Corporate business financing of politics in India goes back decades. The court ruling on the electoral bonds scheme is not going to end this business-politics nexus. We can only hope that the nexus can be nudged in the direction of greater transparency so that voters can make more informed choices.
JAGDEEP S. CHHOKAR
The recent judgement of the Supreme Court of India declaring the electoral bond scheme (EBS) as unconstitutional has brought the issue of the role of money in politics to the centre-stage in public discourse. Public memory is known to be short and therefore we seem not to remember that the connection between money and politics is very old.
Political theorists have pointed out that there has been a connection between money and politics throughout history. For instance, Hannah Arendt (1951) argued that in the 17th century, nascent city-states depended on the active support of moneyed people who placed their capital at the service of the prince in return for preferential treatment. Arendt’s thesis is that while this facilitated the survival of the princes and later the emergence of monarchies, its impact on the politics of the state is debatable.
Interestingly, at the end of the first decade after India’s independence, Justice M.C. Chagla, then chief justice of Bombay High Court, expressed his doubts about the impact of business on politics in a democracy. Justice Chagla’s observations in 1957 in Jayantilal Ranchhoddas Koticha, where a proposal by the Tata Iron and Steel Company to make contributions to political parties was being adjudicated, are worth citing at length:
Now, democracy is a political system which ensures decisions by discussion and debate, but the discussion and debate must be conducted honestly and objectively and decisions must be arrived at on merits without being influenced or actuated by any extraneous considerations. On first impression it would appear that any attempt on the part of anyone to finance a political party is likely to contaminate the very springs of democracy. Democracy would be vitiated if results are to be arrived at not on their merits but because money played a part in the bringing about of those decisions. The form and trappings of democracy may continue, but the spirit underlying democratic institutions will disappear.
History of democracy has proved that in other countries democracy has been smothered by big business and money bags playing an important part in the working of democratic institutions and it is the duty not only of politicians, not only of citizens, but even of a Court of law, to the extent that it has got the power, to prevent any influence being exercised upon the voter which is an improper influence or which may be looked at from any point of view as a corrupt influence. The very basis of democracy is the voter and when in India we are dealing with adult suffrage it is even more important than elsewhere that not only the integrity of the representative who is ultimately elected to Parliament is safeguarded, but that the integrity of the voter is also safeguarded, and it may be said that it is difficult to accept the position that the integrity of the voter and of the representative is safeguarded if large industrial concerns are permitted to contribute to political funds to bring about a particular result.
Justice Chagla went on to say, “It is a danger which may grow apace and which may ultimately overwhelm and even throttle democracy in the country.”
The similarity between the views of Hannah Arendt and Justice Chagla are striking….
https://www.theindiaforum.in/politics/business-and-finance-political-parties-umbilical-chord
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