It is difficult to believe that the caretaker government has issued the ordinance totally banning contributions by companies to political parties in any form whatsoever solely to eliminate the influence of the so-called big money from public life. It must know that political parties cannot fight the forthcoming election without considerable sums of money, especially when a vast majority of candidates are not likely to be rich men who can finance the campaign on their own, and that those in authority at the state or the Union level are not above using their official positions to collect the necessary amounts. Thus it is not at all illogical to infer that the government has been guided by the partisan consideration of placing at a disadvantage those who are either out of office altogether or hold office in one or a couple of states. Of the three major parties and alliance systems in the fray, the Congress (I), for example, is in power only in Andhra. Indeed, even the Janata is less well placed to collect funds by the backdoor than the Janata (S)-Congress (U) alliance by virtue of being out of office in New Delhi.
The government, it is true, has gone by the recommendations of the Sachar committee which its predecessor had set up. But the committee’s report by no means represents anything like a national consensus on the subject. In fact, any number of individuals and institutions, including this newspaper, have held that the 1969 Act, which banned direct contributions by companies to political parties, was itself ill-conceived and that either the ban should be lifted or the Indian state itself should, like its West German counterpart, accept the responsibility of financing the election campaigns of political parties and pay them certain sums, depending on the votes polled by them in the previous poll. Since the second proposal has not yet been accepted, we regard it wrong for the caretaker government to have issued the ordinance.
It is well known that certain loopholes have existed in the 1969 Act, especially in respect of advertisements that companies could place in souvenirs, brochures and pamphlets brought out by various political parties. And it is possible to argue, as a number of leaders have argued, that Mrs Gandhi’s government abused this lacuna in the Act to force companies to place unduly large advertisements at arbitrarily high rates in its souvenirs which it in fact never brought out. As such there is a case for plugging the loopholes if only to save the business community from harassment at the hands of those in authority. But one must be naive to believe that businessmen will now not be required to cough up substantial sums of money by those who are in a position to twist their arms. In plain words, the entire operation of giving and collecting funds is being driven underground. And when businessmen need to find considerable amounts of black money they tend to generate a lot more of the same. The consequences for the country’s economy and polity can easily be imagined. As it is, black money has been playing havoc with both.
In promulgating the ordinance the caretaker government has also violated the widespread understanding that it will not take controversial policy decisions. It is doubtless obliged to act on urgent national issues such as the steep rise in prices day after day. But on those questions, too, it is under an obligation to be guided by the general sense of the community. The total ban on contributions to political parties does not fall in the category of urgent issues. For, the question has been hanging fire for years, and the ordinance in question cannot be said to represent a national consensus as indicated earlier.
The Times of India, 27 September 1979