Patricia Mukhim
The media is rife with reports of how an MLA has used a supplier all the way from Sohra to purchase a range of items from him. The supplier seems like a one stop shop for all equipments, ranging from computers to household items to what have you. I would like to meet this gentleman from Sohra and learn from him how to do a start-up and then log on to an MLA as a regular client. Alas! That’s the way business is done in Meghalaya. Nothing upright; nothing upfront; all bills all faked and the public taken for a jolly good ride when the money spent is actually theirs. Yet the MLA dares to sat that the RTI findings are ‘political.’ Of course they are political. Nothing in life is apolitical. Politics is the where life begins and ends. The MLA should actually be hauled up by the system that should have inspected against the cash memos all the items purchased. The MLA fund has been used by most MLAs to splurge before the elections and keep the voters happy like they are little kids looking for candy. That the voters are fooled by these silly gestures tells us that democracy in our country is very superficial.
Former Home Minister, Meghalaya, RG Lyngdoh was one legislator who maintained that the MLA Local Area Development Scheme is tailored to be an alibi for election funding for a sitting MLA only, so that he/she never loses the seat. Nearly all MLAs spend their Rs 10 crore (Rs 2 crore annually) towards the end of their tenure. And what do they give the electorate? Pots and pans, plastic chairs and tables, tarpaulins, syntex water tanks, etc. Some of them spend a pittance of those funds for repairing roads within the constituency. These roads last exactly six months. Come monsoon and they disappear. No durable community assets are built or acquired. Money just disappears down the drain all Rs 600 crore of it.
In an article in LiveMint (Nov 1, 2017) captioned, “Making party bosses give up their powers,” the writer says the MLA-LADS scheme unjustly favours the incumbent representative and also exacerbates the problem of patronage politics. Patronage politics lies at the heart of dynastic succession in Indian politics—a result of control of political parties by an oligarchic elite. And as the work of political scientist Kanchan Chandra illustrates, dynastic succession also works as insurance against defections and fragmentation of political parties. Chandra concludes that opacity in political financing, fear of fragmentation and unstable governments, dynastic succession, and lack of intra-party democracy are all mutually reinforcing variables. Even if a leader disillusioned with the centralized control in his party, establishes a new party, the results are not very different. Mamata Banerjee is a classic example. The HSPDP with its personality driven leadership is another apt metaphor.
MR Madhavan of PRS Legislative Research has made a compelling case for scrapping the MPLADS and MLALADS. In our case that would amount to putting the amount of Rs 600 crore otherwise used to fund the MLA-LADS as a corpus for state funding of political parties contesting elections. But without public pressure this is unlikely to happen. And in the absence of a critical mass raising their voices no political reforms can come through.
In the book, “When Crime Pays: Money and Muscle in Indian Politics,” Milan Vaishnav whose book is the first comprehensive study of the nexus between crime and democracy in India, says the symbiotic relationship between crime and politics raises complex questions. How can free and fair elections exist alongside criminality? Why do political parties recruit candidates with reputations for wrongdoings? Why do the public elect and re-elect persons with criminal backgrounds to the point that a third of state and national legislators assume office with pending criminal charges? Vaishnav believes it is because elections are very expensive and no right thinking person would want to invest his/her hard earned money while those with a flair for making black money get into politics turning it into another business. Moreover, no one in their right mind would want to cross swords with a criminal. Many political rivals are eliminated before they can start their campaign.
The rising cost of elections and the limited funds that political parties have at their disposal, plus their organisational deficiencies (many political parties do not have units or booth level organisations in Meghalaya) and ineffective election finance regulations makes political parties rely on unreported sources of money. An independent analysis of the disclosed income of six national political parties between 2004-5 and 2011-12 found that 75% of party funds came from sources that could not be identified and half of these funds came in four months before the elections, largely in cash (for the Congress Party this amount stood at 90% of the income).
While there are several sources for black money the bulk of it comes from business people who ask for contracts in lieu of the payment. However, now most political parties have become wiser. They induct/recruit wannabe candidates with deep pockets so it saves them the headache of sourcing funds from the business community. The National Peoples’ Party (NPP) in Meghalaya seems to be following this script to the letter. Most of those who have joined or will be soon joining the NPP have been ministers in the Congress-led MUA Government. The Dhar brothers are the most prominent of the pack. Prestone Tynsong is the other key defector after Rowell Lyngdoh. The question in our minds is whether the electorate will vote for them and why? It seems strange that people would continue to vote someone who would use his/her public office to enrich their personal kitty.
In Meghalaya we have a combination of factors why people vote a certain candidate. Clan and kinship ties and religious affiliations play a major role in influencing voter behaviour. In the urban areas of Shillong which are largely populated by non-tribals there is a tendency for political parties to woo them on the plea that they will offer them security. This quid pro quo hardly works. The absence of the rule of law since 1979 following the communal conflict and which continues in a erratic manner till date makes the non-tribal voter vulnerable and therefore lean towards a candidate from party/parties that have some history of securing their interests. To my mind, neither the Congress nor the regional parties have ever addressed the insecurities of the non-tribal residents here. They are only given symbolic deference at the time of elections and are clean forgotten thereafter. It is this sense of insecurity which pushes the non-tribal voters to the BJP which they see as a party that will look after their interests and treat them as equal citizens. But whether the BJP in its present disparate condition and infighting in Meghalaya will be able to address these vulnerabilities of its constituents is another matter.
Voter behaviour in Meghalaya has changed. That era when emotions played a key role in influencing voters and where candidates posed as ‘saviours’ of the people seems to have waned now. People have been subjected to this brainwashing since 1979 and have had enough of it. Let’s also admit that today every voter wants his/her pound of flesh. One has heard of candidates collecting the EPICs of voters and paying each one between Rs 2000-5000 for them. Clearly the voter is now a slippery customer, not easy to understand.
Coming to elections issues which is going beyond the mandate of this article, I found it rather banal that the HSPDP supremo should raise the ethnocentric bandwagon of a Khasi-Jaintia state and flog the Inner Line Permit (ILP) issue yet again. He must be desperate to win elections and perhaps has grand designs of becoming the chief minister of Meghalaya! Let’s hope the electorate is cleverer by half!