By the choice of candidates announced by the Bharatiya Janata Party for the upcoming Lok Sabha polls, it seems clear that India’s ruling party wants the government’s top decision-makers to seek a direct mandate from voters.
Many of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Cabinet colleagues, including Dharmendra Pradhan, Piyush Goyal and Bhupender Yadav, are on the BJP’s candidate list. They have Rajya Sabha seats right now. Finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman, however, has declined to contest. As she explained this week, she lacks the finances needed to do so. The constraint this imposes is hard for observers to get a sense of, given a paucity of public data. Sadly, campaign finance in India has never been anything but opaque, despite flawed reform attempts such as the electoral bonds struck down by the judiciary.
Her reasoning has spotlighted an issue that must not go undiscussed. To what extent is success in politics a function of financial resources? And what must the country do to ensure this doesn’t act as an entry barrier restricting a field that Indian democracy must keep open to all. Poll funding needs clean methods, finding which would do India good.
#FMs #poll #perplexity #success #function #financial #resources
