prasad1
Active member
Atal Bihari Vajpayee once said, “Every legislator starts his career with the lie of the false election return he files.” That candidates in Indian elections grossly overshoot spending limits imposed by the Election Commission (EC), sometimes even by a factor of 20-30, is no secret. If there is one thing that major Indian political parties agree upon it is that spending limits in Indian elections, and the country’s campaign finance rules in general, are unreasonable.
During a round-table organised in 2012 by the Observer Research Foundation, representatives of both the Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) conceded that candidates overshoot spending limits by crores of rupees, and called for a radical rethinking of campaign finance rules. India’s campaign finance rules seem designed to fail — not only are they violated repeatedly and universally, but they also create deeper problems for representation and democracy at large.
To its credit, the EC has increased the spending limit over time, “to keep it in line with ground realities, particularly inflation,” as former Chief Election Commissioner S.Y. Quraishi said. In the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, each candidate was allowed to spend a maximum of Rs.70 lakh in his or her constituency, representing an increase of Rs.30 lakh over the 2009 limit. But that increase did not reduce the number of spending violations.
To reduce the number of violations, the spending limits should, at the least, be closer to the actual amount candidates need to campaign effectively, and that would require an exponential (and not incremental) increase. Rs.70 lakh implies a total spending of just Rs.3-4 per individual in a constituency, which is a lot less than what the EC itself spends on conducting elections.
The low limits on campaign finance have a large impact on the very essence of representation. For voters to make an informed choice, it is imperative that candidates and parties get their message across to each voter. For voters to make the right choices, they need to understand and respond to the candidates’ policy positions and sometimes interact with the candidates themselves. With the current rules, a law-abiding candidate would not have the resources (financial or otherwise) nor the time to make that happen. This implies lower levels of representation and consequently greater arbitrariness in voting decisions, both of which are harmful to democratic accountability and democracy at large. Politicians then turn to middlemen to mobilise votes with the all too obvious negative consequences. A number of politicians we have spoken with agree that campaign finance laws need to be revisited.
None of them, however, is willing to speak out, fearing the fallout, associated with the mindset linked to some segments of civil society and the state, one that inherently distrusts private accumulation of wealth. Electoral corruption in India is a product of the institutions and systems that we have put in place. The limits on election spending, along with the other restrictive campaign finance rules of the EC, perpetuates a tightly-guarded socialist mindset among many Indian policymakers, which often makes them wary of individual affluence. By relaxing these rules, the Election Commission will be able to not only increase compliance, transparency and representation in Indian elections, but also help align India’s politics with its new economics.
http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-...transparency/article7750253.ece?homepage=true
During a round-table organised in 2012 by the Observer Research Foundation, representatives of both the Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) conceded that candidates overshoot spending limits by crores of rupees, and called for a radical rethinking of campaign finance rules. India’s campaign finance rules seem designed to fail — not only are they violated repeatedly and universally, but they also create deeper problems for representation and democracy at large.
To its credit, the EC has increased the spending limit over time, “to keep it in line with ground realities, particularly inflation,” as former Chief Election Commissioner S.Y. Quraishi said. In the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, each candidate was allowed to spend a maximum of Rs.70 lakh in his or her constituency, representing an increase of Rs.30 lakh over the 2009 limit. But that increase did not reduce the number of spending violations.
To reduce the number of violations, the spending limits should, at the least, be closer to the actual amount candidates need to campaign effectively, and that would require an exponential (and not incremental) increase. Rs.70 lakh implies a total spending of just Rs.3-4 per individual in a constituency, which is a lot less than what the EC itself spends on conducting elections.
The low limits on campaign finance have a large impact on the very essence of representation. For voters to make an informed choice, it is imperative that candidates and parties get their message across to each voter. For voters to make the right choices, they need to understand and respond to the candidates’ policy positions and sometimes interact with the candidates themselves. With the current rules, a law-abiding candidate would not have the resources (financial or otherwise) nor the time to make that happen. This implies lower levels of representation and consequently greater arbitrariness in voting decisions, both of which are harmful to democratic accountability and democracy at large. Politicians then turn to middlemen to mobilise votes with the all too obvious negative consequences. A number of politicians we have spoken with agree that campaign finance laws need to be revisited.
None of them, however, is willing to speak out, fearing the fallout, associated with the mindset linked to some segments of civil society and the state, one that inherently distrusts private accumulation of wealth. Electoral corruption in India is a product of the institutions and systems that we have put in place. The limits on election spending, along with the other restrictive campaign finance rules of the EC, perpetuates a tightly-guarded socialist mindset among many Indian policymakers, which often makes them wary of individual affluence. By relaxing these rules, the Election Commission will be able to not only increase compliance, transparency and representation in Indian elections, but also help align India’s politics with its new economics.
http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-...transparency/article7750253.ece?homepage=true
