The Article doesn't cover basics of Criminality of Indian Politicians.
These are just two example in last week from 1 south Indian state caught on camera (Because Local media would not cover since pretty much media in state supports ruling party):
Very rarely criminality of Indian politicians comes out because Media do not want to cover it. These showed up because someone could record. But in both cases, elected representatives and their goons are already out of trouble.
India is a land of lawlessness and that's a reality.
[1]A journalist being beaten by local representatives brother because he wrote on their corruption.
[2]Goons of local representative beating a women (1 eyed mind you) because she didn't agree for their illegal construction in front of her house.
> India is a land of lawlessness and that's a reality.
It's a little more subtle : well connected people to whatever they want and get away with no consequences. People who dare to oppose these powerful people discover the true meaning of hell. It's true practically everywhere in the world including the US.
IMO for all the shit that social networks receive (for good reasons), one of the side effects is that it's a lot easier to share such gross violations of law an example of which are the above videos. In a way social networks give people power.
>People who dare to oppose these powerful people discover the true meaning of hell. It's true practically everywhere in the world including the US.
It can be true in the US, but it definitely is not the norm. This statement rings false. For all the problems the US has, yes including corruption in some places, it is almost entirely unique in its freedom of speech and its allowance for political opposition without fear of retribution as a modus operandi.
> well connected people to whatever
> they want and get away with no
> consequences
> It's true practically everywhere
> in the world
With the occasional glaring exception (Jimmy Savile, for example) I simply don't believe that's true in most of Western Europe.
The press, the judiciary, the police, and the civil service are strong institutions. Reading up on "Plebgate" will give you a feel for the truly pedestrian nature of power abuse in the UK, and what happens when the police go rogue.
I disagree, at least for more local issues. Social media or other attention platforms only help if there's a single action that needs to happen.
Case in point: a few neighbors had a shitbird stealing milk bottles delivered to our porches. The police obviously aren't sending in the detectives for 4-5 $2 bottles a week. But we captured the guy in camera, did a social media assault that attracted the news. A city fireman saw the guy on TV, recognized him from another petty theft, and called his cop friend who found the guy.
That's what social media does for individual or small group problems.
If you have a problem with a building project or city action, social media will attract sympathetic comments and crazy people. To get action, you need to round up people and show up at events and hearings.
I've helped people out fighting powerful interests.l at a local level. They always fight back, but in modern America you don't have people showing up to rape your wife or beat you. At the end of the day, powerful people need money, and its very possible to create the perception of risk that will slow down the funding stream. That tends to solve David v. Goliath issues.
"Because Local media would not cover since pretty much media in state supports ruling party)' --What's the arrangement there? Do the parties own/control the local press or is the press frightened of the parties?
Jason Jones from the Daily Show years ago did a piece about not "fake news" in India but "paid news" for politicians, pretty interesting:
As an Indian, there are two things I take for granted:
1. Politicians, by default, are corrupt. They are also not to be trifled with - if I accidentally bump into a small-time politician's car at a signal, I'm hightailing it out of there lest I get beaten up.
2. If I get into trouble (especially with a politician or a well-connected person), the last person I'll turn to for help are the cops.
Most occidental countries have corrupted politicians as well. They are just better at playing the system to never be convicted.
In France the elite is incredibly good at it. The best example of this is Charles Pasqua. He has been linked to many, many, manyyyyyyyy shady cases, but every time found innocent : https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Pasqua
What's coming now is worst. The old generation was trying to cover their track. The new one doesn't even bother. They are exposed, play a little TV game, and then carry on like nothing happened. It works so why not ?
Rampant corruption has turned a lot of people into cynics in India. The phrase "Kuch nahi ho sakda India da. China dekh lo kithe pahunch gya" (Nothing will happen in India. See the development in China) gets thrown around a lot in a conversation.
It isn't a problem that affects a single party, both the ruling BJP and the Congress have the same issues. The problem with BJP being our Dear Leader being rather illiterate and surrounded by "Yes Men". The man behind the demonetization was found out to be an individual with a PhD in Yoga. And of course, there's 2002.
The Congress being the Congress mired itself with a series of scams in it's second term, and thus began what Bannon calls the "start of the right-wing revolt".
A personal anecdote about the Congress: A cousin of mine once decided to run for the Lok Sabha but quickly changed his mind because he found out the Congress guy was bribing the poor people (of which there were a lot in his village) with bottles of Johnie-Walker from the past two elections. And ofcourse, it was easy for the said Congress individual to do so because the then Chief Minister was close to Ponty Chadha, the liquor baron with a monopoly in the state of Punjab, for which the CM went to Dubai unannounced [1].
You could write a multi-volume encyclopedia on the tales of the corrupt Indian Politician.
This is what makes AAP's victory in Delhi not so surprising. Delhi is far richer than the rest of India; blatant bribery doesn't work quite as well here as it would be in another state
I have another theory. You don't get votes in India. You buy them. A wannabe politician needs a lot of money to win an election. Criminals who have made money through bootlegging or by beating up people have a leg up in this respect. Once they get to power, they indulge in corruption to pay off the people who helped them win and to save for the next election. The next election, they have more money to pay the average voter so his competitor needs to be an even bigger criminal.
Not saying that people don't try, and there is that odd politician who does come only from money. By and large most chief ministers victory can be explained not by money, but more by identity/group based politics.
This is pretty much also exactly the same to what happens in the US.
The answer is by distributing 2,000INR notes to people and transporting them to the polling station, relying on reciprocity and promising more to come if you get elected.
Paid voters are given pre-filled ballots. They go inside polling station, drop the prefilled ballot in the box, and bring new blank ballot outside to paymaster to collect their cash.
I don't know about India, but in a large part of the rest of the world, money funds campaigns and buys influence, which is extremely correlated to winning elections.
Politicians don't dole out cash and go pray that the voters will honor their agreement. They have a way of making sure that their bought votes are delivered to them.
Buying votes happens mostly in slums and other non-affluent areas. These are the places where the concept of privacy hasn't yet formed and everybody knows what everybody else is doing. Also, a politician is not expected to work for them his whole term. It is natural to see your local representative only during the times of election. So politicians have the two key ingredients to enforce an implicit contract. But the biggest weapon these politicians have is intimidation. Since it's not hard to mostly figure out the faction that refused to vote for the money they took, they can be persecuted and intimidated.
Of course there's no official source to cite this. My driver is very chatty and quite insightful about the politics in India.
The article fails to differentiate between charges and conviction. In India anyone can get charged for a crime no one ever gets conviction.
As an Indian I think Criminality of Indian Politicians is a non issue. Very few of the politicians are actual hard criminals. Most face charges that anyone in important position is likely to face.
Nearly all my politician friends have been in jail and have criminal records but I can vouch they are pretty good people.
India does not uniform laws and far too many laws to deal with the exactly same crime.
Examples:
1. One of my friend has been fighting in court for last 7 years over a case registered on him by his political opponent. My friend called him "asshole". However as per Indian law it is a crime to abuse a person if the person belongs to specific caste (SC/ST) not just that, the police are required to register the case even if they think the charges are frivolous or unsubstantiated. This gentleman has been visiting court every few months. The charges will be dropped some day as a political bargaining chip.
2. I barely escaped having a criminal record when I participated in a political movement. The cops basically filed any random charges against the protestors including molestation, attempt to murder and what not. I escaped because I had a fake ID card with fake name on it.
3. A lot of civil offenses are "crimes" in India.
For example you are CEO of a publishing company that publishes a scholarly book on world mythologies. Some person files a complain saying you (CEO) has hurt the sentiments of public which is a criminal offense. India Ebay CEO was arrested as a criminal becomes someone sold a CD on the website that had porn clip in it !
4. Courts that don't work.
Indian courts spend time only on cases that make the judges popular. Such as cases that involve celebrities or cricket. That is why conviction rates are next to nothing. One Indian celebrity recently got acquited from tow major crimes after around 12 years of fight.
5. Drinking wine or beer might be a crime in some states and in one state they want to give capital punishment for the same.
In case anyone wants to see more specific data, there is a site (http://netafilter.in/) that displays all constituencies, their MPs and the number of cases filed against them on a map.
The information icon at the top says the database is from http://www.myneta.info/, another decent site for Indian political data.
Myneta.info looks like it is maintained by a group called The Association for Democratic Reforms (http://adrindia.org/about-adr/who-we-are), and based on affidavits submitted by the candidates themselves (apparently a Supreme Court declaration that makes it mandatory). This means the actual number of cases could be different from those declared.
There are some comments in this thread bringing out examples of corruption in the West. While Western societies are by no means perfect and have their own warts, they are much better than India when it comes to corruption, effective judiciary, free press or tolerance for scandals.
People typically vote with their feet. If you have any doubts about which society treats its citizens better, just look at how many Indians are clamoring to get out of India and immigrate to USA/Europe and the numbers of Americans/Europeans wanting to immigrate to India.
Indians want to immigrate because of the much higher pay and savings in the western economies compared to the pay for the same job locally.
I am sure a lot of people are motivated by the much more modern western culture as well but I can assure you that money is the motivation for the majority, as condescending as that sounds.
But why is it that its possible to make more money in western economies than in India? I asked this question to myself (and I am sure many others did too) and at least for me, the principle factor came out to be pervasive corruption. In case you are familiar with both India and western economies, can you think of any other bigger factor?
Maybe because nearly 50% of voting population actually preferred Bush/Trump over the alternative? Especially when federal government has vastly increased its power (defense, education, environment, taxes, social policies) and when president has the rare power of nominating supreme court justices who can then stay forever deciding crucial matters (corporations, abortion, gay marriages, affirmative action...). In such cases, its better to vote for a bad candidate on "my side" rather than a better candidate from "other side".
In fewer words - hyper-polarization. Once you win republican or democratic primary, you are guaranteed to win 45% of the vote.
>Mr Vaishnav dispels the conventional wisdom that crooks win because they can get voters to focus on caste or some other sectarian allegiance, thus overlooking their criminality. If anything, the more serious the charge, the bigger the electoral boost, as politicians well know.
Nothing in the article backs up this statement. I hope when the author publishes his book, somebody will point out why.
I believe caste and identity politics play a huge role in such elections. Thefts and crimes are ignored precisely because people think that XYZ crook(from their caste/community) has the courage to stand up to authority and will represent them properly.
Different communities promote up their own representatives and as the elections becomes dirtier, in the end only crooks from various communities stand up.
Kind of similar to how capitalism forces merchants to sacrifice most skills not relevant to 'reducing cost/making money', Indian politics does this to our MPs/constituencies. Money and muscle power become a pre-requisite for being considered as a possible electoral candidate.
Then again, the advent of social media and the internet has started changing things (I don't have stats to prove this though). Crimes committed by MPs (or their families) are being highlighted throughout the country and the guilty are being shamed. I use the word shamed because I am not too sure what happens once the media spotlight moves somewhere else. Possibly, they walk free...
Many US politicians and officials would easily be considered war criminals if there were any sort of binding international law. Even more would likely be jailed for activities that are well known if they weren't already powerful.
Once criminal organizations get powerful enough they can start doing extensive image management and PR, as well as building elaborate headquarters complete with fancy architecture, columns, etc.
Governments are simply the most successful criminal organizations. We the people are continually fooled by the grandeur of the columns and the silly dignity of the titles.
We're also overly grateful for the gifts of patronage they dole out to keep us at bay such as welfare, medals, etc.
The more pomp and circumstance, the more ritual and solemnity, the bigger the racket. It should be no surprise that both candidates in the recent US election still have numerous FBI investigations into their business dealings, and the majority of Americans considered both to be highly unfit for office.
Our presidential motorcade is a sham... The vehicles are tanks made to look like limousines, yet we'd look down upon a foreign leader who paraded around in a tank.
All tyrants attract sycophants, and in our case they make up most of the political and media elite. The most humiliating display in our nation is the exceedingly rare occasion when a president condescends to sit for a one-on-one interview. The softball questions are spoken with a humility (and a reassurance that there certainly won't be any sort of tough follow-up question) that should make us all gag.
In the US, there is a steady stream of news stories about corrupt or otherwise undesirable situations elsewhere in the world.
Readit News
These are just two example in last week from 1 south Indian state caught on camera (Because Local media would not cover since pretty much media in state supports ruling party):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wOueUSVSuYk [1]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3hG2fqW-tcM [2]
Very rarely criminality of Indian politicians comes out because Media do not want to cover it. These showed up because someone could record. But in both cases, elected representatives and their goons are already out of trouble.
India is a land of lawlessness and that's a reality.
[1]A journalist being beaten by local representatives brother because he wrote on their corruption.
[2]Goons of local representative beating a women (1 eyed mind you) because she didn't agree for their illegal construction in front of her house.
> India is a land of lawlessness and that's a reality.
It's a little more subtle : well connected people to whatever they want and get away with no consequences. People who dare to oppose these powerful people discover the true meaning of hell. It's true practically everywhere in the world including the US.
IMO for all the shit that social networks receive (for good reasons), one of the side effects is that it's a lot easier to share such gross violations of law an example of which are the above videos. In a way social networks give people power.
It can be true in the US, but it definitely is not the norm. This statement rings false. For all the problems the US has, yes including corruption in some places, it is almost entirely unique in its freedom of speech and its allowance for political opposition without fear of retribution as a modus operandi.
The press, the judiciary, the police, and the civil service are strong institutions. Reading up on "Plebgate" will give you a feel for the truly pedestrian nature of power abuse in the UK, and what happens when the police go rogue.
Case in point: a few neighbors had a shitbird stealing milk bottles delivered to our porches. The police obviously aren't sending in the detectives for 4-5 $2 bottles a week. But we captured the guy in camera, did a social media assault that attracted the news. A city fireman saw the guy on TV, recognized him from another petty theft, and called his cop friend who found the guy.
That's what social media does for individual or small group problems.
If you have a problem with a building project or city action, social media will attract sympathetic comments and crazy people. To get action, you need to round up people and show up at events and hearings.
I've helped people out fighting powerful interests.l at a local level. They always fight back, but in modern America you don't have people showing up to rape your wife or beat you. At the end of the day, powerful people need money, and its very possible to create the perception of risk that will slow down the funding stream. That tends to solve David v. Goliath issues.
You can get shot for simply brushing some up jumped real estate dealer's car in the capital city - a friend's colleague had to learn the hard way.
Jason Jones from the Daily Show years ago did a piece about not "fake news" in India but "paid news" for politicians, pretty interesting:
* Video: http://www.cc.com/video-clips/mrx7ec/the-daily-show-with-jon...
* Reality check: https://www.quora.com/How-accurate-was-The-Daily-Shows-expos...
1. Politicians, by default, are corrupt. They are also not to be trifled with - if I accidentally bump into a small-time politician's car at a signal, I'm hightailing it out of there lest I get beaten up.
2. If I get into trouble (especially with a politician or a well-connected person), the last person I'll turn to for help are the cops.
In France the elite is incredibly good at it. The best example of this is Charles Pasqua. He has been linked to many, many, manyyyyyyyy shady cases, but every time found innocent : https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Pasqua
What's coming now is worst. The old generation was trying to cover their track. The new one doesn't even bother. They are exposed, play a little TV game, and then carry on like nothing happened. It works so why not ?
It isn't a problem that affects a single party, both the ruling BJP and the Congress have the same issues. The problem with BJP being our Dear Leader being rather illiterate and surrounded by "Yes Men". The man behind the demonetization was found out to be an individual with a PhD in Yoga. And of course, there's 2002.
The Congress being the Congress mired itself with a series of scams in it's second term, and thus began what Bannon calls the "start of the right-wing revolt".
A personal anecdote about the Congress: A cousin of mine once decided to run for the Lok Sabha but quickly changed his mind because he found out the Congress guy was bribing the poor people (of which there were a lot in his village) with bottles of Johnie-Walker from the past two elections. And ofcourse, it was easy for the said Congress individual to do so because the then Chief Minister was close to Ponty Chadha, the liquor baron with a monopoly in the state of Punjab, for which the CM went to Dubai unannounced [1].
You could write a multi-volume encyclopedia on the tales of the corrupt Indian Politician.
[1]http://www.tribuneindia.com/2005/20050712/main3.htm
Not saying that people don't try, and there is that odd politician who does come only from money. By and large most chief ministers victory can be explained not by money, but more by identity/group based politics.
This is pretty much also exactly the same to what happens in the US.
The answer is by distributing 2,000INR notes to people and transporting them to the polling station, relying on reciprocity and promising more to come if you get elected.
Buying votes happens mostly in slums and other non-affluent areas. These are the places where the concept of privacy hasn't yet formed and everybody knows what everybody else is doing. Also, a politician is not expected to work for them his whole term. It is natural to see your local representative only during the times of election. So politicians have the two key ingredients to enforce an implicit contract. But the biggest weapon these politicians have is intimidation. Since it's not hard to mostly figure out the faction that refused to vote for the money they took, they can be persecuted and intimidated.
Of course there's no official source to cite this. My driver is very chatty and quite insightful about the politics in India.
Dead Comment
As an Indian I think Criminality of Indian Politicians is a non issue. Very few of the politicians are actual hard criminals. Most face charges that anyone in important position is likely to face.
Nearly all my politician friends have been in jail and have criminal records but I can vouch they are pretty good people.
India does not uniform laws and far too many laws to deal with the exactly same crime.
Examples: 1. One of my friend has been fighting in court for last 7 years over a case registered on him by his political opponent. My friend called him "asshole". However as per Indian law it is a crime to abuse a person if the person belongs to specific caste (SC/ST) not just that, the police are required to register the case even if they think the charges are frivolous or unsubstantiated. This gentleman has been visiting court every few months. The charges will be dropped some day as a political bargaining chip.
2. I barely escaped having a criminal record when I participated in a political movement. The cops basically filed any random charges against the protestors including molestation, attempt to murder and what not. I escaped because I had a fake ID card with fake name on it.
3. A lot of civil offenses are "crimes" in India.
For example you are CEO of a publishing company that publishes a scholarly book on world mythologies. Some person files a complain saying you (CEO) has hurt the sentiments of public which is a criminal offense. India Ebay CEO was arrested as a criminal becomes someone sold a CD on the website that had porn clip in it !
4. Courts that don't work.
Indian courts spend time only on cases that make the judges popular. Such as cases that involve celebrities or cricket. That is why conviction rates are next to nothing. One Indian celebrity recently got acquited from tow major crimes after around 12 years of fight.
5. Drinking wine or beer might be a crime in some states and in one state they want to give capital punishment for the same.
6. Eating beef might be a criminal offense.
Myneta.info looks like it is maintained by a group called The Association for Democratic Reforms (http://adrindia.org/about-adr/who-we-are), and based on affidavits submitted by the candidates themselves (apparently a Supreme Court declaration that makes it mandatory). This means the actual number of cases could be different from those declared.
People typically vote with their feet. If you have any doubts about which society treats its citizens better, just look at how many Indians are clamoring to get out of India and immigrate to USA/Europe and the numbers of Americans/Europeans wanting to immigrate to India.
I am sure a lot of people are motivated by the much more modern western culture as well but I can assure you that money is the motivation for the majority, as condescending as that sounds.
In fewer words - hyper-polarization. Once you win republican or democratic primary, you are guaranteed to win 45% of the vote.
Nothing in the article backs up this statement. I hope when the author publishes his book, somebody will point out why.
I believe caste and identity politics play a huge role in such elections. Thefts and crimes are ignored precisely because people think that XYZ crook(from their caste/community) has the courage to stand up to authority and will represent them properly.
Different communities promote up their own representatives and as the elections becomes dirtier, in the end only crooks from various communities stand up.
Kind of similar to how capitalism forces merchants to sacrifice most skills not relevant to 'reducing cost/making money', Indian politics does this to our MPs/constituencies. Money and muscle power become a pre-requisite for being considered as a possible electoral candidate.
Then again, the advent of social media and the internet has started changing things (I don't have stats to prove this though). Crimes committed by MPs (or their families) are being highlighted throughout the country and the guilty are being shamed. I use the word shamed because I am not too sure what happens once the media spotlight moves somewhere else. Possibly, they walk free...
Once criminal organizations get powerful enough they can start doing extensive image management and PR, as well as building elaborate headquarters complete with fancy architecture, columns, etc.
Governments are simply the most successful criminal organizations. We the people are continually fooled by the grandeur of the columns and the silly dignity of the titles.
We're also overly grateful for the gifts of patronage they dole out to keep us at bay such as welfare, medals, etc.
The more pomp and circumstance, the more ritual and solemnity, the bigger the racket. It should be no surprise that both candidates in the recent US election still have numerous FBI investigations into their business dealings, and the majority of Americans considered both to be highly unfit for office.
Our presidential motorcade is a sham... The vehicles are tanks made to look like limousines, yet we'd look down upon a foreign leader who paraded around in a tank.
All tyrants attract sycophants, and in our case they make up most of the political and media elite. The most humiliating display in our nation is the exceedingly rare occasion when a president condescends to sit for a one-on-one interview. The softball questions are spoken with a humility (and a reassurance that there certainly won't be any sort of tough follow-up question) that should make us all gag.
In the US, there is a steady stream of news stories about corrupt or otherwise undesirable situations elsewhere in the world.