Even in the United States of America, the world’s oldest democracy, it is not unheard of for candidates to thrive politically despite past run-ins with the law. For instance, convicted felon Edwin Edwards campaigned in the 1991 Louisiana gubernatorial race (against notorious white supremacist David Duke) on the slogan: “Vote for the crook. It’s important.” Edwards won the race by more than 20 percentage points. Of the “unapologetically corrupt” former four-term governor, one admirer warmly recalled: “We all knew he was going to steal . . . but he told us he was going to do it.”52 From former Massachusetts governor James Michael Curley—who served not one but two jail terms—to the convicted ex-mayor of the District of Columbia, Marion Barry, criminal rap sheets have not always been a barrier to higher office.53 Of course, Marion Barry and Mohammed Shahabuddin are very different politicians, yet they may be responding to similar motivating factors. Understanding what is generalizable and what is unique about India’s democratic evolution can be hugely illuminating.
THE MARKETPLACE FOR CRIMINALITY
To preview what lies ahead, this book has five principal findings, each a response to the five central questions posed above. One of its core premises is that it helps to think about politicians, of all types, operating within an electoral marketplace.
Of course, elections and markets are not completely analogous.54 Indeed, one could argue that markets possess a number of underlying characteristics that are rarely, if ever, found in everyday electoral politics. For instance, economic markets typically consist of arm’s-length transactions between independent agents. In a truly free market, buyers and sellers can enter and exit the marketplace with relative ease and information about prices is ubiquitous. Politics often departs significantly from these core tenets. Politics is about the structure of power. Actors do not always behave independently and information asymmetries often crop up. Furthermore, status considerations matter a great deal; indeed, voters, politicians, and parties are all embedded within larger social realities.
These caveats notwithstanding, there is a utility to the market analogy. In elections, there are buyers (voters) and sellers (parties and politicians). As with any market, there are underlying supply and demand factors at work. The idea of supply can be disaggregated into two components: the decision of individuals to make themselves available as candidates, and the selection of candidates by political parties. Without the backing of parties, candidates in most democracies struggle to make it on their own. The demand comes from the voters. Faced with a particular constellation of candidates on offer, voters express their demand for their preferred choice through the ballot box. At the end of the day, elections determine the precise location where supply and demand meet. All actors in the electoral marketplace presumably behave in their own self-interest, much like profit-seeking firms and bargain-seeking consumers. Politicians known for their criminal conduct too must live and die by this market test.
From Criminals to Candidates
One of the fundamental requirements of any marketplace is that there must exist at least two parties willing to make a transaction. Before getting to why voters might buy what criminal candidates have to offer, one must ask why criminal candidates are willing to sell their wares to the electorate.
Although commentators often speak of the criminalization of Indian politics as a new phenomenon, the interplay between crime and politics actually has deep historical roots. Over time, however, there has been a qualitative shift in the nature of their engagement. In the immediate post-independence period, politicians often relied on “criminal elements”—a catchall term for ruffians, strongmen, thugs, and mercenaries—for electioneering. By the late 1970s and early 1980s, the phenomenon of criminals contesting elections as candidates was commonplace. Within a few decades, the tables had turned.
The weakening of the hegemonic Congress Party and the corresponding growth of multiparty competition, organizational decline within political parties more generally in the face of a deepening of identity politics, the decay in the rule of law, and the collapse of India’s election finance regime pulled such individuals into the electoral realm.
While these “pull” factors speak to the political opportunity made available to individuals with criminal records, there was also an important factor pushing them to contest elections. As electoral uncertainty increased within rising levels of political fragmentation, criminals sought to vertically integrate their operations, cutting out the politician middleman in order to maximize control over their own survival and protection. By this time, having functioned as prominent local power brokers who were thoroughly embedded within their local communities, criminals had accumulated considerable social capital; entering the lucrative world of politics allowed them the possibility of reaping greater social and financial rewards on this initial investment.
Welcome to the Party
Just as markets feature intermediaries who help to match buyers with sellers, political parties perform a similar function in an electoral marketplace. In fact, it is hard to think of any truly vibrant democracy anywhere on the planet where political parties do not mediate relations between voters and politicians. True, individuals might have their own incentives to enter politics, but the question naturally arises: why do parties recruit candidates with known criminal backgrounds? Even if one cynically assumes that most criminal cases aspiring candidates face are politically motivated, one might think that parties would still hesitate to embrace implicated candidates out of a fear that they will be punished at the polls. Given this, why do parties find it in their interest to facilitate the supply of criminally suspect candidates into the electoral market?
Money is a core reason parties are attracted to politicians with dubious backgrounds. Election costs in India have risen considerably over the years as the size of the population has ballooned and the competitiveness of elections has grown. This resource crunch has compelled all political parties to innovate in their desperate search for financial “rents.” While these campaign funds are raised to cover the exorbitant costs of elections, undoubtedly some portion of these resources end up lining the pockets of party leaders.
In parties’ struggles to identify reliable sources of funding—a partial reflection of the decline in their organizational strength—they have increasingly placed a premium on candidates who can bring resources into the party and will not drain limited party coffers. Candidates who are self-financing are not only able to cover their own campaign costs; they might also be in a position to pay their parties for the privilege of running and thereby subsidize lesser-endowed candidates. When it comes to campaign cash, candidates willing to break the law have a distinct advantage: they both have access to liquid forms of finance and are willing to deploy them in the service of politics. In some cases, money comes from illicit, rent-seeking business activities; in others, it comes from deep-rooted patronage networks or simple extortion. Either way, parties value “muscle” (serious criminality, in Indian parlance) because of the money that comes along with it.
Voting with Eyes Open
In order to maximize their financial objectives, it makes sense that parties might cut deals with questionable characters who have access to ample in-hand resources. Yet this is only half of the story. Irrespective of what parties might feel, an explanation based on money alone does not fully clarify why voters are willing to vote for candidates who face serious criminal cases. Returning to our marketplace analogy, what is driving the demand for criminal candidates?
Scholars who have studied the connection between malfeasance and democratic politics have often assumed that voters do not willingly support tainted candidates but instead do so inadvertently due to a lack of information. In a poor country such as India, for example, it is highly plausible that many voters make their decisions on Election Day with a heavy dose of ignorance about the qualifications of their local candidates. If this were the case, the election of suspected criminal candidates would be incidental rather than a genuine
expression of latent demand.
Despite the plausibility of this “ignorant voter” scenario, it turns out that voters in India—including those who are reasonably well-informed—often have very rational reasons for supporting candidates with criminal reputations. Beyond money, in contexts where the rule of law is weak and social divisions are highly salient, politicians can often use their criminality as a badge of honor—a signal of their credibility to protect the interests of their community and its allies, casting themselves as modern-day Robin Hoods operating in a polarized society. The allure of politicians with criminal reputations is, thus, a by-product of the institutional failings of Indian democracy to meet the needs of its citizenry in between elections.55
What the interaction of deep social cleavages and weak rule of law means in practice is that voters might vote for politicians expressly because of their criminal reputations. This possibility turns the conventional argument about a lack of information on its head: voters can have access to credible information and still decide to support candidates linked to crime. In some sense, the popular appeal of political strongmen should not be surprising given the widely known struggles of the Indian state to catch up with the aspirations brought about by the democratic, economic, and social changes the country has experienced in recent decades. When the state is either unable or unwilling to fulfill its core obligations vis-à-vis its citizenry, the latter will naturally begin looking for alternatives.
Reforming the System
Although the electoral success of politicians linked to crime can have very real downsides in terms of broader social welfare, the existence of a marketplace for criminal politicians suggests that perhaps democracy is working as it should. After all, the marketplace for politicians associated with wrongdoing only works when both buyers and sellers come together to strike a deal. However, it does not mean that policymakers must meekly accept the status quo. On the contrary, there are many reasons why the existence of such a market should deeply concern them. But if mitigating the phenomenon of criminal politicians is their goal, there is a wide array of potential remedies policymakers can embrace and democratic reformers can support. When governance failures, not a lack of information, are to blame for keeping the criminal-politician marketplace humming, policymakers must turn to a very specific set of policy remedies. These include quickening the wheels of justice in India, building the state’s capacity to efficiently deliver basic goods and services, and freeing the economy from the shackles of state control.
Oftentimes, advocating for “governance reform” is misinterpreted as a kind of pessimistic fatalism: institutions are notoriously sticky so overhauling them is, at best, a multigenerational task. While addressing the deep roots of India’s governance failures is a long-term enterprise, there are many actions reformers can take that would make a difference in the short run on such issues as shutting down loopholes in how campaign finance is regulated or improving the level of transparency and inclusion within political parties. However, reformers must pursue short-term remedies with caution; while politicians tied to criminal activity might make a mockery of the rule of law, the cure should not be worse than the disease. In erecting barriers to criminal entry into politics with the intention of “cleansing” democracy, there is scope for actually engaging in antidemocratic activity (for instance, by contravening the principle of the presumption of innocence).56
Implications for Democracy and Accountability
The value of any book such as this one lies not simply in the light it can shed on any one case but also in how it can shape—however modestly—conventional thinking about broader political phenomena. The key takeaways of this book have implications for popular conceptions of the relationship between democracy and accountability.
For starters, a commonly held view is that the political success of bad politicians in democratic countries is symptomatic of a breakdown in the standard chain of democratic accountability. What this book shows is that, under certain conditions, malfeasant politicians and accountability are compatible. Granted, this form of “democratic accountability” is often partial, imperfect, and counterintuitive. Yet it offers a corrective to the narrative that voters, and parties, are saddled with malfeasant politicians.
Another important takeaway is that there are limits to what greater transparency can offer in terms of improving governance. Just as scholars err in automatically assuming that coexistence of allegedly corrupt or criminal lawmakers and democracy is evidence of a grave accountability failure, they often move too quickly in pointing the finger at information asymmetries as the likely culprit. The findings of this book suggest that while transparency might be a worthy cause to pursue on its own terms, it is not necessarily the proximate driver of the rise of bad politicians.
A final implication is that the selection of candidates with criminal records varies considerably in response to local incentives. In an attempt to simplify complex matters, we often paint with a broad brush when talking about a country’s political elites; most of us are guilty of doing this on a regular basis. For instance, one often hears such statements as “Italian politicians are corrupt,” “America’s representatives are self-serving,” or “India’s legislators are criminals.” What this book shows is that the market for criminal politicians responds to highly contextualized factors of supply and demand, which can vary substantially even within a single country. For instance, although India is a multiethnic democracy, the salience of social cleavages is not uniformly distributed across the entire country. In some cases, due to historical or institutional factors, mobilization on ethnic lines is weaker, which diminishes the relevance of politicians with criminal records (some of whom use these divisions to bolster their own standing).
This final insight provides some intuition for why India’s electoral marketplace for criminal politicians has settled into a kind of equilibrium, to borrow another concept from the economics discipline. No doubt, politicians with criminal backgrounds remain important political actors in India, yet they have not successfully captured the electoral system as a whole. Candidates suspected of serious crimes often fail to win elections and, in many cases, are not even on the ballot. As the various supply and demand drivers suggest, the electoral relevance of candidates with criminal records is conditional on the presence (or absence) of a set of underlying conditions.
OUTLINE OF THE BOOK
My inquiry into the underbelly of India’s democracy is divided into three parts. Part I continues with a brief recap of the evolution of India’s political economy up to the present day, providing useful context for the book’s later discussion of the marketplace for India’s criminal politicians.
Part II examines the key supply and demand drivers underlying this marketplace. I begin first by examining the historic roots of India’s crime-politics nexus to understand why criminals sought to enter the electoral domain, the first step in injecting supply into the market. To understand why parties recruit, rather than reject, candidates with serious criminal antecedents, I delve into the skyrocketing costs of elections and the financial challenges parties must endure.
Although money is part of the equation, it alone cannot explain how the marketplace functions or fully account for voter demand. In contrast to conventional arguments about ignorant voters, I show how even well-informed voters might seek out candidates with criminal records, particularly in contexts where social divisions run deep.
Part III of the book looks to the future, focusing on the broader implications of this research. It begins by asking and answering the “so what” question: what remedies do reformers have at their disposal to address the nexus between crime and politics? In response, I outline a detailed agenda of priority, short-term actions and long-term reforms, which the private and public sectors can get behind. I conclude by stepping back from the case at hand to discuss the lessons India’s democracy might hold for other developing countries embarking on their own democratic journeys.
2 The Rise of
the Rents Raj
India’s Corruption Ecosystem
ON THE MORNING of September 5, 2009, major media organizations in Delhi received a series of bizarre news reports from local outlets across the state of Andhra Pradesh claiming that as many as 122 people had died of shock or committed suicide in the preceding 48 hours under sketchy circumstances.1 The trigger underlying these alleged mass casualties, it turned out, was not one of the usual suspects—drought, indebtedness, natural calamity, or rebel violence—but rather a spontaneous reaction to the unexpected death of a local politician.
The politician in question was Y. S. Rajasekhara Reddy (commonly known as YSR), the incumbent chief minister of Andhra Pradesh, a coastal state in the southern half of India known for centuries as the country’s “rice bowl,” and more recently for its capital city of Hyderabad, home to a sizeable chunk of India’s booming information technology industry.
On the morning of September 2, YSR and a few close aides embarked on a trip from the capital city to the southern district of Chittoor to attend a village meeting. The helicopter ferrying the chief minister was flying in a dangerous rainstorm, and the pilots, blinded by the deluge, veered dangerously off course—eventually colliding with a cliff and smashing the chopper into thousands of shards strewn across the Nallamalla forests below.2
Upon hearing of YSR’s death, dozens of his faithful supporters ended their lives, such was their love for their leader. “YSR dedicated his life to people, I am dedicating my life to him,” read a suicide note one young follower penned right before ending his life with a vial of pesticide.3 According to one longtime political observer, YSR “was one of the most fascinating and powerful political figures to arrive [in India] in the past decade.”4 Judging by the over-the-top responses to his sudden passing, this sentiment was widely shared.
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