India’s
Election Commission’s call to reveal the names of corporations and individuals
funding political parties for electioneering has come not too soon. It should
have been made nearly three months ago, immediately after the government’s
amendment of the Representation of the People Act (RP) and Companies Act during
the Budget session in February this year. The two Acts work like a Rogue’s
Charter exempting political parties from disclosing donations received through
electoral bonds and without any cap on corporate contributions to parties.
Equally
urgent is the need to bring in the system of Proportional Representation (PR)
and replace the current first past the post election system which ignores the
strength or number of votes won by a party’s candidates and awards almost
absolute victory to a single party even though it has failed to win any
commanding share of the total vote. The PR system, as practised in countries
like Germany, enables even smaller parties to have their say in the governance
of the country. The winner doesn’t take all in the PR system.
But
first the need to root out the corrupt system of hidden money bags funding
political parties without fear of public scrutiny. The Election Commission has rightly, if tamely,
asked the government to “reconsider” and “modify” the RP and Companies Acts as
they discourage transparency in political donations. The two Acts rushed by
Parliament through a Money Bill blatantly and brazenly bypass the need for
transparency of political donations which have been a hallmark of national,
state and even local elections throughout the country in recent years.
Under the existing
rules befor the amendment of the RP Act, political parties had to file
contribution reports of donors and donations above Rs 20,000. This was amended
in the Budget session with anew provision that exempts political parties from
disclosing donations received as electoral bonds, even above the prescribed limit, from government
companies and even foreign sources.
The devil in the
detail of the amendments lies in the provision that the donor can by electoral
bonds and gift to a political party without the receiver knowing where the gift
came from. How innocent and gullible!
On top of all this,
the new rules also remove any limit on corporate donations to political
parties. Earlier, a company could contribute not more than 7.5 per cent of its
net profit over the last three years.Under this change, the EC rather boldly
points out: “This opens up the possibility of shell companies being set up for
the sole purpose of making donations to
political parties ...”
The Commission, in
its call or recommendation in a letter just days ago, has asked for the restoration of the earlier provisions which ensured that
only profitable companies with proven track record could provide donations to
political parties.
The need for
transparency and some control on poll
funding for parties favoured by a few industry houses or corporations is too
obvious. The influence of money power in elections – to the detriment of real
democratic choice -- has always been
apparent, but never so starkly overpowering as since India’s 2014 general
election. For months before the polling day newspapers and television channels
had swung their loyalties behind particular groups or alliances. Full page
advertisements in papers in a variety of languages across the country were a
common occurrence day after day and week after week. The buying of private
television channel time, which was much more costly, was no less common.
So who was funding
– indeed has been funding for the last three years and more – all this activity?
Party political expense reports to the
election commission are just a minor fraction of the lakhs of crores or
billions of rupees actually spent. You don’t have to be a genius in accountancy
to sus out that! Nor have you to be a genius to guess which party got most
funding from which industrial house or a group of companies.
Something has to be
done here and now before democracy becomes capital-o-cracy and one-party, nay
one-man, rule. It’s already late but
perhaps not too late before this system gets firmly entrenched. And it won’t be
a lasting victory for the current beneficiary of ‘nameless’ corporate funders.
A day will soon follow when the beneficiary giant itself would be toppled by
the industrial funders themselves as has happened in so many other lands. After
all it’s always the piper who calls the tune.
The other vital
element of democracy, besides the
funding challenge, is the choice of the voting system to elect representative
leaders. The "winner takes all" model of Britain and other
Anglo-Saxon or Western countries doesn’t fit all. Such a
system as adopted and adapted in India may well allow each constituency to send
a representative
to parliament with a simple plurality of votes. But it also means that votes
for the losing candidates and parties are, well, lost. Such a loss, affecting
large number of voters , quite often
in neck-and-neck contests, is clearly unrepresentative of
democratic spirit. Surely, the losers’ voice
can’t be and shouln’t be
dismissed as of no importance. Some way must be found to hear their voice in
the legislatures.
The proportional-representation system is the
answer where no votes are lost, because all parties and candidates are represented
according to their share of the votes. The PR system operative in Germany,
Austria, Ireland and in many states in
the USA is certainly and urgently worth our search. It need not be a copy cat
of any single country’s system. It can
be a hybrid choice as is our existing parliamentary system which has the best
elements from many other countries added to a solid foundation based on our own
traditions and ethos.
No time to lose on both fronts.
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