53. Author’s analysis of affidavits submitted to the Election Commission of India from seven states that had two elections between 2003/4 and 2008/9. In statistical terms, I use a technique known as “matching.” Matching uses an algorithm to “match” constituencies within the same district and state, which appear identical on all observable criteria, save for their reservation status. The next step is to see how criminality varies among these matched constituencies according to reservation status. This matching technique confirms that reservation is negatively associated with criminality at conventional significance levels.
54. The length of a Lok Sabha MP’s term is five years, unless early elections are called or a government falls.
55. Rajya Sabha members are elected in accordance with the system of proportional representation by means of the single transferable vote. In addition, the president nominates up to 12 members for their specific expertise and contributions to the fields of art, literature, science, and social service.
56. If the Rajya Sabha does not return a money bill to the Lok Sabha within 14 days, the Lok Sabha version of the bill is deemed to have passed both houses.
57. There are a few additional differences between the two houses, regarding eligibility requirements (the minimum age for Rajya Sabha members in 30 versus 25 for the Lok Sabha) and permanency (the Rajya Sabha is a permanent body not subject to dissolution).
58. For instance, in the June 2010 Rajya Sabha elections held across seven states, all 30 members were elected unopposed to the upper house.
59. B. Venkatesh Kumar, “Election to Raya Sabha: Proposed ‘Reform,’” Economic and Political Weekly 37, no. 4 (January 26, 2002): 292–93; Kautilya Kumar, “Just an Avenue to Dispense Patronage,” Times of India, December 14, 2010.
60. Suchandana Gupta, “Rajya Sabha Row: Scholarly Debate Stifled in India?” Times of India, December 13, 2010.
61. “Camel-Trading, Rajasthan Style,” Economic and Political Weekly 27, no. 29 (July 18, 1992): 1533–34.
62. Memorandum from the Election Commission of India to the Secretary of the Ministry of Personnel, Public Grievances, and Pension, “Biennial Election, 2012 to the Rajya Sabha from the State of Jharkhand,” April 9, 2012, http://eci.nic.in/eci_main1/current/CBI_inquiry.pdf (accessed August 9, 2015).
63. B. Muralidhar Reddy and J. Balaji, “Rajya Sabha Poll in Jharkhand Countermanded,” Hindu, March 30, 2012.
64. The entry of businessmen into the Rajya Sabha provides a new revenue stream for parties while satisfying the businessmen’s desires for status and policy influence.
65. “Business In and Outside Rajya Sabha,” Financial Express, November 20, 2002.
66. Kumar, “Election to Raya Sabha.”
67. There are at least two procedural aspects of indirect elections specific to India that might dampen the presence of candidates facing serious criminal scrutiny in the upper house. First, India has an anti-defection law, which limits the frequency of “cross-voting” and gives party leaders even more power in selecting candidates and ensuring their election. Party members risk being disqualified if they disobey a party whip. The ability to disobey party orders has been further weakened through a recent reform that allows for an open ballot in Rajya Sabha elections. Legislators can no longer hide behind the veil of secrecy when casting their votes, further strengthening party leaders’ hands. Second, a 2003 constitutional amendment removed the requirement that Rajya Sabha members be residents of the state from which they are nominated. The removal of the residency requirement provided de jure recognition of a de facto reality: many parties had previously found numerous ways to circumvent the official residency requirements. The formal repeal gave parties even greater incentive to nominate influential individuals who do not necessarily possess strong local connections. To the extent such connections are positively correlated with criminality, one should expect to see fewer criminal politicians in the Rajya Sabha. See Kuldip Nayar, “Bringing Down the Upper House,” Indian Express, April 20, 2004.
68. Radhika Ramaseshan, “Cong Elders Eye Lok Sabha Tickets,” Telegraph (Calcutta), January 4, 2009.
69. Statistical estimates are derived from a multilevel logistic regression of a binary measure of whether the member of Parliament has a serious criminal record on the individual’s status as a member of the upper or lower house and legislator characteristics. The model also includes fixed effects parameters for states.
70. See Neelanjan Sircar and Milan Vaishnav, “Ignorant Voters or Credible Representatives? Why Voters Support Criminal Politicians in India,” unpublished paper (on file with author), Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, April 2015.
71. For instance, one study argues that criminal candidates begin at a disadvantage because their alleged criminality carries some degree of social stigma, which will have a negative effect on their vote share. Money, however, allows them to reduce this stigma among voters and hence recover at least some of this “lost” vote share. The authors also point to the resulting nexus between money and “muscle.” See Bhaskar Dutta and Poonam Gupta, “How Indian Voters Respond to Candidates with Criminal Charges: Evidence from the 2009 Lok Sabha Elections,” Economic and Political Weekly 49, no. 4 (January 25, 2014): 43–51.
72. One example is that of the convicted politician D. P. Yadav of Uttar Pradesh. See Rajesh Kumar Singh, “From Land of Milk and Money to Life-Term: Life of DP Yadav,” Hindustan Times, March 16, 2015; Vineet Khare, “I Am DP, Don,” Tehelka, May 4, 2010.
73. “Before Vyapam Scam, a Plunder of Fodder and Health Funds,” Hindustan Times, July 9, 2015.
74. “Kushwaha Entry Not Hasty, but Move to Woo OBCs: BJP,” Indian Express, January 7, 2012.
75. “Babu Singh Kushwaha’s Membership Suspended: BJP,” Indo-Asian News Service, January 8, 2012, http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/kushwaha-bjp-leaders-suspend-membership-nitin-gadkari-nrhm-scam/1/167736.html (accessed September 1, 2012).
76. Pranab Bardhan, “Democracy and Distributive Politics in India,” in Ian Shapiro, Peter Swenson and Daniela Donno Panayides, eds., Divide and Deal: The Politics of Distribution in Democracies (New York: New York University Press, 2010).
77. Dan Morrison, “In Indian Politics, Crime Pays,” New York Times Latitude (blog), February 1, 2012, http://latitude.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/02/01/in-indian-politics-crime-pays/?_r=0 (accessed February 2, 2012).
CHAPTER 7. CRIME WITHOUT PUNISHMENT
1. Sheela Bhatt, “Arvind Kejriwal: The Man the Govt Loves to Hate,” Rediff, September 8, 2011, http://www.rediff.com/news/report/special-arvind-kerjiwal-the-man-the-government-loves-to-hate/20110905.htm (accessed September 5, 2014).
2. Nikhila Gill, “Lokpal Bill: Over Four Decades of Failed Attempts,” NDTV, December 26, 2011, http://www.ndtv.com/india-news/lokpal-bill-over-four-decades-of-failed-attempts-567097 (accessed September 7, 2014).
3. “Politicians Don’t Let Honest CBI Officers Work: Kejriwal,” Outlook, July 2, 2012.
4. “Arvind Kejriwal Calls MPs ‘Rapists, Murderers,’” Times of India, February 28, 2012.
5. Mehboob Jeelani, “The Insurgent,” Caravan, September 1, 2011.
6. Ibid.
7. Abantika Ghosh, “Jan Lokpal a Frankenstein’s Monster: Sibal,” Times of India, June 30, 2011.
8. Pratap Bhanu Mehta, “Of the Few, by the Few,” Indian Express, April 7, 2011.
9. Ibid.
10. “Hazare Appeals to Kejriwal to Call off His Fast,” News18, April 4, 2013, http://www.news18.com/news/india/hazare-appeals-to-kejriwal-to-call-off-his-fast-600933.html (accessed April 20, 2016).
11. Sruthijith K. K., “Arvind Kejriwal Slams Government Representatives for Dilly-dallies,” Economic Times, August 31, 2011.
12. “The Divide within Civil Society,” NDTV, June 15, 2011, http://www.ndtv.com/india-news/the-divide-within-civil-society-458482 (accessed September 7, 2014).
13. “‘A Jokepal Bill,’ Says Team Anna; Plans 2nd Fast,” NDTV, June 16, 2011, http://www.ndtv.com/india-news/a-jokepal-b
ill-says-team-anna-plans-2nd-fast-458642 (accessed September 8, 2014).
14. Jeelani, “Insurgent.”
15. Bhatt, “Arvind Kejriwal.”
16. Andrew Buncombe, “I Am an Anarchist, Says Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal as He Causes Traffic Chaos with Protest in City Centre,” Independent, January 20, 2014.
17. “Arvind Kejriwal Quits as Delhi CM after Jan Lokpal Fiasco,” Economic Times, February 14, 2014.
18. Ibid.
19. “The One Lesson I Have Learned Is That I Will Never Resign, Says AAP’s Arvind Kejriwal,” Indian Express, November 21, 2014.
20. Pew Research Center, Indians Reflect on Their Country and the World (Washington, D.C.: Pew Research Center, 2014).
21. Public Affairs Centre, “The State of India’s Public Services: Benchmarks for the New Millennium,” April 2002, http://www1.worldbank.org/publicsector/pe/milleniumreport.pdf (accessed April 20, 2016).
22. Max Weber, “Politik als Beruf,” speech delivered at Munich University, 1918. An English translation is available at http://anthropos-lab.net/wp/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/Weber-Politics-as-a-Vocation.pdf.
23. Nishith Prakash, Marc Rockmore, and Yogesh Uppal, “Do Criminally Accused Politicians Affect Economic Outcomes? Evidence from India,” unpublished paper, Department of Economics, Youngstown State University, October 2015, http://yuppal.people.ysu.edu/criminal_mla_11_08_14.pdf (accessed January 23, 2016).
24. For instance, in the 2014 general election, 37 percent of candidates won a majority of votes cast in their respective constituencies. That number was actually a significant increase from 2009, when just 22 percent were “majority winners.” See Milan Vaishnav and Danielle Smogard, “A New Era in Indian Politics?” Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, June 10, 2014, http://carnegieendowment.org/2014/06/10/new-era-in-indian-politics/hdc6 (accessed June 15, 2014).
25. Second Administrative Reforms Commission, Government of India, Ethics in Governance (Fourth Report) (New Delhi: Government of India, 2007), http://arc.gov.in/4threport.pdf (accessed March 18, 2013).
26. Diego Gambetta, The Sicilian Mafia: The Business of Private Protection (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1996), 25.
27. 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).
28. 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 January 16, 2012).
29. Second Administrative Reforms Commission, Government of India, Public Order (Fifth Report) (New Delhi: Government of India, 2007), 2, http://arc.gov.in/5th%20REPORT.pdf (accessed March 14, 2013).
30. This section draws on material which first appeared in Milan Vaishnav, “Resizing the State,” Caravan, October 1, 2012.
31. Ila Patnaik and Ajay Shah, “Reforming India’s Financial System,” Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, January 2014, http://carnegieendowment.org/2014/01/29/reforming-india-s-financial-system (accessed February 1, 2014).
32. Asit Ranjan Mishra and Prashant K. Nanda, “How Policies Can Shape Make in India,” Mint, February 15, 2016.
33. Karthik Muralidharan, Jishnu Das, Alaka Holla, and Aakash Mohpal, “The Fiscal Cost of Weak Governance: Evidence from Teacher Absence in India,” National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper No. 20299, July 2014.
34. Karthik Muralidharan et al., “Is There a Doctor in the House? Medical Worker Absence in India,” unpublished paper, Department of Economics, Harvard University, April 2011, http://scholar.harvard.edu/kremer/publications/there-Doctor-House-Medical-Worker-Absence-India (accessed February 10, 2015).
35. Jishnu Das and Jeffrey Hammer, “Money for Nothing: The Dire Straits of Medical Practice in Delhi, India,” Journal of Development Economics 83, no. 1 (May 2007): 1–36.
36. Jishnu Das et al., “In Urban and Rural India, A Standardized Patient Study Showed Low Levels of Provider Training and Huge Quality Gaps,” Health Affairs 31, no. 12 (December 2012): 2774–84.
37. Nazmul Chaudhury et al., “Missing in Action: Teacher and Health Worker Absence in Developing Countries,” Journal of Economic Perspectives 20, no. 1 (Winter 2006): 91–116.
38. Sandip Sukhtankar and Milan Vaishnav, “Corruption in India: Bridging Research Evidence and Policy Options,” India Policy Forum 11 (July 2015): 193–261.
39. Karthik Muralidharan, Paul Niehaus, and Sandip Sukhtankar, “Building State Capacity: Evidence from Biometric Smartcards in India,” National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper No. 19999, March 2014.
40. Sukhtankar and Vaishnav, “Corruption in India”; Muralidharan, Niehaus, and Sukhtankar, “Building State Capacity.”
41. Sukhtankar and Vaishnav, “Corruption in India.”
42. A 2014 study by the VV Giri National Labour Institute reportedly found that contract labor accounts for 55 percent of public sector jobs. See Yogima Seth Sharma, “Following Rajasthan, Centre to Revisit Contract Labour Law,” Economic Times, July 3, 2014.
43. Ernst & Young LLP and Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry, “Private Security Services Industry: Securing Future Growth,” 2013, http://ficci.in/spdocument/20329/Private-security-services-industry-Securing-future-growth1.pdf (accessed April 20, 2016).
44. See, inter alia, Devesh Kapur and Pratap Bhanu Mehta, “Indian Higher Education Reform: From Half-Baked Socialism to Half-Baked Capitalism,” India Policy Forum 4 (July 2008): 101–58.
45. This section draws on and, in some cases, reproduces material that first appeared in Devesh Kapur and Milan Vaishnav, “Strengthening the Rule of Law,” in Bibek Debroy, Ashley Tellis, and Reece Trevor, eds., Getting India Back on Track: An Action Agenda for Reform (Washington, D.C.: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2014). That chapter, in turn, grew out an earlier article in Outlook magazine. See Devesh Kapur, “The Law Laid Down,” Outlook, January 7, 2013. I am grateful to Devesh Kapur, whose insights greatly shaped my own thinking on these issues.
46. World Justice Project, Rule of Law Index 2015 (Washington, D.C.: World Justice Project, 2015).
47. Ibid.
48. Government of India, Ministry of Personnel, Public Grievances, and Pensions, Department of Administrative Reforms and Public Grievances, Report of the Commission on Review of Administrative Laws (New Delhi: Government of India, 1998), http://www.darpg.gov.in/sites/default/files/Review_Administrative_laws_Vol_1.pdf (accessed April 19, 2016).
49. The situation is presumably even worse at the state level, which has far greater potential to affect the day-to-day lives of citizens and workings of business. The precise scope of the challenge remains unclear, however, because India lacks an inventory of state laws on the books.
50. Information on the “100 Laws Repeal Project” can be found at http://ccs.in/100laws?_ga=1.69967696.195209879.1397058421.
51. Devesh Kapur and Milan Vaishnav, “Rule of Law Reform: A Mixed Record,” Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, May 26, 2015, http://carnegieendowment.org/2015/05/26/modi-s-first-year/i8td#8 (accessed May 30, 2015).
52. Arvind Verma, “Police in India: Design and Performance,” in Pratap Bhanu Mehta and Devesh Kapur, eds., Public Institutions in India: Design and Performance (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2005), 194–257.
53. David H. Bayley, “The Police and Political Order in India,” Asian Survey 23, no. 4 (April 1983): 495.
54. A 2013 review claims there is “little doubt” that the absence of real police reform in India is the “most catastrophic point of failure of Indian security reforms.” See Sarah J. Watson and C. Christine Fair, “India’s Stalled Internal Security Reforms,” India Review 12, no. 4 (November 2013): 289.
55. Reflecting on the poor morale within the ranks of India’s police, the director general of police in Uttar Pradesh told an interna
tional NGO: “If you brought a US policeman here he’d commit suicide within one day.” Human Rights Watch, Broken System: Dysfunction, Abuse, and Impunity in the Indian Police (New York: Human Rights Watch, 2009), 7.
56. Sandeep Mishra, “IPS Officers Slam Lateral Entry into Police Services from Armed Forces,” Times of India, April 23, 2012.
57. Abhinav Garg, “Big Backlog, Staff Crunch Ailing Forensic Lab: Govt,” Times of India, October 3, 2013.
58. S. K. Das, “Institutions of Internal Accountability,” in Pratap Bhanu Mehta and Devesh Kapur, eds., Public Institutions in India: Design and Performance (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2005), 149.
59. Ibid., 149–51.
60. Ibid. According to Das, “In all cases investigated by the CBI, the government is empowered, even at the stage of investigation, to acquaint itself with details of evidence, which, in essence, means that the government can interfere at the stage of investigation itself and thwart the case.” For contemporary examples, see Mihir Srivastava, “The Congress Bureau of Investigation,” Open, April 6, 2013.
61. Bishwajit Bhattacharyya, My Experience with the Office of Additional Solicitor General of India (New Delhi: Universal Law Publishers, 2012).
62. Abhijit Banerjee et al., “Improving Police Performance in Rajasthan, India: Experimental Evidence on Incentives, Managerial Autonomy and Training,” National Bureau of Economic Research Paper No. 17912, March 2012.
63. Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative, “Seven Steps to Police Reform,” September 2010, http://www.humanrightsinitiative.org/programs/aj/police/india/initiatives/seven_steps_to_police_reform.pdf (accessed August 10, 2015).
64. Pratap Bhanu Mehta, “India’s Judiciary: The Promise of Uncertainty,” in Pratap Bhanu Mehta and Devesh Kapur, eds., Public Institutions in India: Design and Performance (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2005), 159–60.
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