During elections, anywhere in India is usually so full of unethical practices that it virtually renders ineffective and meaningless the so called code of conduct timed with the formal announcement of the election schedule. By the time the code takes effect there is practically nothing left to be infringed. The fag end of the stipulated tenure is taken for granted, by one and all, without exception, to be a license for plundering public funds for partisan interests, cutting corners with impunity. All this has by now become an accepted norm, notwithstanding its being patently immoral and unfair.
Individual ministers and legislators have no qualms in misappropriating tax payer’s hard earned money and use it for promoting their personal interests. They simply put their names on the foundation stones and inaugural plaques of public projects for which they have not donated a penny from their own pockets. The prevailing practice in independent India amounts to immoral privatization of public fund.
Similarly, the way the so-called ‘constituency development fund’ is allocated and misused as private money is unacceptable. Discovery of serious fraud in its allocation and utilization is not new and is often heard, but because the entire political class is involved in it, nobody minds the presence of this evil practice. A few inquiries held under public pressure have exposed grave irregularities. But the practice continues to remain in place. For the election process to be really free, fair and transparent it is becoming increasingly necessary to weed out these lethal anomalies.
There is so much issue of money power and muscle power influence in elections and consequently upon democratic process. But a criminal silence prevails over this duly authorized misuse of tax payer’s money to promote someone’s individual fortunes or-lining their pockets. The negative impact of such practices is more perceptible in smaller states where the election process is suspect for various other reasons. This trend is getting magnified with the generous dose of developmental funds coming from the centre. Packages and projects are being thrown about liberally as the elections come closer. It is this type of thinking which is responsible for letting a huge accumulation of job vacancies in the administration over so many years, only to grind individual axes around the election time. Even in an inefficient administration, which this state is destined to suffer forever, leaving so many vacant posts for such a long time is bound to take its toll on the overall performance of the depleted departments which is because, the jobs had to be held back and converted around the election time.
Recruitment procedure has already been short circuited and institutional character tampered with in order to go through the motion of a (farcical) process of filling up these vacancies. Connivance within the political class is a major stumbling block. That explains such high degree of mutual tolerance for crime against democracy even as' all of them shed tears for purifying electoral process. Vote rigging is slowly receding into background in the face of these officially blessed and selfishly tolerated pre-poll1 malpractices. All in the name of legal procedures is what the common man says in the end.