A democracy demolition job, carried out silently

Electoral Bonds legalised a route for political parties to secretly funnel unaccounted money from India and abroad into their coffers. But, no one is punished. No one expected they would be. We have been trained by experience to expect so little of democracy and its institutions.

An unsigned note found its way into a government file. No one can tell who had written it. Or who had put it in the file within the secure confines of Union Finance Ministry. That anonymous letter set off a series of events to hollow electoral democracy. The note proposed an Electoral Bonds Scheme. Within months, India would have one. A legalised route for political parties to secretly funnel unaccounted money from India and abroad into their coffers. Mostly, as we now know, to the party that held command, the BJP.

An already rickety edifice of electoral funding in India would be further hollowed out. This time around, without even the pretension of shame. Almost with joy.

Sardar Patel had once called them the ‘steel frame’ of India – the ones who are meant to hold the structure of democracy in place – when others attempted to drill a hole in it. The officials, our public servants. They melted. Like plastic to fire.

Dozens of them signed on to serve the anonymous note. Very few, it was evident in government files, made effete attempts to seed doubts. They gave up easy and soon enough. Everyone began to dress the note up with hundreds of pages of approvals. Elegies for democracy were being penned. With everyone pretending it was sonnets extolling the virtues of malevolence.  

Businesses and the rich would, under cover of darkness, now shovel money into Indian governance. Invest in parties and politicians without fear. Particularly those in power. And reap their returns in due time. All legitimate. All legal. All so beautiful. 

It cannot be said if anyone who fed the beast felt remorse. Files rarely disclose emotions. It can be said with certainty that they knew what the beast would devour in time. 

This was how it was done. No loud bang. No large metal clangs. No gongs. Silent ball pens and correspondence in small print. 

The checks and balances the founding fathers of the Constitution had put in place were dismantled. Nobody would hear of it being done. It was done within the confines of closed, sound-proof rooms. With hundreds of quick signatures on files. Each working like a nick to the body. Bleeding a weak democracy.

And when the body polity had been well-mutilated, it was presented to the people as fait accompli. Darkness was celebrated as a clean bright new day in Indian democracy. Not that Indian democracy had been doing wonderfully well on this count to begin with. Crony capitalism, large swaths of unaccounted for cash and regulatory capture of governance had been the norm. But, now, what was done with shame would be done unabashedly. What was illegal earlier was the law now. 

If there were a thousand local and regional corrupt deities that Indian politics had created, the new religion would goad everyone to pay obeisance to one lord wanting to be above all others. An unplanned formalisation of economy had been set off by a mismanaged GST. A very well-planned formalisation of corruption would now be the norm in electoral funding. It promised efficiency. Single window clearances. 

A few were prescient. They went to the judiciary. Where else would they go. There the petition sat for over five years. There was silence again. The petitioners pleaded for urgency. For the checks and balances of the Indian Constitution to kick in. They hoped.

Meanwhile, thousands of crores began pouring into the coffers of political parties.

It all sounds rather exaggerated, does it? If I watched the television news channels and read the newspapers over these years, I would think so, too. Delusional and conspiratorial. If it had so happened, you would have heard of it, read of it. You would have watched it with shrill sounds and colours.

Were you to believe one retired adamant self-driven man in his seventies? A commodore he was called. Or a band of a few others who constantly crib while sitting in the capital? Or were you to instead believe the pin-drop silence of the media by and large?

After all, life had not been great to start with. Democracy had sputtered some growth, the powers-that-be had doled out more benefits. Given doles and taken the sand, the rock, the forest, the water from under and sold it to friends as capital to build an empire on. We had been trained to imagine this was the most one should expect.

Small pockets of the relatively privileged may have imagined and written about it, but large swathes of citizens had not got to dream of freedom from slavery under the public servant. The Constitution says it cannot be so. But Gods are not to be held accountable. Neither a hundred local deities, certainly not an omnipotent single one.

The economy chugged along. Rs 16,000-odd crores of bonds were not too big in quantum to get noticed in the fifth largest economy of the world. In volume, it was growing but yet not there. In effect, it had put the knife in the heart of Indian electoral democracy. 

Electoral funding at large would continue to be oiled with mostly unaccounted cash. MLAs and MPs bought with currency, or  quietened with raids and suspensions. Elections celebrated with a little more distribution of cash and kind. This money could be used to buy Facebook advertisements, YouTube spots. Payments that had to be made through banks, say to charter airplanes. 

It’s halted now. The anonymous note, the intent of its promoters and their actions held unconstitutional. Held to be an attempt to murder democracy. But, no one punished. No one expected they would be. We have been trained by experience to expect so little of democracy and its institutions. 

The powers that be express indignation. Not remorse. 

After all, the episode has taught us all what we knew to begin with.  

One, that almost no one comes out clean from the business end of Indian politics. Some just a little dirtier than others. Some just a little more brazen than others. 

Two, it does not necessarily need a big loud shotgun. A ruthless cut from a noiseless knife can make democracy bleed just as much.

(The writer is the founding editor of The Reporters’ Collective (www.reporters-collective.in))