By Subhash Chopra
The Election Commission’s call to reveal the names of corporations and individuals funding political parties for electioneering has come not too soon. It should have been made nearly three months ago, immediately after the Government’s amendment of the Representation of the People Act (RP) and Companies Act during the Budget session in February this year. The two Acts work like a Rogue’s Charter exempting political parties from disclosing donations received through electoral bonds and without any cap on corporate contributions to parties.
Equally urgent is the need to bring in the system of Proportional Representation (PR) and replace the current ‘first past the post’ election system which ignores the strength or number of votes won by a party’s candidates and awards almost absolute victory to a single party even though it has failed to win any commanding share of the total vote. The PR system, as practised in countries like Germany, enables even smaller parties to have their say in the governance of the country. The winner doesn’t take all in the PR system.
But first, the need to root out the corrupt system of hidden moneybags funding political parties without the fear of public scrutiny. The Election Commission has rightly, if tamely, asked the Government to “reconsider” and “modify” the RP and Companies Acts as they discourage transparency in political donations. The two Acts rushed by Parliament through a Money Bill blatantly and brazenly bypass the need for transparency of political donations which have been a hallmark of national, state and even local elections throughout the country in recent years.
Under the existing rules before the amendment of the RP Act, political parties had to file contribution reports of donors and donations above Rs 20,000. This was amended in the Budget session with anew provision that exempts political parties from disclosing donations received as electoral bonds, even above the prescribed limit, from Government companies and even foreign sources.
The devil in the detail of the amendments lies in the provision that the donor can by electoral bonds and gift to a political party without the receiver knowing where the gift came from. How innocent and gullible!
On top of all this, the new rules also remove any limit on corporate donations to political parties. Earlier, a company could contribute not more than 7.5 per cent of its net profit over the last three years.Under this change, the EC rather boldly points out: “This opens up the possibility of shell companies being set up for the sole purpose of making donations to political parties …”
The Commission, in its call or recommendation in a letter just days ago, has asked for the restoration of the earlier provisions which ensured that only profitable companies with proven track record could provide donations to political parties.
The need for transparency and some control on poll funding for parties favoured by a few industry houses or corporations is too obvious. The influence of money power in elections – to the detriment of real democratic choice — has always been apparent, but never so starkly overpowering as since India’s 2014 general election. For months before the polling day newspapers and television channels had swung their loyalties behind particular groups or alliances. Full page advertisements in papers in a variety of languages across the country were a common occurrence day after day and week after week. The buying of private television channel time, which was much more costly, was no less common.
So who was funding – indeed has been funding for the last three years and more – all this activity? Party political expense reports to the Election Commission are just a minor fraction of the lakhs of crores or billions of rupees actually spent. You don’t have to be a genius in accountancy to sus out that! Nor have you to be a genius to guess which party got most funding from which industrial house or a group of companies.
Something has to be done here and now before democracy becomes capital-o-cracy and one-party, nay one-man, rule. It’s already late but perhaps not too late before this system gets firmly entrenched. And it won’t be a lasting victory for the current beneficiary of ‘nameless’ corporate funders. A day will soon follow when the beneficiary giant itself would be toppled by the industrial funders themselves as has happened in so many other lands. After all it’s always the piper who calls the tune.
The other vital element of democracy, besides the funding challenge, is the choice of the voting system to elect representative leaders. The “winner takes all” model of Britain and other Anglo-Saxon or Western countries doesn’t fit all. Such a system as adopted and adapted in India may well allow each constituency to send a representative to parliament with a simple plurality of votes. But it also means that votes for the losing candidates and parties are, well, lost. Such a loss, affecting large number of voters , quite often in neck-and-neck contests, is clearly unrepresentative of democratic spirit. Surely, the losers’ voice can’t be and shouln’t be dismissed as of no importance. Some way must be found to hear their voice in the legislatures.
The proportional-representation system is the answer where no votes are lost, because all parties and candidates are represented according to their share of the votes. The PR system operative in Germany, Austria, Ireland and in many states in the USA is certainly and urgently worth our search. It need not be a copy cat of any single country’s system. It can be a hybrid choice as is our existing parliamentary system which has the best elements from many other countries added to a solid foundation based on our own traditions and ethos.
No time to lose on both fronts.
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Subhash Chopra is a freelance journalist and author of ‘India and Britannia’ and other writings.
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