POLITICAL DIARY

New Delhi, 20 February 2009

India’s Criminal Escape Artists

KINGS, KING-MAKERS ABOVE LAW

By Poonam I Kaushish

Nothing succeeds like success. In the last few days, our netagan have once again conclusively proved that power is the most luscious mistress to be loved, raped and conquered at all costs. Along with the kursi and paisa that comes along. Wherein, in a winner-takes-it-all scenario, ideology has been wantonly dumped, the aaya ram gaya ram culture is all pervasive and morality and ethics old hat. Worse, even the faint wisp of demeanor has been discarded with the devil taking the hind most. Let Lok Sabha Speaker Somnath Chatterjee lament, “You do not deserve one paisa of public money…I hope all of you are defeated in the election.”  Who cares?

So far so good. But this holds ominous portends for India. In this free-for-all khichri what is disturbing and more distressing is that all parties are openly recognizing and nominating criminals as candidates. Wherein the rogues' gallery of bandits, racketeers and murderers have filled the halls of power and fame.

Why? With power translating into a number game, parties field mafia dons as they convert their muscle power into votes, often at gun point and emerge victorious. The arrangement works on a quid-pro-quo. The parties get unlimited funds to fight elections and the criminals protection from the law and respectability in society.

Leading the pack is Dalit icon Mayawati. After her successful experiment of the Dalit-Brahmin electoral engineering which saw her safely enthroned on UP’s raj gaddi last year, today she is busy enlisting mafia dons as her nominees for the next battle at the hustings. All for making a bid for India’s Taj and Raj. No matter her tall claim of ridding UP of mafia raj!

With 80 Lok Sabha seats Ulta-Pulta Pradesh could play a decisive role in anointing the next Prime Minister. Towards that end, Mayawati has already nominated nearly 10 “hardened professional criminals" - as police records describe them -- as the BSP candidates because they have the muscle to win the election. Among them are the notorious Ansari brothers facing over two dozen criminal cases, including those of murder, attempt to murder, kidnapping, extortion, loot and land grabbing. What to speak of Dons Atiq Ahmed, BSP’s candidate from Phulpur and Arun Kumar Sharma, alias Anna from Unnao.

If this is bad news, worse follows. It has led to an encore of me-too. All the regional parties have shed all inhibitions and have jumped on the Maya bandwagon. Samajwadi’s Mulayam is busy soliciting the help of the Mafioso, serenading the BJP and simultaneously playing footsie with the Congress. Maratha strongman Sharad Pawar is cosying up to arch enemy rabid Shiv Sena in Maharashtra which accounts for 48 seats. AIADMK’s Jayalalitha is sending Congress’s Sonia come-hither-looks in Tamil Nadu. All playing for being the kingmakers, if not the kings in the next Parliament.

From criminalisation of politics to the politicisation of crime, India has indeed come a full circle. Yesterday’s mafia dons are today our Right Honourables with their “bullet-proof vests.” Unreachable by the long arms of the law, they are the law and all-powerful. Bringing things to such a pass that our elected jan sevaks now dance to the tune of their underworld benefactors at the cost of the janata, democratic ethos and good governance.

Think. Mafia dons have been elected from prisons, some MPs continue to hold durbars in jail, with all home comforts, instruct chamchas by cellphone and rule their empire, issuing diktats that few dare disobey. Not a few take the anticipatory bail route to avoid arrest, others simply abscond only to "surrender" when ready, a la former Union Ministers Shibhu Soren and Jai Nishad.

Sadly, the criminal content in the States is worse. Rough estimates aver that in any State election 20 per cent of the candidates are criminals. In Uttar Pradesh, 92 members of the current 403-member State Assembly have police charges lodged against them. At least 40 per cent of them have criminal record. In the 2000 Bihar State Assembly elections every underworld don and criminal who contested the polls either from jail or in hiding won with huge margins. Arguably, with such legislators, how can we expect to remove crime from the country?

One could have dismissed this politicization of crime as a passing or evolving phase of our democratic process. But the tragedy is that our democracy goes beyond periodic elections, notwithstanding their importance in ensuring the voters freedom to elect. What is more important is the quality of democratic governance. Wherein our democratic system has been usurped by criminals.

No matter how hard we try, the truth is that crime is now politics. Worse, it ensures victory. Be it a petty thug, do numeriya or a mafia don. The only thing that matters is on whose side the criminal is. His or ours? They are all the same. Only the degrees differ. Akin to the famous story. An angry man tells an American official that the man the US was championing abroad was "a son of a bitch"! Pat came the response, "Yes; but he’s our son of a bitch"!

It is this mutual benefit and camaraderie between the criminal-party nexus which is the cause célèbre for our netagan resisting passing any legislation that would rid politics of the cancer of the three C’s --- criminalization, corruption and crisis of credibility. See, how our MPs and MLAs divide along party lines on most issues but close ranks when it comes to taking steps to addressing this problem.

True, the Election Commission makes it mandatory for candidates to disclose details of their criminal background (if any) along with their assets and liabilities at the time of filing nominations. But instead of weeding out criminals it is more about disclosure rather than disqualification of criminal elements.

Primarily because many criminals can safely aver that they have no 'criminal background'. In the sense they may be facing criminal charges but have not been convicted in a court of law. In other words, they must be presumed innocent. Besides, when it comes to criminal cases, the lines are blurred. What to speak of the marathon legal process. Our law only bars persons from running for office once they are indicted by a court, which often happens years, even decades, after an arrest. It's even harder to dislodge someone actually holding office. What is the yardstick that can be applied to them?

In a milieu wherein our Parliamentary system has now been hijacked by the criminalisation of politics where the mafia dons get away like escape artists, the aam aadmi is naturally cynical. No one wants to vote for a criminal. And yet for years criminals have been using the electoral system to enter politics, with the janata hopelessly looking on.

Clearly, no longer will technical or legalistic response suffice. The answer must lie in good, clean democratic political practice, watchdog media and a vigilant public opinion that insists on raising the bar for all political parties. Importantly, if we do not urgently put the correctives in place, today’s criminal king-makers may be tomorrow’s kings! Mayawati, Mulayam, Laloo including a dus numberi! ---- INFA

(Copyright, India News & Feature Alliance)