Criminalization of Politics
The lawmakers are the lawbreakers.
India has been an independent country since 1947 but it is not independent of having people with criminal backgrounds in the parliament.
The criminalization of politics is the participation of criminals in politics. The people with criminal backgrounds are part of the legislature. As the gap between criminals and politicians is decreasing, the threat to democracy is increasing.
The growing criminalization in the political parties of the country has been the trend in Indian politics. All the political parties have their share of criminal representatives in the party for the reason of “winning” the elections. But the question is if the win is really helping the people of the country.
The participation of criminals in elections has been evil in politics since the First General Elections, 1952. In the present Lok Sabha, there are nearly 50% of Members of Parliament have criminal records.
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| Image source: The Print The rising number of MPs with criminal records in general elections |
The many politicians of today have cases on them varying from murder to corruption.
A recent case from Karnataka of K.S. Eshwarappa, Minister of Rural Development and Panchayat Raj, was accused in connection with the death of a government contractor. In the complaint, it was alleged that the Minister demanded a 40% commission to pass four core bills related to the civil works under the Hindala Gram Panchayat constituency. The Minister denied the allegations but the family of the victims was sure. After the accusations, Eshwarappa resigned to prove to the people that he has no part in it and to save the embarrassment for his party.
Criminalization of Politics increases widely due to instances such as when a politician use their political powers for their personal gains. There have been incidents when bureaucrats have received promotions not based on their capabilities but based on how helpful they are to the politician in power and their caste and religion. If an officer belongs to the same caste or religion which is the same as the politician in power or favorable to them, they get a promotion.
Ramachandra Guha in his book, India After Gandhi, explains the way politicians and bureaucrats go hand in hand, “In Jawaharlal Nehru’s time the civil service was shielded from politics, transfers, promotions and the like were decided within the executive branch itself. From the 1970s, however, individual bureaucrats came increasingly to ally with individual politicians or political parties. When the party they allied with was in power, they get the best postings. In return, they energetically implemented the partisan agenda of the politicians”.
This relationship between the politicians and bureaucrats widely opened the doors for the criminalization of politics. The other advantage of having such officers to back the politicians up is that their crimes and wrongdoings will never become known to the public, they will make sure to cover up the mess. The dream of an independent bureaucracy that many freedom fighters wished for has remained a wish.
The influence of such politicians has put honest officers to shame and many times has led to the death of such officers. In some cases, the police and even the High Courts have given a clean chit.
In 2015, the death of D.K Ravi, an honest IAS officer from Karnataka, died by committing suicide. Ravi was dealing with real estate cases related to the then Home Minister, K.J.George, because of which many people assumed he would have a part in it. The then Karnataka government run by Siddaramaiah was forced to hand over the case to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) but he handed over the case to CBI only after a week. This led to the assumption that the government damaged all the evidence and then handed over the case. Now, we will never know what really happened because the HC declared that it was a suicide.
The suicide of a police officer from South Karnataka, Ganapathy, also included the name of K.J.George and yet again HC declared he was innocent.
Politicians in the country use money power and muscle power to win the elections. The money mostly comes from all the corruption activities they carry out and muscle power is obviously the people who can threaten the public to cast the votes for their leader.
The entry of rowdies to strengthen the vote banks of the politicians has worsened the criminalization.
The illiteracy, poverty, underdevelopment, unemployment of people, self-obsessed politicians, and corrupted bureaucracy has led to this situation in the political system.
The government is in favor of rich people who can buy their electoral bonds and increase their party funds. The electoral bonds have been a controversial topic since its introduction in 2018.
The aim of electoral bonds was to increase the transparency on the subject of political funding but it ended up being the opposite and has created a more opaque version than ever.
The voters have the right to know which party is funded by whom and how the decisions of the party are influenced by the funders. This gives them a clear idea to choose the right government.
According to a report in Economic Times, the donations in cash, cheque or electoral bonds constitute a very tiny fraction of the actual expenditure of the party. The other bigger bulk of the money is received and spent completely informally and is neither accounted for nor reported to any higher authority.
Such funding and opaque transparency increase the corruption in the government. The parties have also declared their income from anonymous sources, the BJP declared Rs.3780 crores and Congress declared Rs.526 crores.
The government also sanctions a good amount of money to solve all the grievances of people but none of them are solved because the money dissolves in the hands of the hierarchy.
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| Info source: Association for Democratic Reforms |
Every citizen of this country is aware the system is corrupt, instead of changing it, everyone is accustomed to the idea of a corrupt system. This held the doors wide open for the criminalization of politics.
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