Bond(ed) Democracy: Corporatization of Politics, is this now the 1%’s democracy?
Can the Modi government claim to have a clean corruption free image, when it is surreptitiously passing laws to facilitate corporate funding of political campaigns?
The Finance Bill, 2017 relaxes conditions for corporate funding to political parties. It ensures confidentiality to corporates and removes the limit on corporate funding as regards to proportion of profit previously limited at 7.5 per cent. This means that the companies are now allowed to keep the name of the party they contribute funding to as confidential in their profit and loss account and they can donate as much as they want. This is nothing but a big corporate take over of the political funding.
Are the bonds really as transparent as they are being touted to be? Is this mainstreaming of Hawala?
And there is no limit on the amount of money that can be donated. Along with FCRA amendments allowing foreign companies to donate, you can have any number of multinationals donating any amount of money and public can not know anything about which party got how much from whom. Even before you donate the money, the bonds being bearer bonds can change hands through untrackable cash transactions any number of times. Massive amounts of Black money finds another entry point into the economy. Just because the money is coming from a bank account, it does not make it white forever.
What is worse, is that the government will know who is donating to the opposition, without the opposition even having to declare this. Donors will fear harassment and donations to the opposition parties will dry out. All kinds of black and white money, now gets funnelled from all over the world to the ruling party only.
No resources. No opposition. Perfect way to stay in power and wreck havoc on the country.
The influence of corporates is set to rise exponentially, broadening the already wide gap between the government and the governed.
Now the corporate companies will have increasingly large influence on the political parties and they will be shaping country’s agenda and we the people of India will not even know which company supports which political party.
A report by the Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR) has revealed that between 2012-13 and 2015-16 the BJP received the maximum amount of donations by corporate houses which amounts to 706 crore while the Congress has received the second highest donations with Rs 198 crore. Now we can certainly relate as how this bill which empowers corporate was passed as a money bill in Lok sabha and who will be the real beneficiaries from it.
In the name of transparency, increasing anonymous corporate funding opens the door for government making policies in favour of the corporate. The policies which are shaped to favour profit making of the corporate are certainly not in favour for the other class in the society which are the farmers, wage labourers, marginalized and the working class in general.
Join us at 7:30pm on 20th September as our panelists, Venkatesh Nayak, Shahid Khan & Rachana Reddy discuss these and other aspects of the electoral bonds.
https://actionnetwork.org/petitions/take-back-our-government