The cash-in-elections scourge

Address systemic problems underlying election spending

Nationwide raids have revealed the degree to which election campaigns in India are dependent upon large amounts of — possibly illegal — money. The Election Commission’s (EC’s) special team has so far seized cash, alcohol and drugs from across the country, the value of which could total Rs 1,800 crore. This is clearly not just a major problem but also one that is growing. Polling is not yet properly underway and yet already it seems that the cash seizures during the 2014 election, of Rs 300 crore, have been dwarfed. Of the total haul, Rs 473 crore has already been seized in cash, and Rs 410 crore in gold — Rs 220 crore of the latter from Tamil Nadu alone. That state also led in terms of the cash seized, at Rs 154 crore. Meanwhile, Punjab and Gujarat had the dubious distinction of having the most drugs seized — Rs 500 crore worth from just Gujarat. The EC’s seizures are in addition to huge cash confiscations by several government agencies including the Income-Tax Department. There were over 60 such raids in the recent past. The Centre for Media Studies estimates these elections will see an expenditure of Rs 50,000 crore, far more than what was spent in the 2016 US presidential election.

It is worth noting that the EC’s directive capping the amount of cash each candidate can spend on a campaign is well known to be flouted at every opportunity. The EC allows candidates to spend up to Rs 50 lakh or up to Rs 70 lakh, depending on the constituency. In any case this cap is meaningless, given party expenditures at the state or national level can help their candidates without breaching the cap. Some opposition parties, including the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam in Tamil Nadu, have claimed that specific raids are politically motivated. While it may be possible to countermand specific polls or register individual cases, there is a systemic problem that must be addressed. In a volume — Costs of Democracy: Political Finance in India, published last year — a group of political scientists led by Devesh Kapur and Milan Vaishnav investigated the problem of electoral financing in India and came to some disturbing conclusions. The rise of candidates who finance their own election campaigns has meant that the composition of the Lok Sabha has now skewed towards the rich — 82 per cent of the 2014 Lok Sabha members, for example, have assets of over Rs 1 crore. Over the last three Lok Sabha elections, the wealthiest 20 per cent of candidates were victorious more than 20 times as often as the poorest 20 per cent. The political scientists also found that thinking of this expenditure as merely “cash-for-votes” is simplistic, as it is more like “gift-giving”, as well as required spending on the basic electoral machinery.

What is necessary is to control expenditure and cash-raising at the party level, while allowing parties to fund their candidates more transparently. This would reduce the reliance on self-funding candidates. The current government’s system of anonymous electoral bonds does not aid in this endeavour. Prof Kapur and Dr Vaishnav suggest a “grand bargain” is necessary, in which all money-raising is accounted for, and ideally raised digitally. Parties submit to third-party audits. In return, limits are loosened to reflect the real cost of elections and state funding of elections be introduced.