What is the biggest challenge for democracy and democratic elections? The big elephant in the room. ? It is the fact only the rich people or rich parties or those who are sponsored by them can contest and win an election. Almost all party sponsored candidates spent at an average of ten to twenty times more that limit prescribed by the election.
When it comes to transparency and accountability of funding, all political parties fudged. And most of them are hardly transparent about the source of funding. There is no transparent budgets nor shared on their websites.
According to a report released on January 23 by the Association for Democratic Reforms, for the six national parties, excluding the Communist Party of India (Marxist), 53% of funding or Rs 689.44 crore was from unknown sources in 2017-’18. Known donors contributed Rs 467.13 crore or 36% of party income. The rest 11% came from other known sources such as sale of assets or membership fees. ADR also analysed donations above Rs 20,000 for national parties in its report. In this, the Bharatiya Janata Party garnered an incredible 93% share or Rs 437.04 crore in 2017-’18. The Congress came a distant second with Rs 26.66 crore or 5.67% of the total known donations to national parties.
To credibly contest a parliament election, candidate or their parties or both together spend between one to three million USD or 6 crore to twenty crore. And then the huge expenses for political parties and their leaders to organize advertising, big rallies and charted planes. There are 542 parliament seats.. If we calculate all of this at an average Rs 60 to 70 croe or around 10 million USD per seat is spent. This means around 5500 million USD. It will be around a whopping 40 thousand crores. Where does the money come from? Only a minuscule percent of this money come from ordinary citizens. Till the 1990s a major chunk was raised locally and to a large extent from the public. Now the situation dramatically changed.
1) The mother of all corruption in India is that the rich and powerful hijacked the elections. A large chunk of money in circulation during the elections seem to be black money, amassed through corruption.
2)And it is a well known fact the big corporate crony capitalists fund election of those parties likely to win. They get return on their investment through contract of huge projects, tax rebates, favorable policies and unbridled bank loans.
3)Then there are binami companies and investments by political leaders that they harvest during elections.. Most of the successful political leaders got one or two money bag sponsors. Hence money, media and muscle began to dominate elections in India and money control media and muscle.
This is the real tragedy of elections.. It is very difficult for an ordinary citizen to contest election without the support of a rich party or a rich sponsor.
How democratic is our democratic elections where money and the rich call the shots and elections are reduced to brand marketing along with false promises, by the rich, for the rich and of the rich. When notes begin to dominate votes, democracy lose its currency.
JS Adoor
