Democratic Institutions

Perils of Outsourcing Political Work to Election Strategy Firms  Shubham Sharma 08 May 2022 https://www.newsclick.in/perils-outsourcing-political-work-election-strategy-firms 
The elephant in the boardroom where election strategy firms meet with the top leaders of political outfits is the corporate funding of political parties.

The mode of operation of PK and I-PAC primarily entails working with big data, collating facts from the ground, measuring the popularity of the party or leader it has signed up and streamlining its campaign as and where it seems to nosedive. A modus operandi that I witnessed during the Bengal elections last year was the swift movement of PK’s men in constituencies and passing suggestions about the candidate to the high command directly, bypassing the local leadership, not to speak of people.

organisations like I-PAC and individuals in PK’s mould have the capacity to rig Indian representative democracy in favour of parties with big money. Their fee is bound to be astronomical, an estimate of which can be found from the annual turnover of I-PAC. It stood at Rs. 1,032,170,361 (roughly Rs. 100 crores) in 2021, and the salaries of the three directors totalled Rs. 2.67 crores.

Since most political parties raise most of their money from corporate donations, we can see an umbilical link between the corporate pluriverse and politics. It is not that such links did not exist before the rise of electoral strategising firms. The latter’s rise increased the magnitude of the involvement of moneybags in elections.

corporate style strategising also brings the capitalist neo-liberal project to fruition. For the common person, who has already been atomised and alienated under neo-liberalism, elections are generally an opportunity to make maximum demands on the political parties jostling for their votes. The prospect seems lost because of pithy bylines and (un)witty bromides that election strategists coin. Politics seems to revolve around the banalities of Chai pe Charcha and Nitish Ka Nischay, which are flashed 24x7 on television screens, the internet, hoardings, and placards, closing the door for genuine demands and slogans raised by the masses.

 post-ideological political minimalism becomes the order of the day. Since electoral strategising by firms revolves around crude money, the ideological foundations of the polity take a back seat. Services are available for a communal BJP and those contesting it politically. Class-oriented demands such as raising the floor wage and ensuring a minimum Rs. 25,000 wage—a long-time demand of the Left and allied trade unions—are never suggested as possible programmes of action by the political outfits.

 Modi's 'One Nation, One Election' Puts Uniformity Above Constitution, May Pave Way for Hindu Rashtra https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U60CjeLbhz4 The Wire Oct 1, 2024 Suhas Palshikar  One nation one election undermines the belief our constitution has a basic structure and that could lead to the introduction of Hindutva: Chief Editor, Studies in Indian Politics, shift the debate about one nation one election away from its impact on our democracy, to the impact the constitutional amendments it requires. These are  far more important and dangerous, “It delegitimizes the idea that there is anything fundamental or sacrosanct about the constitution … this government does not care if key aspects of the Constitution have to be changed in a fashion that hurts its very identity.” Prof. Suhas Palshikar fears that this process could “open the doors” to further changes in the  constitution.

Impact on democracy;  “a death blow to the parliamentary system”, “a major attack in the arena of states’ autonomy” and on “the promise of representation”.

 one nation one election will “prioritize neatness, uniformity and sameness” over the heterogeneous multi-faceted character of the country and, therefore, flatten what he calls India’s asymmetry. He points out that India is not one nation one religion, one nation one culture, one nation one language. Therefore, one nation one election would “transform the democratic logic (of our constitution) into a logic of ‘oneness’.”

 One Nation One Election Violates the Basic Structure of Constitution & I’ll Go to Supreme Court Sep 26, 2024
One of the founding members of the Association for Democratic Reforms,has said that he has no doubt that one nation one election will breach the federal structure of the Indian constitution and, therefore, on that basis, it will violate the basic structure of the constitution..., Prof. Chhokar, a former Professor and Dean at the Indian Institute of Management in Ahmedabad, said he not only disagrees with Prime Minister Modi’s claim that one nation one policy will make India’s democracy “more vibrant and participative” but, he added, the opposite is the truth. It will make India’s democracy less participative and less vibrant.

The independence of the judiciary and the profession of lawyers is being slowly but surely compromised.

From Bench to Bar, the Executive Tightens Its Grip on Justice - The Wire 

The political executive has been stalling the appointment of judges by disregarding the recommendations made by the collegium of judges of the Supreme Court (no less). There are well-known, documented cases of the political executive taking no action on recommendations made by the collegium of judges, rendering the agreed Memorandum of Procedure nothing but a scrap of paper. Where appointments are made, they are delayed, thereby adversely impacting the seniority of some judges while favouring others. For the present purposes, it is not necessary to revisit these lanes and bye-lanes.

Dominance of the judiciary by the political executive has delayed justice delivery with the result that violent crimes appear to have increased. These are reported daily in newspapers, and TV channels hype up these cases and convict the suspects even before the police complete their investigation. So much for speedy justice.

by Madan B. Lokur

05/07/2025