New Haven: Yale University Press, 2017. xxiii, 410 pp. (Illustrations, maps.) US$40.00, cloth. ISBN 978-0-300-21620-2.
This book concerns one of the central puzzles of Indian democracy: the election of a significant number of representatives at the national and state levels with criminal records. It is worth remembering that after the 2014 national elections, 34 percent of India’s members in the directly-elected lower house of parliament (Lok Sabha) faced criminal cases, with 21 percent of them facing serious charges. Between 2004 and 2014, of the two national Indian political parties, 14 percent of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)’s MPs faced serious cases, compared to 12 percent for the Indian National Congress party.
Vaishnav analyzes this puzzle of Indian democracy by asking three questions. First, what are the incentives of those with criminal records to contest elections? Second, why do political parties select such candidates? Third, do voters have good reasons for electing such people? He attempts to answer these questions using a market analogy where the buyers are voters and the sellers are political parties and politicians. The environment in which this market operates is one where institutions are weak and there is a high incidence of corruption.
While Vaishnav points out that criminality has been associated with politics in India since the early days of the republic, he argues that it became entrenched from the late 1960s after the demise of the Congress system and the “deinstitutionalized democracy” ushered in by Indira Gandhi. Vaishnav uses the concept of “vertical integration” to explain why criminals, who previously backed politicians, themselves entered politics. As Vaishnav notes, “By directly contesting elections, criminals could reduce the uncertainty associated with negotiating (and renegotiating) contracts with politicians, all the while retaining the benefits they had previously depended on Congress to deliver” (103).
Vaishnav’s explanation for why parties nominate criminals is simply because of their winnability. In the last three national elections, candidates with a criminal record have had a nearly 18 percent chance of winning, compared to clean candidates who have had a 6 percent chance. And the reason criminals are winnable candidates comes down to money. “In a context of costly elections, weakly institutionalized parties, and an ineffectual election finance regime,” writes Vaishnav, “parties are likely to prioritize self-financing candidates who do not represent a drain on finite party coffers but can instead contribute ‘rents’ to the party” (121). Vaishnav draws on the affidavits, which became mandatory thanks to a Supreme Court ruling, of nearly 70,000 candidates between 2003 and 2014 to substantiate his claim about the close link between money and muscle. Self-financing becomes critical in the context of the astronomical costs of contesting elections, which far exceed the official cap on spending.
Moving from the supply to the demand for criminal politicians, Vaishnav’s big claim is that it is rational for well-informed voters to support politicians with criminal antecedents. In a context where social divisions run deep and rule of law is weak, a candidate’s criminality can signal credibility on four counts: redistribution, coercion, social insurance, and dispute resolution. Vaishnav illustrates this with the example of Anant Singh of Mokama in Bihar, a feared criminal and self-styled Robin Hood who has won state elections. There are several politicians like Anant Singh, and not just from Bihar, whom Vaishnav writes about.
Indeed, besides the data and analysis of criminal politicians, one of the notable features of this book is Vaishnav’s description of and conversations with figures such as Anant Singh. Anthropologists might feel that these descriptions are not deep or “thick” enough to qualify as ethnography, but his reportage is a welcome relief in the discipline of political science that nowadays tends to produce dry-as-dust analysis, often devoid of insights into the ground reality.
The solutions that Vaishnav offer for cleaning up politics are, however, fairly standard. One way to do this, he posits, would be to let India’s powerful Election Commission regulate both political finance as well as the internal functioning of parties. But as Vaishnav points out, such regulations “risk perpetuating the worst tendencies of the mai-baap sarkar (nanny state) in India” (274). The other way is to prohibit candidates with criminal records from contesting elections. But criminal cases, as opposed to convictions, cannot be a legal basis for prohibiting candidates from contesting. Besides, given the backlog of cases in Indian courts, convictions of politicians can take several years. However, there are laws now in place to disqualify elected representatives who have been convicted by a court of a serious crime.
Vaishnav presents a grim picture of Indian elections, where candidates with criminal records and deep pockets enjoy a significant advantage. However, he injects a note of optimism about the prospects of Indian democracy, noting that politicians with criminal backgrounds “have not successfully captured the electoral system as a whole” (23). The fact remains though that the flaws Vaishnav points out and so acutely analyzes are serious blots on India’s otherwise admirable record of democracy.
Ronojoy Sen
National University of Singapore, Singapore