Post-Election Remedies
If restricting the entry of candidates into the electoral marketplace is too controversial, an alternative solution would be to focus on those candidates who are actually elected as legislators in India’s state and national assemblies. Both on the campaign trail and later during his initial months in office, Prime Minister Narendra Modi hinted at exactly such a compromise, a position later endorsed by the Supreme Court, which separately ruled that cases pending against sitting MPs and MLAs should be concluded no more than one year after charges have been framed.101
The Supreme Court has recently put into place a process of disqualification for those convicted of crimes specifically enumerated in the Representation of the People Act.102 In an important 2013 judgment, the court found that any MLA or MP currently holding office, once convicted by a court for a class of serious crimes enumerated in the law, would be immediately disqualified from the date of conviction (unless he or she obtained an immediate stay on that conviction).103 Prior to this ruling, convicted lawmakers could retain their seats as long as outstanding appeals were still pending before the courts. Although the government first contemplated an executive ordinance to supersede the court’s ruling, and later introduced a bill to the same effect, it backed down in the face of widespread criticism. One of the first MPs to lose his seat on account of the court’s ruling was none other than Lalu Prasad Yadav of Bihar. Soon afterward the chief minister of Tamil Nadu, Jayalalithaa, who was found guilty on graft charges, became the first sitting chief minister of India ever to be convicted and forced to leave office (although her conviction was later overturned by the Karnataka High Court). According to one analysis, of the 543 MPs elected in 2014, 53 face charges that could trigger immediate disqualification if they were eventually convicted by a court of law.104
MANAGING ETHNIC TENSIONS
A final area where smarter public policy could play a role in reducing the appeal of criminality relates to the management of ethnic tensions. The ability of politicians with criminal reputations to connect with voters is mediated by the prism of identity politics. This reality both perpetuates the exploitation of identity politics in political campaigns and shapes the way politicians rule once in office.
To tackle this issue, there are a few policy options worth considering. The first would be to institute a zero-tolerance policy for candidates who openly campaign or seek support on the basis of inciting ethnic or communal enmity. During the course of the heated 2014 election campaigns, BJP general secretary Amit Shah (who later became party president) made highly inflammatory statements (captured on video) in a communally sensitive electoral district of Uttar Pradesh that had just experienced gruesome ethnic riots. Although the ECI swiftly banned Shah from campaigning in the state, within a few days it withdrew its ban, stating that Shah had expressed remorse.105 Needless to say, handing out mere slaps on the wrist is not a credible deterrent to politicians intent on stoking ethnic tensions.
The second option is to invest in public service campaigns meant to deter voters from lending support to politicians who mobilize largely on sectarian grounds. Here one needs to make a distinction between information provision and persuasion. As demonstrated in Part II of this book, pure information campaigns in which civil society or the media provide factual information on the criminal antecedents of politicians will have only limited success in contexts where voters are already aware of politicians’ criminal reputations. This is likely why some experimental studies from India have found that informing voters of the criminal profiles of their candidates is not sufficient to move the needle on voter behavior.
But pure information campaigns are distinct from hortatory campaigns that seek to persuade voters to change their behavior through implicit or explicit social pressure. In this area there has been some limited success in India. Scholars working in Uttar Pradesh designed an experiment in which an NGO conducted meetings and puppet shows to urge villagers to vote in the coming election and to do so by “voting on issues, not on caste” lines.106 The experiment succeeded both in raising voter turnout and in reducing the extent of caste-based voting in the election. Interestingly, the decline in caste-based voting was highly correlated with a measurable decline in voter support for candidates charged with serious crimes.
One conclusion of this experiment was that voters who are urged not to vote on the basis of caste might, in the face of implicit social pressure, consider alterative evaluative criteria that could detract from criminals’ support. This is consistent with an argument that popular support for criminal candidates is, in part, a by-product of identity-based voting. It also suggests that the salience of identity is malleable; while politicians may ratchet it up, there are also ways of dialing it down.
CHIPPING AWAY
Freeing Indian politics from the grip of politicians with serious criminal records is not a job for the faint of heart. The entrenched nature of the electoral marketplace virtually eliminates any possibility of swift, transformative progress. The deep causes that give rise to criminality in politics emerge, at the end of the day, from weaknesses having to do with the sovereign state’s most essential functions. Generating the right sorts of capacity to fulfill these essential mandates requires time, patience, and a grand vision—three factors that are often anathema to politicians looking only to win the next election.
As Raghuram Rajan has argued, reducing the functions and activities of the government is worthwhile, but getting the government of India to perform its essential functions better is harder—and arguably more important. “Much of what needs to be done,” he has postulated, “requires better, cleverer, focused government rather than less government.”107
The good news is that India’s federal system has become a hotbed of experimentation; in recent years, civil society, the private sector, and public agencies have worked together in various permutations to figure out what works when it comes to public sector reform. Under the constitution, India’s federal states have primacy over a great many subjects related to day-to-day governance; this decentralized framework, if harnessed properly, can aid the diffusion of good ideas and squelch bad ones as well. This spirit underlies the Modi government’s stated desire to kick-start a process of “competitive federalism” in which “leading” states making sound policy choices would govern by example, eventually compelling “laggard” states to mimic what works.
A second piece of good news is that there are many actions political leaders can take in the interim to ameliorate the situation in the short run. Cleaning up political finance or strengthening norms surrounding intraparty democracy are within the realm of the possible, although the past tells us that gains are likely to be incremental rather than sweeping. Many politicians have fought, and will continue to fight, tooth and nail against any restrictions that hamper their ability to maneuver freely when it comes to conducting their political business. Fortunately, a combination of civil society activism and the courts have—especially in the last decade—kept up the pressure. Let’s hope they continue.
8 An Entrenched Marketplace
Rethinking Democratic Accountability
AS THE SWELTERING sun set on the banks of the Godavari River in Andhra Pradesh, evening traffic along a two-lane highway abutting the river ground to a halt as our car approached a police checkpoint. With state and national elections only days away, the ECI had set up a series of checkpoints to clamp down on the movement of illicit campaign cash. As traffic backed up and the incessant honking of cars grew intolerable, I exited the car and found my way to a roadside stall serving soft drinks, where a group of college-age boys were chatting. I asked one of them how he felt about the coming May 2014 general election.
“Modi is going to win. It is not even a contest,” he replied confidently.
Taken aback by his certitude, I felt that it was my duty to point out that neither Modi’s name nor his party’s symbol was actually on the ballot in this area. Voters had to pick a parliamentary candidate a
nd, in this particular constituency in Andhra Pradesh, the BJP had given the seat to its local alliance partner, the TDP. For years, this part of the state had been a TDP bastion.
“I will vote for the TDP candidate because the TDP has an arrangement with the BJP,” the boy explained. “With the votes the alliance gets in Andhra, the BJP will form the government in Delhi and Modi will become prime minster.”
When I asked the boy why he wanted so badly for Modi to win, he responded: “Because he has done good work in Gujarat. And because he will tackle corruption.” When I probed further about the nature of Modi’s good work as Gujarat chief minister, the boy demurred. He gestured in the direction of the checkpoint and suggested that such things would no longer be necessary if Modi won and could enforce his will.
This idea—that one man would be able to make a serious dent in the problems that plagued India’s politics—seemed fantastical, but I could not fault the boy for thinking that it was possible. For the previous several months, Modi had traversed the Indian heartland pledging to root out corruption and, specifically, to end Indian democracy’s dalliance with politicians linked to criminality.
One day before I arrived in Andhra Pradesh, Modi campaigned in the state of Rajasthan, touting his commitment to tackling the underbelly of Indian democracy. “There is a lot of discussion these days on how to stop criminals from entering politics. I have a cure and I have vowed to clean Indian politics.”1 His plan, Modi went on to explain, was to set up fast-track tribunals that would hear the cases of sitting politicians accused of wrongdoing. “I am positive after five years of our rule, the system will be absolutely clean and all criminals will be behind bars,” he continued. “I promise there will be no discrimination and I won’t hesitate to punish culprits from my own party.”2
A week later, while addressing a series of campaign rallies in the battleground state of Uttar Pradesh, Modi again picked up the thread. “We need to rid Parliament of criminals. . . . I won’t let them off the hook if I’m elected to power,” Modi told his audience in Hardoi.3 At a rally later in the day, this time in Etah, Modi reiterated his pledge: “We must do away with [the] criminalisation of politics, and delivering more lectures won’t help.”4 In the town of Mathura, the fabled birthplace of the Indian deity Krishna, Modi declared: “No [criminal] accused will dare to fight polls. Who says that this cleansing cannot happen? I have come to cleanse politics.”5
These frank words, emerging from the mouth of the most popular politician in all of India, came as a breath of fresh air. Politicians in India rarely speak candidly, or self-critically, about the challenge criminality poses to Indian democracy. The idea of setting up tribunals to dispose of high-profile criminal cases involving politicians, a proposal discussed in Chapter 7, has been floating around for several years. But Modi was perhaps the first major politician to provide such full-throated support for the move.
Offsetting these strong words, however, was the simple fact that the prime minister’s own party had embraced dozens of candidates who had serious criminal cases winding their way through the creaky Indian justice system. Indeed, 33 percent of BJP candidates contesting the 2014 Lok Sabha elections declared at least one pending criminal case, while 21 percent possessed cases of a serious nature.6 In response, the BJP leadership argued that the cases against their party men were politically motivated and lacking any legal basis, a standard first line of defense.
When the final votes were tallied on May 16, 2014, the share of elected lawmakers implicated in criminal proceedings climbed to new heights despite Modi’s fiery campaign speeches and the unprecedented level of attention showered on the election proceedings. The 2014 race marked the first time social media was intensively deployed in the service of an Indian election; as a result, details about candidates, campaign rallies, and public statements gained more airtime than ever before. Even for those hundreds of millions of Indians unable (or uninterested) to feverishly check their Twitter, Facebook, or WhatsApp feeds, it was difficult to escape the heightened levels of civil society activism and wall-to-wall media coverage.7
On Election Day, the BJP claimed victory in 282 races—an outright majority in the Lok Sabha. Of its record number of MPs, 35 percent faced ongoing criminal cases, and 22 percent had serious cases pending.8 In one of his maiden speeches in Parliament, Modi reprised his verbal assault on the criminalization of politics, comparing the entry of bad governance into administration to diabetes infiltrating a person’s body.9 Notwithstanding these harsh words, 13 of the BJP’s suspected MPs would eventually find their way into Modi’s first cabinet, including 8 legislators with serious cases.10
In fact, within the BJP, allegations of serious criminal transgressions began near the very top. Around the globe, the election was rightly celebrated as a triumph for Narendra Modi, but never far behind the BJP prime ministerial candidate stood his longtime associate Amit Shah, who oversaw the party’s campaign in the crucial battleground state of Uttar Pradesh. Described as “the one man who holds the key to the mysteries of Modi’s mind,” Shah had been Modi’s right hand for decades, previously serving as a minister overseeing several key portfolios in the Gujarat government, including those involving internal security.11 For the entirety of Modi’s tenure in Gujarat, Shah was widely seen as Modi’s sole trusted election organizer and all-around Mr. Fix-It. To be fair, Shah was a dominant politician in his own right, winning four consecutive elections to the Gujarat state assembly, some by margins larger than what his boss had been able to secure. Before the 2014 general election, Shah had had a hand in as many as thirty elections—with nary a loss, earning him the title “master strategist.”12
Notoriously media-shy, Shah had long been trailed by a cloud of controversy stemming from his time as Gujarat’s home minister. In that capacity, Shah was connected to three cases of extortion and conspiracy, including a famous 2010 case in which he was accused of authorizing the encounter killing of a known extortion artist, his wife, and a witness to the extrajudicial murder.13 An “encounter killing” is essentially a premeditated act of murder, whereby police officials cook up a scenario under which they kill a suspected criminal by alleging that he or she put the policemen’s lives at risk, typically by brandishing a weapon or threatening force. Human rights organizations claim the phenomenon is commonplace in India.14 Shah’s influence in Gujarat was so widespread that upon his arrest the Supreme Court of India forcibly exiled him from his home state for fear that he would exert undue influence over the state’s law enforcement apparatus.15
When I visited Ahmedabad, Gujarat’s most important metropolitan hub, in 2012 to observe state elections, I asked several longtime political watchers about Shah’s role in the Modi regime. “He is Modi’s bag man,” one local journalist told me. “What is in those bags—one does not know . . . or care to ask!” Another individual I spoke with, a longtime resident of the city who had observed Shah’s rise to prominence, told me that the top aide was nothing short of indispensable to Modi during his tenure. Indeed, Shah was openly referred to as the “second most important man in Gujarat.”16
Shah masterfully managed the BJP’s 2014 campaign in India’s most populous state, Uttar Pradesh; his fastidious ground game led the party to victory in 71 of the 80 seats on offer, a rout few had thought possible and made even more impressive by the fact that the BJP’s 2009 tally was a paltry 10 seats. Although typically most comfortable functioning out of the limelight, Shah earned headlines for a fiery speech he made during a campaign stop in Muzaffarnagar, a communally tense constituency where fierce religious riots had broken out in the preceding months. At the rally, Shah told a gathering of Hindus, the BJP’s main votaries, to reject parties with Muslim candidates as Muslims in the area were responsible for raping and killing Hindus. Shah thundered that the coming election was about extracting badla (revenge) and protecting the Hindu community’s izzat (honor).17
Shah’s inflammatory remarks immediately went viral, earning him a rap on the knuckles from the ECI
, which briefly banned him from addressing rallies in the state due to his “objectionable” comments.18 These assorted blemishes, real or alleged, were not enough to damage Shah’s meteoric political career. After the 2014 general election rout, Modi used his newfound stature to appoint Shah national president of the BJP. Rising from the second most important man in Gujarat, Shah became the second most powerful man in the BJP—and some would argue in the entire country.19 A week before the election results were announced, the CBI cleared Shah in one of the fake encounter cases for lack of evidence.20 Sixth months after assuming the powerful post, a special court dismissed the charges against Shah stemming from the remaining two cases linked to the alleged encounter killings, saying that it found fault with the CBI’s evidence.21 Although the CBI could have appealed the decision, it decided against it, a move some argued was politically motivated.22
Although Shah rose to a position of nearly unmatched prominence, he formally remains a state legislator in Gujarat, never making the jump to parliamentary politics in Delhi. But dozens of other men and women also allegedly involved in serious criminal acts did follow this well-trodden path. One member of the sixteenth Lok Sabha elected to office in May 2014 was Sanjeev Baliyan, a man allegedly connected to the tense ethnic situation in Muzaffarnagar. Baliyan won the constituency’s seat in Parliament in spite—indeed, perhaps because—of his having been charged with inciting the violent riots that led to the death of more than 50 people and the displacement of more than 50,000.23
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