It is worth having an academic discussion on the estimate of total expenses (as the cost of a democracy) and finding a way to:
1. Minimize the expenditure (and thereby lessening the burden on common man); and
2. Make all expenses accountable (recorded in books).
As we go by the records and report, USA and India are the costliest democracies (as we consider poll expenses) of the world. As we consider, both accounted and unaccounted expenditure, India’s expenses has surpassed that of USA. It is easy to calculate and compare accounted-expenditure, but how to calculate or estimate the unaccounted (black-money) expenditure?
We invite scholars and academicians to please come up with their inputs/ answers, on the above mentioned issues. Please refer the attachment, for further details.
An estimate on possible expenditure in Indian election - 2014
Based on various reports (cited in reference), we have tried to estimate the possible (minimum) expenditure this time in 2014 election of India. Total cost, in the minimum, is estimated by us to be around Rs.370 billion INR. The break-up with brief explanation is given below:
Constituency/ Total Seats/ Spending limi/t Average # of candidates per-sea/t Total in Rs. lakh/ In Billion INR (Rs.)
MP Seats= 545 Rs.70 lakh 10* 381500 38.15*
Assembly = 3500* Rs.25 lakh 8* 700000 70.0*
a. Extra money spent = Govt. allowed exp. (approx) @ 1081500 108.15*
b. Cash seized (in one month) X2 = 60000 6.0*
c. In kind = In 2 months 80000* 8.0*
d. [half of (b)] Stationery, printing (beyond (a)) 540750* 54.0*
e. Fuel, food & misc. exp. for team b + c (*) 140000* 14.0*
Money spent by candidates & party = Total= 2983750* 298.4*
Money spent by Govt. (election related) & EC (Rs. 3500 Cr.+ 3500 Cr) = 70.0*
Grand Total (*) = 368.40*
*: Approximate. It may vary significantly; but we hope this estimate is about the minimum possible expenditure. Values at b, c, d, e can actually go up.
@: Many candidate might have spent even below the allowed upper limit, but there are evidence (reports) of a large number of candidates spending 5 to 8 times more the allowed limit. Mr. G. Munde (a candidate from Maharastra) publicly announced to have spent Rs. 8 crore INR, alone.
Nice discussion. It is actually impossible to accurately predict since there are so many 'hidden' expenditures too. Take for example, money spent by people associated with candidates who do not come under any of the limitations/scrutiny. Then there are sponsors like the Gujerati billionaire who says he is actually 'renting' his private jets to the party. No one can vouch as to who pays for such expenditures.
Even in a 'smaller' democracy like USA, one single billionaire is reported to have donated $ 89 mn (out of $ 2.6 bn total expenditure) for the Presidential campaign. In India, with 543 seats, strong regional satraps and as many industrial houses currying favours from everyone, it is impossible to actually quote a figure with certainty.
The best thing that has happened this time around in India though, is not that the EC is watching with its eyes peeled; the common people are questioning such trends and an increasing awareness level amongst ordinary citizens is palpable. We just hope that this would lead to better transparency.
The very concept of democracy that originated from ancient Greek was the capacity of society to rule it self by itself - in participating to elect political leaders from among themselves. Any able citizen is capable to run for leadership if the person has a vision to solve concerns of social issues. But now we are witnessing a different and deviated type of a democracy where the process is becoming a commodity in which a huge cost is attached to it and the peoples' right is limited only to participate in voting not to be elected.
To run for a political office some one has to be a person of considerable wealth to fund costly campaigns. Therefore, the democratic process becomes something else - electing wealthy members of society to run social affairs of the majority common people which in most cases fail to address that fundamental issues as the wealthy consistently showed concerns and worked only to their types.
I propose to give another name to current such political processes than using a name which originally was meant to represent a different socio-political process fundamentally coined to political activities of the common public. We can not call a weirdly created system a functioning structure and maintain it if the relations used to create the system uses only few elements of it while making almost every element impotent or functionally invisible.
For instant, if someone creates a mathematical system of certain type with a set of 100 elements, in which only 5 of them are the most visible and used elements of the system, then it hard to call such a system a viable working mathematical structure that can be created from 100 elements.
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