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

[Venugopalan K M]

A very interesting piece of much needed research and also worth sharing;
thanks for the forward.
We may recall that in the last US Presidency elections, the fact that both
the  contestants of the Democratic Party were multi- billioners having
stakes in promoting the interests of Corporates and the fluidity of the
Global Capital, was much less talked about. Instead in the mainstream media
,we saw a fierce campaign at the hustings where one of them was projected as
championing the cause of Afro Americans and non whites worldwide, and the
other as for the cause of women everywhere.
At least quite a few of us were debating similar issues here also .Despite
that a blindly expressed  commitment toward different versions of  identity
politics could  have wrought havoc, unlike in the past,  people seem to have
by  and large  resisted  notions of vote banks built only on identities,
such as Muslim, Dalit and so on. That is a consolation, despite how the
system as a whole  prooves itself deeply biased toward the rich.

Regards,
Venu.

On Sat, Jun 20, 2009 at 1:29 PM, Rakesh Iyer <rakesh.rnbdj at gmail.com> wrote:

> 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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