The 2014 general election campaign ended yesterday evening as the final round of voting is scheduled to take place tomorrow. The first voting took place on April 7 and the last votes will be cast on the evening of May 12. Campaigning, of course, had started some weeks before April 7. But, altogether, this has been a particularly exhausting election. It has been the longest in India's history; it is almost unbelievable that this is the country that, in the past, conducted free and fair elections in a few days. The 1980 election, for example, was over in four days. When the 2014 campaign started, it was still relatively cool in much of India; it ended in the blazing summer sun. Tempers have shortened, too. The Bharatiya Janata Party's prime ministerial candidate, Narendra Modi, has addressed more than 150 rallies in more than a month - each one of those featured a near-unique speech, taking into account which state the rally was being held in, and what the news of the day was. But even Mr Modi has begun to show signs of exhaustion and irritation, especially after the media turned its attention to Priyanka Gandhi's campaign to keep Amethi and Rae Bareli voting for her family.
Till 1989, most elections took less than 10 days to complete. But those days are long gone; and the India of today is closely reflected in the numbers associated with the 2014 election, too. Of the 8230 candidates for the 543 seats on offer in the Lok Sabha this time, around 17 per cent had criminal charges - and 11 per cent had serious criminal charges. This comes after five years in which "criminalisation" of politics became part of the national political discourse. However, clearly, those statements had little effect on the absolute numbers - since the proportion of both rose since 2009. In the 2009 elections, only 15 per cent of candidates had criminal charges; and only eight per cent, three percentage points lower, had serious criminal charges recorded against their name. It is perhaps an overstatement to view this as nothing but "criminalisation". As is often said, false charges can be easily laid against political opponents; criminal charges are sometimes claimed to be the price of politics in some states. Nor to mention the fact that, in some of the more lawless parts of northern India in particular, voting for a local strongman - a "bahubali", as they are known in eastern Uttar Pradesh and Bihar - is a way of ensuring protection against the depredations of other criminals. Addressing "criminalisation" by controlling those who enter Parliament is the wrong way to go about it; ensuring that law and order reaches everyone is the only right way.
Then there's the question of wealth. Excluding billionaires like Nandan Nilekani, the Association for Democratic Reforms found that in 2014, 2208 or 27 per cent of the analysed candidates had assets of over Rs 1 crore, up from 16 per cent (1,249) in 2009 and 13 in 2004. True, these years have also seen relatively sharp inflation. The Congress's 461 candidates declared wealth, on average, of Rs 13.27 crore; only 21 per cent of Congressmen had assets of less than a crore. The BJP's 426 candidates declared wealth of Rs 10.32 crore on average; only 27 per cent had assets of less than a crore. The two national parties clearly seek out wealthy candidates - but even the average candidate from parties like the Bahujan Samaj Party and the Aam Aadmi Party declared wealth of Rs 3.53 crore and Rs 2.77 crore respectively. India's democracy is clearly no place for poorer candidates. Parties complain that much of local constituency spending must come from the candidate; even in other democracies, like the United States, the electoral process tends to be biased towards richer candidates. This will be an even tougher nut to crack than the question of criminalisation. It will not likely be solved by the next general elections, whenever those are. Hopefully the next elections will not, however, be quite as long as the 2014 edition.
