The five state elections coming up in a few months offer us an unprecedented opportunity to initiate steps to check corruption by re-ordering the rules of the game to ensure that criminal elements do not throng our legislatures. The energetic appeal by Chief Election Commissioner S.Y. Quraishi in this direction can provide the much-needed moment to push for reforms, if we are so inclined. The question is, are we? There has been much debate over the years around these issues, but mostly it has been a question of beating around the bush. The current atmosphere in the country, headlined by ubiquitous corruption, does offer the push to respond to the challenge we face. It is up to the political class to seize it. In the past six months we have been inundated with news of floating muck from all parts of the country. Most of it has had to do with people of influence seeking to leverage their unique position of advantage for self-gain. Top politicians, bureaucrats, the Army brass, members of the higher judiciary, the business community, and senior journalists have had their credentials questioned as investigations have been instituted. The extent of the rot suggests that the whirlpool of sleaze that threatens to submerge our politics, subvert policies, and cast a shadow over the working environment in which ordinary procedures are twisted to serve vested interests, is not a mere aggregation of unhappy episodes. The sorry examples before us suggest that the system set in place to serve the public interest has been thoroughly disabled and re-fashioned to serve the interests of the few — in short to destroy the very idea of democracy. At the base of this is the electoral system — from the Parliament to the panchayat — which has been breached. If our MPs, MLAs, and elected representatives at the level of local self-government were to be no more than ordinary clean, it is hard to see how bent bureaucrats and other crooked folk can thrive.
At a public function a few days ago Mr Quraishi expressed his anguish about those in authority not taking meaningful steps to stop law-breakers from contesting elections. It has also been reported that for the past four years the Election Commission has pointed out that only 200 out of the 1,200 registered political parties in the country are involved in political activities, and that political outfits are being created to launder money and use unaccounted wealth to enter the stock market. This is a surprising state of affairs. Can’t dubious parties be struck off the rolls, as the CEC asks? What are the hurdles in the way?
Even as the UPA-II government sets up probes into the various scams that have been widely alleged, it is time it took a political initiative to meet the challenge of cleaning up our legislative chambers. Parliament and the state legislatures may not readily oblige but a public environment can be created to highlight the malaise in the first instance. The Election Commission rose admirably to the challenge of conducting a squeaky clean Assembly election in Bihar a few months ago. It checked the play of money and muscle power through the use of effective administrative methods. But we need a systemic push for clean elections. Otherwise, the same Election Commission may be hard put to deal with simultaneous election in five states. In at least one of them — West Bengal — violence has been seen to be the currency of politics in recent years. By way of response, we have only seen a blame game. It is clear enough that politicians who endorse partisan violence and the pampering of criminals who engage in such violence are, in effect, gestating future legislators and ministers who will be avid participants in corruption scandals.