When Crime Pays

by Milan Vaishnav

  Numerous accounts highlight a similar shift but stop short of providing a fully developed explanation for the change. For instance, Robert Hardgrave and Stanley Kochanek discuss how politicians in India in the past would recruit goondas (thugs) in order to gain electoral advantage. Yet, after a point, criminals themselves occupied center stage; “the nexus among politicians, local police, bureaucrats, and criminals has in fact ‘criminalized’ politics,” they write. “In some constituencies, where once the politicians hired the goondas, the goondas have become the politicians.”119 In both popular discourse and the scholarly literature regarding India, politicians associated with criminal activity are often referred to as goondas. In truth, goonda does not quite capture the figure of the criminal politician; a more apt name (in Hindi) is dada, a figure who operates more like a “godfather” or leader of goondas. While many criminals may have started out as goondas, by the time they possess real political power they have morphed into dadas.120

  Former top civil servant S. S. Gill has argued that the entry of criminals into politics “was a logical corollary of using them to gain political power. If the criminals could put others in power, they were bound to use the same violent methods to get into positions of power themselves.” To this end, he quotes a state-level politician with criminal ties who captures this evolution nicely: “Those whose feet we used to touch, are now touching our feet. We captured booths for them, now we are in power.”121

  The Emergency

  Most, if not all, accounts suggest that one key triggering event that may have helped tip the balance of power was the brief period of emergency rule. In 1975, the president of India—acting on the advice of Indira Gandhi—declared a state of emergency, which suspended the constitution and centralized an unprecedented degree of power in the hands of the prime minister and, by extension, a small group of political and bureaucratic insiders. The Emergency, which lasted less than two years, involved curbs on freedom of expression, arbitrary detention and arrest, overt political pressure on the judiciary, and the further politicization of the state and represented the nadir of political sycophancy within the Congress.122

  The Emergency was in many ways the culmination of a decades-long process of hollowing out of the state apparatus. The debasement of state authority and the politicization of virtually every tier of government further infused politics with individuals harboring criminal ties. As the internal democratic structures of the Congress were progressively eliminated, the party began to resemble a pyramid-like organization responsible only to the very top. Loyalty to Indira and Sanjay Gandhi (Indira’s younger son and closest political adviser) took precedence over all other criteria.123 It was during the height of the emergency period that a raft of political cronies tied to Congress—less charitably described as goondas and linked especially with Sanjay—became important power brokers in the party. This brief period saw the sharp rise of what came to be called “Sanjay culture” in India, which refers to the young Gandhi’s induction of many criminals and thugs into positions of leadership in the Congress.124 Over time, it has become shorthand for the marriage of crime and politics.

  Congress was voted out of office in 1977 after Indira called surprise elections and brought an end to the Emergency, but it would once again climb to power in 1980 following the collapse of the brief rule by the Janata government. Congress underwent another split following the Emergency with the largest faction renamed Congress(I); the “I” stood for “Indira”—a telling detail about the state of the party.

  Although politics was churning at a rapid clip, the shift of criminals to the forefront of politics gained unstoppable momentum.125 The Emergency may well have served as a proximate trigger for a more direct incorporation of criminals in the electoral mainstream. But this brief nondemocratic interregnum came on the heels of trends that had been building up for many years. Furthermore, the Emergency itself does not adequately explain why criminals felt the need to become politicians themselves, having toiled successfully in the service of politicians for several decades.

  Vertical Integration

  To understand what propelled this change in strategy among criminals, it is important to look at the human motivations that pushed them more squarely into the electoral domain. Returning to the marketplace analogy, I argue that criminals adopted a strategy of “vertical integration,” a concept popularized by the Nobel economist Oliver Williamson. Vertical integration refers to the “substitution of internal organization for market exchange,” or the merging together of two businesses that are at different stages of production.126 Think, for example, of an auto manufacturer that decides to make its own tires in-house rather than contract with a third party to manufacture them.

  When do firms operating in a competitive marketplace typically seek to vertically integrate their operations? According to Williamson, when markets work well, there is typically little need for firms to prefer internal supply to the external contracting of goods and services. But when markets fail to work efficiently—for example, when contracts are incomplete, ambiguous, or lack finality—firms might shift production in-house, thus vertically integrating. It turns out that this is roughly the position criminals working with politicians in India found themselves in during the 1970s.

  When Congress was the dominant player in Delhi and in the states, there was little doubt about which party would be returned to power once elections were over. Of course, there was electoral competition in most parts of the country, but there were few viable players other than Congress. Thus, from a criminal’s perspective, working as an agent for hire for Congress made eminent sense. Criminals demanded money and protection in exchange for helping politicians with their work during the height of election season and were virtually guaranteed employment for the next go-round after their candidate was elected. In other words, Congress could credibly commit to upholding its political contracts, and criminals were accordingly rewarded after the election.

  However, incentives began to shift once the era of Congress hegemony gave way to greater fragmentation. Between 1951 and 1966, incumbent state governments were virtually guaranteed reelection; during this fifteen-year period, the incumbent reelection rate stood at 85 percent. As a result, there was a semblance of political stability and predictability in electoral markets. That changed in subsequent decades: between 1967 and 1979, incumbents won reelection just 54 percent of the time.127

  At this stage, criminals faced a complex dilemma. Thanks to the uncertainty stemming from greater electoral competition, they were no longer able to rest easy knowing that the party that employed them would remain in power. Congress was, in other words, no longer the only game in town. This shift drastically increased the uncertainty associated with contract negotiations. In the event that Congress lost an election, a criminal in the employ of the party would have to negotiate a new “contract” with the party in power and would be at an obvious bargaining disadvantage. Alternatively, the criminal could try to negotiate multiple contracts with parties, but this would, if nothing else, complicate decision making. The danger, of course, was that the criminal would be left out in the cold, vulnerable to the retributive whims of the state that he had previously been protected from. Any ex ante promises of protection were now “too tenuous to guarantee their safety.”128

  The pursuit of protection was a crucial objective for aspiring criminal politicians. Candidates charged with engaging in illegal activity first sought elected office because they feared the reach of the state, and politics offered a promising mechanism for evading prosecution. While politicians in India do not have formal immunity from criminal prosecution, officeholders can rely on the trappings of office to delay or derail justice, such as the power to transfer public officials.129 In the words of the Supreme Court of India, the slow motion of justice “becomes much slower when politically powerful or high and influential persons figure as accused.”130

  The protection criminally linked candidates seek is not only from the state—in some
cases it is from their rivals. The politicization of state institutions means that the state does not act as an entirely neutral arbiter. This lack of impartiality allows politicians to manipulate the state according to their whims, leaving those outside government vulnerable to state crackdown. In pockets of the country, there is anecdotal evidence that some criminal politicians contest elections where their rivals have decided to do the same, reducing elections in these constituencies to a choice between rival criminal politicians.131

  In the wake of uncertainty prompted by chaotic “client-shifting,” a rational solution to this challenge was for criminals to move from outsourcing political protection to doing it in-house. In other words, the solution rested in becoming politicians themselves. By directly contesting elections, criminals could reduce the uncertainty associated with negotiating (and renegotiating) contracts with politicians, all the while retaining the benefits they had previously depended on Congress to deliver.

  Bypassing politicians and directly contesting elections was a natural response by criminals not only to political market failures but also to obvious status concerns. Many politically savvy criminals eventually realized that, having worked in the service of politicians to win elections, they had accumulated enough local notoriety to contest elections directly. Over time, criminals had acquired a considerable amount of social capital as a result of their ethnic bona fides, their reputation as fixers, their access to resources, and their roots within local communities. This social capital gave criminal entrepreneurs useful leverage they could now exploit in the political realm.132

  The alleged gangster Ashok Samrat, who contested elections in north Bihar, summed it up best: “Politicians make use of us for capturing the polling booths and for bullying the weaker sections. . . . But after the elections they earn the social status and power and we are treated as criminals. Why should we help them when we ourselves can contest the elections, capture the booths and become MLAs and enjoy social status, prestige and power? So I stopped helping the politicians and decided to contest the elections.”133

  Once the vertical integration process took hold, it was difficult for it to be undone. Criminals now had both the status and the power; having invested in building up their local electoral machinery, they found that the costs of reversal far outweighed the benefits, particularly as electoral uncertainty further intensified.

  If criminals decided to take the electoral plunge and become full-fledged politicians in their own right, it begs the question: why did criminals-cum-politicians tie up with political parties rather than strike out on their own and contest elections as independents? There are several possible answers. For starters, although party labels in India possess very little programmatic content, parties are still connected to distinct leaders, families, ethnic groups, and social bases. Aspiring candidates can tap into these networks to expand their appeal beyond their own narrow support bases. Although political parties may not have clearly distinct views on, say, the welfare state, that does not mean that party labels are devoid of meaning. It is entirely possible that these labels also have some normative appeal for potential candidates as well.

  Second, in a country with high rates of poverty and illiteracy, party symbols hold great weight; they serve as an important visual cue through which millions of voters connect to electoral politics. As such, the historical legacy of parties matters a great deal in Indian democracy. To this day, many voters support Congress, for instance, because their families have done so since the days of the independence struggle. The available evidence suggests that the party imprimatur remains vital for maintaining electoral relevance. Of the 4,300 MPs elected between 1977 and 2014, a mere 1.4 percent (or 82 in total) were independent candidates. Given that independents accounted for over 56 percent of all candidates, their lack of electoral success is even more striking.134

  WAGGING THE DOG

  In the post-Emergency period, a whole class of hired agents who once served politicians now were the politicians. “Gone are the days when the gangsters were a pawn in the hands of politicians. The position is practically reversed today,” wrote one observer. “It is no longer the dog that wags the tail but the tail that is wagging the dog.”135 Examples of the role reversal abound. As one scholar notes, “The criminalization process cuts across various states, political parties and ideologies.”136

  In Bihar, Suryadeo Singh was once a powerful mafia leader who ran a protection racket in Dhanbad, the hub for India’s coal mafia. Singh and his associates successfully captured the state-controlled coal mining operations in the region through a combination of luck, grit, political connections, and sheer coercive power.137 By virtue of his position, Singh became a key financier for the Janata Party, but he eventually outgrew this limited role. In 1977, Singh won assembly elections on a Janata Party ticket and became a close confidant of Chandrashekhar, who later went on to serve briefly as prime minister.138 In 1984, Singh was the Janata Party candidate in the Lok Sabha election and a sitting member of the Bihar legislative assembly. At the time of the election, he faced no fewer than 17 murder charges, and the state police deemed him to be too dangerous to let him set foot in his home district.139 He was arrested in 1988 on charges of murder, rioting, and extortion but was later released. The man who put him in jail, the deputy commissioner of Dhanbad, was not so lucky. For the crime of incarcerating Singh, he was promptly transferred from his post.140

  Around the time Arun Gawli shot to political prominence in Mumbai, scores of small-time crooks and gangsters employed by politicians emerged as politicians in their own right across Mumbai and the state of Maharashtra. Although the connection between organized crime and political parties in Mumbai began in the late 1970s, propelled by a lucrative smuggling racket, this fusion broke new ground with the rise of the Shiv Sena.141 In the words of one close observer: “The popularity of sainiks [foot soldiers/volunteers] as brokers and protectors owes much to their image of being violent, ruthless, aggressive defenders of the common man by means of employing the common man’s only strength—his strength in numbers—and his language—fists and muscles—in order to assert his rights vis-à-vis the establishment.”142 Not surprisingly then, “several well-established gangsters, major slumlords, and dadas ran on a Shiv Sena ticket” in the 1980s and 1990s.143

  In Gujarat, another son of the textile chawls was enjoying a similar rise to prominence in the 1980s. The infamous bootlegger Abdul Latif (known simply as “Don Latif”) operated in urban Ahmedabad, running a crime syndicate—financed by illicit liquor smuggling—that doubled as a Muslim protectorate in the ethnically tense metropolis. Gujarat was, and is, a dry state, making liquor a prized commodity. Politicians, including at least one former chief minister of Gujarat, Chimanbhai Patel, reportedly protected Latif from the law in exchange for support from the city’s Muslim community and illicit cash infusions.144 After the communal riots of 1985, Latif and his associates organized an emergency social services network to assist the rehabilitation of Muslim riot victims.145 Latif, armed with dirty money, then traded on his image as a social worker to catapult into mainstream politics. In jail on charges of inciting riots, Latif contested and won election to five separate wards in the city’s 1987 municipal poll.146 To the police, Latif was an antisocial element, but to his poor, urban constituents, he was a local Robin Hood, who stood ready to assist the unemployed, parents who could not provide dowries, or widows who lost their husbands.147

  In southern Andhra Pradesh, as the case of YSR illustrated, political competition took place not between parties but between gang-like factions.148 One notorious “factionist” who emerged from this milieu was Paritala Ravi.149 Inspired by the Naxalite insurgency, Ravi’s family was actively involved in resisting the landed aristocracy in southern Andhra. After Ravi’s father illegally occupied the property of a well-known landlord with Congress ties, he was brutally hacked to death, triggering a bitter dispute between the opposing families that would play out over the next several decades and would event
ually claim the lives of two generations of family members on both sides.150

  The two sides left no stone unturned in their attempts to exterminate one another, planting bombs in cars, ice cream carts, and even televisions in order to gain the upper hand.151 Ravi went underground and joined the Naxalites. He soon emerged as one of the most powerful leaders in the region, a self-made faction leader, distinguishing him from the many feudal landlords who held sway in this part of Andhra. Along the way, Ravi accumulated 54 serious criminal cases, 16 of which involved murder; it was for good reason that he was once described as “the most feared person in Anantapur district.”152 In 1994, the Telugu Desam Party (TDP) recruited Ravi to run for office.153 Ravi won handily and was immediately made a minister in the state government. Ravi would repeat his electoral victories in 1999 and 2004, winning his three elections with an average of 63 percent of the vote. Shortly after securing reelection in 2004, Ravi was brutally murdered, gunned down in broad daylight on the steps of the TDP party office in Anantapur.154

  Post-Emergency Fallout

  The criminal-to-candidate transition was accompanied by a marked increase in the incidence of coercive violence around elections. The 1980 Lok Sabha election brings this out clearly. During the brief two-year period of Janata rule following the Emergency, Sanjay Gandhi allegedly mobilized a corps of pro-Congress “storm-troopers and street-fighters” to stymie the Janata government. By the time of the general election, Sanjay made sure that the most loyal among these goondas were given tickets to contest elections in exchange for their services while the party was in opposition.155 The election in Uttar Pradesh, Sanjay’s home turf, proved a perfect opportunity for the Congress scion to put this motley crew to work. Sanjay Gandhi’s antics in the 1980 election helped crystallize earlier trends that heralded closer cooperation between crime and politics: “Politics became attractive to those unscrupulous enough to subvert, by corruption and violence, the procedures and institutions designed to protect civility and a government of laws.”156 The new recruits into the party, handpicked by Sanjay, were “often young men on the make, of dubious provenance, some with criminal records”—all of whom professed a loyalty to the Gandhi family rather than any Congress ideology.157