THE INEVITABILITY OF POLITICAL CORRUPTION IN INDIA

Dr. Sanjeev Sabhlok, 20.6.2000

“Possessing representatives in any intellectual respect superior to average”, as Mill stated in

his essay on Representative Government, is what citizens aspire for when they go out to vote. We
would all like our MLAs and MPs to be at least men of ordinary prudence, intellectual and moral
honesty, and possessing attributes of dedication and easy approachability. But do we in India face a
real choice on the day of poll which might lead to such an outcome? We live and experience a
corrupt1 democracy where the choices are more often than not skewed toward those with serious
intellectual and moral deficiencies. Now, I do not believe that we have magically come to live in this
questionable form of democracy. I will try to demonstrate presently how we have as citizens, actively,
if unwittingly, foisted this unfortunate constraint of choice on ourselves.
A functioning democracy does not come for free. It requires enormous expenditure of time
and money to reach out to the people, to apprise them about one’s point of view and about one’s
commitment to the welfare of the society, and once having been elected, to support the vast, primarily
illiterate, electorate that clamours for succour. It is not quite relevant at the cutting edge whether one
has a parliamentary or a presidential system in India. What is critical is the society’s understanding
and sympathy toward the opportunity cost of the operationalization of a real, functional, democracy.
The level of societal understanding and vigilance2 ultimately determines the choices that emerge
before the people on the day of the poll, and thence the quality of our democracy. Today we have not
only become insensitive to corruption as a society, most of us are also not quite aware about the
causes of this chronic problem. I will try to show that the major cause is corruption at the political
level caused by compulsions created by us as citizens.

1. Wages and competence

For someone with a more profitable opportunity set, it makes little sense to indulge in
electoral politics. We do not expect Premji of Wipro to spend time running for electoral office,
becoming an MLA, then a Minister, touring villages and trying to make some alleged improvements
in the lives of ordinary people, when he can generate vast amounts of wealth and thus welfare, for
himself and the country through a more appropriate route. Rationally speaking, therefore, only those
who can potentially earn less than what a Minister earns, join politics. Now, an average Minister
receives about Rs.10,000 per month as salary, and if his allowances are added up he would receive not
more than Rs.20,000 per month, which comes to Rs.2.4 lakhs per year.3 On the other hand, an MBA
of ordinary ability from an ordinary Indian university gets this much and more, at the outset of his
career today. It is apparent, therefore, that only those who cannot or could not become MBAs, or
doctors, or engineers, or such, would ordinarily think of joining electoral politics as an occupation. To
this we can add retired folks who have secure pensions, and of course, those who enjoy the challenge
and rough and tumble, and often, the gamble, of electoral politics.
Thus, by ensuring that salaries of our Ministers are well below what a young man of ordinary
ability in India can command at the commencement of his career, our system attracts to politics
primarily the intellectually weak. One of the unintended consequences of this is that the bureaucracy,
being usually ‘smarter’ than most representatives, having been competitively selected, and enjoying
higher salaries than Ministers, is often able to exploit loopholes in the system for its personal gain.

2. Origin of corruption
Contesting elections is a very expensive hobby. Further, the law sets unreasonable limits of
all types, much on the pattern of the licence-quota raj, and actively drives away transparency through
its internal contradictions. In the case of the parliamentary elections of 1999, I carried out a simple
analysis of the Shillong Parliamentary Constituency based on information made available by the

1
Where corruption means the misuse or diversion of public funds for perusal ends
2
Eternal vigilance being the price of liberty.
3
One is not adding perquisites since these are usually intended to cover the additional costs of travel and
communication that representatives incur in the ordinary performance of their duties.
1
Deputy Commissioner, Shillong under Rule 88 of the Conduct of Election Rules, 1961 the analysis is
shown in the following table:

Expenditure incurred/authorized by candidates from Shillong Parliamentary Constitutency

under Section 77 of the R.O.P Act, 1951
Permissible limit: Rs.13.00 lakhs

Name of Candidate Party Funds Funds Funds Funds Total Remarks

from from from from ex-
Party other other can- penses
orga- indivi- didate
niza- dual
tion/s
S.S.Cajee People’s 3.0 2.0 1.0 3.35 9.35 Part III, IV (I) not
Democratic filled properly
Movement
S.D.Khongwir United Democratic 0 0 1.38 4.58 5.96 Part IV(IV) filled
Party improperly
P.R.Kyndiah Indian National 1.0 - 0.51 3.03 4.54 -
Congress
H.S.Lyngdoh Hill State People’s N.A. N.A. N.A. N.A. N.A. Part III, IV and V
Democratic Party improper and
unacceptable
K.S.Lyngdoh Ajeya Bharat Party 0.34 - - 0.12 0.46 Part IV (I) not
properly filled out
T.H.Rangad Bharatiya Janata 6.05 0 0.77 0 6.82 Part III nor filled out
Party
D.Saioo Independent Returns not filed by
D.Dympep Independent 7/11/99 as required in
A.Lanong Independent S.78 of R.O.P.
Act,1951

The suspiciousness of some of these accounts is immediately apparent. There are individuals
who claim to have spent Rs.4.5 lakhs on their own while their party allegedly spent nothing. On the
other hand are those who claim that their party spent Rs.6.05 lakhs while they spent nothing. In at
least five cases the accounts were incomplete or improperly filed. To cross-check these accounts. I
would have liked to know if all major payments were made by cheque, but apparently that is not
required by the Election Commission. Also, whether these match with what political parties have
filed. But political parties are not required to make their election expenses public. They furnish these
only to the Election Commission. I took up this matter with the Chief Election Commissioner but he
did not care to reply.
Over and above these technical issues, the major problem is that the penalty prescribed in the
law for violating the requirements of transparency is an extremely small fine of Rs.500, under
sections 171G, H & I of the IPC. How obtuse can we get as a nation? An important thing such as non-
submission or improper submission of electoral accounts is penalized by Rs. 500? Our laws are
clearly designed to draw wool over our eyes.
Three of the above candidates had not submitted their accounts till the 3rd of December,
1999, thus violating S.78 of R.O.P. Act, 1951. Also, there was virtually none who had not violated the
law in at least some aspects. But the Deputy Commissioner informed me on 24th of April, 2000 that
so far only one other person had bothered to requisition these accounts from his office, and also, no
action was being contemplated against any violation. Indeed, I doubt if any case has ever been filed in
such a matter, ever before, anywhere in India.
There is very little sanctity to election expense accounting today. Everyone seems to ‘know’
that laws will be violated; there is cynicism all around. They do not even bother to seek a copy of

2
these accounts even though the copy costs only Re.1. Mr. Seshan has spoken of cases where the actual
expenses, as informally gathered by him, exceeded the official limit by many orders of magnitude. If
one were to state that every politician has entered his political life by telling a lie through filing false
or incomplete accounts, and by not being penalized for these actions, one would not be straying too
far from the truth. And that, if really true, is not a pleasant reality to live with as a nation.

3. The fuel of corruption

But the situation is much more alarming than this. On a purely theoretical level, assuming that
a candidate does not get the financial support of any party, organization, or other individual, as in the
case of some independents, and actually spends the Rs.15 lakhs prescribed by the Election
Commission, what would he actually receive at the end of the process, if successful? An MP in India
receives approximately Rs.10,000 per month excluding perquisites. It is trivial to demonstrate that it
is impossible to recover the admissible expenses of elections from the salary officially received by
MPs.4 Thus we have the strange phenomenon that at least some of our representatives are happily
losing big money by representing us. Apart from a few charitable folk who might thus find spiritual
bliss in ‘serving’ the society, I find it very difficult to believe that people in general would voluntarily
give up their time and money merely to have the thankless and often dangerous and dubious pleasure
of representing us.
In reality, a major goal of most elected representatives has become to make extra money on
the side. Very few Ministers are seen taking deep and sincere interest in their allotted work by guiding
their departments towards public welfare. Policy matters usually occupy the least attention of
Ministers. Prima facie, then, it does not appear that such people are performing their job out of the
sheer pleasure of improving the condition of the citizens. This should come as no surprise, given that
they have the obligation of recovering the money they invested during elections. Everything else is
secondary; the departments they manage usually become a tool to recoup their investments.
But if recovering electoral expenses were the end of it all, there would be still some relief,
eventually. In practice, it is seen that at least some important Ministers travel literally with briefcases,
or at least wallets, bulging with hard cash. Such Ministers are often found distributing large
denomination notes to their drivers, security guards, the public who have come to them with petitions,
and so on. Indeed, many Ministers and MLAs are obliged to distribute significant amounts of money
to various organizations, such as youth clubs, that exist in their constituencies, in order to raise
manpower for their future electoral campaigns. In other words, not only do our representatives throw
away their money at the time of elections, but they also continue to scatter considerable amounts
away after becoming our official representative. Such amazingly charitable, public-minded folk exist
in India, and yet our country is in shambles! Clearly, we have placed our representatives in the firm
grip of a vice, from which they can only escape by being enormously corrupt. Compulsions,
compulsions, everywhere, and no redemption in sight. No wonder, our democracy is run by proxy by
the mafia5, consequent to which the distribution of favours has become the fundamental business of
our representatives.

4. Not one reason to be honest

Summing up, I find absolutely no reason which would persuade me to believe that most
Ministers in India can be strictly honest. I hope that we, as citizens, realize this fundamental fact of
our democracy. It is very unpopular for MPs and MLAs to raise their own salaries. But unless we the
citizens are prepared to drastically change the current rotten system and remunerate our
representatives far better than we do today, we shall be unable to attract good people into politics, and
we shall have no cause to grouse about what we get. We want everything to be free in India. We want
subsidy for food, transportation, education, power, and health care. But these subsidies, despite very
strong reasons for their removal, do not damage our innards as a nation since we do pay for these
subsidies openly through a public budgetary process.

4
Indeed, there are cases of people becoming MPs for merely one year in the case of casual vacancies which
means that there is absolutely no hope of the recovery of their costs.
5
cf. Vohra Committee Report, available at www. indiapolicy.org
3
 On the other hand, our desire for good representation without paying for it, has ensured that
the entire system has become completely rotten to the core, including the system of subsidies which
are most often misdirected toward the rich and influential. In my opinion, a good (i.e., competent and
honest) Prime Minister is worth well over Rs.1 lakh crores to India. We should therefore increase the
salary of the Prime Minister to at least the levels of a middle-level business executive, say Rs. 1 crore
per year. Today, we ask other citizens to not only represent us, but to throw away their money merely
in order to enjoy the pleasure of representing us. How long can we fool ourselves? This system is
merely an invitation for altruists and rascals to step forward and dig out our souls. We cannot afford
cheap representation.
Competent, rational, public-minded citizens who are capable of managing their own affairs
of business successfully will come forward only when there is some reasonable relationship between
their remuneration, risk, and opportunity cost. Let us carefully set incentives in our system to ensure
good representation. No doubt, a wider set of reforms of the electoral system is required, such as
making property returns of our representatives public. But this one, of incentives, is the basic one.
Indians as a people are not all corrupt and intellectual pygmies. Our system merely throws up
more of them, and indeed, breaks the back of the honest. A good system would do otherwise.