What is the ways to curb the misuse of money and muscle power in politics?
Answers
Explanation:
Even after Narendra Modi promised on the campaign trail in 2014 to “do away with the criminalization of politics”, money and muscle still dominate the electoral scene in India, Milan Vaishnav writes in his forthcoming book “When Crime Pays”.
Vaishnav, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, argues that India, in embracing democracy before it developed stable institutions, became a fertile ground for criminals to get involved in politics – and eventually to become politicians themselves. If anything, that trend has strengthened as a growing economy increased the spoils available to the victor: based on their election filings candidates facing serious criminal charges are three times more likely to win than those who aren’t.
Modi’s decision on Nov. 8 to ban most of the cash in circulation – ostensibly to cleanse the economy of “black cash” – will inflict temporary pain on political parties, says Vaishnav. But it won’t bring about fundamental change as they gear up to contest five regional elections, the biggest of them in the battleground state of Uttar Pradesh. “No matter which party wins elections in the pivotal state of UP, rest assured that the crime-politics nexus is not going anywhere anytime soon,” Vaishnav said in an interview ahead of his book’s publication in India by HarperCollins.