Cashing in on poll season

With elections just a little more than a month away in Tamil Nadu, officials of the Election Commission of India will turn their focus on various violations of model code of conduct, mainly cash movement in the state. The importance given to this election-season menace in the state by the ECI was evident from Chief Election Commissioner Sunil Arora pointing out to reporters that TN was the only state where polls were rescinded on two occasions due to large-scale cash seizures and voter inducements during a recent interaction and that they would be extra vigilant this time around. The CEC was referring to the RK Nagar assembly by-poll and the election to Vellore Lok Sabha seat that were called off in the last-minute following seizure of a huge cache of unaccounted cash from both constituencies.

But would maintaining extra vigil help matters in any way? Considering that distributing cash for votes is nothing new in TN and has been taking place quite blatantly for the past several decades despite best efforts by the ECI to put an end to it, it is about time the authorities come up with new ideas instead of sticking to old techniques. With the model code of conduct in place, ordinary businessmen, property sellers and buyers, and even those visiting gold retailers to buy jewellery will now have to think twice before taking their cash out as it is likely that ECI officials, through their sources among general public and the police, are likely to stop every vehicle passing on the road with luggage and check them. More often than not, this causes great inconvenience to interstate travellers.

While ECI records indicate that a large amount of cash is seized by them during every poll, unfortunately, most of it belongs to common public who have to wait for a month or so before they are able to claim it back after showing proper records. Besides, even though cash distribution by political parties continues to be rampant at least in TN during every election, there is very little evidence to show it has really worked in the past, except in by-polls, which by and large goes to the ruling party due to its natural advantage of being in power and the public knowledge that one or two seats wouldn’t make any change to whoever governs them. If the TN voter could be appeased by a few thousand rupees, ruling parties should have never lost an election in the past few decades.

It is likely that the TN voter can get swayed by the cash at the time of elections, but if that is followed by poor governance for five years, the ECI can be certain that irrespective of the amount of cash given to each voter next time around, the voter would know where to cast his ballot more smartly the next time round.

And that is exactly why ruling parties, despite their cash reserves and administrative control, lose polls regularly in TN even though cash-for-vote formula has existed for so many decades now. It’s about time ECI focussed on educating the voter on democracy and the value of a vote rather than their singular mission of ‘search and seize’ cash during the run up to the elections.