[Reader-list] Is Indian democracy turning into a farce now?

[Rakesh Iyer]

Dear all

This is an article from 'The Hindu' which I got, and liked very much. In it
lies a message for us as well as for the Indian democracy. May be also
something for the Bollywood brigade which was encouraging all of us to go
out and vote. May be it's time we do understand that the meaning of
democracy is not just elections, which is what all of us indirectly or
directly have reduced to.

Hope you enjoy the article. And I do hope others will comment on this, as
they do on identity based concerns.

Regards

Rakesh*

The age of the aam crorepati - P.Sainath *

* If you are worth Rs. 50 million or more, you are 75 times more likely to
win an election to the Lok Sabha than if you are worth under Rs. 1 million.
*

“I think almost everyone will grant that if candidates for the United States
Senate were required to possess ten million dollars, and for the House one
million, the year-in-year-out level of conservatism of those two bodies
might be expected to rise sharply. We could still be said to have a freely
elected Congress. Anybody with ten million dollars (or one, if he tailored
his ambition to fit his means) would be free to try to get himself
nominated, and the rest of us would be free to vote for our favourite
millionaire or even to abstain from voting.” — A.J. Liebling, *The Wayward
Pressman*, 1947

Liebling also warned in the 1960s that the business models of newspapers
would one day prove their undoing. A prophecy that rings true today for the
giants of that industry in his own country. Yes, you’ve seen his words on
voting in these columns before. But the 2009 poll results have made him
doubly relevant. “Voting for our favourite millionaire” comes alive with the
15th Lok Sabha. Its 543 MPs are worth close to Rs. 28 billion. (Of which 64
Union Cabinet members from the Lok Sabha account for Rs. 5 billion). And the
links between wealth and winning elections are firmer than ever before.

If you are worth over Rs. 50 million, you are 75 times more likely to win an
election to the Lok Sabha than if you are worth under Rs. 1 million. At
least, in the case of the 2009 polls. (Some 23 of 64 Cabinet Ministers whose
asset worth is in the public domain fall into this Rs. 50 million-plus
category. Providing it stability of sorts, I guess. In the entire Cabinet,
only one falls into the less-than-Rs.1 million group.)

Another 29 members of the Cabinet fall in the Rs. 5 million-Rs. 50 million
category. If you are in this bracket, your chances of winning aren’t as
great as the 50 million-plus, or Platinum Tier, elite. However, you are
still 43 times more likely to win than those with less than Rs. 1 million in
assets (that is, almost the whole of India’s population). The remaining
Ministers, in case you were losing sleep over their condition, fall into the
Rs. 1 million-Rs. 5 million club, the Cabinet equivalent of BPL. However,
there are five years in which to remedy this situation and alleviate the
misery of this group.

These are just a few of the insights brought to us by an interim report of
National Election Watch on the 2009 polls. NEW is a coalition of over 1200
civil society groups working across the country. Their “Analysis of MPs of
the 15th Lok Sabha (2009)” makes great reading and is the product of fine
research and much hard work.

There were 3,437 candidates in the polls with assets of less than Rs.1
million, says the report. Of these, just 15 (0.44 per cent) made it past the
post. But your chances soar with your assets. Of the 1,785 candidates in the
Rs. 1 million-Rs. 5 million group, 116 (6 per cent) won. This win-ratio goes
up to 19 per cent of candidates for the Rs. 5 million-Rs. 50 million
segment. And of 322 candidates in the Rs. 50 million-plus or platinum tier,
106 (33 per cent) romped home.

The higher you climb the ladder of lucre, the better your chances. That is
obvious. But what is striking is how bleak things are for non-millionaires.
Even a modest improvement in your wealth helps. Say, you move from the below
Rs. 1 million group to the Rs.1-5 million group — your chances immediately
improve at a higher rate than your wealth. (Of course, that works only if
you are already close to the Rs. 1 million mark.) So it’s not just that
wealth has some impact on election outcomes — it influences them heavily and
disproportionately as you go up the scale.

All of a piece with a society that only last year had 53 dollar billionaires
(pre-meltdown). One that still has 836 million human beings who “get by” on
less than Rs. 20 a day. Which ranks 66th amongst 88 nations on the Global
Hunger Index (just one notch above Zimbabwe). Which has plummeted to rank
132 in the United Nations Human Development Index (one slot below Bhutan) as
our billionaire count has risen. That wallows below Bolivia, Botswana, the
Republic of the Congo and the Occupied Territories of Palestine in the HDI
rankings. And never mind being worth billions — 60 per cent of adult rural
Indians simply do not have bank accounts.

There is little question that big bucks help in our polls. The number of
‘crorepatis’ in the present Lok Sabha is up 98 per cent as compared to 2004.
Then there were 154, now there are 306 — almost double. A healthy growth
rate. And there are grounds for optimism that the BPL group in the Cabinet
can uplift itself speedily. That’s happened to both MPs and candidates in
some of the most troubled parts of the country. The net worth of candidates
in Vidarbha rose by over 160 per cent between 2004 and 2009. In the Wardha
district of that region alone, the net worth of candidates rose by 1,157 per
cent between 2004 and 2009. (Ananth Krishnan, *The Hindu*, April 14, 2009).
The Kalahandi-Bolangir-Koraput region had seven ‘crorepati’ candidates.

But back to the NEW report. Of the 306 crorepatis in the new Lok Sabha, 141,
almost half, belong to the party of the *aam aadmi*, the Congress. The BJP
lotus is a withering second, with 58. The SP, the BSP and the DMK follow
with 14, 13 and 12 multi-millionaires. The Shiv Sena doesn’t do too badly
with nine and the NCP with seven. In the case of these two parties, it means
that almost 80 per cent of their elected MPs are ‘crorepatis.’ The Left bloc
fares poorly, scoring just one from among its 24 MPs.

The one-in-three success rate of the Rs.50 million-plus candidates doesn’t
tell the whole story, though. Often, they have defeated others of their own
league. Who might well have fared better against candidates of lower asset
castes.

We are also faithful to our role model: the United States, where Liebling’s
prophecy has worked with a vengeance for decades. One pre-meltdown piece in
* www.opensecrets.org * put it neatly last year. “As Americans worry about
their own finances, their elected representatives in Washington — with a
collective net worth of $3.6 billion [roughly Rs. 172 billion] — are mostly
in good shape to withstand a recession.” Before the meltdown rained on their
parade, it says, members of Congress, “saw their net worths soar 84 per cent
from 2004 to 2006, on average.” It points out that while U.S. Senators had
“a median net worth of approximately $1.7 million in 2006,” only about “1
per cent of all American adults had a net worth greater than $1 million
around the same time.”

So the collective net worth of elected representatives in Washington is
Rs.172 billion and that of our own Rs. 28 billion. Okay, we’re outclassed.
But not to feel too bad about it. For one thing, the U.S. figure appears to
include both the Senate and the House of Representatives. Ours covers only
the Lok Sabha. What’s more, our team seems to clock a better rate of growth.
And the gap is narrowing. The good rate of growth for second or third-term
MPs also holds another lesson. Not only is it easier to get elected if you
have money, it is easier to make money if you get elected

In both countries, money from big corporations helps clinch poll victories.
Corporate lobbies like Big Oil have long “owned” Senators and Congressmen.
In India, this trend has grown even in terms of individual corporate chiefs.
In the U.S., corporate power has been on shameless display during the
financial bailouts.

The AIGs, The Goldman Sachs *et al* unsheathed their massive clout to grab
public money. In India, that power was visible to the naked eye in the
run-up to last year’s trust vote in Parliament. One party even dumped a
sworn political stand of eight decades under that influence.

In the NEW report, the wealthiest group of those elected falls into the Rs.
50 million-plus category. The ranking within this is intriguing. The average
worth of a Lok Sabha MP is Rs. 51 million. But there are 74 MPs with serious
criminal charges against them whose wealth averages Rs. 60 million. That is,
they are well entrenched in Parliament’s Platinum tier. And the average
wealth of a Cabinet Minister is around Rs. 75 million. Ah well, it’s a hard
climb to the top.
 * *

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