(Brinda Karat is a Politburo member of the CPI(M) and a former Member of the Rajya Sabha.)The voter has voted. Whatever the results, one thing is for sure - the Maharashtra election campaign and related issues show that unless Parliament wakes up to the urgent need for electoral reforms, it's sunset time for Indian democracy.
The need for proportional representation, state funding, an end to corporate money in elections, and setting limits for expenditures of political parties are just some of the urgently required reforms thrown up so clearly in the experience of the Maharashtra elections.
This of course would require an initiative from the ruling party. The Congress showed no interest for nearly a decade. Whether the BJP will is to be seen. The Maharashtra experience shows that there is little difference among the main contenders as far as the injection of a toxin of the multiple Cs into the body politic in Maharashtra is concerned - corruption, cash, criminals, caste and communalism. If all this did not become an important poll issue, it is because all four major contenders were pretty much equally guilty in spreading the toxins around, though in differing degrees.
Let's look at the aspect of cash and criminals.
Nitin Gadkari, a central Minister and the former President of the BJP, was charged by the Election Commission for his outrageous remarks in an election rally. In a public meeting in the Latur district on October 5, Gadkari said "In the next 10 days all of you will have in your stars the chance of
Laxmi Darshan. Do not kick away the
Laxmi (wealth) that will come to you. . . There will be foreign liquor for the special leaders and country liquor for the petty leaders. Eat what you want, drink what you want and keep what you get!"
Forget ethics. This is a clear violation of the election code of conduct. It constitutes a corrupt practice but Gadkari got away with a reprimand. When a Central Minister speaks this language, what is the hope of cleansing Indian politics? These were not just empty words.
The official figures of cash and liquor intercepted by the police in Maharashtra three days before the elections are of around Rs 16 crore in cash. The nodal officer in Pune reported that the unaccounted-for cash seized by his team was over Rs 24 crore. According to the Director of Enforcement of the State Excise department, the liquor seized was 15.81 lakh litres. The raids that brought out liquor were indeed according to the declared menu of Nitin Gadkari from foreign liquor to toddy.
But this is a highly underestimated amount, just a fraction of the actual amounts spent by leaders to bribe the voter. Regretfully, corruption has become so all pervasive that there are few to report it.
It is true that cash-for-votes is nothing new but the sheer scale of it today is enough to completely distort and subvert a free and fair election. When the Prime Minister is setting the pace, one would expect that the old corrupt ways of the Congress-NCP combine in winning elections would have been replaced with a
swachh politics campaign. But Nitin Gadkari would have put everyone straight on that expectation. There was not a word from Narendra Modi in all his 27 rallies against the use of money power to buy votes. It is obvious why.
Maharashtra also showed the completely unequal, non-level playing field for different contestants. One of the instruments which help national parties to "legally" cross the expenditure barrier is the concept of "star campaigners." National parties or state-level recognized parties get to appoint a list of around 30-40 star campaigners. The expenditure of these campaigners, like hiring of helicopters, private planes etc. are not counted in the accounts of the candidates they are campaigning for, which gives an advantage to the candidate who has the richest leader.
Worst of all, the hundreds of crores spent in advertisements, hoardings, television ads, mobile vans projecting a national leader is not calculated as poll expenditure at all. It is attributed to the expenditure of the political party for which there is currently no limit. So whether the expenditure on Modi's campaign is Rs 200 crore as alleged by Raj Thackeray or Rs 2,000 crore, it is all the same as far as election rules are concerned.
A direct impact of this dominance of money is in the profile of candidates. We are fast getting to a stage when only the really rich can successfully contest elections in most states where the major mainstream national parties dominate. In this election, the richest candidate with declared wealth of Rs 353.53 crore was from the BJP; so was the second-richest with Rs 200 crore. The poorest was a CPI(M) candidate with Rs 15,000. A large majority of candidates, 236 from the four main parties are crorepatis several times over. Maharashtra is fifth on the list as far as per capita income is concerned, but still the gap between the earnings of ordinary folk and their representatives gets wider every election. This is more like corporatocracy than democracy.
It is also a sobering thought that the larger-than-life created image of the Prime Minister acted as a shield to push away from public scrutiny the more murky aspect of the choice of candidates. 60 of the BJP's candidates were leaders from other parties. Among them was a candidate accused of the murder of two north Indians when Raj Thackeray was arrested in 2008; another is a man who spent four years in jail as an accused in the multi-crore Telgi scam; yet another a man who was booked for spreading communal hatred.
According to Maharashtra Election Watch, the BJP has one-third of all candidates who are accused in cases of serious crimes such as murder, rape, crimes against women, dacoits, robbery. The MNS has 42 per cent, Shiv Sena 41 per cent and the NCP and Congress have 29 and 20 per cent respectively.
India's parliamentary democracy is already subverted in umpteen ways. Now we have a winner-takes-it-all philosophy on display, when anything and everything goes as long as you win.
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