CHENNAI : “Has money become the only arbiter for success in Indian politics today?” asked BJP MP Feroze Varun Gandhi, while addressing a group of students at Loyola College on Thursday while releasing his book, “A Rural Manifesto: Realising India’s Future Through Her Villages.”
His book seeks to open a national conversation on rural distress, highlighting the potential solutions to putting the village economy on an even keel, while exploring how the vast majority of India ekes out a living. Gandhi shines a bright light on the travails of the marginal farmer and asks searching questions on why the rural economy remains in doldrums, six decades after Independence.
Speaking of the elections and the increasingly important role that money plays, he observed that in the 2014 elections, 84% of the time in all constituencies, the richest candidate won in every Lok Sabha seat, and 100% of the time, the poorest candidate lost their deposit.“When we look at elections, it is very easy to curb spending but one of the reasons corruption is so endemic in our country is because politicians think they need to amass wealth to spend it in elections to survive again,” Gandhi said.
He cited the example of Norway as being a country with an admirable election model where they did not curb spending but rather ‘curbed the market for spending.’ He said the entire election, end-to-end was five days — between the time the nomination was filed and the time of the result. The rules prevented any kind of print, radio or television commercial and did not allow for billboards or hoardings either.
Further, he said a public assembly of more than 1,000 people was not allowed and neither were candidates permitted to have more than five cars in one constituency.“It forces the person to actually go door-to-door and compete on the strength of their ideas, which actually is what a democracy is there for,” Gandhi said. “The reason that people vote for caste, religion or region, is because they actually don’t know how one candidate is different from another in terms of ability and thought. They feel they might as well vote for the person who is seemingly similar to them, even though he may not be.”
Gandhi lauded the government’s schemes such as the Ujjwala scheme or even the move to provide LPG connections. However, he said that the problem lay in its implementation and rollout as the schemes were Centralised.
“We are incentivising, through political favour, the death of agriculture,” he said. “You are forcing people or rather incentivising people to grow certain crops that in effect, are causing their land to be desertified one generation down. Then you’re really doing them no service! Our conversational tone about farmers and farmer loans, needs to change.” He strongly condemned lack of fiscal sops given to farmers.