A report in the New York Times describes Baliyan, a political dilettante who had previously been employed as a veterinarian, as “a first-time officeholder famous for precisely one thing”—his role in the riots.24 Indeed, Baliyan not only rode that notoriety to Parliament, but also was rewarded with a ministerial berth.25 In summer 2014 BJP sources told me that Baliyan’s inclusion in the cabinet was a fillip to the RSS, the nationalist organization affiliated with the BJP, since he was widely regarded as a strong pro-Hindu, anti-Muslim voice. “Yes, I am a novice in politics,” admitted Baliyan, “but I am a fast learner.”26
Joining Baliyan on a BJP ticket from Uttar Pradesh was a longtime neta allegedly mixed up in criminal activities, Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh, ringing in his fourth term as an MP. Sharan Singh had gotten his political start with the BJP but later abandoned the party, only to be lured back in 2014. In a somewhat ironic twist, he rejoined the party to much fanfare at a major event attended by key BJP leaders, at the same time Narendra Modi was barnstorming the state railing against the use of criminal politicians by the state’s regional parties.27
Sharan Singh had gotten his start in student politics in the 1980s, earning a reputation as a vocal leader of the Thakur community.28 His political career was given a boost in the early 1990s around the time of the controversial Ram Janmabhoomi movement. During the movement, activists associated with the BJP sought to dismantle a contested Muslim mosque in Uttar Pradesh, which they claimed was located on the birthplace of the Hindu god Ram, in order to construct a temple on the site. Sharan Singh, who had already carved out a role for himself as a strongman in the Gonda region of the state, used his influence to aid the Janmabhoomi karsevaks (volunteers) and later get himself elected to Parliament.29 The CBI also accused him of having knowingly harbored associates of noted international terrorist Dawood Ibrahim, booking him under the TADA Act, though he was later acquitted.30 At one point, he is reported to have racked up as many as 40 criminal cases, involving murder, kidnapping, and aiding terrorism, and other serious infractions.31
As an MP, Sharan Singh was not bashful about brandishing his strongman reputation, though he claimed it was for those who were helpless. “I have never troubled the poor and the decent,” Sharan Singh once stated. “And I have never shied away from taking on those who oppress others.”32 Once, when launching a protest over the inaction of the local police, Sharan Singh was asked about his tendency to create a ruckus for political gain: “I am a mafia man. How can I be Gandhi? I have forty cases lodged against me,” the MP stated. “How can I be any good? I try to do my best. This is the public. I want to be of some help to them.”33 In 2015, Sharan Singh added another title to his CV: he was unanimously reelected president of the Wrestling Federation of India.
The year 2014 also marked the triumphant return of Pappu Yadav to Parliament. Yadav, readers will recall, was one of the six MPs temporarily furloughed from jail to vote in the 2008 no-confidence motion over the proposed US-India civil nuclear deal. After a surprise acquittal in a case involving the murder of a bitter political rival, Yadav seamlessly moved from jail to the hallowed halls of Parliament House. While he was sidelined in jail, Yadav had recruited his wife, Ranjeet Rajan, to act as the family’s torchbearer. She campaigned in his name, winning a seat in Parliament. In 2014, they assumed their seats in Parliament next to one another.
The election also served as a political revival of sorts for the Bellary brothers of Karnataka. In the wake of the Karnataka mining scandal, the fall of the state’s BJP government, and the sudden death of YSR (their political patron in Andhra Pradesh, on the other side of the border), the brothers had come upon hard times. In spite of these setbacks, there appear to have been limits on how low they could plummet. By 2014, the brothers had put their political stock in their honorary fourth brother, B. Sriramulu, who had previously served as health minister in the BJP government that the brothers had bankrolled. Sriramulu enjoyed his fair share of the Bellary brothers’ mining success; in Bellary it was rumored that he was so wealthy that he regularly bathed in Bisleri brand bottled water.34
Perhaps as a way of keeping the brothers within the tent, the BJP gave Sriramulu a party ticket to contest the Bellary seat. The honorary brother was more than an empty stand-in; he had represented Bellary in the state assembly on four previous occasions dating back to 2004. A constituent once commented that the constituency used to be “a place you sent people as punishment. Now government officers pay for postings in Bellary. It is because of Sriramulu.”35 A loyal representative of the tribal Valmiki community of north Karnataka, Sriramulu was also a bare-knuckled politician in his own right, with a reputation as an enforcer—confirmed by the fact that he was battling a criminal case involving an allegation of attempted murder.36 Notwithstanding this fact, Sriramulu defeated his Congress rival by nearly 10,000 votes in the 2014 general election.37
The Maharashtra-based Shiv Sena, another entity whose electoral fortunes had waned, found itself ascendant again in 2014. The previous year, the militant Sena suffered a major blow when its founder and chief agitator, Bal Thackeray, unexpectedly passed away. The Sena’s standing had taken a hit but its electoral fortunes, and those of its avowedly fearsome legislators, quickly rebounded—thanks in no small measure to its alliance with the BJP.
One of the men who would come to represent the Sena in the newly formed Lok Sabha was Rajan Vichare, who put up a sustained record of electoral success in the Thane constituency of Maharashtra while also being fingered in at least thirteen criminal cases winding their way through the courts.38 A longtime Shiv Sainik, Vichare openly embraced Bal Thackeray’s methods of “direct action.” “Shiv Sena is known to be in such a way,” explained Vichare to the scholar Thomas Blom Hansen, “that if there is injustice we will fight it in a rather dashing way.”39 Indeed, Vichare claimed his illustrious criminal record was the result of his no-holds-barred brand of constituency service: “The cases against me pertain to issues related to the public for whom I have been fighting all along,” he explained to a journalist. “One case is of assaulting an engineer, which was over a delay in flyover work. It was not a personal issue but for the people.”40
Vichare’s work on behalf of “the people” was perhaps less evident in an incident that grabbed headlines after the election, in which the MP was caught on video abusing a cook at a state-run facility for the lousy quality of the food. In recorded images that made prime-time cable news, Vichare was seen stuffing a chapati (bread) into the mouth of the cook, a Muslim who was fasting in observance of Ramadan.41 Despite claims that the tussle was merely about the sad state of the cuisine in the Maharashtra canteen in Delhi, the visual of a powerful member of a pro-Hindu party stuffing food down the throat of a fasting member of the Muslim community likely helped Vichare’s grassroots appeal, a man who even close associates say is renowned for his “rude” manner.42
The “good governance” election of 2014 ushered in many other members of Parliament associated with criminal wrongdoing. Accompanying Pappu Yadav from the Bihar delegation was Yadav’s longtime party-mate Taslimuddin, who had previously served five terms as an MLA and four terms as an MP, racking up numerous criminal cases along the way.43 A political survivor of unique caliber, in 1996 Taslimuddin earned a cabinet berth in the short-lived United Front government, but he was compelled to resign once his criminal record attracted a hailstorm of negative media attention.44 Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury won election from Baharampur in the state of West Bengal on a Congress Party ticket. Chowdhury, who faced 16 ongoing criminal cases at the time of election and is the president of the Congress unit in the state, once made light of his lengthy criminal rap sheet by asking reporters not “to talk of any charge lower than that of murder against me. If you do so then my status would go down.”45 Known as the “Robin Hood of Baharampur,” Chowdhury was arrested on murder charges in 2005, but he has yet to be convicted of any serious criminal violations. During the 2006 West Bengal state assembly elections, a jailed Chowdhury was u
nable to campaign but asked his supporters to play his prerecorded speeches in lieu of a campaign; he won the race.46 Vitthalbhai Radadiya was a long-serving politician from Modi’s home state of Gujarat, lured to the BJP just before the 2014 election. This courtship occurred despite the fact that Radadiya had no fewer than 10 pending criminal cases against him at the time of the election.47 In one much-discussed incident, Radadiya was caught on CCTV footage brandishing a gun when a frightened toll plaza operator in his home state dared ask the MP to pay the standard toll fare. What business does “a man who earns 100 rupees” have stopping an MP, Radadiya mused before the press.48 Radadiya claimed he was acting in self-defense: “They said I was a bogus MP. I am an MP, I deserve respect.”49
The list goes on and on . . .
GOOD GOVERNANCE?
Judging by the results of India’s 2014 election, politicians with serious criminal records are not going away any time soon. Despite recent reform victories, the relevance of individuals with criminal reputations remains deeply entrenched in India’s electoral marketplace. That they should fare so well in an election widely believed to be a vote in favor of good governance might appear to be a puzzle at first glance but perhaps is less of one when considered in light of the findings described in previous chapters.
After all, criminally suspect MPs seem to gain strength from the fact that they are perceived to be, rightly or wrongly, delivering governance to their constituencies. Of course, the precise manifestation of “governance” that criminal politicians are able to offer (and its repercussions) may be at odds with prevailing notions of what successful democratic politicians should deliver. But then again, India’s suspected criminal politicians must be seen as political creatures embedded in a social context that gives rise to their very existence.
To this end, the vitality of the nexus between crime and politics has larger implications for democracy in India and around the world. It also raises additional questions deserving of much closer scrutiny than they have received to date.
The coexistence of democratic politics and rampant criminality is a puzzle for students of politics and political behavior. Although this cohabitation may seem paradoxical at first, there can be a symbiotic relationship between the two. In this book I have claimed that this coexistence can best be understood if politics is conceptualized as a marketplace. As with any market, there are both supply and demand factors at work that allow the market to survive. The realities, and the diversity, of India make its particular electoral marketplace a case worthy of close study.
In India, the initial supply of criminality into politics resulted from strategic decisions taken by criminal entrepreneurs who had long been active in the political sphere. In the early years of the republic, they operated as free agents, willing to sign up with political parties and incumbent politicians to help them get elected. Many of these criminal elements signed up with the Congress Party, which dominated India’s political scene in the immediate post-independence era. In providing assistance to politicians, criminals occasionally engaged in illegal activity, such as booth capturing or voter suppression. But they also used their social capital and local standing to bridge the divide between state and society in ways that political parties increasingly struggled to do, especially as party organizations gradually exhibited signs of decay.
A number of trends pulled criminals into a more direct role in electoral politics. These included the Congress Party’s decline, rising social demands often expressed through identity politics, and the deterioration of public sector institutions. An important, previously underemphasized factor contributing to the entry of criminals in politics was the collapse of the prevailing system of financing elections, paving the way for the rise of black money. Criminals were further pushed into politics by their quest for self-preservation. As political competition grew and the party system became increasingly fragmented, criminals allied with the Congress could no longer take their political protectors’ reelection for granted. This uncertainty created huge new risks for criminals: without secure political protection, they would be subject to retribution, either at the hands of the state or from their political rivals.
The obvious solution to this dilemma was for criminals to take matters into their own hands and join electoral politics. Having accumulated considerable local clout upon which they could build, criminals could reduce uncertainty as well as reap serious returns from holding office. This transition played out in the 1970s and 1980s; by the 1990s, the rise of candidates—and elected representatives—facing criminal charges, including those of a serious nature, had been locked in.
The supply of criminally linked politicians, however, cannot be reduced to a story of individual incentives alone. In nearly all democracies, parties are the key gatekeepers that decide which politicians eventually get a spot on the ballot. Candidates always have the option of running as independents without a party affiliation, but the success of those choosing this option is rather limited, in India and elsewhere. Why parties recruit candidates linked to wrongdoing is not obvious, but parties’ underlying quest for resources suggests one possible explanation. In settings where elections are costly yet parties are weakly organized, seeking out self-financing candidates is an attractive option. Candidates with deep pockets can contribute financial rents in numerous ways; in addition to plugging election funding gaps, they can directly provide financial payments to party leaders or engage in other kinds of rent-seeking behavior that could ultimately benefit the party. The vagaries of Indian elections suggest that money is a prime motivation for why parties are willing to embrace muscle, or candidates linked with serious criminal acts. Indeed, that is exactly what the qualitative evidence suggests and quantitative analyses of candidate affidavit data confirm. Candidates with greater financial resources (read: spending capacity) are much more likely to win election. Candidates linked with criminality, in turn, often have better access to accessible financing.
However, the appeal of candidates with criminal reputations transcends matters of a purely financial nature. Money can only partially explain the electoral advantage of candidates with criminal backgrounds. Politicians with criminal reputations possess another form of “currency” that has more to do with their connection to voters. This brings us to the “demand” side of criminal politicians. If individuals associated with crime choose to join active politics and parties choose to nominate them, what is in it for voters? In contexts where the rule of law is weak and identity divisions are especially salient, candidates linked with criminality possess an additional advantage. In these environments, they can use their criminality as a sign of their credibility to protect the interests of voters in their constituencies. When the state is either unable or unwilling to adequately perform its most basic functions in an impartial manner, voters are often willing to turn to someone who can substitute for the state, even if that person is linked to allegations of illegal activity. This inclination is further enhanced when identity-based cleavages render politics a zero-sum game; the fierce contestation over local dominance, which typically occurs when social hierarchies are collapsing but new ones have not yet been forged, gives voters an added incentive to ensure that the representative they choose is best suited to protect and lock in the status of their community and its allies. Politicians with criminal reputations, for their part, have an incentive to perpetuate the underlying drivers propping up their local support.
Taken together, the demand politicians attached to crime are able to engender from the electorate suggests that a lack of information cannot adequately explain why they thrive at the ballot box. In fact, there can be an affirmative case for why voters willingly back candidates suspected of wrongdoing. In many instances, this popular nexus of crime and politics has been portrayed as a primarily north Indian, or Hindi belt, phenomenon. On the contrary, it is far more widespread; there is evidence of criminality in Indian politics in many diverse parts of the country, defying any simple categorization of rich versus poor st
ates, urban versus rural localities, or north versus south.
Testing the underlying logic for why criminal politicians succeed in some areas and fail in others is no easy feat. This is due to the lack of quality data on social divisions and on the varied, contextual nature of the demand. A combination of indirect methods—such as exploiting quirks of electoral politics like ethnic quotas and indirect elections—and more direct survey data can build confidence in the “criminality as credibility” thesis.
Understanding the precise supply and demand motivations, it turns out, is crucial if society’s goal is to take steps to curb the entrenched marketplace for crime in electoral politics. For instance, if information truly did act as a binding constraint, it would imply a very different set of policy interventions than if the root cause were poor (or absent) governance. Unfortunately, the latter does appear to be at the heart of the matter, leaving reformers with few short cuts to grasp onto. Hence, fixing what ails the Indian state is essential to reducing the demand for criminal politicians. Unless and until the state is seen as an impartial and credible provider of security, justice, and social and economic benefits, there will always be space for those seeking to fill in the gap between institutions and popular expectations to make a living. But “fixing the state” means more than simply shrinking India’s stifling bureaucracy; rather, what is needed is to bring regulatory procedure and human capital into much better alignment. At present, the former is suffocating, and the latter is anemic.
Curbing the demand for politicians mixed up with criminal activity is a long-term proposition since state capacity is, put euphemistically, a slow-moving variable. There are, however, complementary steps that can be pursued to address the supply side. For starters, India’s regime for regulating political finance is in dire need of an overhaul. Cleaning up political finance can help to reduce parties’ incentives to embrace candidates associated with crime. Tackling the issue of black money in politics is also linked to fixing the infirmities of political parties, whose inner workings are autocratic and highly opaque.
When Crime Pays Page 34