By: Valson Thampu
Conducting a free and fair poll is a superhuman effort. Corruption, crime and communalism are in the DNA of Indian politics. It is laudable, hence, that the Election Commission (EC) remains vigilant and proactive.

The Election Commission, on its part, needs to fight this battle with exemplary discernment. Its vigilance should include alertness to the reality that elections happen in a charged ambience. It lends itself to misunderstandings and over-reactions which cloud judgment. Truth is often a matter of fine distinctions. Though distinctions are wafer thin, outcomes are potentially humungous.

Consider this statement by Soren Kierkegaard, “Understanding of evil can become an understanding with evil.” The difference between the two statements is a matter of two prepositions, “of” and “with”. But the outcomes are like day and night. When subtle distinctions and discernments are lost, the very effort to contain malpractices could prove counterproductive and cast the Commission in a poor light.

In a charged and biased context, it is necessary to keep personalities out of our thinking, if we are to think fairly. What should matter is what has been said, and not who said it. Bias reverses this order. As Kabir said, ‘a bottle of milk in the hands of a drunkard will be taken for a bottle of liquor.’ Fairness involves the duty to distinguish between liquor and milk, and not act in terms of presumptions.

One of the strategies that political parties resort to all the time is to infuse prejudice into public perceptions. Parties malign each other. In an ambience of cognitive laziness, the public laps up partisan allegations as truth. This becomes a pestilence when media becomes partisan.

What should be the legitimate ambit of freedom of speech for politicians in times of elections? What should be the extent of objectivity preserved in judging if a statement falls within the ambit of freedom of speech, or if it amounts, instead, to a violation of the model code?

We have a case study to look at this crucial question. Does saying, “If bribes are offered to you take it, but don’t vote for that party. Vote for my party,” amount to ‘instigating voters to take bribes’ and, thereby fall foul of the model code?

Let’s go back in time and consider an instance from a different context. During the time of the British Raj, some of the British and Indian officers used to accept gratifications offered to them. There was, however, a difference between them. Many a white man took what was offered and handled the corresponding situations impartially. In other words, they treated an intended bribe as a gratuitous gift. Of course, they should not have done that. Of course, they cheated the bribe-givers. Even so, we cannot overlook the fact that their dishonesty vis-à-vis bribe-givers averted dishonesty vis-à-vis their work.

That’s not all. Accepting the intended-bribe, but acting irrespective of it, acts as a disincentive to bribe-givers. It is a rebuff to money-power.

Now, to the present context. Are electoral malpractices rampant? Are poor voters bribed? Does money-power swing elections? Of course, they do. Can the EC ensure that no bribe is given or taken in the run-up to elections in any state? Does the EC have the means to ensure that those who foul elections with bribes, crime and communalism are punished to the extent of deterrence? Alas, no. It’s not that they don’t try. The EC is one of the institutions that deliver. Even so, electoral malpractices remain rampant.
The statement to the effect that if bribes are offered, they be taken, but the bribe-givers be ditched, can be deemed an instigation to practise corruption, if corruption is under effective control, which clearly is not the case. The done thing, according to a UP politician is, “One note, one vote”. It is well-known that in the 2015 Delhi elections voters took bribes from two parties and voted for a third. Poor voters, in state after state, are bribed with money and liquor.

So, if bribes are offered, the targets of this pestilential insult have three options: they can (a) refuse to take it, (b) be honest vis-a-vis corruption and vote for the party that greased their palms or (c) be dishonest with the corrupt (and honest with their conscience) and punish bribe-givers by ditching them in poll booths.

The second option, which we shall consider first, becomes complicated when more than one party bribes you. In that case, you have two options; vote for the party that gives you the larger bribe, or deem both parties corrupt and vote for a party that did not insult your dignity by trying to buy you with the power of its ill-gotten wealth.

The problem with the third option is that in order to be politically honest you have to be morally dishonest. It is like treating one malady with another malady. But, unlike the second option, it at last implies disrespect towards the aberration, which is recognized as such. The bribed punish bribe-givers by mocking the latter’s intent.

Option (a) is the ideal. But the targeted voters do not live in an ideal world. They live degraded by poverty and social inequality. They live betrayed and burdened, consigned to the twilight world of insignificance. Elections are the only time they begin to matter and acquire any sense of worth. Minus their vote, they are less than dry leaves.

Insofar as voters from this socio-economic segment are routinely cheated and disowned by political parties, and the victory of this party or that has no material relevance to their plight, what makes sense to them is following the norm that governs our culture of governance at all levels: make hay while the sun shines. Their sun shines once in five years; whereas the sun of bribe-givers (who are mega-bribe takers) shines all the time. Political corruption is an Empire on which the sun never sets. What they distribute is a small part of the molasses of corruption stolen with invisible hands from the national kitchen called governance.

So it is understandable, if not wholesome, if the third option makes better sense to impecunious voters. After all, the pittance offered to them is from the wealth that was pilfered from their pockets. Politicians and parties do not create wealth; they only misappropriate it.

Does a politician instigate voters to practise corruption when he tells them that the bribes, if offered, be accepted but not voted for? I’m afraid not! Instead, the statement warns voters that bribes will be offered. But bribes work only if they are ‘honest’ in respect of them. Treat electoral arithmetic like school math –two negatives make a positive. Take what is offered, but let them not buy your souls. This is a realistic, if not an honest, advice under the circumstances.

It would be a different matter if someone were to exhort voters to sell their votes at a particular rate, or to the highest bidder. It is intellectually kitschy to mistake sarcasm for endorsement. The intent and effect of sarcasm is to discourage, and not to instigate!

A politician doesn’t preach to voters, “Do not take bribes!” This is a moral exhortation, not a political one. Not even religious pontiffs have the moral authority today to exhort poor voters to turn down bribes. That’s because they are not identified with the plight of the poor. They live in comfort and luxury. The luxury has the ugly underbelly of extortion and corruption. Who has the courage to tell the voters who languish in neglect and poverty to spur the bribe offered to them? I would not do it, even if I were spotlessly clean; for the reason that I don’t share their predicament, their struggle and their corrosive sense of under-privilege.

I remember telling my driver on the eve of the 2015 Delhi assembly elections, “Bribes will be offered. It is an insult to accept them. But if you do, mind your self-respect and not vote for those who insult you with their ill-gotten wealth.”

Corruption, by the way, is more in the effect than in the means. This is not to advocate a divorce between means and ends. Going by the outcome in the 2015 Delhi elections, the statement under reference has had a hugely salutary effect.

(Valson Thampu is former principal of St. Stephen’s College, Delhi)