When Crime Pays

by Milan Vaishnav

  30. “Brij Bhushan Shares Space with Advani and Dawood in CBI Files,” Times of India, May 4, 2014.

  31. Ibid. According to his 2014 Lok Sabha election affidavit, Sharan Singh faced two pending cases in which charges had already been framed.

  32. Sharma, “In Uttar Pradesh, Big Dons Aren’t Afraid.”

  33. “I am not Gandhi, I am a Mafia Man: SP MP,” News18 video, September 30, 2012, http://www.ibnlive.com/videos/politics/sp-mp-sot-512775.html (accessed April 20, 2016).

  34. Charu Sudan Kasturi, “In Bellary, Bisleri Bath Is Bottled and Modi Is Risky,” Telegraph (Calcutta), April 17, 2014.

  35. Johnson T. A., “Despite ‘Taint,’ Sreeramulu Hopes to Win by Mining Modi Name,” Indian Express, April 11, 2014.

  36. Frank Jack Daniel, “In Indian Mining Town, Nexus between Politics and Crime Plays Out,” Reuters, April 22, 2014, http://www.reuters.com/article/us-india-election-crime-idUSBREA3L0DQ20140422 (accessed April 10, 2016); Sriramulu disclosed eight pending cases in his 2014 Lok Sabha election affidavit. In a 2012 case involving an attempted murder charge, a Karnataka judge had already framed charges against the politician.

  37. Mahesh Kulkarni, “Why BJP Bets on Sreeramulu despite Sushma’s Opposition,” Business Standard, March 17, 2014.

  38. Vichare declared 13 pending criminal cases in his 2014 Lok Sabha election affidavit. In his 2009 election affidavit, he disclosed 11 ongoing cases. One media report claimed that at least 24 cases had been registered against Vichare in Maharashtra’s Thane district over the course of the past 25 years. See “24 Cases in 25 Years against MP Rajan Vichare, Who Force Fed Maharashtra Sadan Staffer,” DNA, July 24, 2014.

  39. Thomas Blom Hansen, Wages of Violence: Naming and Identity in Postcolonial Bombay (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001), 111.

  40. “Rajan Vichare Wins Hands Down in Criminal Cases Race,” Fourth Estate (blog), April 12, 2014, http://web.archive.org/web/20141029234103/http://fourthestateonline.in/?p=1430 (accessed April 21, 2016).

  41. Sandip Roy and Lakshmi Chaudhry, “Shiv Sena MP Force Feeds Fasting Muslim: A Curious Case of Communal Chapati,” Firstpost, July 24, 2014, http://www.firstpost.com/politics/shiv-sena-mp-force-feeds-fasting-muslim-a-curious-case-of-communal-chapati-1630795.html (accessed April 20, 2016).

  42. Alok Deshpande, “Shiv Sena MP Vichare Faces 8 Police Cases,” Hindu, July 23, 2014 (accessed April 20, 2016).

  43. According to the affidavit Taslimuddin submitted to the Election Commission in advance of the 2014 Lok Sabha election, he faced four ongoing criminal cases. In two cases, charged had already been framed.

  44. Swati Chaturvedi, “Criminal on Bail in Manmohan Ministry,” Tribune, May 26, 2004; Bhuvaneshwar Prasad, “Taslimuddin, the Undisputed Leader of Seemanchal Region,” Times of India, October 20, 2010.

  45. “Status Will Go Down If Charge Lower than Murder Slapped: Adhir,” Press Trust of India, April 14, 2014, http://www.business-standard.com/article/pti-stories/status-will-go-down-if-charge-lower-than-murder-slapped-adhir-114041400748_1.html (accessed November 15, 2015).

  46. Susenjit Guha, “Bengal PCC Chief Faces Criminal Charges,” Sunday Guardian, February 15, 2014.

  47. Affidavit submitted by Vitthalbhai Radadiya to the Election Commission of India in advance of the 2014 Lok Sabha election. See also Rohit Bhan, “Elections 2014: The Tainted Candidates of Porbandar,” NDTV, April 25, 2014, http://www.ndtv.com/elections-news/elections-2014-the-tainted-candidates-of-porbandar-558822 (accessed November 15, 2015).

  48. Rohit Bhan, “Who Is MP with a Gun, Vitthalbhai Radadiya?” NDTV, October 12, 2012, http://www.ndtv.com/people/who-is-mp-with-a-gun-vitthalbhai-radadiya-501616 (accessed July 10, 2014).

  49. “MP, Who Pulled out Gun at Toll Plaza, Won’t Apologise; Refused Bail,” NDTV, October 17, 2012, http://www.ndtv.com/india-news/mp-who-pulled-out-gun-at-toll-plaza-wont-apologise-refused-bail-502058 (accessed July 10, 2014).

  50. One advantage of the present study is that it relies on data covering all candidates who stand for election, not only the eventual winners. This is not true of all studies in the political selection literature.

  51. One recent study of party selection in the Indian context used interviews with senior officials across major political parties to gain a better understanding of their deliberative process when it comes to selecting party candidates. See Adnan Farooqui and E. Sridharan, “Incumbency, Internal Processes and Renomination in Indian Parties,” Commonwealth and Comparative Politics 52, no. 1 (January 2014): 78–108.

  52. One innovative example is a study by a researcher who successfully convinced political parties in Benin to randomize clientelist platforms in a real (rather than simulated) election setting. See Leonard Wantchekon, “Clientelism and Voting Behavior: Evidence from a Field Experiment in Benin,” World Politics 55, no. 3 (April 2003): 399–422.

  53. Carlos Pereira and Marcos Andre Melo, “Reelecting Corrupt Incumbents in Exchange for Public Goods: Rouba Mas Faz in Brazil,” Latin American Research Review 51, no. 1 (Spring 2016): 88–115.

  54. Pablo Fernández-Vázquez, Pablo Barberá, and Gonzalo Rivero, “Rooting Out Corruption or Rooting for Corruption? The Heterogeneous Electoral Consequences of Scandals,” Political Science Research and Methods 4, no. 2 (May 2016): 379–97.

  55. Devesh Kapur and Milan Vaishnav, “Quid Pro Quo: Builders, Politicians, and Election Finance in India,” Center for Global Development Working Paper 276, March 29, 2013, http://www.cgdev.org/sites/default/files/Kapur_Vaishnav_election_finance_India-FINAL-0313.pdf (accessed April 1, 2013).

  56. Daniel Gingerich, “Brokered Politics in Brazil: An Empirical Analysis,” Quarterly Journal of Political Science 9, no. 3 (September 2014): 269–300.

  57. Mariana Escobar, “Paramilitary Power and ‘Parapolitics’: Subnational Patterns of Criminalization of Politicians and Politicization of Criminals in Colombia” (PhD diss., London School of Economics and Political Science, 2013).

  58. International Crisis Group, “Cutting the Links between Crime and Local Politics: Colombia’s 2011 Elections,” Latin America Report No. 37, July 25, 2011, http://www.crisisgroup.org/en/regions/latin-america-caribbean/andes/colombia/37-cutting-the-links-between-crime-and-local-politics-colombias-2011-elections.aspx (accessed September 1, 2014).

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

  60. According to one editorial in a local newspaper, when it comes to the criminalization of politics in West Bengal, “The only change that has come under the new regime is that the [Trinamool Congress’s] writ has replaced that of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) at all levels of administration.” See “State of Decay,” Telegraph (Calcutta), July 2, 2014.

  61. Soudhriti Bhabani, “Political Goondaism in Bengal: Was, Is, and Will Be,” India Today, June 11, 2013. One Trinamool Congress MLA, confronted by a party worker over the party’s decision to induct a suspected criminal syndicate leader previously associated with the rival Communist Party, justified the move by saying: “The party cannot be run with writers and bearded intellectuals. Bhojai [the controversial inductee] is our party’s asset. The decision to take him in the party was taken at the highest level.” Furthermore, the MLA argued, the presence of a feared goonda was a necessary evil that would help neutralize the threat posed by the Left: “To fight Pakistan, I am bringing in China. Do you have any objection? With China, I will take on Pakistan. If China swallows me up, that’s my concern.” See Subrata Nagchoudhury, “We Cannot Run a Party with Intellectuals: TMC MLA on Induction of Ex-CPM Goon,” Indian Express, January 29, 2011; Aniruddha Ghoshal, “In the Boomtown, ‘Syndicates’ Hold Key to Pole Position,” Indian Express, October 2, 2015.

  62. Ruchi Chaturvedi, “‘Somehow It Happened’: Violence, Culpability, and the Hindu Nationalist Community,” Cultural Anthropology 26, no. 3 (August 2011): 342–43; Paul Zacharia, “Conduct of a Perfect Murder,” Caravan, June 1, 2012.

  63. Ruch
i Chaturvedi, “North Kerala and Democracy’s Violent Demands,” Economic and Political Weekly 47, no. 42 (October 20, 2012): 21–24.

  64. Ibid.

  65. Nahomi Ichino, “Essays on Ethnic Diversity and Political Instability in Sub-Saharan Africa” (PhD diss., Stanford University, 2008).

  66. Daniel Jordan Smith, A Culture of Corruption: Everyday Deception and Popular Discontent in Nigeria (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008).

  67. Omobolaji Ololade Olarinmoye, “Godfathers, Political Parties and Electoral Corruption in Nigeria,” African Journal of Political Science and International Relations 2, no. 4 (December 2008): 67.

  68. Richard L. Sklar, Ebere Onwudiwe, and Darren Kew, “Nigeria: Completing Obasanjo’s Legacy,” Journal of Democracy 17, no. 3 (July 2006): 100–115.

  69. Smith, Culture of Corruption, 122.

  70. Candidates and godfathers often collude in the deployment of thugs—sometimes called “area boys”—around election time to mobilize or suppress turnout, as circumstances warrant. Daniel Smith describes such collusion in fascinating detail. Before a local election, godfathers, politicians, and their hired goons would meet “secretly” to plot how they would deploy their “muscle” during elections. The politicians would actually intentionally leak news of the meeting so as to intimidate rival factions. See Smith, Culture of Corruption, 121–25.

  71. Human Rights Watch, Criminal Politicians: Violence, “Godfathers,” and Corruption in Nigeria (New York: Human Rights Watch, 2007).

  72. Colin Clarke, “Politics, Violence and Drugs in Kingston, Jamaica,” Bulletin of Latin American Research 25, no. 3 (June 2006): 420–40.

  73. Clarke, “Politics, Violence and Drugs in Kingston, Jamaica.”

  74. Obika Gray, “Badness-Honour,” in Anthony Harriott, ed., Understanding Crime in Jamaica: New Challenges for Public Policy (Kingston: University of the West Indies Press, 2003), 13–48.

  75. Obika Gray writes of Jamaica’s political dynamics: “An important claim to personal authority now relied on a capacity to deploy militant social identities that would cause others to pause and possibly concede respect.” See Gray, “Badness-Honour,” 19–20.

  76. Ibid., 35.

  77. Harriott, Understanding Crime in Jamaica.

  78. Robert Hislope, “Crime and Honor in a Weak State: Paramilitary Forces and Violence in Macedonia,” Problems of Post-Communism 51, no. 3 (May-June 2004): 18–26.

  79. Robert Hislope, “Shaking Off the Shakedown State? Crime and Corruption in Post-Ohrid Macedonia,” Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars Meeting Report 271, February 26, 2003, https://www.wilsoncenter.org/publication/271-shaking-the-shakedown-state-crime-and-corruption-post-ohrid-macedonia (accessed July 16, 2015).

  80. Huma Yusuf, Conflict Dynamics in Karachi (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Institute for Peace, 2012).

  81. Ibid.

  82. Ibid.

  83. Olarinmoye, “Godfathers, Political Parties and Electoral Corruption in Nigeria.”

  84. Clarke, “Politics, Violence and Drugs in Kingston, Jamaica.”

  85. Subrata K. Mitra, Power, Protest and Participation: Local Elites and Development in India (New York: Routledge, 2002).

  86. D. N., “Landlords as Extensions of the State,” Economic and Political Weekly 24, no. 4 (January 28, 1989): 179–83.

  87. Charles Tilly, “War Making and State Making as Organized Crime,” in Peter B. Evans, Dietrich Rueschemeyer, and Theda Skocpol, eds., Bringing the State Back In (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 169–91.

  88. In some cases, the criminals who became locally dominant political forces once served in the employ of powerful rural landlords propped up by the British Raj.

  89. 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.

  90. John T. Sidel, “Bossism and Democracy in the Philippines, Thailand, and Indonesia: Towards an Alternative Framework for the Study of ‘Local Strongmen,’” in John Harriss, Kristian Stokke, and Olle Törnquist, eds., Politicising Democracy: The New Local Politics of Democratisation (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005).

  91. Andrew Dawson, “The Social Determinants of the Rule of Law: A Comparison of Jamaica and Barbados,” World Development 45 (2013): 314–24.

  92. The Money, Politics and Transparency project, a joint initiative of Global Integrity, the Sunlight Foundation, and the Electoral Integrity Project, has created an interactive web portal with cross-country indicators of political finance. For more information, visit https://data.moneypoliticstransparency.org/.

  93. Nicholas Carnes and Noam Lupu, “Do Voters Dislike Working-Class Candidates? Voter Biases and the Descriptive Underrepresentation of the Working Class,” American Political Science Review (forthcoming); Nicholas Carnes and Noam Lupu, “Rethinking the Comparative Perspective on Class and Representation: Evidence from Latin America,” American Journal of Political Science 59, no. 1 (January 2015): 1–18.

  94. Nicholas Carnes, White-Collar Government: The Hidden Role of Class in Economic Policy Making (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013).

  95. Former World Bank president Robert Zoellick summed up this consensus in a 2011 speech: “Our message to our clients, whatever their political system, is that you cannot have successful development without good governance. . . . We [the World Bank] will encourage governments to publish information, enact Freedom of Information Acts, open up their budget and procurement processes, build independent audit functions.” See World Bank, “Citizen Empowerment, Governance Key for Middle East-Zoellick,” April 6, 2011, http://www.worldbank.org/en/news/press-release/2011/04/06/citizen-empowerment-governance-key-middle-east-zoellick (accessed January 3, 2015).

  96. Matthew S. Winters, Paul Testa, and Mark M. Frederickson, “Using Field Experiments to Understand Information as an Antidote to Corruption,” in Danila Serra and Leonard Wantchekon, eds., New Advances in Experimental Research on Corruption, vol. 15 of Research in Experimental Economics (London: Emerald Group Publishing Limited, 2012), 213–46.

  97. The seminal study in this regard is Anthony Downs, An Economic Theory of Democracy (New York: HarperCollins, 1957).

  98. Two studies, in particular, helped make the case that the identity of politicians matters both for electoral reasons as well as subsequent policy outcomes. See Timothy Besley and Stephen Coate, “An Economic Model of Representative Democracy,” Quarterly Journal of Economics 112, no. 1 (February 1997): 85–114; and Martin Osborne and Al Slivinski, “A Model of Political Competition with Citizen-Candidates,” Quarterly Journal of Economics 111, no. 1 (February 1996): 65–96.

  99. A study by Abhijit Banerjee and Rohini Pande does explicitly look at how voter “ethnicization,” or the preference for politicians from one’s own ethnic group, produces political corruption. However, the study assumes that all citizens would like “high quality” or honest, noncorrupt representatives but often end up with “low quality,” corrupt representatives because their preference for co-ethnic candidates overwhelms concerns about probity, etc. Although insightful, it does not quite capture what value added criminality provides over co-ethnicity. See Abhijit Banerjee and Rohini Pande, “Parochial Politics: Ethnic Preferences and Politician Corruption,” unpublished paper, Harvard Kennedy School, 2007, http://scholar.harvard.edu/files/rpande/files/parochial_politics_0.pdf?m=1412891482 (accessed April 10, 2016).

  100. Simon Chauchard, “Ethnic Preferences and Candidate Quality: A Vignette Experiment in North India,” unpublished paper, Department of Government, Dartmouth College, 2015, http://www.simonchauchard.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/Chauchard_crim_091414.pdf (accessed April 11, 2016).

  101. Francis Fukuyama, Political Order and Political Decay: From the Industrial Revolution to the Globalization of Democracy (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2014), 37.

  102. Madhav Khosla, The Indian Constitution (New Delhi: Oxford University Press,
2012), xii.

  APPENDIX A

  1. In addition, the database contains information on 226 members of the Rajya Sabha, as of 2010.

  2. Hand checking was ever more vital because a common act of political treachery in India is for an underdog party to run a candidate with the same name as the favored candidate in order to confuse voters.

  3. To my knowledge, there have been relatively few known instances of candidates failing to disclose or making false disclosures about their criminal antecedents. In one case, involving a local politician in Tamil Nadu, the Supreme Court ruled that concealing one’s criminal antecedents was grounds for immediate electoral disqualification. See “Declaration of Criminal Antecedents Must for Candidates: Supreme Court,” Indian Express, February 6, 2015.

  4. Government of India, Law Commission of India, Electoral Disqualifications, Report No. 244 (New Delhi: Law Commission of India, February 2014), http://lawcommissionofindia.nic.in/reports/report244.pdf (accessed April 22, 2016).

  5. The coding strategy I employ here is similar to the one used in Eric C. C. Chang, Miriam A. Golden, and Seth J. Hill, “Legislative Malfeasance and Political Accountability,” World Politics 62, no. 2 (April 2010): 177–220.

  6. Two examples illustrate why it is essential to code individual criminal charges. In May 2011, Congress MP Rahul Gandhi was arrested after participating in a peaceful demonstration to raise awareness about farmers’ rights. Gandhi was charged with violating IPC sections 144 (joining an unlawful assembly with a “weapon of offence”) and 151 (knowingly joining an assembly after it has been ordered to disperse). Gandhi’s protest was nothing more than an attempt to woo support before elections. See “Rahul Arrested amid High Drama, Released,” Hindu, May 12, 2011. Contrast this to the case of Shekhar Tiwari, an MLA from the same state, charged with extorting and killing a bureaucrat who refused to donate money to the MLA’s party. Tiwari—charged with violating sections 302 (murder), 342 (wrongful confinement), and 364 (kidnapping)—was sentenced to life in prison. See Man Mohan Rai, “BSP MLA, Shekhar Tiwari Gets Life Imprisonment in PWD Engineer Murder Case,” Economic Times, May 7, 2011.