Anonymous Cash Is Flooding India’s $7 Billion Elections
A plan to increase transparency in one of the world’s most expensive (and corrupt) campaigns might have the opposite effect.
India’s elections are among the world’s most expensive. New Delhi’s Centre for Media Studies projects that about $7 billion has been spent on this year’s national races, putting the tally ahead of the $6.5 billion that OpenSecrets.org reported was spent on the 2016 U.S. presidential and congressional campaigns combined.
They’re also among the most corrupt. Illegal donations known as “black money” are used to ferry supporters to rallies or buy drugs and alcohol to bribe voters, among other things. It’s a vestige of the system that prevailed after a 1969 ruling barred companies from funding political parties; even though the ban was lifted in 1985, corporate donors had gotten used to making anonymous cash donations.