Campaign Finance Reforms in India: Issues and Challenges

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Campaign Finance Reforms in India: Issues and Challenges minimum agreement among all political parties for not violating this code of national responsibility towards cleaning up the system. As of now, no party is interested. Each party wants to play the same game, “Ab tumari baari, aglee baar hamaari baari aayegi”. A corporate would say, “reform others, not me, tax others”. Vested interests are tied up together and no one is seriously interested in reforms, everyone is interested in putting obstacles or leaving enough loopholes to reap the benefits from non-regulation. Certainly we need a regulator. If we have learnt anything from reforms, leaving it to markets would not help, leaving it to Government will not help. Each has a vested interest, each has fundamental weaknesses of its own—market failures, State failures, and people's failures. People too would like not to pay taxes. No one is honest to the core. So, under such circumstances the first pre-requisite will be political reforms of the parties and candidates. Good candidates have to be certified by various parameters, and people at the grass-root should decide who should be fielded or not, not the political parties. Participant: As has been rightly said, apart from public pressure, nothing works on political parties. I have been in touch with the political system for over three decades; every time there was a question on whether criminals could be fielded or not, every political party would find one logic or the other to evade it. Political parties think that they are above all. That is the most unfortunate thing. Unfortunately, the entire political class is being seen as a villain, which is not true because political parties, after all, don't descend from heaven. They also come from the society. So, society at large has also to be viewed in context. But political reforms, as has rightly been mentioned, is one vehicle through which we can achieve many things. What do we mean by a political party? They, like all other organisations, need to be audited, need to be regulated. Then comes the question of what kind of candidates? I am really appalled when political party leaders say that if a candidate has not been convicted, how can he be debarred from contesting? www.orfonline.org 33
ORF Seminar Series This is absolutely ridiculous and every political party, every political leader speaks the same language. We have seen the recent issue on the Lok Pal, with all kinds of arguments to derail the whole process. Somebody talks of federalism; suddenly federalism becomes such an important issue. Even those parties that are highly supportive of a strong Centre, they are also talking of federalism. We have to all agree that unless public pressure is built, political parties are not going to agree to anything. Dr. Niranjan Sahoo, Senior Fellow, ORF: Just two issues which caught my imagination, based on what Mr. T. K. Arun said about disclosures. We can actually begin with the panchayati raj institutions, egging on others to disclose more and more information. But here I sincerely feel that the media is actually missing in action in terms of reporting, in terms of playing the activist role which it is playing on many other policy issues, be it on the Lok Pal, be it on many of the other issues relating to environment and other concerns. Some process has already been started on disclosure, criminal antecedents and many other things. Now, routinely, a lot of things are coming to public knowledge, like corporate donations to different political parties. But why are we not getting actually deeper and looking at it in terms of who donates and whether it has any linkages to influencing policies adversely or in any one's favour. I am talking about the crony capitalism aspects, which have come out vividly in the 2-G case. So, this needs a thorough probing. Of course, a research organisation like ours and many others also have to play a role because we don't have much empirical work on this issue, like how much money is involved, what kind of role it plays in influencing elections or determining the outcome. We don't know much about it in India unlike in Europe and the US. They have reams of empirical work to validate many such arguments. The time has come to actually take this issue very seriously on our part, apart from expecting the political class and the civil society to take the lead. Here I sincerely request the media to play an active role because if they don't 34 www.orfonline.org
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