RPA: Elections Commissions Campaign Rules; India’s position on Palestine, Syria

Current Affairs

Contents


Limited finance limits democracy

Opinion based concept. You should try to establish an opinion backed by reasonable arguments.

Question: Electoral corruption in India is a product of the institutions and systems that we have put in place. Analyze critically.

  • India’s campaign finance rules are violated repeatedly and universally.
  • Atal Bihari Vajpayee once said, “Every legislator starts his career with the lie of the false election return he files.”

Restrictions that are impractical

  • There are many restrictions on resources a candidate can deploy, such as the number of vehicles that can be used.
  • In terms of the time for campaigning, the period per constituency currently stands at just a few weeks.
  • These restrictions are impractical and cannot be strictly enforced.
  • The restrictive rules create deeper problems for representation and democracy at large.
  • By relaxing these rules, the Election Commission will be able to increase compliance, transparency and representation in Indian elections.

So why these restrictions?

  • The primary objective behind the EC’s visibly restrictive campaign finance rules is to level the playing field.
  • EC assumes that a wealthier candidate is not only more likely than a poor candidate to win the election, but also less likely to accurately represent his or her constituency’s interests.

RPA and EC’s authority over restrictive campaign rules


  • The authority of the EC comes from the Representation of People Act, Chapter VIII, which states, “the total of the said expenditure shall not exceed such amount as may be prescribed.”
  • The Representation of People Act, however, does not say what the limit should be and why it should be so low.
  • The Act is silent on whether it is the job of the Commission or the state to level the playing field among candidates and parties.
  • The Indian state has chosen to interpret the Act as giving it the right to set unrealistically low limits to create a level playing field.


Consequences of restrictive rules

  • Due to the official limits, candidates rely almost completely on unaccounted cash from undisclosed donors, which essentially renders all the other transparency initiatives of the EC redundant.
  • Once in office, the candidates must find ways to repay their debts to these donors, and often do so by favoring them through policy changes or resource allocation.
  • Thus the restrictive campaign finance rules infuse corruption into day-to-day politics.

Limited resources and less informed voters

  • The low limits on campaign finance have a large impact on the very essence of representation.
  • For voters to make an informed choice, it is imperative that candidates and parties get their message across to each voter.
  • For voters to make the right choices, they need to understand and respond to the candidates’ policy positions and sometimes interact with the candidates themselves.
  • With the current rules, a law-abiding candidate would not have the resources (financial or otherwise) nor the time to make that happen.
  • This implies lower levels of representation and consequently greater arbitrariness in voting decisions, both of which are harmful to democratic accountability and democracy at large.
  • Politicians then turn to middlemen to mobilize votes with the all too obvious negative consequences.

What can be done?

  • To reduce the number of violations, the spending limits should, at the least, be closer to the actual amount candidates need to campaign effectively, and that would require an exponential (and not incremental) increase.
Or
  • Enforce strict laws to catch and severely punish the violator (most unlikely).

What is Descriptive representation? (Relevant for PSIR optional only)

  • ‘Descriptive representation,’ assumes that effective representation requires shared socio-economic characteristics.
  • It assumes that the rich cannot represent the poor.
  • The simple idea of descriptive representation does violence to the relationship between the voters and the politicians.

India’s current position on Palestine

  • India wants an amicable solution to the Israel-Palestinian conflict.
  • India supports a negotiated solution resulting in a sovereign, independent, viable and united state of Palestine, with East Jerusalem as its capital
Recent change in attitude
  • Narendra Modi government is trying to pursue stronger ties with Israel.
  • In July, India, for the first time, abstained from voting on a resolution on Palestine adopted at the U.N. Human Rights Council that called for accountability by parties involved in last year’s conflict in Gaza.
Mahatma Gandhi’s quote
  • “Palestine belongs to the Arabs in the same sense that England belongs to the English and France belongs to the French.”
  • Since independence, India always sympathized with Palestinian cause.
  • It is only recently that India has moved away from Palestine and got closer to Israel because of its defense needs.

India’s position on Syrian crisis

  • “There’s no military solution to the Syrian crisis. The long-term solution should be political”, says India.
  • India backs Russian military involvement in Syria, but calls for a long-term political solution.

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