On April 15, Arvind Kejriwal, founder of the upstart Aam Aadmi Party which is crusading to eliminate criminality and corruption in Indian politics, started a 140-character fundraising campaign. “....Need clean money to fight Modi and Rahul. Pl sms me at 9868069953 if u wish to donate. Pl RT” he said. Within 24 hours, the plea was retweeted 2,000+ times and the party had raked in nearly 8 million rupees ($133,000).
The Twitter fundraiser is significant in a country where political parties and candidates in the ongoing 2014 general election are said to be running their campaigns on vast amounts of “black money”, cash on which income and other taxes have not been paid. Indian politicians are forecast to spend a total of $5 billion on the election, according to think tank Centre for Media Studies, which compares it to the most expensive election campaign of all time, the $7 billion 2012 U.S. presidential race.
One academician described the 2014 election as the world’s biggest black money-financed democratic exercise.
In the massive election which is not even half-way through its nine-phase course, the fund-strapped Aam Aadmi (Common Man) Party has taken on, among other politicians, the two prime ministerial frontrunners Congress Party’s Rahul Gandhi in the Amethi constituency and BJP’s Narendra Modi in the Varanasi constituency, in India’s heartland. The party is contending with India’s notoriously un-transparent election funding system that favors mainstream political parties. Despite launching novel fundraisers such as benefit dinners, it is struggling to meet costs.
The Election Commission mandates that each candidate (the huge country has 543 constituencies) is only allowed to spend 7 million rupees ($116,000) on the campaign. But candidates exploit the many loopholes to spend several multiples of that, splurging on public rallies, private aircraft and 3D projectors.
Cash seizures by the Election Commission are commonplace in India these days. This week, Baba Ramdev, yoga guru and a supporter of prime ministerial candidate Modi, was caught by TV cameras shushing a BJP candidate who complained that he was unable to transport cash into his constituency.
Candidates commonly use unaccounted cash to entice voters and influence outcomes. In his book, “The Undocumented Wonder, The Making of the Great Indian Election”, a former Election Commission chief S.Y. Quraishi listed lures such as paying voters’ utility bills, doling out currency notes and even tying up with local outlets to provide free liquor. No candidate has been barred for exceeding the spending limit so far in the 2014 election.
