The one mistake that Indian democracy must learn to avoid from American democracy?

Indian Express Group hosted Michael Sandel, Professor of Philosophy at Harvard University, at its adda recently.

One of the questions he was asked was:

The one mistake that Indian democracy must learn to avoid from American democracy.

His answer was:

Allowing money to dominate politics and political campaigns.

His answer could not have come amidst a more interesting audience and at a more ironical time. The audience was interesting as it had all who’s who of Indian business and politics at the adda. The timing was ironical as the electoral bonds just exposed this nexus between politics and corporate money like never before.

The list of donors is dominated by Indian corporates who have donated funds to political parties either in the name of their firms or even in individual capacity. The analysis shows that corporates did not buy bonds out of will but out of compulsions. The corporates seem to have bought bonds for multiple quid pro quo reasons: avoid government raids, post government raids, seek political favors for projects and so on. We will know many more details once SBI gives the alphanumeric code of the bonds to match the donors with the recipients. But even before that, there is some evidence of several cases of quid pro quo.

Once the corporate money starts to dominate political campaigns, it obviously goes on to dominate politics of a nation. The polices will be drafted in a way that it benefits the donors, plain and simple.  Clearly with elctoral bonds funding, all the principles of the Indian Constitution which was based on social equality and ensuring the weakest also have a voice are thrown out of the window.

It is amazing not one of the leading corporates raised any voices if there was demand for quid pro quo? Instead they just chose to invest/donate in electoral bonds. What happened to all the corporate governance, disclosures and so on? How is it the listed companies got away without disclosing their investments? Then there are also cases of how the corporates donated funds via unlisted companies. There are just so many myriad ways through which money was routed to electoral bonds.

To top it all, they tried to delay and get a stay order on the Supreme Court order to release the donor information on electoral bonds. They appealed via their several industry bodies but none of the industry bodies spoke against the corporate funding of elections via the very bonds.

Sandel’s answer leads to this larger historic question on how did this relationship between politics and business become so closely intertwined? How is it that Indian businesses which participated in Indian independence and nation building of which democracy was a critical part, come to play such a leading role in undermining Indian democracy?