Skip to main content

Politics and Crime




The present Lok Sabha has the highest number of MPs with criminal cases against them.  One-third of the MPs face serious criminal charges.  All the MPs of Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD – Bihar), 15 out of the 18 MPs of Shiv Sena (Maharashtra), and 4 out of the 5 MPs of Nationalist Congress Party (NCP – Maharashtra) are people with criminal records.  More than one-third of the BJP’s new MPs face criminal charges most of which are very serious.  The Congress Party fares better with 7% of its MPs facing serious charges while there are minor charges against 18%.  Maharashtra, Bihar and Uttar Pradesh have contributed most of these criminals to the 16th Lok Sabha.
Courtesy: Here
These MPs are very wealthy too.  82% of all the present MPs had assets worth over ₹1 crore each in 2014 (when they were elected).  Wealth does play a significant role in making politics criminal.  Criminals enter politics precisely because they bring wealth with them to the political parties.  Parties sell ‘tickets’ to candidates who are willing to pay the highest price.  The wealthy criminals have a lot of black money and hence they are ready to pay enormous amounts to the political party provided they can win a seat in the Parliament or the Legislative Assembly.  The party is happy to get the funds. 

Political power is the best means for whitening black money as well as erasing criminal records.  Add religion to it, and the mix is headier than what one can imagine.  While political power enables one to float above all legal structures in the county, religion sanctifies one’s actions.  Mass murders, for example, become holy acts when they are given religious colours.  Forget minor crimes such as mafia attacks.

Are Indians fools to elect such people to power?  The question is raised by the latest edition of Indispire (a forum of Indiblogger, a community of Indian bloggers).  The answer is both yes and no.  Yes, because the people can choose to say no to these candidates if they want.  No, because the people have very little choice: most candidates are criminals irrespective of the party – the range and degree of the crimes may vary, that’s all.

Politics in India today is a criminal activity, in short.  India stands terribly in need of a leader with a vision who can clean up the entire system.  Unfortunately the country shows no sign of any such visionary leader.  We are condemned to be ruled by criminals as long as we don’t learn the other available alternative: question the leaders when they fail to deliver.  Our television news channels are doing a great job at this.  But the fate of NDTV shows that the channels won’t be able to go very far.  If a leading national channel is unable to lead a fight against political crimes, who can? 

PS. Written for Indispire Edition 180: #ToErrIsIndian


Comments

  1. Pranju chakrapaniJuly 28, 2017 at 9:20 PM

    Two businesses will always remain profitable- religion and politics. And they will remain profitable till we remain blind to their deadly concoction with each other and also other elements.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalJuly 28, 2017 at 9:26 PM

      The common man's stupidity is what nurtures both religion and politics.

      Delete
  2. UnknownJuly 28, 2017 at 10:30 PM

    Perhaps India is the only country where we could see a symbiosis between crime and politics.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalJuly 29, 2017 at 1:56 PM

      One of the many such countries, in fact. Politics and venality have always shared a symbiotic relationship. They were born for each other. They are the most enduring spouses. Religion is the Narada in it.

      Delete
  3. Jyotirmoy SarkarJuly 29, 2017 at 7:25 AM

    Informative post indeed, as it is believed by the educated people that the politicians should be chosen with exam(Like school and colleges) and with certain qualifications, any person with criminal background should be banned to join politics...but who will make this rule?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalJuly 29, 2017 at 1:59 PM

      The rules are made by these very same criminals. In spite of having an abundance of black money with them, they keep on revising their pay scales and other benefits very methodically and very religiously. The whole written history of mankind revolves around these bastards. Einsteins and Heisenbergs who make the real contributions remain in the background and any bastard who rules people for some period of time becomes a hero in history :)

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Adventures of Toto as a comic strip

  'The Adventures of Toto' is an amusing story by Ruskin Bond. It is prescribed as a lesson in CBSE's English course for class 9. Maggie asked her students to do a project on some of the lessons and Femi George's work is what I would like to present here. Femi converted the story into a beautiful comic strip. Her work will speak for itself and let me present it below.  Femi George Student of Carmel Public School, Vazhakulam, Kerala Similar post: The Little Girl
47 comments
Read more

Why India Needs to Reclaim its Liberal Soul

Russia’s Putin announced the demise of liberalism, America’s Trump wrote its obituary, and India’s Modi wielded the death as a political forge that transmuted him into a demigod. We are, unfortunately, passing through an era of so-called “strong leaders” like Putin, Trump, and Modi. A 2024 report based on a 2023 Pew survey found that 67% Indians endorsed a governing system with a “strong leader” who can make decisions without interference from courts or parliament. This support for autocracy was the highest among all surveyed nations and has increased consistently after Modi became the PM. Shockingly, the same 2023 survey found that 72% of Indian respondents expressed a favourable view of military rule. Indians don’t want individual freedom, it seems. We are used to the many gods who incarnated at appropriate times and destroyed evil ( Sambhavami yuge yuge ). Modi is our present divine incarnation. It is the duty of these avatars to conquer evil; hence individual freedom doesn’t ...
12 comments
Read more

The Little Girl

The Little Girl is a short story by Katherine Mansfield given in the class 9 English course of NCERT. Maggie gave an assignment to her students based on the story and one of her students, Athena Baby Sabu, presented a brilliant job. She converted the story into a delightful comic strip. Mansfield tells the story of Kezia who is the eponymous little girl. Kezia is scared of her father who wields a lot of control on the entire family. She is punished severely for an unwitting mistake which makes her even more scared of her father. Her grandmother is fond of her and is her emotional succour. The grandmother is away from home one day with Kezia's mother who is hospitalised. Kezia gets her usual nightmare and is terrified. There is no one at home to console her except her father from whom she does not expect any consolation. But the father rises to the occasion and lets the little girl sleep beside him that night. She rests her head on her father's chest and can feel his heart...
19 comments
Read more

Being Christian in BJP’s India

A moment of triumph for India’s women’s cricket team turned unexpectedly into a controversy about religious faith and expression, thanks to some right-wing footsloggers. After her stellar performance in the semi-final of the Wormen’s World Cup (2025), Jemimah Rodrigues thanked Jesus for her achievement. “Jesus fought for me,” she said quoting the Bible: “Stand still and God will fight for you” [1 Samuel 12:16]. Some BJP leaders and their mindless followers took strong exception to that and roiled the religious fervour of the bourgeoning right wing with acerbic remarks. If Ms Rodrigues were a Hindu, she would have thanked her deity: Ram or Hanuman or whoever. Since she is a Christian, she thanked Jesus. What’s wrong in that? If she was a nonbeliever like me, God wouldn’t have topped the list of her benefactors. Religion is a talisman for a lot of people. There’s nothing wrong in imagining that some god sitting in some heaven is taking care of you. In fact, it gives a lot of psychologic...
26 comments
Read more

Hollow Leaders

A century ago, T S Eliot wrote about the hollowness of his countrymen in a poem titled The Hollow Men . The World War I had led to a lot of disillusionment with the collapse of powerful empires and the savagery of the war itself which unleashed barbaric slaughter. The generation that survived was known as the “Lost Generation.” Before the war, Western civilisation was sustained by certain values and principles given by religion, the Enlightenment, and Victorian morality. The war showed that science and technology, which could improve life, had actually produced machine guns, gas warfare, and mass death. Religion became hollow. People became hollow. “We are the hollow men,” Eliot’s poem began. The civilisation looked sophisticated from outside, but it was empty inside. There is a lot of religion today in the world. My country has allegedly become so religious that it decides what you will eat, wear, which god you will pray to, and even the language for communication. The ultimat...
16 comments
Read more