I thought I was done with jokes linking electoral bonds with James Bond. But there are other bonds that bind us, too. With so much controversial talk swirling around the secrecy of the bonds that landed many entities in a soup, there is a natural reminder of Britain’s most famous fictional secret agent. The alphanumeric number vested with each bond kind of reminds you of 007.
I see more British links to the issue than the dashing spy, apart from the fundamental truth that the bonds are a bumbling outcome of mixing a Westminster-style parliamentary democracy with an independent judiciary with our own desi culture of lenadena, in which dhandha (business) gets mixed up with chanda (donations).
I have another English inspiration to understand the confounding bonds—from Winston Churchill’s famous radio speech in 1939, when he described Russia as “a riddle wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma”.
I am tempted to discuss the electoral bonds with the nuances of the English language, which has three different words to describe a situation that may be intertwined: confidentiality, secrecy and anonymity. Confidentiality, the Cambridge Dictionary informs, is ‘private information being kept secret’. Secrecy, on the other hand, is where ‘a piece of information is only known by one person or a few people and should not be told to others’. Anonymity refers to a situation ‘in which someone’s name is not given or known’.
Now, put all that into a juicer-blender to get a hang of the infamous bonds. Companies that bought them feel unfairly violated, while media and political entities left out of the party are delightfully outing names that so far enjoyed a Voldemort-like status of not being named. We were led to believe what happened between the parties buying the bonds and the SBI, its monopoly issuer, was a matter of confidentiality that would ensure anonymity to the general public while being executed with secrecy.
But the facts of the State owning the SBI and the presence of shareable alphanumeric codes queers the pitch. From these arise allegations that those wrapped inside the cloak of confidentiality included parties that received the donations, certainly including the ruling party at the Centre.
So, to stay in a Churchillian rhythm, the bonds were officially intended as a confidential arrangement designed to ensure anonymity through a process of secrecy. But following the Supreme Court’s directive to publish information on the tangled web of donations, dates of purchase and encashment, and names of buyers, we now have a different situation. An electoral bond may now be described by critics as one designed for secrecy to ensure anonymity, but was effectively an inside job involving the confidentiality of a chosen few.
It’s more complicated when you realise opposition parties also received bonds, but (no surprises there) mostly those in power in provincial governments. Then you note some companies that bought bonds worth dozens or hundreds of crores were organically linked by partnerships, directorships or acquisitions to better-known industrial groups. It doesn’t end there. Some bonds were bought by corporate leaders in their personal capacity, whatever that means.
It’s all in the wordplay. We first have to wonder like Alice in Wonderland on a case that gets curiouser and curiouser, and then jump to the words of contemporary British author E L James to describe those bonds as ones with ‘fifty shades of grey’. Speculation ranges from whether the bonds were donations for decent politics, relationship gifts or sophisticated bribes for favours. We are argumentative Indians, after all.
We may view our bespectacled Chief Justice D Y Chandrachud as a wizard of sorts in challenging those who shall not be named. Critics who feel their trust in the system has been betrayed by a democracy that has put transparency in public affairs above confidentiality in private matters are understandably upset.
The English also gave us cricket. In true Indian jugaad style, we have converted the slow, straight-bat game played in Tests into a strokeful T20 variety. A similar fate seems to have befallen our democracy. T20 donations ahead of elections are being examined under Test match rules by the Supreme Court. We thus have secrecy, anonymity and confidentiality guarding electoral bonds like fielders in the slips, gully and backward point, being outsmarted by a top court that found a constitutional gap between slip and proverbial gully.
Those poring over spreadsheets to find who paid how much to whom at what time, and connecting them with the larger context of favours, are behaving like third umpires observing action replay. The jury is still out, in a manner of speaking, but outraged buyers and equally outraged activists are in what looks like a rugby tackle.
Come to think of it, rugby is also an English game, accidentally invented at Rugby School in Warwickshire in 1823 when a boy decided to simply pick up the ball and run during a game of football. The game has eventually become a metaphorical expression for life. A rugby tackle is described as ‘an act of seizing and attempting to stop an opposing player in possession of the ball by bringing them to the ground’.
As we head into a noisy season of elections in which electoral bonds are being invoked for political rugby tackles, we may rest assured we are equally torn between two English sports. It’s simply not cricket.
(Views are personal)
Madhavan Narayanan | Senior journalist