The late awakening of the Supreme Court headed by the Chief Justice of India Dr. D Y Chandrachud in seeing the quid pro quo relationship between the donors and the ruling party under the Electoral Bonds Scheme 2017 is welcome. The CJI has been firm in getting all the details from the State Bank of India by March 21 since the SBI has been dilly -dallying to furnish the crucial info contained in the unique code of bond. Once it is furnished by the SBI without hiding any details, the identity of the bond purchaser and the political party beneficiary will be known.
So far, the bonds details available after Supreme Court drubbing to the SBI indicate that out of the total bonds valued at Rs. 16492 crore purchased between April 12, 2019 and February 15, 2024 (the day the Supreme Court declared the scheme as unconstitutional), the BJP got 8250 crore – meaning more than majority of the value. Apart, about Rs 4,000 crore worth bonds were supposed to be purchased from the beginning of 2018 till the Supreme Court’s order issued on April 12, 2019. BJP must have got a majority also from this amount.
Now as ordered by the Supreme Court, the SBI is scheduled to disclose the hidden alphanumeric code which will indicate the relationship between the purchaser and the beneficiary. So only after March 21, more details about the relationship of the purchasers and the beneficiary political parties, mainly the ruling party, will be known. The ruling government has been opposing this disclosure citing the confidentiality but the Supreme Court has been firm in getting every details and thus all pressure from the business chambers and the BJP have been ignored by the CJI.
There are some important indicators from the information so far revealed. It has been found that 21 companies bought bonds after they were raided by the central agencies. In the last ten years of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s rule, this has been a common feature. The central agencies have been used against the opposition leaders as also the companies. While the opposition leaders with something to hide, have been targeted to tame the rival parties, the focus on the companies is to ensure that the companies give funds to the coffers of the BJP. There are so many ways to oblige the ruling party BJP, the electoral bonds purchase is just one of them.
The elections to the 18th Lok Sabha have been declared in seven phases starting from April 19 and ending on June 1 this year. The results will be announced on June 4. The BJP will be spending huge amount for the 2024 polls, the amount collected from the Electoral Bonds scheme is only a small fraction of that, perhaps not even 10 per cent of its war chest. Its other sources mainly consist of the funds that come to the BJP war chest from overseas, mainly the USA and the diamond bourse in Antwerp which is dominated by the Gujarati Indians. Most of the brokers have close ties with the BJP and they are very rich. Apart, there are traditional traders and business houses which have been friendly to the BJP for decades.
The ground reality is that BJP and the Sangh Parivar outfit Viswa Hindu Parishad (VHP) have huge support base in Indian diaspora. The Congress support base is miniscule compared to them. The VHP and some other Hindu organisations control the management of the Hindu temples and trusts in US, UK, other parts of Europe as also recently in Middle East countries. The temples and the trusts have huge funds at their disposal. The BJP which claims itself as the biggest political party of the world with membership crossing over 10 crore, can always get facility of these funds through different routes. Since the BJP rules centre, there is no threat to the Party from the agencies when there are violations. The Congress is nowhere in this race with BJP for funds from overseas.
During the last assembly elections, the BJP leadership had offered a few legislators of the then ruling Telangana Rashtra Samiti Rs. 100 crore each to crossover to BJP. This created furore in the state capital Hyderabad and as usual the BJP leaders denied this. But, this type of move by BJP was nothing new. In fact, ever since the BJP came to power in 2014 under Prime Minister Narendra Modi, a deliberate policy of seeking funds from the top industrialists of the country to bolster BJP’s election kitty, has been followed and in the process, the top industry people have got concessions and contracts. It has been a win win situation for both to build conglomerate capitalism in India in partnership.
In the last five years since 2019 Lok Sabha polls, the BJP has spent crores of funds in destabilising state governments in Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh and bought MLA’s to form state governments in Goa and Manipur. The latest was in Maharashtra where it was clear as daylight that huge funds, some sources put it at more than Rs. 200 crores were mobilised in ensuring the defection of the Eknath Shinde group from the Shiv Sena led by Uddhav Thackeray. The Shinde-BJP government was formed finally.
The fear of the Indian corporates about raids by the central agencies is so overwhelming that even the young scions of the industrial families who are forward looking and do not like BJP, keep silent as they are not ready to risk the future of their companies just for the sake of some liberal personal thinking. The net result is that there is no level playing field in the elections. The BJP is in a position to spend more than ten times compared to its opposition rivals and the party has a war chest of a huge amount to engineer defections through offering massive funds, where that is needed.
In the last ten years of Modi rule, there has been an unusual concentration of wealth in the Indian corporate sector. A recent study suggests that India’s twenty most profitable firms generated 14 per cent of total corporate profits in 1990, 30 per cent in2010and 70 per cent in 2019. This means there was a steep jump in concentration of profits in few houses just during five years of Narendra Modi rule. This process must have accentuated in the last five years. The nexus between the ruling BJP and the leading industrial houses has further deepened before the 2024 Lok Sabha polls.
Now how these profits have been made? An analysis by the eminent economist Dr. Pranab Bardhan suggests that these profits were not due to innovations or productivity rises but mainly due to market power. This means that the Prime Minister made the Indian market favourable for these selected houses for making high profits. This is a part of quid pro quo between the top industry and the Modi government. This fits in with the RSS-BJP concept about New India based on Hindutva-corporate nexus.
What is significant about the corporate concentration in the last ten years is that Modi’s one nation one market concept has favoured the big companies as against the regional companies. The Modi government policies have facilitated the process of withering the market competition and as a result, after ten years of Modi rule, in key sectors like telecom, airlines, steel, cement, aluminium, there are only two to three big players who control more than 59 per cent of the market.
What is the net result of this Modi Government-Crony Capitalists bonhomie on the nature of Indian economy? As Dr. Pranab Bardhan sees it, the crony oligarchs mainly operate in non-traded goods in highly regulated sectors where getting government favours is much more important than the need to compete in foreign markets. The BJP’s new protectionist regime known as atmanirbhar or self reliance ends up making imported inputs more costly and exports less competitive. The result is a low productivity, oligarchic-autarchic economy. This is evident from the data given in The Economist which shows India’s share of billionaire wealth derived from ‘rent-thick’ or crony sectors rose from 29 to 43 per cent between 2016 to 2021.
The wealth of the crony capitalists has grown exponentially as against the decline in the real income of the common masses during the Modi rule. The opposition parties have to focus on this quid pro quo between the Indian crony capitalists and the Modi regime and demand probe into their interlinking leading to the withering away of the level playing field. In 2019 Lok Sabha elections, Bloomberg estimated the expenses of the political parties at around US $ 8.6 billion. 2024 Lok Sabha elections will be most costly. The figure may touch even more than US$ 11 billion. BJP might be spending 70 per cent of this massive amount. The main opposition party the Congress will just struggle this time to finance its poll campaign. Where is the level playing field? Where is democracy?
CJI Chandrachud has set a milestone in his illustrious judicial career by mentioning of the possibility of quid pro quo in his February 15 judgement. It will be in the interests of establishing a vigorous functioning democracy in India if the apex court can expand its outreach to probe big industry – BJP nexus and how it is effectively undermining the election process. Both the Supreme Court and the Election Commission of India can play as stellar role in ensuring a fierce competitive democracy in this great nation India, if they are willing. (IPA Service)
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