When Crime Pays
Page 43
147. Shani, “Bootlegging, Politics and Corruption,” 33.
148. According to K. Balagopal, each faction is organized like a pyramid, with MLAs on top; contractors, smugglers and shady businessmen in the middle; and village landlords at the base. “From the village sarpanch to the MLA, most of the elected representatives today are leaders of gangs armed to the teeth.” See Balagopal, “Seshan in Kurnool.”
149. Ravi’s life was later immortalized in the loosely fictionalized film Rakhta Charitra, which chronicled the dramatic evolution of a murderous bandit who decides to become a politician.
150. “A Saga of [a] Chilling Feud between Two Families of Anantapur,” Indo-Asian News Service, January 4, 2011, https://in.news.yahoo.com/saga-chilling-feud-between-two-families-anantapur-20110104-042647-540.html (accessed April 20, 2016).
151. Rajeev P.I., “In Andhra’s Samurai Country, Ravi Was Always a Cut Above,” Indian Express, January 31, 2005.
152. K. Balagopal, “A Tough Law for Other People’s Crime,” Economic and Political Weekly 36, no. 16 (April 21–27, 2001): 1285–89.
153. Ibid.
154. Ahead of the 2004 Andhra Pradesh state assembly election, which would be his last electoral contest, Ravi disclosed two ongoing cases in his election affidavit.
155. Gill, Pathology of Corruption, 203–4.
156. Rudolph and Rudolph, In Pursuit of Lakshmi, 85; William Stevens, “India Politics: The Sun Sets on Old Ways,” New York Times, November 26, 1984. According to many analysts, Sanjay Gandhi was principally responsible for giving Congress Party tickets to “lumpen elements,” though the party did not fully repudiate this tactic after his death nor did other parties desist from engaging in similar activity.
157. Ibid., 141; Sumanta Banerjee, “Serenading the Emergency,” Economic and Political Weekly 35, no. 26 (June 24–30, 2000): 2205–6.
158. Anil Coomar Maheshwari, “Uttar Pradesh: Rigging in Practice,” Economic and Political Weekly 15, no. 3 (January 19, 1980): 99.
159. Ibid.
160. Nalini Singh, “Elections as They Really Are,” Economic and Political Weekly 15, no. 21 (May 24, 1980): 909.
161. Election Commission of India, Second Annual Report, 1984 (New Delhi: Election Commission of India, 1985), 46, http://eci.nic.in/eci_main/eci_publications/books/genr/ECI-ANNUAL%20REPORT-84.pdf (accessed February 12, 2014). In the 1983 by-elections, the ECI reported 173 complaints, most having to do with the alleged misuse of official machinery, booth capturing and intimidation, harassment of party workers and voters, and breakdown of law and order. The incidents were spread across a number of states, with Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Uttar Pradesh, and Bihar topping the list. See Election Commission of India, First Annual Report, 1983 (New Delhi: Election Commission of India, 1984), 47, http://eci.nic.in/eci_main/eci_publications/books/genr/First%20Annual%20Report-83.pdf (accessed February 12, 2014).
162. Agarwalla, Contemporary India and Its Burning Problems. Even the states in India’s far-flung northeast were not left untouched by electoral irregularities. See “Parliamentary Elections: Tripura Style,” Economic and Political Weekly 24, no. 50 (December 16, 1989): 2757–58.
163. Gill, Pathology of Corruption, 190.
164. Ibid.
165. Ibid., 192.
166. Subhash Mishra, “A Criminal Record,” India Today, November 1, 2004.
167. Ministry of Home Affairs, Government of India, Final Report of the Vohra Committee (New Delhi: Government of India, 2005), http://adrindia.org/sites/default/files/VOHRA%20COMMITTEE%20REPORT_0.pdf (accessed April 20, 2016).
168. Jaffrelot, “Indian Democracy,” 112–13.
169. Ibid.
170. Devesh Kapur, “Explaining Democratic Durability and Economic Performance: The Role of India’s Institutions,” in Devesh Kapur and Pratap Bhanu Mehta, eds., Public Institutions in India: Performance and Design (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2005), chap. 1.
171. Sridharan and Vaishnav, “India.”
172. For his efforts, Seshan was dubbed a “middle-class hero,” although many argued that his draconian measures to clean up politics led to an accumulation of almost “Orwellian power.” See David Gilmartin, “One Day’s Sultan: T. N. Seshan and Indian Democracy,” Contributions to Indian Sociology 43, no. 2 (May–August 2009): 247–84; and Ujjwal Kumar Singh, “Between Moral Force and Supplementary Legality: A Model Code of Conduct and the Election Commission of India,” Election Law Journal 11, no. 2 (June 2012): 165. Seshan’s critics argued that he believed (mistakenly, in their view) that he could “hold the election process to a higher morality than existed in ‘normal’ political life.” See Gilmartin, “One Day’s Sultan,” 271.
173. Specifically, 36 percent of the MLA respondents believed politicians were mainly responsible. This was the modal response. See Vir K. Chopra, Marginal Players in Marginal Assemblies: The Indian MLA (New Delhi: Orient Longman, 1996), 269–71.
174. Balagopal, “Seshan in Kurnool,” 1904.
175. Manor, “Changing State, Changing Society.”
176. Kumar, Community Warriors, 174.
177. Aman Sethi, “Rule of the Outlaw,” Frontline, December 17–30, 2005; Alka Pande, “A Slice of Sicily,” Outlook, December 19, 2005; Andrew MacAskill and Kartikay Mehrotra, “Jailed Lawmakers Rule in India as Crime Brings Few Punishments,” Bloomberg Business, March 5, 2012.
178. “Ansaris Launch Own Political Outfit, Will Contest Polls,” Indian Express, August 9, 2010; Andrew MacAskill and Kartikay Mehrotra, “Indian Jailbirds Win Election,” Bloomberg Business, March 8, 2012. At the time of his election in 2012, Mukhtar Ansari had no fewer than 15 cases pending, including at least 8 charges of murder or attempted murder, according to the affidavit he submitted to the Election Commission of India.
179. Patrick French, India: A Portrait (New York: Knopf, 2011), 264.
180. MacAskill and Mehrotra, “Jailed Lawmakers Rule in India.”
181. An entire book could be written about the cultural iconography of criminal politicians in Indian cinema. In addition to Bollywood films on the subject, such as Gangs of Wasseypur, Gangaajal, and Godmother, there are a number of films from regional cinema that have focused on the issue of criminality in politics, including Subramaniapuram and Jigarthanda (Tamil), MLA Fatakeshto and the sequel, Minister Fatakeshto (Bengali), Rakhta Charitra (Telugu/Hindi), and so on.
CHAPTER 4. THE COSTS OF DEMOCRACY
1. Select quotes from this section, drawn from the author’s interviews in Andhra Pradesh, previously appeared in Milan Vaishnav, “Votes for Crooks and Cricket Stars,” New York Times, May 10, 2014.
2. As it turned out, Andhra Pradesh was in the process of breaking up into two states, the newly created Telangana and the rump state of Seemandhra. As a result of the bifurcation, which was bitterly opposed by many residents of Seemandhra, elections had taken on an even more electrifying air than usual.
3. In Tamil Nadu, it is rumored that candidates will sometimes pump bicycle tires with alcohol or stash booze in hidden compartments of milk and water tankers to evade detection during election eve distribution. See Abheek Barman, “How Political Parties Try to Get Past EC Guidelines to Fish for Votes,” Economic Times, April 3, 2011.
4. A similar strategy was reported in a cable authored by a U.S. diplomat who followed the 2008 elections in Karnataka, and later made public by Wikileaks. See U.S. Consulate Chennai, “A Night on Karnataka’s Campaign Trail,” diplomatic cable, May 9, 2008, https://wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/08CHENNAI170_a.html (accessed January 10, 2015).
5. Paul R. Brass, Factional Politics in an Indian State: The Congress Party in Uttar Pradesh (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1965), 1.
6. Zoya Hasan, “Political Parties in India,” in Niraja Gopal Jayal and Pratap Bhanu Mehta, eds., The Oxford Companion to Politics in India (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 241.
7. Panu Poutvaara and Tuomas Takalo, “Candidate Quality,” International Tax and Public Finance 14, no. 1 (February 2007): 7–27.
8. Analyses of candidates who contested state elections between 2003 and 2009 also show a striking prevalence of candidates with criminal cases, including those of a serious nature, across leading parties.
9. Author’s calculations based on affidavits submitted to the Election Commission of India by candidates contesting state elections between 2003 and 2009.
10. Ibid.
11. “Bad politician” is something of a misnomer; candidates involved in wrongdoing may be badly behaved, but they can actually be “good” politicians in the sense of being successful and even effective representatives.
12. Vincenzo Galasso and Tommaso Nannicini, “Competing on Good Politicians,” American Political Science Review 105, no. 1 (February 2011): 79–99.
13. Toke Aidt, Miriam Golden, and Devesh Tewari, “Criminal Candidate Selection for the Indian National Legislature,” unpublished paper, Department of Political Science, University of California–Los Angeles, March 2015, http://media.wix.com/ugd/02c1bf_b515ef1dc03b4f00a58a6b4c48043f38.pdf (accessed April 22, 2016).
14. Ibid.; Timothy Besley, Principled Agents? The Political Economy of Good Government (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006).
15. Timothy Besley, “Political Selection,” Journal of Economic Perspectives 19, no. 3 (Summer 2005): 43–60.
16. Donald R. Matthews, “Legislative Recruitment and Legislative Careers,” Legislative Studies Quarterly 9, no. 4 (November 1984): 549.
17. Besley, “Political Selection.”
18. Ibid.
19. Adam Ziegfeld, “Coalition Government and Party System Change: Explaining the Rise of Regional Parties in India,” Comparative Politics 45, no. 1 (October 2012): 69–87.
20. Mark Schneider, “Does Clientelism Work? A Test of Guessability in India,” Center for the Advanced Study of India Working Paper 14–01, University of Pennsylvania, September 2014.
21. Lloyd I. Rudolph and Susanne Hoeber Rudolph, In Pursuit of Lakshmi: The Political Economy of the Indian State (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987), 135.
22. Liquor is a perennial favorite pre-election inducement because of its great popular demand and the ease of supply. Because government tightly regulates the liquor industry, the latter has notoriously cozy links with the political class. Entrepreneurs in the liquor industry rely on the state for licenses to produce and sell alcoholic products as well as to gain access to needed ingredients (such as molasses). Politicians can regulate the supply of inputs to help favored firms, limit market participants, and falsify excise duty payments in exchange for payments and election-time “donations.” For more on the liquor industry’s links with the state, see Mehboob Jeelani, “Under the Influence,” Caravan, November 1, 2013; and Raghu Karnad, “City in a Bottle,” Caravan, July 1, 2012.
23. Mayank Mishra and Satyavrat Mishra, “The 2015 Money Race: Paying the Price for an Election Bout,” Business Standard, July 7, 2015.
24. PRS Legislative Research has compiled a useful primer on India’s election finance laws and regulations. See Namita Wahi, “Draft Discussion Paper: Regulation of Campaign Finance,” Social Science Research Network, August 12, 2008, http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2297767 (accessed April 21, 2016).
25. M. V. Rajeev Gowda and E. Sridharan, “Reforming India’s Party Financing and Election Expenditure Laws,” Election Law Journal 11, no. 2 (June 2012): 231.
26. Also excluded from the ECI’s candidate expenditure limits is travel expenditure incurred by party leaders for purposes of propagating the party program.
27. As an example of the brazenness on display, in April 2016 the ruling BJP government planned to introduce a retrospective amendment to the Foreign Contribution (Regulation) Act, 2010 (also known as FCRA). The government proposed the legislation in response to lawsuits brought against the BJP and the Congress, accusing them of accepting foreign funds. The proposed amendment would retroactively alter the definition of a “foreign” company in India. See Anuja, Remya Nair, and Shreeja Sen, “Move to Legalize Donations from Foreign Sources to Benefit Parties,” Mint, April 9, 2016 (accessed April 20, 2016).
28. Gowda and Sridharan, “Reforming India’s Party Financing and Election Expenditure Laws.”
29. National Commission to Review the Working of the Constitution, Final Report: Volume 1 (New Delhi: Ministry of Law and Justice, 2002), chap. 4, http://lawmin.nic.in/ncrwc/finalreport/volume1.htm (accessed June 13, 2013).
30. Election Commission of India, Report on the Third General Elections in India, 1962 (New Delhi: Election Commission of India, 1965), 93, http://eci.nic.in/eci_main/eci_publications/books/genr/ThirdGenElection-Vol-I-62.pdf (accessed January 22, 2015).
31. U.S. Consulate Chennai, “Cash for Votes in South India,” diplomatic cable, May 13, 2009, https://wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/09CHENNAI144_a.html (accessed January 10, 2015).
32. Quoted in Yogendra K. Malik, “Political Finance in India,” Political Quarterly 60, no. 1 (January 1989): 88.
33. Association for Democratic Reforms, “Analysis of Election Expenditure Statements of MPs 2014 Lok Sabha Elections,” August 1, 2014, http://adrindia.org/download/file/fid/4709 (accessed August 7, 2014).
34. Ibid.
35. V. B. Singh, “Grass Roots Political Process: Atraulia Constituency,” Economic and Political Weekly 31, no. 2/3 (January 13–20, 1996): 125.
36. Vir K. Chopra, Marginal Players in Marginal Assemblies: The Indian MLA (New Delhi: Orient Longman, 1996), 176. A 2001 consultation paper written for the National Commission to Review the Working of the Constitution estimated that actual election spending is easily twenty to thirty times the allowable limit. See National Commission to Review the Working of the Constitution, “Review of Election Law, Processes, and Electoral Reforms,” Consultation Paper, January 8, 2001, http://lawmin.nic.in/ncrwc/finalreport/v2b1-9.htm (accessed September 15, 2013).
37. E. Sridharan, “Electoral Finance Reform: The Relevance of International Experience,” in Vikram Chand, ed., Reinventing Public Service Delivery in India: Selected Case Studies (New Delhi: Sage Publications, 2006).
38. Arun Kumar, The Black Economy in India (New Delhi: Penguin, 2002).
39. Bhavdeep Kang, “Inside Story: How Political Parties Raise Money,” Yahoo! News India, September 25, 2013, https://in.news.yahoo.com/inside-story—how-political-parties-raise-money-091455119.html (accessed October 1, 2013).
40. The 2014 study on election spending was carried out by the New Delhi–based Centre for Media Studies. See Sruthi Gottipati and Rajesh Kumar Singh, “India Set to Challenge U.S. for Election-Spending Record,” Reuters, March 9, 2014, http://www.reuters.com/article/us-india-election-spending-idUSBREA280AR20140309 (accessed March 10, 2014).
41. Internal surveys of Congress Party elites conducted in 1967 and 1993 demonstrated that very little changed in the intervening two and a half decades. In 1993, party members remained weakly identified with the party and its ideology and rated the organization as ineffective. See Pradeep Chhibber, Democracy without Associations: Transformation of the Party System and Social Cleavages in India (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1999).
42. Ibid., 77.
43. Ibid.
44. Malik, “Political Finance in India,” 83.
45. The source for the information on membership fees comes from the websites of the respective political parties.
46. Ruchika Singh, “Intra-Party Democracy and Indian Political Parties,” Hindu Centre for Public Policy Report No. 7, 2015, http://www.thehinducentre.com/publications/policy-report/article6912772.ece (accessed January 2, 2016).
47. Kedar Nath Kumar, Political Parties in India, Their Ideology and Organisation (New Delhi: Mittal, 1990), 335.
48. While the lack of internal party democracy within the Congress has been well established, political scientist Zoya Hasan points out that the BJP has not had a contest for the post of party president since its inception in 1980. See Hasan, “Political Parties in India,” 249.
49. Singh, “Intra-Party
Democracy and Indian Political Parties,” 7.
50. Suhas Palshikar, “Revisiting State Level Parties,” Economic and Political Weekly 39, no. 14/15 (April 3–16, 2014): 1478.
51. Kanchan Chandra and Wamiq Umaira, “India’s Democratic Dynasties,” Seminar 622 (June 2011), http://india-seminar.com/2011/622/622_kanchan_&_wamiq.htm (accessed July 3, 2012).
52. For instance, weeks before critical state elections in 2010, I watched the parliamentary board of a leading opposition party in the state of Bihar (Rashtriya Janata Dal, or RJD) pass a resolution that empowered its party president, former chief minister Lalu Prasad Yadav, to select each of the party’s 168 candidates on his own. Indeed, one longtime scholar of Bihar had earlier commented that “no substantial decision-making” took place at the Janata Dal’s Patna headquarters (Janata Dal was the predecessor to the RJD). Instead, all major decisions came out of informal sessions with Lalu Prasad Yadav, often at his personal residence. See Jeffrey Witsoe, “Social Justice and Stalled Development: Caste Empowerment and the Breakdown of Governance in Bihar,” India in Transition: Economics and Politics of Change series, Center for the Advanced Study of India, University of Pennsylvania, Spring 2006.
53. Adnan Farooqui and E. Sridharan, “Incumbency, Internal Processes and Renomination in Indian Parties,” Commonwealth and Comparative Politics 52, no. 1 (2014): 78–108.
54. Chandra and Umaira, “India’s Democratic Dynasties.”
55. Kanchan Chandra, “Hardly the End of Dynastic Rule,” Economic and Political Weekly 49, no. 28 (July 2014): 25–28; Rukmini S., “They Have Politics in Their DNA,” Hindu, June 9, 2014.
56. Kanchan Chandra, “Hardly the End of Dynastic Rule”; Patrick French, India: A Portrait (London: Alfred A. Knopf, 2011).
57. Motilal Nehru, a prominent lawyer involved in the nationalist struggle, was the president of the Congress Party on two occasions prior to India’s independence (1919–20, 1928–29). His son, Jawaharlal, was India’s first post-independence prince minister, a position he held from 1947 until his death in 1964. Jawaharlal’s daughter, Indira Gandhi, served as prime minister from 1966 to 1977, and again from 1980 to 1984. She was succeeded by her son Rajiv, who was prime minister from Indira’s death in 1984 until 1989. In 1998, Rajiv’s widow, Sonia, assumed the presidency of the Congress, although she turned down the job of the prime minister in 2004. In 2014, Sonia Gandhi remains Congress president, and her son, Rahul, who assumed the party vice presidency in 2013, is widely believed to be her successor.