Tag: narendra modi corruption

Electoral Bonds Blow Giant Holes in Modi’s Anti-Corruption Plank

The anti-corruption plank is dramatically slipping from under Modi’s feet as revelations about the real nature of anonymous contributions to political parties via electoral bonds, with the BJP being the largest beneficiary, are coming thick and fast.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s big claim that no corruption charge has ever tarnished his government lies in tatters after the Supreme Court declared the electoral bonds scheme ‘illegal’ and ‘unconstitutional’.

The anti-corruption plank is dramatically slipping from under Modi’s feet as revelations about the real nature of anonymous contributions to political parties via electoral bonds, with the BJP being the largest beneficiary, are coming thick and fast.

Every official claim made before the launch of the murky scheme in 2017 stands totally discredited. Remember, the then Finance Minister Arun Jaitley boasted that established Indian corporates wanted this scheme to bring in white money into the electoral system and that they just wanted their identities protected.

This argument becomes laughable on a cursory scrutiny of the list which has largely small unknown companies, many acting as fronts of big corporates, pumping 10 to 100 times their net profit via electoral bonds.

Why would a company want to be so generous as to give 100 times its profits to a political party?

Just think about the various possible motivations for doing this. Were some of these companies designed to just launder money for politicians? If so, what might have been the quid pro quo, a question Chief Justice of India D.Y. Chandrachud kept asking during the hearing of the electoral bonds case.

What is the role of investigative agencies in extorting money out of infrastructure companies which are doing mega projects across India?

Finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman has sought to defend her government by asking a meaningless question: “How do you know the contributions by companies came only after they were raided?”

The finance minister suggests that bonds could have been bought before the raids. She may be jumping the gun as more revelations in this regard are in the offing.

The role of ED, Income Tax department and CBI, in what appears like an institutionalised extortion racket, was revealed earlier in an investigation by The News Minute and Newslaundry, which showed how over Rs 300 crore of electoral funding via the open trust route by some companies happened after investigations were launched against them by the ED and Income Tax department. This pattern is now also visible among the companies which have contributed huge sums via electoral bonds.

Modi’s anti-corruption plank was badly dented during the Karnataka elections itself when the charge of “40% Sarkara” had defined the character of the BJP rule. Large infrastructure projects, tom-tommed as a key driver of growth in the Modi era, seem to have opened floodgates of payouts so omnipresent in the electoral bonds saga. Guaranteed commissions seem to be the name of the game. It can easily appear in one of the ads of “Modi ki Guarantee”(Modi’s guarantee).

Congress leader Rahul Gandhi has charged Modi with running the biggest extortion racket in the name of electoral bonds. The opposition parties are likely to escalate this campaign against Modi in the coming weeks as the election campaign hots up. True, opposition parties, too, have also got funds from electoral bonds, each receiving about 5% to 20% of what BJP had got.

If one includes the other official sources of funding such as the electoral trust route and the Rs 20,000 and above contributions which are recorded, the share of the opposition goes down even further as the BJP has received 80% to 85% of those monies.

It is evident the playing field is very skewed and the institutionalised misuse of agencies like ED and Income Tax department has largely contributed to this. In fact, the BJP had become quite brazen about it. Sometime ago, Prime Minister Modi boasted that his government had the unique distinction of having seized over Rs 1.12 lakh crore worth of assets of companies and individuals during his tenure. The ED has been on steroids for the last 10 years and its conviction rate remains as low as 0.5% of the PMLA cases launched.

It is a moot question how many of these companies whom the ED, CBI or Income Tax department were pursuing bought electoral bonds. Many small companies may have acted as front companies like the one which has turned out to be a private, unlisted subsidiary of Reliance Retail.

Before the electoral bonds came, there was a ceiling of 7.5% of the previous three years’ net profits beyond which companies could not donate. There was a reason for this ceiling. It limited the quid pro quo element to some extent and protected the shareholders interest too. And it was revealed by both the political party and the company in their respective books. There was far more transparency then. The Electoral Bond scheme just removed the ceiling on net profits and made the contributions anonymous. This was an invitation to corruption as the nature of companies that have bought electoral bonds shows.

That the Electoral Bond scheme is a can of worms is not in doubt anymore. A large group like Vedanta is shown as having contributed over Rs 300 crore between 2019 and 2022 while being investigated by the ED and CBI. Worse, during this period Prime Minister Modi also handpicks Vedanta as a partner of the government for launching the ambitious and “Atmanirbhar” semiconductor chips project in Gujarat for which the Centre announces a grant of over $5 billion. Modi inaugurated it just before the Gujarat state elections. How can a company under serious investigation for money laundering be part of such a prestigious project in which the government is pumping in Rs 50,000 crore.

Thankfully, Vedanta could not deliver with its weak partner Foxconn and eventually got out of the project, which is now being implemented by Tatas. Modi inaugurated it a week ago.

The slow unravelling of the electoral bond scam will surely become an important conversation in the run-up to the Lok Sabha election. The dirty tricks department of the government will attempt multiple distractions to shift focus on other things. But this time it may not be so easy for Modi to divert attention. His anti-corruption plank is now full of gaping holes.

On the other hand, the opposition has a sitting duck in front of them. Even an incompetent opposition will find it difficult to botch up this one!

‘Corruption-Free India’ Under BJP Government Is Just a Sham

Transparency International’s latest survey has revealed that India has the highest bribery rate in Asia.

India has the highest bribery rate in Asia according to the Global Corruption Barometer published by Transparency International. The report released on the eve of International Anti-Corruption Day, December 9, shows that nearly 50% of those who paid bribes in India were asked to, while 32% of those who used personal connections said they would not receive services like healthcare and education otherwise, without bribing. The findings are a scathing indictment of the anti-corruption claims of the ruling dispensation, which came to power on the plank of a ‘Bhrashtachar mukt Bharat’ (corruption-free India).

It is a fact widely acknowledged that unlike many countries, where corruption is restricted to the highest echelons, in India the malaise goes down to the lowest level of administration. While big-ticket corruption grabs eyeballs, it is the everyday petty corruption that haunts the common person.

Decentralised corruption cannot be tackled through any centralised fix. What is needed is to empower ordinary people to expose and report corruption locally, and systems that act promptly on these complaints to hold corrupt officials accountable.

Whittling down of RTI

Perhaps the single most effective tool available to ordinary citizens for exposing corruption in the last 15 years has been the Right to Information (RTI) Act. The law has been used by over three crore people in the country, especially by the poorest and the most marginalised who have understood the tremendous potential of the law to empower them to access their basic rights and entitlements like rations, pensions and healthcare.

A 2011 study by Yale University in India showed that using the RTI Act is as effective as paying a bribe in ensuring service delivery! The law has also been put to effective use by public-spirited citizens to shine the light on corruption and abuse of power in the highest offices.

Instead of strengthening the RTI regime, the last six years have seen a systematic attack on people’s right to information. The worst blow has come in the form of a persistent and concerted undermining of the transparency watchdogs set up under the law.

A protest against proposed changes to the Right to Information (RTI) Act. Credit: Facebook/ Somnath S.N.

A file image of a protest against the changes to the Right to Information (RTI) Act. Photo: Facebook/ Somnath S.N.

In 2019, despite stiff opposition within and outside parliament, the government pushed the RTI (Amendment) Act which compromised the autonomy of information commissions by allowing the Central government to determine the tenure and salaries of all information commissioners. The functioning of commissions has also been severely impeded by governments not appointing information commissioners in a timely manner.

The track record of the BJP-led government at the Centre has been particularly abysmal. Since May 2014, not a single commissioner of the central information commission (CIC) has been appointed without citizens having to approach courts.

The Global Corruption Barometer shows that 41% of people surveyed in India paid bribes to obtain official documents, like identity papers, and 42% paid bribes to the police. Tackling this kind of graft encountered by people in their everyday lives requires an effective timebound mechanism at the local level to deal with complaints arising out of corruption and wrongdoing.

Broken promises

The Grievance Redress Bill introduced in Parliament in 2011 created an architecture for receiving and dealing with complaints close to people’s place of residence down to the panchayat and municipal ward levels. It sought to make the supervisory structure accountable for resolving complaints in a stipulated timeframe, with penal consequences for failure to do so.

The Bill, however, lapsed with the dissolution of the Lok Sabha after the 2014 elections. Despite its poll promise to reintroduce the Bill in parliament if it came to power, the BJP has failed to do the needful. An effective grievance redress legislation would have helped significantly reduce arbitrariness and corruption captured in the Transparency International report and ensured better access to basic services and entitlements for people.

Giant cardboard cutouts of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and home minister Amit Shah in New Delhi. Photo: Reuters/Cathal McNaughton/File Photo.

In fact, even the Lokpal law meant to tackle corruption involving senior functionaries, which was passed after a long and arduous struggle in 2014, has been subverted. In 2016, key provisions regarding mandatory public disclosure of assets and liabilities of public servants were whittled down through amendments. For over five years after the law was passed, the chairperson and members of the Lokpal were not appointed.

Finally, the manner in which appointments were made, by a selection committee with a preponderance of the government and its representatives, raised serious doubts about the independence of the Lokpal even before it became operational. Subsequently, for nearly a year the govt did not make the requisite rules, prompting one of the Lokpal members to tender his resignation.

The anti-corruption ombudsman is clearly a non-starter, with a deafening silence from the institution on all recent allegations of big-ticket corruption like the Rafael defence deal and banking scams that have rocked the country.

Another significant finding of the Global Corruption Barometer is that while reporting corruption is critical to control its spread, as many as 63% of people surveyed were deeply concerned about retaliation. This concern is not misplaced. Brutal attacks on whistleblowers and RTI users in the country have highlighted the vulnerability of those who dare to show the truth to power.

In 2018 alone, 18 people were killed for blowing the whistle on corruption on the basis of information accessed under the RTI Act. Despite this, the government has failed to frame rules and operationalise the Whistle Blowers Protection law enacted in 2014 to provide a statutory framework for concealing the identity of whistleblowers and protecting them against victimisation. The law establishes a mechanism to receive and enquire into complaints against public servants relating to offences under the Prevention of Corruption Act.

When the BJP came to power riding on the plank of fighting corruption and ensuring effective service delivery, it was expected that the government will immediately put in place a strong anti-corruption and grievance redress framework.

In the last six and a half years, however, critical anti-corruption legislations have languished and the government, despite widespread opposition, has pushed ill-conceived programmes like demonetisation and electoral bonds as the definitive solutions to the problem of corruption.

Limitations of relying on technical fixes like Adhaar-based biometric authentication in fighting corruption have been exposed through scams like the Jharkhand scholarship fraud. The Transparency International report should serve as a strong signal for the government to course correct, provided it has the political will.

Anjali Bhardwaj and Amrita Johri are social activists working on issues of transparency and accountability.

The Chowkidar’s Whataboutery and BJP’s Blatant Doublespeak

The fallacy of BJP justifying every act of murder of democracy by Congress’ terrible record in the past while indulging in one corrupt practice after the other itself.

What happened in Maharashtra should shame every Indian.

The craven and amoralistic grab of power in the dead of the night by the ruling party, and the meek surrender and acquiescence of the highest constitutional offices, will be a dark spot in India’s political history.

But one might ask how this is different from many such instances in the past.

The fundamental difference between the gross abuse of the constitution, especially witnessed under Indira Gandhi, and that is being seen under Narendra Modi and Amit Shah over the last five years, is that while the former was seen with anger and revulsion, the latter is adoringly termed as Chanakyaniti.

It is this shift in language and discourse that is the most dangerous for Indian democracy – every act of brazen challenge to the constitution is normalised and projected as brilliant political masterstrokes. It is why Amit Shah is eulogised by the mainstream television media.

Along with the normalisation of illegalities and the rampant use of money power to subvert democracy (the figures cited for the ‘purchase’ of MLAs in Karnataka and Maharashtra range from Rs 50 crore to Rs 100 crore), the BJP also resorts to shamefaced whataboutery to explain away the decimation of institutions in the present.

As the argument goes, “Indira Gandhi and the Congress did the same.”

Also read: What Did India Really Vote For?

But the BJP claims to be a “party with a difference” and Narendra Modi claims to be the crusader against corruption – he rose to power on the basis of the moral claim of “na khaoonga, na khaane doonga” (will not take bribes, nor let anyone do so).

The hollowness of this whataboutery can be easily exposed:

The Congress government imposed the Emergency in 1975. So, does it become legitimate to impose an Emergency now?

The Congress indulged in corruption. So, is it legitimate for the BJP indulge in corruption? But the Congress was voted out precisely because people felt that it was tainted by gross corruption, is it not?

At least a section of the people who voted for Modi thought that they were voting for something different from Congress. Then, how is it kosher for the BJP to organise a midnight constitutional coup and seek to align with what Modi called a “Naturally Corrupt Party”?”

How is it kosher that the crusade against corruption has only been restricted to opposition leaders? How is it that a Congress leader like Sukh Ram, convicted for corruption, is in the BJP now? How is it that scores of leaders charged with serious corruption charges like Mukul Roy, Himanta Biswa Sarma, Narayana Rane and others, have become clean after a “saffron wash” by joining the BJP?

More than the open disregard for constitutional proprieties, the blatant doublespeak of the BJP is grating. On the very day that the Maharashtra governor hurriedly swore in a BJP-NCP government in the early hours – without even ascertaining the signatures submitted by Ajit Pawar – this is what Modi said at the Conference of Governors: “As Chancellors of Universities, governors become sources of inspiration for our dynamic youth.” He then called upon governors to serve the poor “inspired by the principles outlined in our great constitution!”

Also read: BJP, Serial Betrayer of Allies, Has Got a Taste of Its Own Medicine in Maharashtra

Just two days after the midnight machinations to install a government without majority, and then “poach” opposition MLAs through money power and the threat of investigation agencies, Modi, while campaigning in Jharkhand, said that under the Congress and its allies, “governments were made through the back door. There were alliances of self-seekers who were driven by the lust for power.”

The double standards are simply staggering.

Listen to Amit Shah when he claims, “Shiv Sena has done the work of insulting the mandate of Maharashtra, not BJP.”

So where was this moral outrage when BJP insulted the people’s mandate in Bihar? After all, the JDU-Congress-RJD alliance won a huge majority, but the BJP formed the government with JDU when the latter walked out of the government.

Narendra Modi and Nitish Kumar. Credit: PTI

Where was the moral outrage at ideologically contradictory post-poll coalitions when the BJP joined together with the PDP in Jammu and Kashmir after the elections, or formed governments in Manipur, Goa, and Meghalaya despite not being the party with the highest number of MLAs?

In Arunachal Pradesh, the Congress won the elections with a big majority in 2014, yet the BJP formed the government in 2016 after a series of the most amoralistic machinations – which even saw the suicide of a deposed chief minister – and where the number of BJP MLAs increased from 11 to 45!

In Manipur, the BJP won 21 seats in the 2017 elections, now it has 31. In Goa, the BJP won 13 seats in the 2017, now it has 27, with many Congress MLAs now BJP ministers.

The BJP under Modi is willing to accommodate every corrupt politician from any other party. It is willing to take every corrupt institutional practice practiced before to a new low.

So, Maharashtra is only the latest episode in the new dawn that was supposedly inaugurated in 2014. And the Maharashtra fiasco at forming a government by the most questionable means should dispel any illusions (that some people might still harbour) about Narendra Modi as a crusader against corruption.

That this has come not too long after BJP’s breaking of the Congress-JD(S) government in Karnataka just shows how deep the rot is in a party led by a leader who claims to be an ascetic and an exception in Indian politics.

The MLAs who resigned from the Congress-JD(S) alliance. Photo: PTI/Files

It should not be forgotten that the CBI closed cases against the Bellary Brothers just before the Karnataka elections for mining scams valued at Rs 16, 500 crore. That’s just one more example of why Modi’s entire moral discourse on corruption, especially on demonetisation, is a complete masterclass in skullduggery.

Yet, what is curious and shocking is that in the last five years, Modi seems to be in some kind of a glass case, insulated from everything that the BJP or Amit Shah does. It is like the most powerful person, the single-man army of the BJP, has no moral or ethical responsibility for whatever his party does. It is this mass-marketed halo which has been shattered with Maharashtra. After all, Modi was the one who informed the world about the new government in Maharashtra with a tweet congratulating Ajit Pawar.

And the constant references to the political ills of the past under various non-BJP regimes to justify one’s own actions is so ridden with contradictions. A leader who is promising to make India a $5 trillion economy and a superpower in the immediate future has no moral dilemmas about continuing political practices that are actually part of tin-pot dictatorships or fledgling democracies.

The Emergency, for example, was imposed in India when in the world there were merely 38 democracies, while there were 118 autocracies – as of the end of 2017, 96 out of 167 countries with populations of at least 500,000 were democracies of some kind, and only 21 were autocracies.

Also read: The Maha Vikas Aghadi Could Liberate Shiv Sena and Maharashtra

Further, the standards of democracy have substantially changed since 1975. The most powerful person in the world, the president of the United States, is facing impeachment charges; Benjamin Netanyahu became the first sitting prime minister in Israel to be indicted for corruption, and there is a global wave of protests for deepening democracy across various nations. Even the Pakistan Supreme Court, astoundingly, ruled against the three-year extension given to the army chief of the country.

Yet, in Maharashtra, the murder of democracy is justified by a drawing a false moral equivalence of Shiv Sena joining with Congress-NCP. Now, the Shiv Sena is a fascistic party; there should not be any doubts about this. And the Congress should not have delusions about defeating the bigger fascistic project in India through post-poll coalitions bereft of ideology. Nevertheless, the Shiv Sena forging an alliance with Congress-NCP after elections on the basis of a common minimum programme (with secularism included in it) is not the same as the constitutional abuse of the offices of the President and the Governor, and installing a government through illegalities.

Even after Maharashtra, Modi and company, the self-proclaimed guardians of Indian democracy, are completely silent on what ails India’s political institutions. If the Governor’s position is being abused, the logical corollary would be to think of ways to improve its autonomy instead of the justification, “you abused it in the past, and we will continue to abuse it in the future”. Democracy is about solidifying the legal institutional frameworks, not justifying its breaking by referring to all kinds of illegal activities of the past.

Indira Gandhi’s Emergency was a dark period precisely because there are democratic standards and the Constitution to measure it against. And that was a gross violation. But even the Emergency could be justified by its supporters by any number of reasons like might is right, that there is no morality in politics, or that it was needed as there was a threat to India’s security. And Indira Gandhi did indeed justify it:

“We felt that the country has developed a disease and, if is to be cured soon, it has to be given a dose of medicine, even if it is a bitter dose.”

This has an uncanny resemblance to the present discourse launched by Modi that nationalism and national security can justify the administration of any number of bitter doses of medicines. After all, corrupt and illegal moves like the Maharashtra power grab are necessary for the larger national interest of the BJP remaining in power, and “minor” moral and legal compromises are required for upholding the larger Dharma.

Also read: A Thackeray as Chief Minister Brings its Own Challenges

If India’s ruling parties use the past as template, and keep repeating what the others did, democracy is destined to be doomed. Is it not time to build a national consensus about the absolutely shameful practice of herding and caging MLAs in hotels and resorts after each elections?

Yet, we can be rest assured that the ruling party, which, to its supporters, has shown “strength and courage” in revoking Article 370, implementing the National Register of Citizens, and introducing the Citizenship Amendment Bill, will not move a finger when it comes to cleaning up a corrupt and compromised political structure.

After all, is this not the same party which took five years to institute a (terribly weak) Lokpal (of which we have not heard a single word since its inception), and is neck deep in the morass of political and election funding – the fount of political corruption in India?

How far have we travelled from May 2019, when Narendra Modi was seeking a re-election with his ‘Main Bhi Chowkidar’ campaign. It’s time to wake up and realise that Indian democracy is under much bigger threat than ever before under the very same ‘chowkidar’ who is supposedly protecting it.

Nissim Mannathukkaren is with Dalhousie University and tweets @nmannathukkaren.

A shorter version of this article appeared in the Kochi Post under the title ‘When the Chowkidar stole Democracy.’