India is in election mood. The divisive forces of the country, the ones which tried stifling dissent, suppressing freedom of Press and expression, helping rich industrialists multiply their wealth by awarding them suspicious contracts, constructing bridges and highways to facilitate transportation of coal, with severe damage and detriment to the environment, people’s properties and health, with the sole aim of accumulating huge sums, and endeavoured to implement their nefarious agenda, riding roughshod over the wishes and interests of the people, are in the forefront in the election arena. So also are other parties which have also often proved unworthy of people’s trust either by defection, corruption, nepotism, etc. These are not specific to any but omnipresent in every party.
Ironically, Modi’s promise of greater transparency turned electoral funding more opaque than ever before. Major changes are: 1) Political parties can now receive foreign funds, that too with retrospective effect from 1976. This allowed both Congress and BJP, to escape investigation into violations of FCRA, which they were found guilty of, by the Court 2) Companies can donate any amount to any political party, and 3) Individual, group of people or company can donate anonymously to any party, through electoral bonds.
Arun Jaitley further removed the 7.5% cap of Company’s three-year profits for donations to political parties, without BOD approval, and exempted it from naming the beneficiary political party. Today, corporate funding accounts for 89% of parties’ funds. Electoral bonds up to one crore can be purchased anonymously by anyone. Out of 215 crore of such bonds 210 have gone to BJP and 5 to Congress. When the ruling party is funded so heavily by corporates and the wealthy, is it surprising that the Government works for them instead of for the people, as I pointed out above? Any wonder that the BJP is the richest party in India, with income in 2016-17 of over 10 billion, an increase of 81% over previous year?
Surely money power is the easiest tool to manipulate voting among the highly exploited poor and illiterate of India. However, a very serious threat hovers over us at the moment which is a real one and will surely destroy the idea of India as a unified, multi-cultural and multi-religious nation. The party which wields tremendous power with “legally” collected funds has the potential of tilting the balance towards it, with liberal distribution of money to garner votes. The nauseating desperation to win elections has reached dangerous and shameful proportions. We had never descended to these levels…We have seen how Pulwama, Bagalkot and Armed Forces’ heroic ventures are misused and exploited to stir patriotic emotions.
Thank God, assassination attempts or actual murders have been missing which would have drawn sympathy votes. Cash of Rs 1.8 crore seized from the convoy of Arunachal CM and Rs 8 crores seized in Telengana, apparently withdrawn, in cash, by the party from its bank account for payment for various expenses, when party leaders have been advocating digital payments, are only few examples of how EC guidelines are being flouted with impunity.
On the first day of polling itself, several cases of glitches of EVMs not functioning or malfunctioning, thousands of names missing, etc, have been reported. The EC has been labelled as a toothless paper tiger by many. The days of ECs Seshan & Lyngdoh, who made political parties shiver, are long over.
Barring the right to life, there is no other right as precious and cherished as the right to free speech and it is this right which has been and will continue to be most under threat.
It has been rightly said that the only real prison is fear and the only real freedom is freedom from fear.
In 2017, World Press Freedom Index sank India by three places to 136th position. It reported 54 attacks on journalists, three TV news channels banned and 45 sedition cases framed. Four liberal thinkers and journalists had to pay the price of freedom with their lives and several people were lynched by cow vigilantes on mere suspicion of cow slaughter. Such incidents cannot just be ignored and mercifully have found an echo among writers, scientists, theatre and cinema personalities.
“The system of higher education is being greatly weakened by the promotion of obscurantism, irrationality and aggressive communalism by the ruling dispensation,” one such statement reads. It denounces Modi-led government’s inclination to appoint RSS linked people to the office of academic prominence. It appeals to people to vote for “constitutional values, diversity and inclusive society” to preserve “questioning and critical thinking” in institutes of higher education. It decries attacks on “pluralistic society, secularism and diversity which are central to the idea of India” and calls for rejection of those who “lynch or assault people” and to vote against “inequality, intimidation, discrimination, and unreason.”
It behooves of us, as responsible citizens, to listen to these voices of reason. To our good fortune, prominent personalities and the intelligentsia are outraged and have been unambiguously vocal. Such opposition and expose of forces of hate, aggressiveness, vindictiveness capable tearing into the Constitution, is unprecedented in the country.
Vote, we must, division avoid. By voting day, hopefully, it would be clearer who our choice should be. Though it may prick our conscience, a negative vote may be inevitable once again, to keep the worst out. However, an encore must be rejected at all costs.
(The author is a retired banker)
