When Crime Pays

by Milan Vaishnav

  Thus, a characteristic often portrayed as a liability for politicians in democracies with free and fair elections—connections to illegal behavior—can sometimes be an asset. The fact that voters often perceive candidates associated with breaking the law to be more credible than their counterparts suggests that the emergence of tainted politicians in democracies is not necessarily symptomatic of a breakdown in political and electoral accountability.

  6 The Salience of Social Divisions

  How Context Shapes Criminality

  ON JANUARY 14, 2009, the chief minister of Uttar Pradesh, Mayawati, celebrated her fifty-second birthday in lavish style with a giant party in the state capital of Lucknow. Each year, Mayawati—the first Dalit and the first female chief executive of India’s most populous state—would direct leaders of her Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) to commemorate her birthday by raising funds for the party’s war chest. This year’s celebrations were no different: supporters draped the capital in blue cloth (the party’s official color), plastered city walls with signs emblazoned with pictures of Mayawati beneath slogans like tum jiyo hazaron saal, saal ke din ho pachas hazaar (May you live a thousand years with 50,000 days in each year), and even baked a birthday cake weighing 52 kilograms—one for each year.1

  Mayawati, it turns out, knew a thing or two about raising funds. From 2003 to 2007, her self-reported financial wealth grew fiftyfold.2 The meteoric growth of the BSP leader’s pocketbook triggered a federal investigation into her “disproportionate assets,” to which Mayawati responded by declaring that her newfound largesse was the result of small donations from party workers.3 While such an accumulation of wealth in the form of five and ten rupee notes seems fantastical, Mayawati’s supporters are known to—literally—adorn her with cash. At one highly publicized rally, supporters greeted her with a garland made entirely out of thousand-rupee notes; the “cash garland” was estimated to be worth tens of millions of rupees.4 By 2012, Mayawati’s assets totaled a whopping 1.1 billion rupees ($17 million)—the vast majority of which consisted of real estate holdings in posh sections of Delhi and Lucknow.5 The leader’s extravagant wealth led some detractors to joke: Mayawati Dalit ki beti nahin balki daulat ki beti hain (Mayawati is not the daughter of a Dalit but of wealth).6

  The birthday festivities in Lucknow took place with national elections mere months away and Mayawati’s legislators were under intense pressure not to disappoint in their fundraising efforts, lest they fall out of favor with their beloved leader. Mayawati is widely known to hold her party colleagues to account should they shirk on their responsibilities of bringing funds into the party.7 In a 2003 speech, Mayawati is reported to have chastised her party’s lawmakers for siphoning off funds intended for the party: Bhai saara mat khao. BSP ne MLA, MP banaya, ek lakh lao (Brothers, don’t eat it all yourselves. The BSP has made you an MLA or MP, so bring the party one lakh [one lakh is equivalent to 100,000 rupees, or $1,500]).8

  In another fiery speech to key party functionaries, Mayawati refused to mince words about the necessity of refreshing the party’s coffers, including by redirecting funds from legislators’ constituency development funds: “Now I’ll tell you my method of depositing money. It will be applicable from the coming year. In Uttar Pradesh, every MLA gets 75 lakh [$114,000] a year to fund projects. Even an honest MLA gets a kickback of Rs 5 lakh [$7,500] from those he funds. Keep 4 lakh [$6,000] but deposit 1 lakh with the party. Similarly, MPs get 2 crore [20 million rupees, or $300,000] a year and they will have to give 2 lakh [200,000 rupees, or $3,000].”9

  Unlike many Indian politicians, Mayawati is refreshingly honest when it comes to discussing her “innovative” fundraising techniques. “We make no bones about observing my birthday as a day for seeking donations from our party supporters who shell out their savings, with which we sustain our party,” the former chief minister explained.10 Once, in response to accusations that she took money from aspiring candidates in exchange for party tickets, Mayawati readily admitted to the practice: “Since many rich persons were keen to contest on our party ticket, I see nothing wrong in taking some contribution from them; after all, I use the money to enable poor and economically weak Dalit candidates to contest. . . . Remember, unlike the Samajwadi Party, Congress or the Bharatiya Janata Party, the BSP does not comprise affluent industrialists, businessmen or traders; we run the party solely with the help of contributions received from party supporters and through membership drives.”11

  According to a classified U.S. diplomatic cable released by Wikileaks, the going rate to “acquire” a BSP party ticket for the 2009 parliamentary elections was in the neighborhood of $250,000.12 The same cable also insinuated that perhaps not all of the funds raised were for strictly “electoral” purposes, disclosing that when Mayawati was in need of new sandals, she dispatched her (empty) private plane to Mumbai to procure her favorite brand and ferry them back to her.13 Mayawati, for her part, called the allegations brought to light by Wikileaks “baseless,” suggesting that Julian Assange, the organization’s founder, be “sent to a mental asylum.”14

  In the lead-up to the 2009 national polls, one supporter who did not want to disappoint his revered party president was Shekhar Tiwari, a powerful MLA. Tiwari was a noted BSP leader with a reputation as a no-nonsense local strongman. Tiwari’s criminal past was well known when Mayawati lured him into the BSP fold; when he won election to the Uttar Pradesh state legislature in 2007, he was reportedly implicated in no fewer than 14 ongoing criminal cases.15

  A few weeks before Mayawati’s birthday celebration, Tiwari paid a visit to Manoj Gupta, a mid-level engineer in the state public works department, to solicit a donation for his party. Tiwari’s methods of using his position to influence government employees were well known. According to one local bureaucrat, Tiwari “always tried to pressurise engineers to award contracts to his chosen men and he was given his cut in every contract.”16 Gupta, an honest public servant, was not willing to give in so easily and reportedly refused Tiwari’s entreaties. To add insult to injury, Gupta allegedly slow-walked approving payments demanded by several local contractors who regularly shared their proceeds with Tiwari.17

  Days later, an infuriated and drunken Tiwari rounded up his associates, drove to Gupta’s home, and subjected the bureaucrat to electric shocks and a merciless beating with a wooden baton.18 The engineer died later that night of a brain hemorrhage, and Tiwari conspired to cover up the killing. A court later found Tiwari guilty and sentenced him to life in prison. Mayawati, for her part, expressed outrage and declared that from then on she would have only “low-key” birthday celebrations.19 Although the following year’s festivities were certainly more subdued, the fundraising did not stop. Even though her official “birthday party” was canceled, Mayawati silently collected millions of dollars.20

  In a party founded expressly to serve as a political vehicle for advocating the interests of India’s historically disadvantaged Dalit community, what is striking about Tiwari is that he is not a Dalit. In fact, Tiwari is a prominent upper-caste leader, touted as one of Mayawati’s “Brahmin mascots”—someone she relied on to organize sammelans (caste meetings) to mobilize support from upper-caste Brahmins on the BSP’s behalf in an effort to diversify her party’s appeal. Incorporating key upper-caste leaders like Tiwari was an integral part of Mayawati’s political strategy, intended to soften (if not eliminate) the upper castes’ traditional aversion for the BSP.21

  As gruesome as Tiwari’s acts were, he was far from the only one of Mayawati’s party-mates situated on the wrong side of the law. And like Tiwari, most of the BSP’s criminally suspect candidates hailed from non-Dalit communities. In the 2007 Uttar Pradesh state elections, the BSP ran candidates in all 403 of the state’s assembly constituencies—15 percent of whom were under serious criminal scrutiny.22 But in constituencies constitutionally reserved for Scheduled Castes, where only candidates from this group could stand for election, fewer than 7 percent of candidates faced serious criminal cases.23 In other words
, the same pro-Dalit party in the same state adopted different political recruitment strategies depending on whether or not the candidate would contest an election in an area where Dalit quotas were operative.24

  It turns out that the BSP experience in the 2007 Uttar Pradesh elections was no anomaly; the party’s dual-track strategy extends far beyond that one election. Across all states in which the BSP was active between the years 2003 and 2009, 7.1 percent of its 3,656 candidates in general constituencies faced serious criminal cases compared to 3.7 and 1.7 percent in constituencies reserved for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, respectively (figure 6.1).

  By now, it is pretty clear what factors grease the wheels of India’s electoral marketplace for criminality. But what explains the discrepancy between reserved constituencies, where candidates must hail from the community the seat is set aside for, and unreserved constituencies, where anyone can stand for election? And what does this disjuncture tell us, if anything, about the conditions under which the “credibility” of suspected criminal politicians holds sway?

  Figure 6.1. Share of BSP candidates with pending serious criminal cases contesting state assembly elections, by constituency reservation status, 2003–9. Legislative seats are reserved for Scheduled Tribes (ST) and Scheduled Castes (SC); all other seats are unreserved or general (GEN) seats. (Author’s calculations based on affidavits submitted to the Election Commission of India by candidates contesting state assembly elections between 2003 and 2009)

  AN EMPIRICAL DILEMMA

  Contrary to the expectations of the ignorant voter hypothesis, there can be a demand for alleged criminal politicians in a robust democratic marketplace. As the evidence from Bihar demonstrated, informed voters often rally behind candidates who not only possess serious criminal records but regularly (and publicly) tout them. To study this relationship further, one would ideally like to move beyond case studies and identify a more systematic method of ascertaining the reasons voters provide support for politicians with criminal backgrounds. Unfortunately, using hard data to study this relationship presents numerous practical challenges.

  For starters, any systematic review of the connection between social divisions and criminality in India is hampered by the fact that the last detailed enumeration of caste identities took place in 1931 under the British Raj. As this book goes to press, the government of India is finalizing the results of a new caste census it carried out in 2012–13, the first such enumeration in eight decades. Unfortunately, it will likely take years before these granular data are widely disseminated and analyzed.25 As a result, today we know far less than we should about the caste demographics of populations across India.

  As if this were not enough of a stumbling block, there is a second challenge: the lack of comprehensive data on the social identities of candidates contesting elections. In the absence of such disaggregated data, it is very difficult to identify the influence social divisions might have on popular support for suspected criminal candidates.

  The scarcity of data renders the prospect of more fine-grained analysis difficult, although not impossible. If the logic explaining the popular appeal of politicians linked to crime detailed in the previous chapter conforms to reality, there are a few ways of validating this argument. Two indirect methods exploit constitutional features of India’s electoral design that (unintentionally) introduce variation in the salience of social cleavages and thus can be employed.

  The first method exploits a distinct attribute of India’s electoral order: ethnic quotas for historically disadvantaged minorities. One of the principal ways through which India’s founders sought to redress historical discrimination was to “reserve” legislative seats for two historically disadvantaged groups: Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes. Given the way these quotas are designed, there are good reasons to expect lower levels of criminality among politicians in reserved constituencies. The logic is simple: in reserved constituencies, candidates must hail from the community for which the seat is being reserved. In a constituency reserved for SCs, by law only SC candidates can stand for elections (the same is true for STs in constituencies reserved for that community). Although the candidate pool for these specially designated seats is restricted to the minority community, the entire electorate is eligible to vote—and therein lies the rub.

  Because the ethnic identity of the winner is preordained, quotas serve to diminish the salience of social cleavages in reserved constituencies, and so parties have a much weaker incentive to engage in ethnic jockeying for votes. To the extent that parties are constrained from mobilizing along ethnic lines, candidates with criminal reputations will have much less resonance; after all, their popularity often rests precisely on their comparative advantage in activating identity-based divisions. This reality, in turn, accords with the common sentiment that candidates contesting elections in reserved areas are often more interested in wooing voters from other blocs than catering to their own ethnic community.

  A second quirk in India’s electoral design is the simultaneous existence of direct and indirect elections. At the national level, India has a bicameral legislature consisting of a lower house (Lok Sabha), directly elected by the voters, and an indirectly elected upper house (Rajya Sabha), whose members are chosen by the elected members of the various state assemblies. Several states in India have bicameral legislatures with similar features.

  What impact might this have on criminality in politics? If the theory about why criminal politicians are popular is on the mark, one implication is that there should be lower levels of criminality in India’s indirectly elected bodies. Because indirectly elected legislators do not have to contest popular elections, those legislators who are electing them are less concerned with how well they might connect with the electorate. The ethnic bona fides of candidates, which are crucial for mobilizing sought-after vote banks, are less relevant when voters are not part of the picture. Thus, if identity politics is an important motivation for why voters support suspected criminal candidates (and, hence, why parties select them), this incentive would likely be muted for indirect elections.

  Data exploiting both of these electoral quirks reveal differences in the presence of politicians with criminal records that are consistent with the voter demand logic. However, these methods are still fairly indirect. A more direct strategy is to simply ask voters whether they support politicians with serious criminal reputations. One could then correlate these responses with attitudes on caste or ethnicity to gauge whether attitudes toward criminality in politics and social divisions proceed hand in hand. Thanks to a new survey of Indian voters, I do exactly that in this chapter.

  EXPLOITING ETHNIC QUOTAS

  The Constitution of India is arguably one of the world’s most aggressive in its commitment to using state power to counter ethnic discrimination.26 Although the constitution and subsequent law established a wide array of affirmative action policies for disenfranchised minorities, one of the principal ways through which policymakers sought to redress discrimination was through the reservation of legislative seats for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes. India is not entirely unique in this regard; nearly 40 countries around the world employ quotas to manage ethnic tensions.27

  In order to protect the rights of these minorities, the constitution stipulates that seats in the state assemblies and the Lok Sabha be reserved for SCs and STs in proportion to their population in the state. Under the constitution, each state was required to construct lists (“schedules”) of groups that would qualify as belonging to either category. Reservations were introduced as a short-term remedy, but Parliament has consistently renewed them. Although ending the practice of legislative reservation has often been mooted, most politicians are happy to maintain the status quo; the political risks of halting reservations are perceived to be too high to bear.28 Today, roughly one-quarter of state assembly and national parliamentary seats are reserved for one or the other of these two communities (figure 6.2).29 Within states, specific constituencies are reserv
ed on the basis of where the share of residents from the respective minority community is largest in number.

  Implications for Criminality

  It is not immediately obvious what influence reservations, or ethnic quotas, might have on crime in politics. The historical record offers no explicit articulations or even remote suggestions by scholars or statesmen about the connection between quotas and criminality. Yet this is precisely why their introduction provides a unique natural experiment; no one would argue that quotas were legislated to influence criminality in politics. Any impact, therefore, is purely unintentional and allows for a clean comparison of reserved and unreserved areas.

  There are good reasons to expect that politics might function differently in general (“unreserved” or “open”), as opposed to reserved, constituencies. Recall that in general electoral constituencies, there are no restrictions on who can contest elections or who can vote in them. Unlike reserved constituencies, which artificially constrain who can stand for elections, general constituencies have no such limitations. Thus, there is significant potential for parties and candidates to engage in spirited multiethnic competition over votes.

  Figure 6.2. Distribution of Lok Sabha constituencies based on reservation status, 2014. Legislative seats are reserved for Scheduled Tribes (ST) and Scheduled Castes (SC); all other seats are unreserved or general (GEN) seats. (Author’s calculations based on data from the Election Commission of India)

  As a result, in general constituencies where quotas play no role, the election stakes are high since the ethnic identity of the winner is not known in advance. In such places, contests over local dominance, which in India typically operate along ethnic lines, will be more prevalent. Accordingly, social divisions are more likely to be brought to the fore during the course of the campaign; the increased relevance of ethnic voting means there are greater incentives for parties to select candidates whose sweet spot is using their criminal reputations to exploit social divisions while promoting an aura of “protection” for members of their own communities (figure 6.3).