Why India’s election is the most expensive in the world
NEARLY ONE BILLION people are casting their votes in India’s general election. It is the biggest democratic exercise in history—and could also be the most expensive. Spending is expected to reach 1.35trn rupees ($16bn), according to the Centre for Media Studies (CMS), an Indian non-profit. That would be more than double the amount spent in the previous election in 2019 and even exceed the cash splashed in America’s presidential election in 2020. Why do Indian political parties spend such vast sums?
The explanation seems simple: the more voters there are, the more it costs parties to reach them. Yet the size of India’s electorate only partly explains the massive election bill. Over the past two decades, election spending has increased by 165% (after adjusting for inflation)—far more than the 27% rise in the population during the same period.
Another explanation is the number of candidates. In India contests at constituency level can feature dozens: in 2019, an average of 15 candidates contested each seat (preliminary data points to a similar figure in this election). Packed fields can lead to aggressive and costly campaigning.
According to estimates by CMS, more than half of party and candidate spending in 2019 went towards advertisements, party workers’ wages and transport. As India’s economy has grown, voters are being wooed in more sophisticated and costlier ways. With more Indians online, much more is now spent on digital marketing. Data from Google suggests that spending on adverts on its platform in the months leading up to this year’s election was six times greater than the equivalent period in 2019.
Another important factor is the money spent on sweeteners for voters. These expenditures are never declared but CMS estimated that around a quarter of political spending in 2019 went to voters directly in the form of gifts, which can range from booze to TVs to goats, or outright cash bribes. It estimated that more than half of voters in four southern Indian districts were paid 1,000-2,000 rupees for their votes. Research conducted in northern India by Jennifer Bussell of the University of California, Berkeley found that more than 80% of candidates said their peers feel pressured to hand out gifts.
This largesse is illegal. On April 15th, a week before voting began, the Election Commission said that it had seized assets worth 47bn rupees in an effort to ensure “a level playing-field”. The loot included 36m litres of alcohol and 4bn rupees in cash. That is probably a small fraction of the total. There are caps on the campaign spending of individual candidates, but they are loosely enforced. Moreover, there is no restriction on the amount that the candidates’ parties can spend.
The extravagance involved in campaigning affects the type of people who are elected. Successful candidates tend to be wealthy. In 2019 the median wealth of winning candidates was 40m rupees, roughly 16 times higher than those they beat. And partly because so much of the spending is illicit, they are also more likely to have criminal backgrounds. Nearly 30% of winners had serious criminal cases filed against them at the time of their victories, compared with 13% for the competition. Preliminary data reveal a similar trend in this year’s candidates.
These problems are not unique to India. Cash-for-votes is a common practice in other developing democracies. And like their counterparts in those places, Indian officials have long wrestled with how to weaken the relationship between money and politics. In 2018 the government launched an “electoral bonds” scheme to stem the flow of “black cash” into politics by providing a legal channel for donations. But the programme did little to improve transparency as donations were anonymous. In February the Supreme Court deemed the initiative unconstitutional In truth, the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party has little reason to introduce effective reform. In 2019 it led the way in election spending, accounting for over half of all the expenditure by parties. It swept to power—and will probably do so again. ■
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