Milan Vaishnav

Review: Why Criminals Enter Politics in India

In ‘When Crime Pays’, Milan Vaishnav explores the factors that influence voter demand for candidates with criminal reputations, showing that voters prefer them not despite their dubious record but because of it.

In When Crime Pays: Money and Muscle in Indian Politics, Milan Vaishnav explores the factors that influence voter demand for candidates with criminal reputations, showing that voters prefer them not despite their dubious record but because of it.

Criminal candidates with ill-gotten wealth make themselves available to political parties as “self-financing” candidates. Credit: Reuters

“There are two ways of making politics one’s vocation: either one lives ‘for’ politics or one lives ‘off’ politics,” said German sociologist Max Weber in his essay ‘Politics as a Vocation‘. Surely, many politicians have come to live off politics but what are the ‘incentives’ that encourage individuals soaked in criminality to take the plunge into it in the first place? At a time when we are witnessing increasing criminalisation of politics in our democracy, this question needs to be confronted head on and that’s precisely what Milan Vaishnav sets out to do in his book When Crime Pays: Money and Muscle in Indian Politics.

The author has adopted a political economy approach to the study of the “symbiotic relationship” between crime and politics in India. The book is divided into three parts: Part I lays down the subject of enquiry and gives a broad overview of the larger changes that have happened in our society and economy since independence; part II explores the demand side and the supply side factors influencing the marketplace for criminals in politics and part III examines the nature of that marketplace and discusses concrete steps that need to be taken to minimise its importance.

While we know that the share of MPs and MLAs with criminal backgrounds has been growing steadily, the puzzle that stares us in our face is why such candidates get rewarded and not rejected by the voters. The author says that “the market metaphor serves as a useful frame to understand why the appeal of politicians linked to criminality endures”. Political parties act as a platform, purveying criminal candidates to the voters. This marketplace is best seen as a ‘platform market’, where strong ‘network effects’ are at play and the two sides – demand and supply – mutually reinforce each other.

One notices that the presence of criminal elements in politics is not altogether new. As the historian Srinath Raghavan has pointed out, muscle-power as embodied in entrenched caste-relations in rural India was instrumental in mobilising votes for the Congress party in the first two decades after independence. But the phenomenon we are looking at is the transformation of criminal individuals from being the hired guns of party politicians to becoming full-time politicians themselves. Why did they have to take the giant leap?

“Three trends – political fragmentation, deepening competition and continued Congress decline – converged in the late 1980s to break open the political system in an unprecedented manner”. How did this incentivise criminals to make their foray into electoral politics? The explanation offered is an interesting one: “Thanks to the uncertainty stemming from greater electoral competition, they were no longer able to rest easy knowing that the party that employed them would remain in power”. The author intelligently deploys the concept of ‘vertical integration’ to elucidate this development.

Milan Vaishnav
When Crime Pays – Money and Muscle in Indian Politics
Harper Collins, 2017

What do political parties gain by recruiting criminally connected individuals, especially when it can be self-defeating as the party’s image can take a beating for fielding criminals in elections? This is where the role of ‘competition’ comes into play. With the proliferation of political parties and expanding size of the electorate, electoral democracy has become a costly affair, which needs a steady flow of money to keep its wheels moving. Criminal candidates with ill-gotten wealth make themselves available to political parties as “self-financing” candidates and promise financial rents to the party coffers, thereby liberating parties of the binding constraint.

The supply side incentives are clear, but doesn’t the demand side (voters), which demands democratic accountability, express its dissatisfaction at this trend by rejecting such crooks? The author argues that “where the rule of law is weakly enforced and social divisions are rampant, a candidate’s criminal reputation could be perceived as an asset”. He identifies four channels through which such candidates establish their credibility – redistribution, coercion, social insurance and dispute resolution. All four, including coercion, are the sole prerogatives of the state and by guaranteeing these through their criminal reputation, they signal ‘credibility’.

The crucial question that begs our attention is whether they cater to a cross section of the electorate. The answer is no and it is so because, such individuals exploit social divisions to thrive and promise to protect sectional interests by engaging in “defensive criminality”, where they use strong-arm tactics to uphold the dignity of their caste brethren. The tension between caste-kinship and citizenship will be the driving force of a social churning that would put Indian democracy’s stressed institutions to further test in the political sphere. These criminal politicians are partial answers to the governance vacuum and know it is in their interest not to think up sustainable solutions that would render them irrelevant: “If the rule of law vacuum were solved by investing in state capacity to provide basic public goods, criminal candidates would lose their lustre”. In other words, even a minimal state envisaged by Adam Smith can fix our problems if it gets its institutional structure right.

By explaining how these factors influence voter demand for candidates with criminal reputation, the author debunks the “ignorant voter” hypothesis and shows that voters prefer such candidates not despite their dubious record but because of it. This thesis neatly fits into the classic economic paradigm of rational individuals making decisions in their self-interest by efficiently processing all the available information. But the author alerts us to the caveat that this thesis is context-specific and cannot be universally applied.

It would be pertinent to look at the trends in the dynastic consolidation of political power and perpetuation of criminality in politics. Recall that during the political Emergency, the complete takeover of state power by the Nehru-Gandhi family resulted in the criminalisation of the entire state apparatus and it was only a matter of time before the regional and smaller players emulated the first family’s model of centralising power. From the Akalis in Punjab to the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam in Tamil Nadu, most parties are run as family firms.

Milan Vaishnav. Credit: Youtube screenshot

Nonetheless, it is important not to forget that leaders of such parties enjoy popular support in spite of their corrupt and criminal backgrounds. The paradigmatic example is Jagan Reddy of YSR Congress, who was seen by the masses as achha chor (Robin Hood types), as the veteran journalist P. Sainath put it, in the run up to the 2014 general elections. Lack of internal party democracy has increased the discretionary powers of the party patriarch/matriarch. The author has dealt with this aspect in detail to show how it encourages the continued supply of criminal candidates.

In using the marketplace analogy, the author states that a truly “free” market works through arm’s length transactions and informational symmetry. He argues that “politics often departs significantly from these core tenets” and “politics is about the structure of power”. These arguments are equally applicable to the so-called free market as well. In fact, information asymmetry is a major source of economic power and the invisible hand of the market doesn’t hesitate to use its invisible fist. As for the free market conception, it would be illuminating to read Ha Joon Chang’s 23 Things They Don’t Tell You About Capitalism to know that the myth of the free market is predicated on weak grounds.

The author uses the growth of multiparty competition as one of the explanatory factors to show what forced criminals to enter politics. If one assesses this argument within the analytical frame the author has used, then contrary to the standard economic proposition that competition will lead to social well-being and optimal outcomes for all, competition in the electoral marketplace has resulted in sub-optimal outcomes. An important observation made in the book is that criminals are recruited by political parties across the board to contest elections and their ideological vacuum allows them the suppleness to recruit such candidates. If the recently concluded assembly elections in Uttar Pradesh and its aftermath is any indicator, then one can argue that it is perfectly compatible to have both programmatic content and criminal legislators who can push the boundaries of that content.

That said, this is an intellectually stimulating work of scholarship. The interesting anecdotes and apocryphal stories about the criminal candidates add rich flavour to the narrative. The author has crunched truckloads of data by mining the Election Commission’s database of candidate affidavits and findings from independent election surveys. The numerous graphs in the book effectively supplement the well-constructed narrative. For those who despair about the state of politics, the book is a sobering reminder that ‘politics is a strong and slow boring of hard boards’ and ‘it takes both passion and perspective’.

Raghunath Nageswaran holds an M.A. in Economics from Madras Christian College.

Modi’s Promise of Decriminalising Politics Is Mere Lip Service

Between 35-40% of candidates in the UP elections have a criminal record. Many criminal acts have ideological legitimacy, resulting in reward rather than punishment, as seen in the case of the UP BJP president.

Between 35-40% of candidates in the UP elections have a criminal record. Many criminal acts have ideological legitimacy, resulting in reward rather than punishment, as seen in the case of the UP BJP president.

File photo of Prime Minister Narendra Modi (R) being garlanded by UP BJP president Keshav Prasad Maurya (L) and party MP Ramesh Pokhriyal. Credit: PTI

Writing for The Telegraph, historian Ramachandra Guha has cited new data provided by the Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR) based on affidavits submitted to the Election Commission, which put the BJP at the very top of the list of candidates with criminal charges in the first phase of the Uttar Pradesh elections, at 40%. The Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) comes next, with 38% of the candidates having criminal charges.

However, in the second phase of polling in UP, the Congress has the highest score, with 36% of candidates facing criminal charges. Samajwadi Party tops in the third phase with 41% of the candidates having criminal charges against them. Guha juxtaposes these facts with Narendra Modi’s explicit promise during the 2014 election campaign (quoted in a recently released book titled When Crime Pays: Money and Muscle in Indian Politics by Milan Vaishnav) that if he became prime minister, “No accused (with criminal charges) will dare to fight polls. Who says this cleansing is not possible.”

In another statement cited in the book, Modi says with a sense of urgency, “We have to do away with criminalisation of politics and delivering more lectures won’t help”. As it happens, Modi is doing precisely that – delivering more lectures on the subject of cleansing politics and eliminating political crime and corruption. Of course his lectures assume different forms from time to time, and the latest comes in the garb of demonetisation which is meant to cleanse the system.

The reason why one is recalling Modi’s statements from the 2014 election campaign is to demonstrate that the new dispensation perhaps lacked even the intent to incrementally change the system. Otherwise why would Modi have allowed Amit Shah to appoint Keshav Prasad Maurya, facing about a dozen criminal charges – also having been chargesheeted and put to trial in a murder case – as the president of BJP in India’s largest state by voting population?

Indeed, Maurya’s appointment as UP BJP president in April 2016 had caused ripples even within the BJP. The old guard did not approve of this, but Modi and Shah decided to brazen it out saying the criminal cases against him were politically motivated. Interestingly, Maurya himself gave a statement to the Times of India asserting that most of criminal cases against him were on account of “leading protest movements for the people”. Of course, this was not entirely true because one serious case pertained to the murder of one Chand Khan, for which he was chargesheeted and even underwent trial. However, some of the leading witnesses in this case did not cooperate after Maurya won the 2014 Lok Sabha elections from Phulpur – the erstwhile constituency of Jawaharlal Nehru – with over five lakh votes. His growing clout within the BJP seemed to have coerced the elder brother of the deceased to withdraw from pursuing the murder trial.

Maurya’s meteoric rise in the UP BJP after Modi’s takeover of the party knocks the bottom out of the prime minister’s claim that he would decriminalise politics. He continues to give tickets to candidates with criminal records, as the latest ADR data reveals.

Indeed, Maurya’s elevation symbolises legitimacy to a different brand of criminalisation in politics – criminalisation underpinned by ideology. Note that Maurya’s rise from a tea seller and newspaper hawker to becoming the state unit president has come after his consistent activism in the past as sangathan mantri in the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, which led the Ram temple campaign in 1991 in UP. He was also nagar karyavah in the local RSS unit at one time. The eventual demolition of Babri Masjid was a criminal act which is still under trial. However, those associated with such acts of crime with intended ideological underpinning are being promoted as policy by the BJP. The then district magistrate, K.K.Nayar, who actively connived to place the idol of Rama inside the Babri Mosque in 1949 was rewarded with a Jana Sangh ticket and he became a Lok Sabha MP in 1952. No wonder Maurya openly claims that many cases against him pertain to participating in protest movements, which could be about Babri Masjid in the past or “gau rakhsha” in more recent years.

While Vaishnav’s book talks about the traditional role of money and muscle in politics, we also need to recognise criminalisation derived from sustained ideological motives. The brief history of Hindutva consolidation and the progressive recruitment of backward castes and Dalits in movements such as the one for a Ram temple and cow protection are different from the traditional ‘social bandit’ phenomenon where criminals rise in politics by partially controlling the ‘coercive functions’ as well as ‘welfare functions’ of the state.

The ideological basis for criminalisation too has a history, as can be seen from the way the idol of Rama was illegally placed inside the Babri Mosque complex in December 1949. The subsequent decades saw a sustained movement around it often with blatant criminality, as seen in the demolition of the masjid and the mass violence resulting from it in the Mumbai riots documented by the Sri Krishna Commission. Indeed, this movement also has a link to the Godhra and Gujarat violence – triggered by the burning of the train carrying kar sewaks.

The larger point is people like Maurya, who have proudly participated in such ideological movements marked by grave criminal acts from time to time, get systematically rewarded in the BJP. Predictably, the Sangh parivar tends to brush aside such criminality as aberrations, which they are not if seen as a continuum from 1949 to 2017. This is not to detract from the “Bahubalis” of Bihar and UP who are spread across in all political parties, as the latest ADR report shows. But the rise and rise of ideological warriors in politics with impressive criminal records needs to be studied separately, as they come with a different kind of motivation.

Voters Make “Strategic Choices” in Favour of Money and Muscle: Milan Vaishnav on Criminal-Politicians

Milan Vaishnav’s recently released ‘When Crime Pays – Money and Muscle in Indian Politics’ explores the co-existence of democracy and illegality, and why it is repeatedly blessed by voters.

Milan Vaishnav’s recently released When Crime Pays – Money and Muscle in Indian Politics explores the co-existence of democracy and illegality, and why it is repeatedly blessed by voters.

Milan Vaishnav. Credit: Youtube screenshot

Milan Vaishnav, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, has made a mark in a relatively short time as an expert on the political economy of India. His data crunching is legendary and much needed for establishing statistically what many Indians might know instinctively – that crime is a big part of politics today. They have seen the criminal-politician as a protagonist of ‘realist’ films, fixing, managing and growing his empire while delivering results to voters. Vaishnav’s recently released When Crime Pays – Money and Muscle in Indian Politics explores the co-existence of democracy and illegality, and why it is repeatedly blessed by voters. The first comprehensive study of its kind, the book helps explain many paradoxes of Indian politics.

Vaishnav talked to Seema Sirohi in Washington:

You said at your talk at Carnegie that the criminal-politician is a product of democracy, not an antithesis of democracy. Can you explain the idea in more detail?

The point I was trying to convey is that so-called “tainted” politicians in India are finding success in some of the world’s most competitive elections. Like all politicians in India, candidates with criminal reputations also live and die at the ballot box. They are a byproduct of democratic practice. Now, do many criminal politicians rely on coercive measures to succeed? Undoubtedly. But their success cannot be reduced to coercion alone, especially as election-related monitoring has greatly expanded.

To think of them as subnational autocrats misses the point, in my view; politicians with criminal connections and democratic accountability can be compatible. Granted this form of accountability is often partial or imperfect. In many respects, it does not conform to our standard notions of what democracy ought to look like. But we have to acknowledge the reality that there is a “demand” for politicians with criminal reputations emanating from the electorate. Voters are often voting for such figures because, rather than in spite of, their criminal bona fides. They are not all being duped by savvy politicians; there is a strategic logic behind their actions.

India was unique among developing countries coming out of the yolk of colonialism in adopting a democratic system. Institutions were not in place and the compulsions of democracy made shortcuts inevitable. The erosion of institutions was almost simultaneous with their building. Do you think the rise of criminals in politics was inevitable given political parties’ need for funds?

The rise of criminals in politics was not inevitable, but it is understandable. The way in which democratic, economic and social change has outpaced governance has created a vacuum of authority that is being filled in by strongmen who promise to “get things done” for their constituents. Until this institutional gap shrinks, such strongmen will have some measure of popular appeal. But, the Indian experience should not be thought of in monolithic terms. The two principal ingredients, in my view, that give rise to such criminal politics – weak rule of law and charged social divisions – are not uniformly distributed across the country. As I write in the book, one should not think of the marketplace for criminal politicians as a wholesale market but as a series of hundreds or thousands of local markets across the country. The functioning of any given market is going to vary according to local contextual factors.

Would you say that all major political parties are equally tainted by criminal politicians? I might have thought the Left parties are less prone to the disease. What does your research show?

The nexus of crime and politics touches parties of all stripes in virtually all corners of the country. The Left parties have not been immune. Just take one look at the level of political violence in Kerala or in West Bengal. The goondagiri one sees now in West Bengal that many now associate with the Trinamool Congress was before linked to the Left Front. National parties have not distinguished themselves on this front, nor have regional parties. The Aam Aadmi Party began as an experiment created in opposition to this kind of politics, but it too has often made compromises in favour of “winnability.”

Do you think as India modernises, industrialises and improves governance, the criminal politician would fade? Or would he morph into another avatar?

In the first elections after independence, parties used to contract with criminals to do their dirty work around election time. As the Congress party’s national hold began to weaken, identity politics deepened and the cost of elections surged, criminals moved from the periphery to centre stage. Today, in many respects, the so-called criminal and the politician are embodied in the same individual. But the outright violence and coercion they once employed has reduced, thanks to Election Commission strictures. In its place, money power has grown in importance. I expect the next phase of evolution will be away from gangsterism as we understand it and toward deeper crony capitalism. So many goondas in politics who got their start running criminal rackets are becoming businesspeople today. I expect that is the next avatar. As I have jokingly remarked before, we are seeing the transition from Godfather I to Godfather III play out in front of our eyes.

Milan Vaishnav
When Crime Pays – Money and Muscle in Indian Politics
Harper Collins, 2017

Your book is about India but it seems relevant in today’s US too. There are always billions spent in US presidential elections but this time there was ‘muscle’ too, especially at Donald Trump’s rallies where intimidation was the norm. Would you agree?

The parallels with the Trump phenomenon are rather striking. Many American voters knew of Trump’s past supposed transgressions – regarding women, his businesses, and his tax history – but they voted for him anyway. The moment I first recognised the parallel between the non-traditional Indian politicians I study and Trump was when he announced during the primary that, his popularity was so great, he could shoot a man on Fifth Avenue and still win the election. If you think about the two animating factors behind the Trump phenomenon, they are the same factors we often see in India.

The first is a perception that government is broken and is unwilling or unable to deliver for the little guy. The second is a sense of social division that Trump cynically manipulated in order to consolidate the white vote, especially among those without a college degree. As James Fallows of the Atlantic has noted, social cleavages, racial differences and concerns about immigration – all of these things are realities. But Trump, and the ecosystem around Trump, helped to increase the salience of these cleavages for political gain. Identity politics, in other words, is socially constructed. From the opposite end, you could also argue that Democrats in recent years have not done enough to cater to this group, which further fuelled a sense of disenfranchisement.

What similarities do you see between the way money moves around in the US political system and in India? One could argue that corruption in the form of millions of dollars being given through ‘campaign donations’ and Super PACs – admittedly legitimised via laws – is just as high. Pharmaceutical companies and telecom giants flood campaign chests of every politician and get laws written to their benefit. So is India all that different. Yes, it is a cruder, ruder version but corruption is rampant in both countries.

One disappointing development in American politics in recent years is the rise of so-called “dark money.” America has been far from a beacon of virtue when it comes to money in politics, but until recently it had a system of reporting and disclosure that helped establish a certain baseline degree of transparency. With the Supreme Court’s ruling in the Citizens United case and the rise of Super PACs, we are gradually surrendering that benefit. In India, there is very little transparency when it comes to how politics are funded. The best we can hope for in the short run is better disclosure with harsher punishments for those who violate the rules.

As someone who is familiar with both India and the US, what would be your three or four top recommendations to clean the system?

First, when it comes to money in politics, I am frankly pessimistic about bringing down the cost of elections in the short-term. I think the focus has to be on transparency in political funding. We have to insist on better disclosure, both on the giving and the receiving ends. Let voters decide how to use that information when they enter the polling booth. They may not at first, but that is ok – it is out there and someone will eventually pick it up.

The second key is investing in better enforcement. This applies mainly to the Indian case. Right now, the Election Commission has difficulty taking action against candidates who provide false or misleading information on their candidate affidavits or election expenditure statements, even when compelling evidence exists. The government’s view, and this applies to the current government as well as the previous one, is that the commission should not concern itself with this. It should only take action if there is missing or incomplete information. In his Budget speech, finance minister Arun Jaitley announced that parties would have to comply with income tax (IT) rules when it comes to submitting their accounts. But there has to be someone on the other end carefully scrutinising these submissions. Election watchdogs complain that this is not given a high priority right now. This has to change.

The third recommendation is about governance. In both countries, there is a sense that public institutions are unable to keep pace with the aspirations of the population. In India, many of these institutions have to be built up from the ground up. In the United States, we are seeing a kind of democratic decay, to borrow a phrase from Francis Fukuyama. There are many reasons for this, not least rising inequality.

We have to move beyond simplistic debates about growing the state or cutting the state. In India, for instance, two things have to happen simultaneously. On the one hand, red tape has to come down. This excessive proceduralism provides incentives for businesses to seek favours and politicians to hold on to the discretionary powers they have to grant them. The end result of this is a system that is rife with corruption. At the same time, India requires new investments in the human resources of the state – in civil servants, judges, police officers, tax collectors and so on. In many domains, the state is unable to carry out its most basic duties in an effective manner.