Reforming Political Funding It is welcome that the government
has committed itself to reform political funding. But the
thinking, in terms of state funding of elections, is flawed. The
basic goal in political funding reform should be to achieve
complete transparency as to how much parties and politicians
spend and how they finance that spending. Reform of political
funding is necessary, even if not sufficient , to tackle
corruption. Indian democracy is funded by corruption.
Politicians take money out of the exchequer , sell patronage and
extort money, all in the name of mobilising funds for political
activity. They pocket a large part of the collection and pass on
the rest to the party and the workers they employ. Since civil
servants must collude for misuse of state power , this method of
mobilising political funds suborns the bureaucracy and
procedural hurdles proliferate as rentseeking opportunities. All
the scams rocking the country have this common root. Finding a
new source of political funding away fro