When Crime Pays

by Milan Vaishnav

  40. Das, “Landowners’ Armies Take Over ‘Law and Order.’”

  41. On Bihar, see Francine R. Frankel, “Caste, Land and Dominance in Bihar,” in Francine R. Frankel and M. S. A. Rao, eds., Dominance and State Power in Modern India: Decline of a Social Order, vol.1 (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1990), 123. In Andhra Pradesh, K. Balagopal writes that voters either would have to present stamped ballot papers to the landlord’s polling agent who was seated inside of the booth before placing it in the ballot box or the landlord’s agent would just stamp the ballot paper himself while the voter stayed at home. See K. Balagopal, “Seshan in Kurnool,” Economic and Political Weekly 29, no. 30 (July 23, 1994): 1903–6.

  42. Witsoe, “Caste and Democratization in Postcolonial India,” 13.

  43. Vikasa Jha writes on the Bihar experience: “Criminal gangs are now given [a] contract by the candidates to capture polling booths. . . . It has become customary for candidates to give their supporting criminal gangs the assurance that after winning the election they would be protected from law and administration and that they would be given contracts for roads, bridges, and buildings [sic] constructions.” See Jha, Bihar: Criminalisation of Politics, 87.

  44. Jha, In the Eye of the Cyclone.

  45. It suffices to say that the politics of defection was lubricated by a heavy dose of bribe payments and monetary transfers between individuals and parties.

  46. Susheela Bhan, Criminalization of Politics (New Delhi: Shipra, 1995), 8.

  47. Susheela Bhan, quoting Subhas Kashyap, writes that by the end of March 1971 approximately half of India’s parliamentarians and 52.5 percent of its state legislators had changed their partisan affiliations at least once. See Bhan, Criminalization of Politics, 9.

  48. Rajni Kothari, “The Non-Party Political Process,” Economic and Political Weekly 19, no. 5 (February 4, 1984): 216–24.

  49. Paul R. Brass, Factional Politics in an Indian State: The Congress Party in Uttar Pradesh (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1965). James Manor, “Changing State, Changing Society in India,” South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies 25, no. 2 (2002): 231–56.

  50. Manor, “Parties and the Party System,” 66.

  51. Gill, Pathology of Corruption, 74.

  52. Myron Weiner, Party Building in a New Nation: The Indian National Congress (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1967).

  53. Brass, Factional Politics in an Indian State.

  54. Manor, “Changing State, Changing Society,” 239.

  55. Ibid.

  56. K. C. Suri, “Parties under Pressure: Political Parties in India since Independence,” paper prepared for the State of Democracy in South Asia project, 2005, http://www.democracy-asia.org/qa/india/KC%20Suri.pdf (accessed March 10, 2013).

  57. Christophe Jaffrelot, India’s Silent Revolution: The Rise of the Lower Castes in North India (New York: Columbia University Press, 2003).

  58. Christophe Jaffrelot and Sanjay Kumar, eds., Rise of the Plebeians? The Changing Face of Indian Legislative Assemblies (New Delhi: Routledge, 2009).

  59. Pratap Bhanu Mehta, “India’s Disordered Democracy,” Pacific Affairs 64, no. 4 (Winter 1991–92): 541.

  60. Jha, In the Eye of the Cyclone, 41–42.

  61. The frequency of violence grew more intense as the campaign progressed, with the bulk of violent events taking place during the actual polling. The Congress, unsurprisingly, was the most cited aggressor when one could be readily identified. The most frequent type of violence, according to the author, was “stone throwing, brick batting and throwing glass pieces.” See D. N. Dhanagare, “Violence in the Fourth General Elections: A Study in Political Conflict,” Economic and Political Weekly 3, no. 1/2 (January 1968): 151–56.

  62. Ibid.

  63. Election Commission of India, Report on the Mid-Term Elections in India, 1968–69 (New Delhi: Election Commission of India, 1970), 78, http://eci.nic.in/eci_main/eci_publications/books/genr/Mid-Term%20Gen%20Election-68-69.pdf (accessed October 3, 2013).

  64. Ibid.

  65. Quoted in Kohli, Democracy and Discontent, 214.

  66. Bipin Chandra, Mridula Mukherjee, and Aditya Mukherjee, India after Independence, 1947–2000 (London: Penguin, 2000), chap. 17.

  67. Myron Weiner, “The 1971 Elections and the Indian Party System,” Asian Survey 11, no. 12 (December 1971): 1156.

  68. Sudipta Kaviraj, “Indira Gandhi and Indian Politics,” Economic and Political Weekly 21, no. 38/39 (September 20–27, 1986): 1697–1708.

  69. Jha, In the Eye of the Cyclone, 45.

  70. Ashutosh Kumar, “Middle Classes, Parties, and Electoral Politics in India,” in Arun Mehra, ed., Party System in India: Emerging Trajectories (Atlanta: Lancer, 2013).

  71. Ironically, the Congress was also guilty of refusing to dissolve its own governments even when it was obvious that they did not enjoy the support of a majority of members in the assembly. The leadership’s refusal to allow its chief minister of Madhya Pradesh, D. P. Mishra, to resign in 1967 after thirty-six of his legislators defected is the most prominent example of this. See Jha, In the Eye of the Cyclone, 32–33.

  72. Bhagwan D. Dua, “Presidential Rule in India: A Study in Crisis Politics,” Asian Survey 19, no. 6 (June 1979): 611–26.

  73. Anoop Sadanandan, “Bridling Central Tyranny in India,” Asian Survey 52, no. 2 (March/April 2012): 247–69.

  74. Singh, Politics of Crime and Corruption, 17; Biplab Dasgupta, “The 1972 Election in West Bengal,” Economic and Political Weekly 7, no. 16 (April 15, 1972): 804–8.

  75. Quoted in N. S. Saksena, India: Towards Anarchy, 1967–1992 (New Delhi: Abhinav, 1993), 35.

  76. Kohli, Democracy and Discontent, 16.

  77. Mehta, “India’s Disordered Democracy,” 538.

  78. As political scientist Atul Kohli explains: “Personal control over a highly interventionist state has been maintained, but the interventionist arm of that state has gone limp.” See Kohli, Democracy and Discontent, 16.

  79. Lloyd I. Rudolph and Susanne Hoeber Rudolph, In Pursuit of Lakshmi: The Political Economy of the Indian State (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987), 7. As the authors artfully wrote, “Jawaharlal Nehru was the schoolmaster of parliamentary government, Indira Gandhi its truant.”

  80. R. V. R. Chandrasekhara Rao, “Mrs. Indira Gandhi and India’s Constitutional Structures: An Era of Erosion,” in Yogendra K. Malik and Dhirendra K. Vajpeyi, eds., India: The Years of Indira Gandhi (New York: E. J. Brill, 1988), 28.

  81. David H. Bayley, “The Police and Political Order in India,” Asian Survey 23, no. 4 (April 1983): 484.

  82. Ibid., 487.

  83. Henry C. Hart, “Political Leadership in India: Dimensions and Limits,” in Atul Kohli, ed., India’s Democracy: An Analysis of Changing State-Society Relations (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988), 23.

  84. Arvind N. Das, “Landowners’ Armies Take Over ‘Law and Order,’” Economic and Political Weekly 21, no. 1 (January 4, 1986): 15–18.

  85. Jayant Lele, “Saffronisation of Shiv Sena: Political Economy of City, State and Nation,” Economic and Political Weekly 30, no. 25 (June 24, 1995): 1520.

  86. Thomas Blom Hansen, “Politics as Permanent Performance: The Production of Political Authority in the Locality,” in John Zavos, Andrew Wyatt, and Vernon Marston Hewitt, eds., The Politics of Cultural Mobilization in India (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2004), 26.

  87. Ibid., 28–29.

  88. Ashwani Kumar, Community Warriors: State, Peasants and Caste Armies in Bihar (London: Anthem Press, 2008).

  89. Ibid., 131–33.

  90. Kohli, Democracy and Discontent; Manor, “Changing State, Changing Society.”

  91. Venu Menon, “The Politics of Blood,” Rediff, March 21, 1997, http://www.rediff.com/news/mar/21venu.htm (accessed November 17, 2015).

  92. In the next chapter, I examine the connections between money and muscle more methodically, using data from the contemporary period to establish precise
linkages. But in this section, I sketch out the evolution of India’s system of election finance, its changing nature in the first few decades after independence, and connections with criminality.

  93. Chandan Mitra, The Corrupt Society: The Criminalization of India from Independence to the 1990s (New Delhi: Viking, 1998), 75.

  94. Yogendra K. Malik, “Political Finance in India,” Political Quarterly 60 no. 1 (January 1989): 75–94.

  95. Election Commission of India, Report on the Second General Elections in India, 1957 (New Delhi: Election Commission of India, 1959), 187, http://eci.nic.in/eci_main/eci_publications/books/genr/Report%20on%20the%202nd%20Gen%20Election-57.pdf (accessed November 11, 2013).

  96. Stanley A. Kochanek, “Briefcase Politics in India: The Congress Party and the Business Elite,” Asian Survey 27, no. 12 (December 1987): 1278–1301.

  97. Ibid.

  98. Rahul Mukherji reports that businessmen were an important source of election funding in the immediate post-independence era. Leading businessmen, such as G. D. Birla, helped mobilize Indian industry in support of the Congress during the election years of 1952 and 1957. See Rahul Mukherji, “The State, Economic Growth, and Development in India,” India Review 8, no. 1 (February 2009): 85.

  99. Malik, “Political Finance in India,” 77. Of course, even in the early days of the republic not all corporations disclosed their political contributions, considering they often gave in excess of the impossibly low contribution limits permitted by law and feared retribution from parties to which they did not give. Furthermore, due to legislative loopholes, candidates did not have to report expenses incurred by third parties. See Kochanek, “Briefcase Politics in India,” 1285–86.

  100. Krishna K. Tummala, “Combating Corruption: Lessons Out of India,” International Public Management Review 10, no. 1 (2009): 41.

  101. This feeling of insecurity was further fueled by the Congress’s poll debacle in 1967.

  102. Gandhi also managed to persuade Parliament to amend the constitution to revoke the right of India’s erstwhile princely rulers to their “privy purses,” a constitutional compromise that was integral to convincing the rulers of India’s princely states to accede to the Union. Gandhi was irate that the former princes were using their influence to prop up the right-of-center opposition Swatantra Party.

  103. Jha, In the Eye of the Cyclone, 39.

  104. The inflow of black money into the electoral domain was discussed by the 1971 report of the government-appointed Wanchoo Direct Taxes Enquiry Committee.

  105. Sridharan and Vaishnav, “India.”

  106. In advance of the 1971 general elections, Congress trade minister L. N. Mishra granted 700 import licenses in just three weeks, presumably in exchange for a timely infusion of election funds. See Suman Sahai, “‘Hawala’ Politics: A Congress Legacy,” Economic and Political Weekly 31, no. 5 (February 3, 1996): 253–54.

  107. Krishan Bhatia, Indira: A Biography of Prime Minister Gandhi (Santa Barbara: Praeger, 1974), 267.

  108. Ibid.

  109. Manor, “Party Decay and Political Crisis in India,” 34.

  110. Jha, In the Eye of the Cyclone, 38–42.

  111. Sahai, “‘Hawala’ Politics,’” 253.

  112. Jha, In the Eye of the Cyclone, 40.

  113. M. V. Rajeev Gowda and E. Sridharan, “Reforming India’s Party Financing and Election Expenditure Laws,” Election Law Journal 11, no. 2 (June 2012): 226–40.

  114. Sridharan and Vaishnav, “India.”

  115. Inaugural Speech by Congress President Rajiv Gandhi at the Congress Party Centenary Session, Bombay, India, December 27–29, 1985, http://rajivgandhistudycircle.com/rajiv_vision.php (accessed June 10, 2015).

  116. Malik, “Political Finance in India,” 85.

  117. Andrew Sanchez, “Corruption in India,” in Nicholas Kitchen, ed., India: The Next Superpower? (London: London School of Economics and Political Science, 2012), 51.

  118. National Commission to Review the Working of the Constitution, “Review of the Working of Political Parties Specially in Relation to Elections and Reform Options,” NCRWC Consultation Paper, January 8, 2011, http://lawmin.nic.in/ncrwc/finalreport/v2b1–8.htm (accessed June 1, 2015).

  119. Robert Hardgrave and Stanley Kochanek, India: Government and Politics in a Developing Nation (Boston: Thomson, 2007), 342.

  120. Dada is perhaps the most commonly heard moniker for a criminal who possesses real political power, even in non-Hindi-speaking regions. In Bengal, such figures are often called mastans. In Tamil, people often speak of someone who is a porukki, literally a “rowdy.” But this more closely resembles a goonda than a dada, who is someone who is higher up the criminal food chain.

  121. S. S. Gill, The Pathology of Corruption (New Delhi: HarperCollins India, 1999), 192–93.

  122. Chandra, Mukherjee, and Mukherjee, India after Independence, 311–31.

  123. Yogendra K. Malik, “Indira Gandhi: Personality, Political Power and Party Politics,” in Yogendra K. Malik and Dhirendra K. Vajpeyi, eds., India: The Years of Indira Gandhi (New York: E. J. Brill, 1988), 15.

  124. This definition of “Sanjay culture” comes from scholar Atul Kohli. See Kohli, Democracy and Discontent, 57.

  125. The ECI reported at least 72 cases of booth capturing in the post-Emergency elections of 1977. See Election Commission of India, Report on the Sixth General Elections to the Lok Sabha and General Elections to the Kerala Legislative Assembly 1977 (New Delhi: Election Commission of India, 1978), http://eci.nic.in/eci_main/eci_publications/books/genr/GenElection-Kerala-Vol-I-77.pdf (accessed March 25, 2013).

  126. Oliver E. Williamson, “The Vertical Integration of Production: Market Failure Considerations,” American Economic Review 61, no. 2 (May 1971): 112–23.

  127. Sanjay Kumar, Shreyas Sardesai, and Pranav Gupta, “The Weakening of Electoral Anti-Incumbency,” Economic and Political Weekly 48, no. 13 (March 2013): 128–31.

  128. For instance, when V. P. Singh became chief minister of Uttar Pradesh in 1980 he took strong action against the state’s dacoit gangs, despite the fact that many gang leaders were well connected to Singh’s Janata Party. The gang leaders’ collective response, Prem Shankar Jha notes, was not to retreat but to join politics to ensure their safety. See Prem Shankar Jha, “How Did India Become a Predatory State,” n.d., on file with the author.

  129. Robert Wade, “The System of Administrative and Political Corruption: Canal Irrigation in South India,” Journal of Development Studies 18, no. 3 (1982): 287–328; Frank de Zwart, The Bureaucratic Merry-Go-Round: Manipulating the Transfer of Indian Civil Servants (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 1994); Iyer and Mani, “Traveling Agents.”

  130. Shri Ganesh Narayan Hegde vs. Shri S. Bangarappa and Others (1995) 4 SCC 41.

  131. In such instances, politics becomes the arena through which rivalries play themselves out. As a former chief election commissioner of India once remarked, “Whether it is money or criminals, both are competitive phenomena. If a criminal is put up as a candidate by one party the other party feels very disadvantaged. They feel they have no chance until a bigger dada is put up against them.” Sreenivasan Jain, “Elections Have Become the Biggest Source of Corruption: SY Qureshi,” NDTV, November 14, 2011, http://www.ndtv.com/india-news/elections-have-become-the-biggest-source-of-corruption-sy-qureshi-468841 (accessed November 17, 2011). One voter in the Pratapgarh constituency of Uttar Pradesh, a district known for its warring politically connected gangs, described the scenario aptly: “It is a fight not between candidates and how good they are, or how much development the Congress party or anyone else promises to bring, but between goonda and goonda.” See Jyoti Malhotra, “Who Will Clean Up Filthy and Feudal Pratapgarh?” Rediff, April 23, 2009, http://www.rediff.com/election/2009/apr/23loksabhapolls-who-will-clean-filthy-pratapgarh.htm (accessed May 15, 2009).

  132. This is analogous to how unregistered firms operate where informal economies, which operate outside of the ambit of the law, thrive.

>   133. Quoted in Jose J. Nedumpara, Political Economy and Class Contradictions: A Study (New Delhi: Anmol Publications, 2004). Ashok Samrat is commonly referred to as a “dreaded criminal of north Bihar.” See, inter alia, Ramashankar, “Flying like a Phoenix,” Telegraph (Calcutta), November 11, 2010.

  134. Of the 1995 party-backed candidates facing criminal charges contesting in the 2004, 2009, and 2014 general elections, 23 percent were ultimately successful. In contrast, only .49 percent of independent candidates with criminal records—or just three candidates—achieved success.

  135. S. K. Ghosh, The Indian Mafia (New Delhi: Ashish, 1991), vi.

  136. Bhan, Criminalization of Politics, 25.

  137. Indu Bharti, “Usurpation of the State: Coal Mafia in Bihar,” Economic and Political Weekly 24, no. 42 (October 21, 1989): 2353.

  138. Hiranmay Dhar, “Gangsters and Politicians in Dhanbad,” Economic and Political Weekly 14, no. 15 (April 14, 1979): 690–91.

  139. Hardgrave and Kochanek, India, 390.

  140. Ghosh, Indian Mafia, 12.

  141. Liza Weinstein, “Mumbai’s Development Mafias: Globalization, Organized Crime and Land Development,” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 32, no. 1 (March 2008): 22–39.

  142. Thomas Blom Hansen, Wages of Violence: Naming and Identity in Postcolonial Bombay (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001), 54–55.

  143. Ibid., 99.

  144. Jaffrelot, “Indian Democracy,” 100.

  145. Ornit Shani, “Bootlegging, Politics and Corruption: State Violence and the Routine Practices of Public Power in Gujarat, 1985–2002,” in Nalin Mehta and Mona G. Mehta, eds., Gujarat beyond Gandhi: Identity, Society and Conflict (New Delhi: Routledge, 2013), 33.

  146. Howard Spodek, “Crisis and Response: Ahmedabad 2000,” Economic and Political Weekly 36, no. 19 (May 12–18, 2001): 1629.