The nature of politics has changed decisively in the last few decades. Media based campaigns are becoming more important. Election expenses have soared and financial power has become as important as old style door to door campaigning. From the use of pure muscle power in the earlier decades, we now see large funds being used to entice voters. From booth capturing we are moving towards vote buying.

Businessmen earlier shied away from politics, but now many of them are entering the political fray. The public perception is that nearly all political parties are run autocratically by a single charismatic leader. The role of the party in turn seems more important than that of the individual candidate. Manifestos are becoming blatantly populist and there is a blurring of ideology across parties.

Vested interests

Many castes, religions, industry lobbies, NGOs and multinationals are becoming more and more aggressive in pursuing their interests. The stakes for political parties are very high today because of the sheer amount of resources required to fight elections.

The opportunities for making money after coming to power are much greater today. Public faith and respect for politicians is very low and recent surveys show that they score less than two on a five point scale. Today political power is going after money.

The political party is at the heart of this process and there is clearly a need for political party reforms. Unfortunately, political parties are the least regulated in our country. This is in sharp contrast to other leading democracies in the world.

They have laws to regulate the functioning of political parties, to ensure inner party democracy, transparency in political party funding, limits on donations to political parties, and so on. Even in India there have been several reports calling for these reforms. The Law Commission headed by a Supreme Court Judge, the Election Commission, and the National Commission to Review the Working of the Constitution, headed by a former Chief Justice of the Supreme Court have all given excellent recommendations for political party reforms. But nothing has been done so far.

Bur recently we saw some progress. The Central Information Commission (CIC) overseeing the Right to Information Act gave a landmark ruling on April 29, 2008 in response to an application by the Association for Democratic Reforms. The Income Tax authorities had earlier denied this information and rejected the first appeal. However, the CIC directed the Income Tax authorities to make public the IT returns of political parties in the second appeal. In its 24 page ruling, it cited the recommendations of the three bodies mentioned earlier, several court judgments, precedents from other countries, and the RTI Act itself to explain its order.

Far reaching effects

The operational part of its order says “The Commission directs that the public authorities holding such information shall provide the Income Tax Returns of the political parties to the appellant.” The implication goes far beyond the applicant, and this information is now publicly available to all citizens.

Both the Income Tax authorities and the political parties were united in their stand that such information should not be made public. Reasons for non-disclosure included tortuous legal arguments, saying the appellant was frivolous and of malafide intent, and declaring that disclosure was not in public interest. The only exceptions were the CPI and the CPM who said they had no objection to this disclosure. The Information Officers from Jammu and Kashmir and from Assam however did provide the IT returns of the J&K People’s Democratic Party and the Asom Gana Parishad.

The implications of this ruling are far reaching. With an increasingly literate population and the growing media presence, the functioning of political parties will come under greater scrutiny. Fudging of accounts will become much more difficult. The matter may not end so soon if the political parties challenge the CIC ruling in the Supreme Court. How events unfold will have a great impact on the kind of democracy we will see in the future.
(The writer is Professor, Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore.)