Hindutva supporters want to convert India into a centralised state for the brahmans only. The rise of the BJP from a marginal Hindu nationalist party of the 1980s to the majority party in Parliament in 1999 indicates ascendancy of the Hindutva trend.
Obviously, India is the largest democracy in form but not in substance.
