However, the new law is largely a dead letter because very few companies disclose contributions to the parties whereas everyone knows that the unaccounted payments continue. To some degree, this is a consequence of the arbitrariness with which politicians wield power: imagine what Ms Mayawati would do to a businessman whose company reported donations to the Samajwati Party, or what Ms Jayalalitha would do if she knew of a company that had contributed to the DMK. The Tata group tried to get round this problem by setting up an independent body that would donate money to the different parties in accordance with some criteria that would be disclosed. This was an attempt to insulate the group's companies from the possible repercussions of any political donations, but little has been heard of it in recent years. In the same way, nothing has been heard about the follow-up action taken by the Congress, after a committee headed by Manmohan Singh went into the issue of cleaning up party funding.
The manner in which corporate contributions to politicians have worked, or not worked, is a symptom of a deeper problem: of the lack of transparency in political party accounts, and of the quid pro quo that operates in terms of donations and government actions. Simply legalising corporate donations will not, therefore, provide the answer. There are some who hope that the recent decision to allow access to political party accounts, under the Right to Information law, will make a difference but they hope in vain; it is almost certain that the formal accounts of political parties disclose only a fraction of what the parties actually receive and spend, especially at election time. Indeed, Ms Mayawati has discovered a new method, of explaining away vast sums as having been received in the form of countless donations from undisclosed party followers.
Any party that wants to clean up its sources of finance should study the manner in which Barak Obama has used the internet to create an army of people who both organise funding and who contribute, not a large sum once, but small sums over a period of time
