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How Big Money Finances Indian Politics

The business elite funds Indian politics and elections in return for economic favours or for securing favourable policies for their industry.

By Swagato Sarkar, 360info
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Indian politics and big money

How big money finances Indian politics | Big money plays an outsized influence in India's elections. | Goutam Roy, Al Jazeera English/Flickr Credits CC BY 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/)

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How big money finances Indian politics

Many years ago in West Bengal, I encountered school-age boys playing Carrom or cricket all day. Curious as to why they weren’t at school or out working, they responded:  “We are all employed. We do party-r-byabsa (‘business of the party,’ or work for the Communist Party of India-Marxist).”

“We participate in rallies, attend meetings, and mobilise people on election days. In return, the party gives us small contracts (such as repairing roads, tube wells, etc.). This ‘business of the party’, as British Anthropologist F.G. Bailey called it, worked on the basis of parties distributing minor contracts to their workers at the grassroots level.

Times have changed.

Political parties are now corporate entities. They no longer depend on self-sacrificing volunteer full-timers, but party office bearers. These functionaries are paid handsomely, travel by airplanes or air-conditioned cars and stay in five-star hotels. 

They look more like party executives than workers. The party offices resemble luxurious hotels or corporate headquarters. 

For all this, political parties need to build a massive war chest. 

A part of that money must be in ‘white’ — auditable and traceable.

Corporations and ultra-high net worth individuals need the ruling parties to capture regulatory apparatus, get access to lucrative natural resources and government contracts, buy state enterprises and competitors (often taking advantage of insolvency and bankruptcy resolutions) at an

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