Kranti

Fairness at play: Money and Muscle

power at work in Electoral

Politics

What is at Stake

2 Million Elected Representatives

1 out of 800 Indian will be an elected representative

Having authority to dispense Lakhs of Crores of Public money

Politics is now a serious business

543 Lok Sabha Seats

250 Rajya Sabha Members : 12 nominated 238 elected

4129 Vidhan Sabha Seats

454 Legislative council seats in 6 states

~600 Zilla Parishads with at least 50 to 75 members

~240000 Gram Panchayat with 7 to 17 members

Why need money

• Success in elections leads to achieving positions & direct or indirect influence on business decisions

• Many businessmen & successful professionals find comfort in realizing perks that even money cant buy

VIP Culture in Democracy is a driver

• High decibel campaigning including short term benefits (distribution of free goods i.e. laptops/Tv/ food grains/cash or in kind) to voters can gain above two objectives leading to spending money

• Not all have it & it leads to Black Money

& What is being spent…??

What is being spent

• Avg. money spent by candidates on Loksabha Election

– 5-6 Crores per candidate • ~ 20 Crores per Loksabha Seat (4-5 Candidates)

– > 10,000 Crores per Lok Sabha Election

• Average money spent by candidates in Vidhan Sabha Seats

– ~ 1 Crores • 3-5 Crores per Vidhan Sabha Seats

– ~ 15000 – 20,000 Crores Vidhan Sabha Elections

Add Zilla Parishad & Panchayat & we have a staggering cost in Excess of 50,000 Crores

Impact of Power to assets

• 18% of candidates analyzed by ADR have declared criminal cases against themselves

• Of these, 8% have serious criminal cases against them

• 30% of LS MPs have criminal cases registered against them

• Average assets of MPs in LS tripled from 2004 to 2009

What is the source

• Donations to Political Parties : Accounted

• Donations to Political parties : Unaccounted in cash or kind

– Payment of expenses such as events costs including Aircraft Charter etc.

• Legislature’s constituency fund plough back

• Individual’s funds either earned through clear or dubious means such as kick backs etc.

Wasteful expenditure & source of corruption in regular life post elections as either successful candidates or their near & dear ones try to offset costs incurred in elections by compromising decisions in management of public funds

Term related suggestion..

• The 5 year term of ruling can be reduced to 3 years of ruling. This can cause the following transformations: – Judging the performance of the administration is faster and loss

to the exchequer can be reduced accordingly

– Keeps the ruling party on it’s toes for the incentive to continue implementation of party’s foreign, domestic and economic policy

– This will give public more power in elections

– Most of the demands made by public should be met sooner

– Disadvantage: Increased cost to the EC due to higher number of elections

– However, the relative merits outweigh potential risks

What can be done • State Funding of elections: i.e. providing airtime on

television/print-media for campaigning; defined public meetings – That is an easier answer difficult to implement

• Impart effective political education in democracy and for democracy and in citizenship responsibilities so that the right kind of representatives are elected and kept fully accountable to the people

• Decentralization of power down to the grassroots levels and building multi-tiers of Government from below in a bottom-up instead of the present top down approach

• Direct elections only at local levels with the upper tiers filled by representatives indirectly elected by an electoral college consisting of the representatives manning the lower tiers

Some other measures.. • Representation by providing seats to recognized political

parties in proportion to the votes obtained by them

• Voting – Online

– Compulsory

• Debar all legislators from being appointed as chairpersons of various state undertakings, also debar them from any non-ministerial post other than chairmanship of legislative committees

• Limit of two terms for any political position

• Election linked to minimum votes, qualification & controlling candidate’s criminal background with effective law

• Hold State level and parliamentary level elections at the same time to reduce election expenditure

Some other measures…

• Use of technology on deployment of public funds

– E – Auctions of public contracts

• Use of technology in distribution of public schemes to reduce leakage

– Aadhar/Bio-records • Implementation of a ‘Whistleblower law’ to promote and

protect people who come forward with reports of inappropriate conduct.

• In the end, we will need to build character of the nation which is responsible in all its behavior which will reflect in election, governance & reduce influence of money in decision making in all spheres…

Some other measures…

• The RTI (Amendment) Bill, 2013 seeks to insert an explanation in section 2(h) of the Act which states that any association or body of individuals registered or recognized as political party under the Representation of People Act, 1951 will not be considered as public authority which was missing in the act passed in 2005 RTI act

• Implementation of a helpline similar to 311 of the USA that allows for direct contact to the government or an appropriate authority

References

• www.adrindia.org

• Wikipedia

• www.rti.gov.in

• Google

• Newspaper Archives(DNA)

Made By: Team Kranti

• Arpita Gupta

• Sapan Gandhi

• Jinkal Javia

• Jaagrit Arora

• Chirag Gupta