Editor’s Note: Electoral bonds, and our tumbledown democracy

The BJP exudes an almost contemptuous confidence that no revelations can derail its ultimate victory. Where does this confidence come from?

When the skeletons came tumbling out after the Supreme Court demanded full disclosure in the electoral bonds scheme, it did not really surprise anyone.

It is 2024 and among the BJP’s star campaigners in the high-stakes electoral battle in Maharashtra are Ajit Pawar and Ashok Chavan. But rewind to the 2014 and 2019 Lok Sabha campaigns and you will find that Ajit Pawar and Ashok Chavan figured prominently in the BJP’s campaigns then too.

Remarkably consistent, one might say. The only problem is that in 2014 and 2019, Pawar and Chavan were in the opposition and the BJP had grounded its entire campaign on their alleged venality, attacking them fiercely for being “tainted” and the “face of corruption”.

All it took for the two men to morph from tainted leaders to star campaigners was to swear allegiance to the BJP. In a normal democracy, one would call this opportunism, dishonesty, even brazen duplicity. But in the tumbledown democracy we now inhabit, it is called a “masterstroke”. This doublespeak has been in evidence since 2014, when the saffron party came to power riding on the coattails of Anna Hazare’s anti-corruption movement, promising to wipe out graft and crony capitalism. And did anything but that in the 10 years following.

Thus, when the skeletons came tumbling out after the Supreme Court demanded full disclosure in the electoral bonds scheme, it did not really surprise anyone. How could it? A government that does not baulk at using Enforcement Directorate probes to arm-twist opposition party members is not likely to shy away from corporate extortion. What is surprising, however, is the sheer amount of money involved.

The roughly Rs. 12,000 crore received by political parties—with the BJP getting about 55 per cent—is many times more than that ever raised singly by other political funding routes. It added to the obscene amounts of money sloshing about in electioneering. The last Lok Sabha election cost Rs.60,000 crore, making it the most expensive one globally. This year, it is expected to double. Until the system changes, parties need funds to survive, but a party clearly needs much more than ordinary funds if it wishes to continuously engineer defections and neuter any opposition.

The other point one notes is that it took six years for the Supreme Court to declare the scheme unconstitutional. This in effect amounted to giving one party a six-year lead to amass wealth. But the wealth was not required for electioneering alone; it yielded something much more important—influence. The last decade has been used to mobilise an unprecedented degree of clout and to wield it unerringly. To embed a certain belief system deeply into the political, social, and cultural fabric of the nation.

As the electoral bonds scheme unravels, what one notices is the almost contemptuous confidence the BJP exudes that no revelations can impact its ultimate victory. Where does this confidence come from? For one, from its control of mainstream media and democratic institutions, but even more importantly, from its belief that it no longer needs approval from democratic value systems. The party has concentrated on gathering majoritarian approval by manipulating religious sentiments to a degree where it deems both performance and an image of incorruptibility immaterial.

Add to this the continuing large-scale efforts to harvest data and information about various sections of the populace and the casual disregard with which the democratic and institutional carapace is being shrugged off and one sees a definite movement towards totalitarian control. This, however, might not be as inevitable as it is being subliminally suggested. After all, the important question remains. Will it really be that simple to mind-control what is easily one of the world’s most unbridled and tumultuous people?