Electoral Bonds ‘scam’ just a symptom of the polity: Corporatocracy is the disease

The independent journalists and crusaders have also revealed that the BJP government gave over ₹3.7 lakh crores of government contracts to some 35 companies after encashing bonds worth ₹2,500 crore transferred by these companies.

Also read: BJP lead gainer

Contracts for bonds

Around ₹65,000 crore worth of contracts were given, and another ₹1,000 crore of bonds were encashed later. ED and IT raided over 40 such companies just before they purchased crores of bonds the BJP encashed later. At least 40 companies purchased bonds worth four to ten times their profits. In some cases, even loss-making companies have purchased bonds a few times more than their paid-up capital.

Seven pharmaceutical companies whose drugs failed crucial tests, including Remdesivir, the much-consumed drug during Covid-19, continued in the market by purchasing bonds after receiving initial notice about their drugs’ quality.

Companies like MEIL, a non-descript company with only five lakhs paid up capital in 1989, have been now awarded more than ₹1.8 lakh crore worth of infrastructural projects in 18 states. In the Kaleshwaram Minor Irrigation Project in Telangana, the cost was doubled to ₹1.5 lakh crore after the contract was awarded to MEIL, which was the second-highest purchaser of bonds and the biggest donor to BJP and BRS of Telangana.

In another incident, the Navyug company, named in an FIR for negligence, causing the death of 20 workers in Maharashtra, was given the contract of building a tunnel in Uttarakhand, which collapsed in November 2023, where more than 40 workers were entrapped for more than 16 days.

Also read:  Full donor list

Qui pro quo bond

More than 33 percent of the electoral bonds were purchased by companies in the energy sector, where blessings, omissions and commissions by the different departments of the Union government are a daily requirement for these companies to make a profit. Thus, Vedantas, Birlas, and Mittals donated a few thousand crores in electoral bonds and ensured the environmental and social regulations were changed in their favour.

While the BJP is the major beneficiary and benefactor of this ‘scam’, the Congress, TMC, BRS, BJD, and DMK are also beneficiaries of the scheme and have equally rendered their service to the corporate class.

Thus, the BJD of Odisha, which is infamous for its pro-mining policies, derives most of its bond revenue from mining companies and is famous for quelling social protests against them.

Congress also benefitted at the state level by ensuring the ease of business for the toxic and polluting industries in the states it ruled, like Rajasthan and Jharkhand. The third-biggest recipient of bonds is the TMC of West Bengal.

In fact, the IFB-Agro is the only company in the bond list which has revealed in its annual report that it had to subscribe to electoral bonds to the tune of ₹55 crore to ensure that the political forces do not harm its business.

The highest donors for the BRS party are the pharmaceutical companies and the MEIL. The state government has regulatory power over drug companies. Most drug companies that failed tests and continued their operations are situated in Telangana and Gujarat. DMK is the major recipient of the bonds donated by the lottery king, Santiago Martin.

Related: Everyone got a share

No party opposed bond scheme

Thus, the BJP has the lion’s share, and opposition parties have a minor share in this corporate funding exercise. All the major opposition parties except the left parties have their share in the bonds.

They never opposed the bond scheme, which denied voters knowledge of the funding pattern and the biases of the parties seeking votes. Nor did they oppose the “quid pro quo” embedded in the scheme, which SBI revelations now prove.

Of course, the BJP seems to have played a much more dirty game in the scheme’s operation. Donors’ anonymity was its USP, but now it’s known the bonds had an embedded security number naked eyes couldn’t see. The SBI even recorded it against each bond sold and encashed.

Thus, the SBI and, hence, the BJP government at the Centre had a unique advantage over the other parties regarding knowledge of the bond trail.

The FICCI, ASSOCHAM, and the CII, India’s big corporate associations, petitioned the SC not to reveal the security numbers, and the BJP government and the SBI tried to dodge and violate the SC order.

It has been established that the bond scheme is the biggest ‘scam’ in post-independent India. Arvind Kejriwal, Delhi’s chief minister, was arrested for allegedly changing the liquor policy favouring a group and allegedly receiving kickbacks.

Why not apply the same standard to parties that received bonds and changed policies to favour companies?  For instance, a party like the BJP?

Why does the Supreme Court not take suo moto cognizance of the mammoth size of the corruption revealed as a consequence of its own order and constitute an SIT under its supervision? Has the SC ever hurt the class interest of the corporate class, especially after 1991 when the welfare statism was constitutionally buried, and the Indian state metamorphosed into a neoliberal state?

Related: Who is paying?

Corporate colours

Do the letter of the SCBA chairman to the President of India to intervene and restrain the implementation of the SC order against electoral bonds and the letter by 600 advocates of the SC led by the seniormost advocate and a dear friend of the Modi government, Harish Salve, to the CJI, warning him of the pressure group hijacking SC against India, constitute concerted efforts to prevent further probing by the SC?

Besides the dissenting Left, why is the rest of the opposition shying away from making electoral bonds a poll issue?

Now that the electoral bonds scheme is annulled, will the political parties face a lack of corporate finances?

A Centre For Media Studies study suggests that in the 2019 general elections, the BJP alone spent approximately ₹27,000 crore. Of this, only ₹4,000 crore were from bonds. A similar volume or less came from the electoral trust route. The rest are all from so-called unknown resources.

The bond scheme did not prevent cash flow or the flow of black money into the Indian elections. Even the Supreme Court endorsed it in its oral clarifications.

Corporate funding for elections and parties has existed for a long time, and bonds are a minor part of it. Hence, the “quid pro quo” between the corporate and political classes is built into Indian electoral democracy. It became dominant and decisive after 1991.

After the neo-liberalisation of the economy and privatisation of public resources, they were legalized by all the regimes after 1991. After the BJP’s dominance began, the corporate class hijacked the democratic processes and governance itself.

Also read: Big donors

Costly election business

The business of elections has become costly. A well-known economist commented in 2008 that to win a state assembly election, a minimum of ₹20 crore is required. However, to achieve an honourable defeat, a minimum of ₹10 crore is needed.

Thus, the Indian election has ceased to be an instrument of people’s voice. It has become a process to legitimate corporatocracy instead of people’s democracy.

Bonds or no bonds, the structural bonds between corporate and political classes, their hegemony and control over governance, will perpetuate. What can stop it is a radical democratization occurring in the economy, politics, and society. As Dr BR Ambedkar said, without economic and social democracy, a political democracy is a farce.

The SC order against the scheme has only addressed the symptom, not the deeper malaise in Indian democracy. That is de facto corporatocracy through many means, including corporate funding of elections.

Unfortunately, the informed public debate about and against the bond scheme is confined to only the symptoms.

(The writer is an activist and a columnist based in Bengaluru. The views are personal.)