The way to minimize election
expenditure
The Election Commission of India (ECI) has issued
detailed guidelines and set up an elaborate administrative machinery to monitor
the expenses of candidates and ensure a free and fair poll. Election
Expenditure Monitoring (ECM) team deals
with matters ranging from maintenance of accounts by each candidate, training
of election agents on expenditure monitoring, maintenance of registers,
appointment of election expenditure observers for each constituency and
preparation of daily activity reports by flying squads on seizure of cash and
so on,
It is high time for our politicians to move from the
ugly and irritating physical campaigning to electronic media campaign and debates
on TVs to reach the audiences. This will make it not necessary to pay cash or in
kind to collect the people, diversion of public transport to take them to
meeting venues, elaborate stage and lighting arrangements consuming lots of
energy and money even when the public is sweating under unpredictable power
cuts, large processions in hot sun causing traffic jams and hardships to the
public, and so on. We can save money, energy, watch on TV decent debates on
real issues for each constituency or region, and voters can participate in the
discussion of past performance of their MPs and the current promises of the contestants
in real time discussion moderated by the anchor. This is the way forward for an
open, decent and transparent election with full participation of the
electorate. In such cases we can cut down the campaign expenses and hardships
by half or more.
If there is a will, there may not be any
insurmountable hurdle in infusing austerity in election expenditure by
candidates and political parties. At the present stage of technological
development, messages (and images) can be reached to audience without anyone physically
traveling places. Therefore, gradually, we should move towards less journeys
for such purposes. Except for occasional social meetings, government and even
private organisations should endeavor to bring down travel expenditure. This
will indirectly help to bring down even oil bills.
Campaign by 'Star Campaigners' should come under
general party propaganda. Each party must be allowed to spend a fixed amount of
money on general propaganda and star campaigning depending on the number of constituencies
they are fighting from. Campaign expenditure of individual candidates must be
accounted separately, even if star campaigning in their constituency has a
direct impact on their chances of winning. Otherwise political parties will
have to do away with star campaigning.
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