Recently Azim Premji had commented that corruption is a serious issue that needs to addressed for the better future of this country... All of us (mango men - Aam Aadmi) have grown up cursing politicians and blaming them to be corrupt and making false promises which I think is very much true...But when I think deeper and dig in to this issue I feel that the politicians have no option left but to be corrupt... Here is why... I am told that during elections in India a politician who wants to contest from an area has to spend anyway between 2 to 25 crores to just get a ticket (this information is thoroughly from the common man's word of mouth I have no proof of this) the rate differs based on geography and the competition.. so the average for a metro is about 10 crores. Now this amount is spend to contest this does not assure a seat. The politician has to spend at least two to three times the above amount for campaigning. They also take money from number of industrialist, contractors and entrepreneurs in their area and make make promises to favour them once in power...Now if we add up all the above we derive at about 30-40 crores spend and an equal amount of promises made to their supporters... this still does not guarantee a win as there is at least one other politician who is also competing for the same seat against you...We will have a winner and a loser. The looser will again compete again later after 4 years and will spend land up spending the same amount if not more...Now how in the hell do we expect the elected leader not be corrupt ... one may wonder that the numbers above are 30-40 crores but the scams we here are in hundred's of crores. So the answer to that is if you have gone against your conscious and have crossed your ethical line by starting to be corrupt to raise the funds one spent during elections then what is stopping you from not repeating and growing in that space... as you will get used to it and would find this an easy way to pool party or personnel funds....It would be unrealistic if a politician is corrupt and has a limit of an amount...so to me the issue is the election spend that is making the politicians corrupt... The system of practising democracy (general elections) is to be blamed...This happens with almost all democratic countries and has nothing to do with India or America or any other nation of a sizable population... the only difference in India is that the politics and corruption is very cheap (especially the way the media puts it) in US it is very polished and subdued... Having analyzed the problem we need to think of a solution that will kill the root cause which in this case is the spending during campaigning.
There were leaders in the past at also a famous election commissioner Mr T.N.Seshan who had bought in rules and regulations to check the spend during elections... there are rules now for the same but like any other rule in our country there are ways to go around it or no one will dare challenge the offender especially in this case as it is a politician... this leads to another topic of discussion which is a weak judiciary system in a large democratic country...
Just my analysis and I think most of us are already aware of but sometimes when you put things together you get a different view of an issue ... just wanted to share my views.
Thanks for your time reading this. Have a good day ...
