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After the Indian Independence, we have seen many ups and downs that are causing different turns in our political scenario in India. From the 1950s, Indian politics has changed from becoming a Congress dominated political landscape to a diverse field where many parties are coming together to form governments in the state and the centre.
What Were the Changes?
The emergence of caste-based parties and different agendas have changed the political scene to a new era where parties are facing difficulties in even getting a simple majority.
Another factor that I must adhere to- is the increasing money spending and illicit use of power to influence voters has become a trend in the course of action. Similarly, horse-trading has been another part of the game.
Horse Trading
Horse trading simply means buying and selling of legislators to overturn the people’s verdict. So what does this mean? This means the use of money to control the already released poll results and make a ruling party resign from office. The whole thing may seem to be an age-old affair in India but it started making headlines from the 1980s.
Everything starting from the emergence of regional players like Lalu Prasad Yadav, Mulayam Singh Yadav, Kanshiram and instability informing local governments and minority formed governments in the centre in different phases between the 1980s and 1990s has created some changes in the political sphere.
The Current Situation
The recent crisis in Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh have created confusion in people’s minds about political leadership. We all know that BJP as a party is getting a lot of corporate patronages and gets huge donations.
Around 90 per cent of the total donations received by the political parties are for BJP only. So what we can see is that in recent local state polls BJP lost in several states and what they tried is- to poach legislators from other camps.
In Karnataka, the JDS - Congress alliance couldn’t last long, as there were growing problems between the newly formed coalition and the 2019 Lok Sabha results turned the local coalition into a fix.
Similarly, if we see that in Madhya Pradesh the change of camp of Jyotiraditya Scindia made BJP clinch power by ousting the Kamal Nath government. The whole sequence is a vicious cycle where legislators are being lured for money, prestigious posts and other different offers that generally remains undisclosed.
Anti defection law is in place but generally, it can’t be applied when legislators are resigning from there legislative posts and another thing is it also depends on the wish of the speaker of the assembly most of the time.
The problem is Indian political representatives are becoming more and more corrupted, in the sense that they are finding people’s verdict irrelevant. Around 70 politicians are there in the present political context who have changed camps to gain individual benefits.
Similarly, we can see that in Telangana around 2/3rd of the Congress party joined Telangana Rashtra Samiti and subsequently joined the Telangana ruling government ranks. In Madhya Pradesh, Congress legislators have resigned to join ranks in BJP and will get subsequently elected in the coming days.
We all can see that increased funding in political parties is being misused to get numbers and subjugate the political verdicts. From the time of Indira Gandhi, there was always use of force and power to topple the state governments run by the opposition parties through constitutional force.
But the use of money power to buy legislators has become the new playing rule to gain a stronghold in the opposition-dominated political landscape. The whole procedure is making Indian democracy as being viewed in poor light in terms of the credibility of Indian democracy is concerned.
But this is going to be the rule as coalition politics is the new norm and huge spending on advertisements is becoming a trend today. A large number of donations are only coming to BJP that makes it a credible player in the poaching market and that is how it is making the use of money to topple governments and form new governments.
As our nearly defunct anti-defection law couldn’t help in attaining more transparency horse-trading will continue and the largest democracy will someday become the least credible democratic society.
Written by - Bodhiswatta Mukherjee
Edited by - Ivanova
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