Is political corruption a fall out of democratic structures?
Posted on April 18, 2011
In a two-part blog series, Ex-IAS officer, T.R Raghunandan examines the democratic structure for possible causes contributing to the emergence and sustenance of political corruption in India.
There is no doubt that some aspects of our democratic structure as well as democratic practice encourage corruption. The structural distortions start with our system of Constituency-based elections, combined with the Majoritarian System under which the ‘first candidate to cross the post’ becomes our representative for the next five years. In this system, small swings in voting can cause dramatic political changes.
There is a strong incentive for competing parties to obtain as many votes as possible, which therefore encourages electoral malpractices such as booth capturing and bribing of voters. When this ‘first to pass the post’ system operates in a multi-party and multi-candidate environment, it causes fragmentation of the mandate. So we end up being ruled not by the party that gets the majority of the votes (that rarely happens) but by the largest minority. When no party receives an absolute majority, horse-trading following elections is not ruled out; anti-defection laws are not sufficient disincentive; therefore, we see another cycle of high level corruption; the payment of MPs and MLAs to switch sides.
Constituency-based elections also result in competition between levels for opportunities to distribute patronage, because nobody knows what causes voter swings. So the Member of Parliament wants to construct bus stops and inaugurate municipal toilets because that is more visible than participation in the Parliament. We cannot blame the MP either, because citizens also vote not for individual performance of the representative but to express their general dissatisfaction with government performance.
The above problems are compounded further by the replication of these distortions at all levels of political representation; including local governments such as Panchayats and Municipalities.
There are many tendencies that promote corruption. In many of our mainstream parties, bribing of the organizational set-up is required to get a party ticket. Political parties are not obliged to maintain accounts and these are not audited. There is no transparency in political contributions and expenditure.
When voters are faced with bad candidates all around, they get disgusted and cynical. They begin to believe that they have very little political choice and then they sell votes. Many of them actually believe that selling of votes is a good idea; that it amounts to taking revenge on corrupt politicians, and is a way of recirculating illegal earnings of politicians back to society!
Part – II in this series examines simple reforms that could make a difference. Watch this space.