Electoral Bond – UPSC Sociological Perspective
July 13, 2024
Electoral bonds are a form of anonymous donations to political parties that were introduced by the Finance Bill 2017. The scheme allows any individual or entity to purchase electoral bonds from SBI in denominations of Rs 1,000, Rs 10,000, Rs 1 lakh, Rs 10 lakh, and Rs 1 crore and donate them to any registered political party.
A five-judge Constitution Bench of the Supreme Court unanimously struck down the Centre’s electoral bond scheme which facilitates anonymous political donations for being unconstitutional. It underscored that the scheme violates the right to information under Article 19(1)(a) of the Constitution.
Sociological Analysis
- From a political perspective, electoral bonds and the opacity surrounding it results in the distortion of healthy competition and political diversity. This can affect the pluralism vis-à-vis power dynamics as said by Robert Dahl.
- From a Marxian perspective, electoral bonds are criticized to favor crony capitalism, as wealthy corporations can exert undue influence on political parties and make substantial contributions without public scrutiny.
- Electoral bonds are also condemned for providing opportunities to acts of deviance like money laundering, tax evasion etc. This can lead to the loss of economic capital of the state as tax money is being lost.
- As per CMIE database, 33 loss making companies contributed around 576 crores in electoral bonds, raising the possibility of money laundering.
- From a subaltern perspective, electoral bonds can marginalize the voices of marginalized communities and underprivileged groups as wealthy individuals channel significant resources to favored parties or candidates, thereby amplifying their influence.
- This exacerbates the situation of social inequality that’s been affecting disproportionately the downtrodden for many years.
- Electoral bonds and their characteristic feature of secrecy causes disillusionment amongst citizens regarding a fair and free electoral process and thus goes against the principle of social contract and Rousseaus’sprinciple of general will.
- Post modernist scholar Habermas’s delegitimisation crisis can be connoted to this aspect as well.
- Secrecy with regard to electoral bonds can lead to exclusion of certain categories of people like the middle class due to the concerns of privacy,security and legal implications.
- So when funding from small and medium donors is minuscule, their interests would be least recognised and ultimately, power would be concentrated in the hands of a few elites in the society, who provide the major share of funding to political parties(Weber’s zero sum theory of power can be correlated here).
- From a feminist perspective, electoral bonds can be said to reinforce the existing power balance between genders.
- Women are mostly underrepresented in corporates and hence a political structure where vested interest of corporates come into play, policies would mostly be male centric. This would widen the misogynisticmilieu prevalent in the society.
A clean & transparent electoral funding process is vital to ensure a fair electoral democracy.Electoral bonds raise significant sociological concerns regarding their impact on democracy, political accountability, and the integrity of the electoral process. Addressing these issues requires comprehensive reforms to promote transparency, accountability, and inclusivity in political funding, while safeguarding the principles of democratic governance and citizen participation.. As India aspires to achieve developed country status by 2047, it must aspire for similar standards of transparency in the political sphere.
