Vivek Menezes | May 7, 2014, 02.10 AM IST
Whatever the result, the ongoing electoral campaign has been a historic turning point for Indian democracy. Each successive Lok Sabha polls sets a new record for the largest elections ever held-and this year will be no different-but 2014 has also set an unexpected and unsavoury benchmark.
The sums spent on campaigning have been exponentially higher than ever before, reliable estimates for the BJP's media expenditure alone-from television ads to roadside hoardings-are Rs 5,000 crore. Once other costs are added (parties need not report actual figures to the Election Commission until 90 days after polling) that total is likely to rise above Rs 6,000 crore, significantly more than the record one billion dollars Barack Obama spent to win the money-soaked American presidential election in 2012. Right in front of our eyes, we are witnessing the most expensive election campaign ever conducted in world history.
But the eye-popping stats don't end there. Politically tense polling in Andhra Pradesh is particularly awash in money, because this is the crucial last elections before the state splits on June 2 into Telengana and Semmandhra.
So the parties are going all out, with every kind of inducement available. Several days ago, the state police had already confiscated Rs 56 crore in unaccounted-for cash and 4,40,000 litres of alcohol. According to a news website, there is a strong possibility that Andhra Pradesh alone has conducted "the second most expensive election season in the history of the world".
In a thoughtful editorial on his website, veteran journalist and senior fellow at the Center for Public Affairs and Critical Theory, Siddharth Varadarajan, questions the impact of these giant sums "not just on the election outcome and the policies of the next government but on the future course of Indian democracy" before pointing to a far-seeing 1974 Supreme Court judgement (in the Amar Nath Chawla case) seeking to "eliminate as far as possible, the influence of big money in the electoral process".
The court predicted that politicians "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."
Varadarajan concludes "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 both, 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% of the money raised by the Congress and half of that of the BJP." As the Supreme Court foresaw in 1974, there is an inevitable payback for huge campaign contributions, the cost of which is borne by the average citizen, future generations, and democracy itself.
This is what happens in the USA, where all-powerful lobbies exert a stranglehold on the legislative process. And it seems inevitable this is now going to play out in India, with the interests of a tiny minority of "haves" weighted heavily over the needs of "have nots", the overwhelming majority of the country's population that is left without access to the corridors of power. That is the definition of disenfranchisement.
Goa has remained an exception to the drastic income/lifestyle inequalities that persist in much of the rest of the country. Its citizens are broadly well-fed, well-educated, decently-housed, and aware enough of their fundamental rights to repeatedly stave off brazen corporatist conspiracies like SEZs (a hard-to-believe 18 were approved in India's smallest state) and the deeply irresponsible Regional Plan 2011.
But Goa is now inevitably feeling the impact of the big money wave that is clearly swamping the rest of the country's political process-and projects, clearances and permissions are increasingly being rammed through at the behest of powerful lobbies that wield disproportionate clout.
In a searing address earlier this month, the ex-governor (and grandson of the Mahatma) Gopalkrishna Gandhi put it plainly, "money is at our democracy's throat". He said, "corporate greed has crossed all bounds, as has corporate tastelessness." Gandhi was speaking broadly of India (ironically, to a stunned audience of CBI officers) but the words strike very hard in Goa, where most policy decisions are now opaquely made by a tiny coterie of privileged insiders, for the benefit of their cronies and sycophants. If big money gets away with hijacking the elections this year-as it looks likely to-such shenanigans will become the rule, and Indian democracy will have entered a very dark period that will be very difficult to exit.
The writer is a well published author and photographer.
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/home/lok-sabha-elections-2014/news/Corporate-coup-Big-moneys-subversive-effect-on-Indian-democracy/articleshow/34749938.cms
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