Question

How to do debate on money and muscle power

Answer 1

Money plays a central role in elections nowadays. Election requires money not only to distribute it illegitimately to influence voter choices but also to fulfill the legitimate expenditures required to fight an election in large and big constituencies of India. Even if we consider fighting an election in legitimate manner then also it requires visiting hundreds of villages, meeting thousands of people and employing hundreds of worker to keep the campaign work going. A candidate will have to personally visit his whole constituency and let the people know about his vision for the constituency. Thus fighting an election requires a huge sum of money. Cost of fighting an election is increasing rapidly. Even the election commission has put a limit on expenditure of 25 lakh thus it seems that even they are sure that at least this much of money will be required for fighting an election.By power here I mean muscle power. In most of the places in India especially in rural and semi urban places it is required heavily during elections. What causes to the political parties and individual candidates to rely on such elements to win elections?

After our Independence, political parties didn’t give much emphasis on developing the party organization. With the organizational decline, gradually the parties started loosing their direct support bases and support structures previously available at the gross root level. Thus in the lack of proper organizational ways to mobilize people behind issues, they started depending on the influence which the individual candidates having in constituencies and their win-ability in elections. After the Nehru’s period which witnessed one party dominance system in India, the Indian polity witnessed growing factionalism especially in Congress. Congress suffered divisions in the party. Later our polity witnessed much more fragmentation in political process and rise in might of regional parties and subsequently coalition governments. With this increasing fight on the margins and growing fragmentation, it become politically difficult for the parties to win elections and form government. Thus in their desire of winning elections at any cost and because of non availability of any effective party organization at the constituency level, candidates gradually started depending upon local criminal elements who can perform booth capturing, rigging of election and force voters to vote for the candidate. With time these local criminal elements instead of supporting the party candidates started asking for tickets for themselves and given their win-ability and power, parties also started giving them tickets.