When Crime Pays

by Milan Vaishnav

  28. Kanchan Chandra, Why Ethnic Parties Succeed: Patronage and Ethnic Head Counts in India (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004).

  29. “Patronage democracies,” according to Chandra, are those democracies “in which the state has a relative monopoly on jobs and services, and in which elected officials enjoy significant discretion in the implementation of laws allocating the jobs and services at the disposal of the state.” See Chandra, Why Ethnic Parties Succeed.

  30. Steven I. Wilkinson, “A Constructivist Model of Ethnic Riots,” in Kanchan Chandra, ed., Constructivist Theories of Ethnic Politics (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013), 5.

  31. Several scholars have suggested that co-ethnicity induces cooperation among co-ethnics because of norms of reciprocity among group members coupled with a credible fear of sanctioning for would-be defectors. See, for instance, James Habyarimana et al., Coethnicity: Diversity and the Dilemmas of Collective Action (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2011).

  32. The need to focus on candidate identity, as opposed to party brand, is a point made effectively in Simon Chauchard, “Unpacking Ethnic Preferences: Theory and Micro-Level Evidence from North India,” Comparative Political Studies 49, no. 2 (February 2016): 253–84.

  33. Zoya Hasan, “Political Parties in India,” in Niraja Gopal Jayal and Pratap Bhanu Mehta, eds., The Oxford Companion to Politics in India (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 247.

  34. Robert H. Bates, “Modernization, Ethnic Competition, and the Rationality of Politics in Contemporary Africa,” in Donald Rothchild and Victor A. Olorunsola eds., State versus Ethnic Claims: African Policy Dilemmas (Boulder: Westview Press, 1983); Donald L. Horowitz, Ethnic Groups in Conflict (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985); Chandra, Why Ethnic Parties Succeed; Daniel N. Posner, Institutions and Ethnic Politics in Africa (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005).

  35. Chandra, Constructivist Theories of Ethnic Politics.

  36. Benn Eifert, Edward Miguel, and Daniel N. Posner, “Political Competition and Ethnic Identification in Africa,” American Journal of Political Science 54, no. 2 (April 2010): 494–510. Other authors have found that the significance of candidates’ ethnic identity as a shortcut for voters is mediated by other factors, such as the presence of cross-cutting cleavages, concerns over goods provision, partisanship, or future expectations of patronage. See, inter alia, Karen Ferree, “Explaining South Africa’s Racial Census,” Journal of Politics 68, no. 4 (November 2006): 803–15; Thad Dunning and Lauren Harrison, “Cross-Cutting Cleavages and Ethnic Voting: An Experimental Study of Cousinage in Mali,” American Political Science Review 104, no. 1 (February 2010): 21–39.

  37. Daniel N. Posner, “The Political Salience of Cultural Difference: Why Chewas and Tumbukas Are Allies in Zambia and Adversaries in Malawi,” American Political Science Review 98, no. 4 (November 2004): 529–45.

  38. M. N. Srinivas, Caste in Modern India and Other Essays (Mumbai: Asia Publishing House, 1962).

  39. Jeffrey Witsoe, “Territorial Democracy: Caste, Dominance and Electoral Practice in Postcolonial India,” PoLAR: Political and Legal Anthropology Review 32, no. 1 (May 2009): 64–83.

  40. Ibid. In Bihar, for example, backward-caste criminal politicians emerged to help assert and protect their newfound dominance in society. Upper-caste communities responded with their own “mafia-politicians” to maintain their traditional dominance. See Jeffrey Witsoe, “Social Justice and Stalled Development: Caste Empowerment and the Breakdown of Governance in Bihar,” India in Transition: Economics and Politics of Change series, Center for the Advanced Study of India, University of Pennsylvania, Spring 2006, 32.

  41. Wilkinson, “Constructivist Model of Ethnic Riots,” 8.

  42. Ward Berenschot, “Clientelism, Trust Networks, and India’s Identity Politics: Conveying Closeness in Gujarat,” Critical Asian Studies 47, no. 1 (February 2015): 8.

  43. The conventional ethnic voting logic can run into trouble in situations where voters are presented with multiple co-ethnic options. Indeed, it is often the case—in India and elsewhere—that there are multiple candidates who share a common ethnic identity standing for election in the same race. A simple co-ethnic voting logic cannot account for how voters behave under these circumstances because voters are not selecting only on the basis of identity but also on the basis of who among their co-ethnics—in their view—can most effectively serve their interests. If candidates share an ethnic identity, voters have to depend on some other reliable signal in order to determine who is most likely to be the most credible co-ethnic candidate. This is where criminality can offer an advantage.

  44. “Ramanand to Fight on RJD Ticket from Danapur,” Times of India, May 9, 2002.

  45. Interestingly, all three of these possibilities are found in the literature on political violence. See, for example, Steven Rosenzweig, “Dangerous Disconnect: How Politicians’ Misperceptions about Voters Lead to Violence in Kenya,” unpublished paper, Department of Political Science, Yale University, February 2016.

  46. Federico Varese, “Protection and Extortion,” in Letizia Paoli, ed., The Oxford Handbook of Organized Crime (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 343–58.

  47. For discussions of the “politics of dignity,” see Myron Weiner, “The Struggle for Equality: Caste in Indian Politics,” in Atul Kohli, ed., The Success of India’s Democracy (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001); and Vijayendra Rao and Paromita Sanyal, “Dignity through Discourse: Poverty and the Culture of Deliberation in Indian Village Democracies,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 629, no. 1 (2010): 146–72.

  48. As Ashutosh Varshney notes, the “politics of dignity” has played a powerful role in ethnic mobilization in post-independence India. Ashutosh Varshney, “Is India Becoming More Democratic?” Journal of Asian Studies 59, no. 1 (2000): 3–25.

  49. Horowitz, Ethnic Groups in Conflict.

  50. Ibid., 185.

  51. Wilkinson, “Constructivist Model of Ethnic Riots.”

  52. The strategic use of violence to achieve political ends is nicely summarized in Rosenzweig, “Dangerous Disconnect.”

  53. Author’s interview with deputy president of Bihar unit of a major national party, Patna, October 2010.

  54. 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).

  55. Sanjay Kumar, Mohammad Sanjeer Alam, and Dhananjai Joshi, “Caste Dynamics and Political Process in Bihar,” Journal of Indian School of Political Economy (January–June 2008): 1–32; Harry W. Blair, “Caste and the British Census in Bihar: Using Old Data to Study Contemporary Political Behavior,” in Norman Gerald Barrier, ed., The Census in British India: New Perspectives (New Delhi: Manohar, 1981); Abhijit Banerjee and Lakshmi Iyer, “History, Institutions, and Economic Performance: The Legacy of Colonial Land Tenure Systems in India,” American Economic Review 95, no. 4 (September 2005): 1190–1213.

  56. As a group, upper castes are—and have always been—heterogeneous; indeed, factionalism has been rife both within and among the ruling castes. Yet pragmatic political considerations as well as the nationalist struggle often united them under the umbrella of the Congress Party.

  57. Frankel, “Caste, Land and Dominance in Bihar,” 95.

  58. Blair, “Caste and the British Census in Bihar.”

  59. Most upper-caste landowners had long-standing alliances with the Congress Party in which state patronage was exchanged for the votes of villagers beholden to the landlords. Landlords controlled vote banks through mechanisms of self-interest as well as coercion. See Frankel, “Caste, Land and Dominance in Bihar,” 123.

  60. Janata Dal would later split, with Lalu Prasad Yadav forming a new party known as Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD), which became his personal fiefdom.

  61. It is difficult to overstate the heightened insecurity upper-caste e
lites began to feel once Lalu Yadav came to power. From their perspective, their once-dominant position in society was in danger of total extinction. Lalu himself used grand rhetoric to deepen these feelings of concern, once confiding to a journalist, “The upper castes want to get rid of me, but I will sit on their chests for another twenty years, . . . I have changed things forever. I have given them [the backward castes] a sense of self-respect. Nobody can stop them.” See Sankarshan Thakur, Subaltern Saheb: Bihar and the Making of Laloo Yadav (New Delhi: Picador, 2006), 108.

  62. Santhosh Mathew and Mick Moore, “State Incapacity by Design: Understanding the Bihar Story,” IDS Working Paper 366, May 2011, http://www.ids.ac.uk/files/dmfile/Wp366.pdf (accessed May 4, 2013).

  63. As one longtime observer of Bihar noted, the state lacks “an institutional memory of good governance.” Vandita Mishra, “The Long Road to Nootan Bihar,” Seminar 620 (April 2011), http://www.india-seminar.com/2011/620/620_vandita_mishra.htm (accessed October 7, 2012).

  64. Thakur, Subaltern Saheb.

  65. While some refer to Lalu’s reign as “Jungle Raj,” others have labeled it “Yadav Raj,” due to the fact that Lalu’s caste-men were seen to have benefited disproportionately from his 15-year reign.

  66. Raj Kamal Jha and Farzand Ahmed, “Laloo’s Magic,” India Today, April 30, 1995.

  67. Varghese K. George and Mammen Matthew, “Changing the Political Context,” Hindustan Times, November 25, 2010.

  68. Chinki Sinha, “The Battle to Tame Bihar,” Open, December 22, 2012.

  69. Nitish Kumar’s willingness to tolerate candidates with criminal reputations is borne out by the quantitative, as well as the qualitative, evidence. See Upadhyay, “How Nitish Plays the Caste Card”; Sinha, “Don of Mokama”; Sinha, Nitish Kumar and the Rise of Bihar; and Jeffrey Witsoe, “Bihar,” in Atul Kohli and Prerna Singh, eds., Routledge Handbook of Indian Politics (New York: Routledge, 2013), 304.

  70. Peter Foster, “Burgeoning Lawlessness in India’s Wild East,” Telegraph (United Kingdom), March 19, 2007.

  71. An article in the October 31, 2010, Patna edition of the Times of India roughly corroborated this estimate, stating that there were 95,000 Bhumihars in Mokama out of an electorate of 215,000.

  72. For their part, Mokama’s Bhumihars lament that the annual submersion leads to land grabbing by backward communities. Indeed, they remain deeply concerned that their traditional position of superiority is eroding. This sense of insecurity over status stems from the changing patterns of dominance that have swept Bihar—and, indeed, much of north India—over the past two decades. In Mokama, many members of the Bhumihar community resent the 15-year reign of Lalu Prasad Yadav and the social empowerment of the backward castes—empowerment that they perceived came at their expense.

  73. In years past, Anant Singh has been locked in a fierce rivalry with fellow Bhumihar strongman, Suraj Bhan Singh. In 2010, Suraj Bhan did not contest elections directly but rather backed his sister-in-law. Suraj Bhan was largely a nonentity in the election campaign.

  74. According to approximations based on the 2001 census, the literacy rate in Mokama was around 50 percent. This was roughly on par with the Bihar average but well below the rate for Patna district as a whole (64 percent), which is close to the all-India average.

  75. Although Anant Singh did file an affidavit with the Election Commission of India before the 2010 Bihar assembly election, his submission was missing a declaration of pending criminal cases. The affidavit states these cases are listed in an annexure, but that annexure was either omitted or not posted online. Singh’s 2015 election affidavit, however, discloses 15 pending cases, with 2 dating back as far as 1979. In total, Singh faced 13 murder-related charges. At least 6 of these cases predated the 2010 election.

  76. Sinha, “Guns, Dance & Power Play”; Sinha, “Don of Mokama.”

  77. Das, “All Crime and No Punishment”; Sinha, “Don of Mokama”; “MLA Arrested after Attack on Journalists,” Hindu, November 2, 2007.

  78. Anant Singh seems to openly embrace his likeness to the stereotypical (and sometimes sympathetic) Bollywood villain. Indeed, the mutual reinforcement between Bollywood and politics helps to explain why Anant Singh’s “tough” image might help, rather than harm, him. In fact, there is a well-known tradition in Indian politics of film stars contesting office and politicians imitating the imagery of film stars. See Sara Dickey, “The Politics of Adulation: Cinema and the Production of Politicians in South India,” Journal of Asian Studies 52, no. 3 (May 1993): 340–72.

  79. “Anant or Lalan, Only a Criminal Will Represent Mokameh,” Financial Express, November 18, 2005.

  80. Landlords in many historical and contemporaneous cases have also overseen powerful networks of patronage and control. See, inter alia, James A. Robinson and Jean-Marie Baland, “Land and Power: Theory and Evidence from Chile,” American Economic Review 98, no. 5 (2008): 1737–65. Landlords in Mokama still claim some influence or control (exactly how much is subject to debate) over the vote of those they employ—typically agrarian laborers who are from the lower and backward castes.

  81. Across Bihar the upper-caste blowback to calls for further land reform, such as granting sharecroppers legal rights, was swift. See Rajesh Chakrabarti, Bihar Breakthrough: The Turnaround of a Beleaguered State (New Delhi: Rupa, 2013).

  82. Indeed, many residents suggested that even Lalu Prasad Yadav had previously courted Anant Singh in order to win elections in eastern Patna district. See Das, “All Crime and No Punishment.”

  83. Nitish Kumar is said to have believed that rejecting Anant Singh would endanger his prospects in his home turf of Barh (the area that borders Mokama to the west and where Anant Singh’s ancestral village is located). See Upadhyay, “How Nitish Plays the Caste Card”; Sinha, “Don of Mokama”; Sinha, Nitish Kumar and the Rise of Bihar; and Charu Kartikeya, “Python, Murder & High Drama: Arresting Don Anant Singh Could Harm Nitish,” Catch News, June 27, 2015, http://www.catchnews.com/india-news/pythons-murders-and-high-drama-how-the-arrest-of-don-anant-singh-could-harm-nitish-kumar-1435332051.html (accessed November 14, 2015).

  84. “Both Nitish, Laloo Courted Anant,” Tehelka, December 1, 2007.

  85. Sinha, “Guns, Dance & Power Play.”

  86. For instance, Anant Singh is believed to have close links with the Ranvir Sena, the leading Bhumihar caste army operating in central Bihar. According to scholar Ashwani Kumar, the Ranvir Sena operates as a surrogate political arm for many politicians in the region affiliated with the ruling JD(U) alliance. Upper-caste candidates with serious criminal records like Anant Singh often cast themselves in the role of “community warriors” who contest elections to protect the interests of their own community. Of course, this appeals to many of the Sena’s true believers. See Ashwani Kumar, Community Warriors: State, Peasants and Caste Armies in Bihar (New Delhi: Anthem Press, 2008).

  87. Sinha, “Don of Mokama.”

  88. According to the 2009 National Election Study conducted by CSDS, roughly two-thirds of voters who had an opinion stated that politicians could rarely or never learn how they voted. See Center for the Study of Developing Societies, India National Election Study 2009 (New Delhi: CSDS, 2009).

  89. Sinha, “Don of Mokama.”

  90. Author’s calculations based on data on judicial pendency from the National Judicial Data Grid. Data are available at: ecourts.gov.in/services/njdg/index.php.

  91. One journalistic account reaches an identical conclusion in his reporting on the “dons” of Uttar Pradesh. Describing their allure, the reporter Ashish Khetan writes: “His criminal record doesn’t matter to the man on the street. Because, one, there is no conflict between his illegal activities and the needs of the poor and the deprived who make up his vote bank. Two, he often carries out his criminal activities outside his constituency. The cases of murder or physical assault that he faces on home turf mostly relate to political or gang rivalry and do not involve the common man.” Ashish Khetan, “Lives of the Rich and Infamous,
” Tehelka, October 2, 2004.

  92. A similar point is made in Lucia Michelutti, “Wrestling with (Body) Politics: Understanding Muscular Political Styles in North India,” in Pamela Price and Arild Ruud, eds., Power and Influence in South Asia: Bosses, Lords, and Captains (Delhi: Routledge, 2010).

  93. Kumar, Community Warriors, 39.

  94. Atul Kohli, Democracy and Discontent: India’s Growing Crisis of Governability (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991).

  95. Ibid., 235.

  96. Chauchard, “Unpacking Ethnic Preferences.”

  97. Witsoe, “Territorial Democracy,” 65.

  98. Ibid.

  99. Ibid. It is no coincidence that criminal politicians are often referred to as “protectors,” “guardians,” or even “saviors.”

  100. See, inter alia, “Ramanand to Fight on RJD Ticket from Danapur,” Times of India, May 9, 2002.

  101. In the 2000s, Ramanand Yadav briefly joined the BJP and even contested against Lalu Prasad Yadav in the 2000 Bihar state assembly election, though he lost the Danapur constituency to his onetime political mentor.

  102. According to the affidavit Ramanand Yadav submitted to the Election Commission ahead of the 2010 assembly election, he faced three pending criminal cases.

  103. At the time of the 2010 Bihar assembly election, Sunil Pandey faced 23 separate criminal cases according to the affidavit he filed before the Election Commission. Both Anant Singh and Sunil Pandey were members of the JD(U), Nitish Kumar’s party. According to one account, “As long as the dons did not break party discipline, Nitish allowed them to be in the JD(U).” Indeed, Kumar renominated both of these men in 2010. See Sinha, Nitish Kumar and the Rise of Bihar, 254. One journalist was less charitable in his assessment: “Nitish had no qualms in taking advantage of Sunil Pandey’s criminal antecedents to consolidate his own position.” See Upadhyay, “How Nitish Kumar Plays the Caste Card.”