The income-tax department is now carrying out raids to investigate land deals reportedly worth an illicit Rs 1,000 crore. Many other figures of the Opposition are also being investigated by the CBI or the incometax department.

Indians would welcome a crackdown on corruption. They are also savvy enough to draw the distinction between a crackdown on corruption and a crackdown on the Opposition.

Any crackdown will carry conviction as a genuine attack on corruption only when the basic enabler of corruption in the country, the absence of an institutional mechanism to finance politics, is dealt with. We are yet to see any sign of that.

No Nripen Chakraborty Now

In a situation in which politics is financed principally off the books, personal honesty of politicians is just a question of letting someone else do the dirty work of resource mobilisation. Of course, there can be rare exceptions. Nripen Chakraborty, who was chief minister of Tripura from 1978 till the Left Front’s defeat in 1988, famously vacated the chief minister’s official house packing his belongings, all of them, into a steel trunk, which he carried out in a cycle rickshaw.

And the politics of his party in those times depended on voluntary work and small, willing donations. There are no Nripen Chakrabortys around in the world’s fastest-growing economy, although his Communist successor Manik Sarkar is also a man with a Spartan lifestyle. Even if a leader himself did not insist on having all the creature comforts of high office every waking moment, air conditioners and sofas are likely to be thrust upon him, even when he makes a condolence visit to ahome bereft of such things.

No one would seriously question the personal honesty of a leader like Manmohan Singh or A K Antony. But do they contribute to their party’s war chest, from which their own political expenses are met?

Political expenses are real and immense. Take a rally of one lakh people. Organisers spend anything from Rs 500 to Rs 1,500 per head, apart from the expense on the travel of the leader who addresses the rally. Such a rally can cost Rs 10 crore, on average. National and regional parties together hold hundreds of such rallies in one state in an election. Do the math.

Then there is publicity. Posters, hoardings, banners, television spots, newspaper advertisements, publications, other propaganda material, including masks, caps, flags and T-shirts. Chartered planes and helicopters that fly for extended periods. Sensible parties do not pack senior leaders into the same aircraft — one crash would eliminate the entire leadership.

Many peripatetic leaders mean many planes/choppers. It is not just the star campaigners who travel. On the ground, cars, jeeps and two-wheelers cover thousands of dusty kilometres. These days, every party conducts election surveys, several times over.

Parties need offices and staff. They need to be paid for. This is all valid expenditure, even if the ridiculously low spending limits prescribed by the Representation of the People Act make much of it illegitimate. Then, there is the kind of spending that is not valid, the money spent on buying off politicians, bribing voters with cash, liquor and drugs, hiring goons and musclemen.

Democracy is Expensive

All told, Indian democracy calls for tens of thousands of crores to be spent. But the declared expenditure of all political parties typically adds up to less than Rs 1,000 crore. Which means, the bulk of their actual income and expenditure is off the books.

Does this mean that political parties keep two sets of books, one for their own internal use and the other to show the Election Commission? It’s a little more complex. It is not the party HQ that finances all expenditure.

Individual leaders raise money and spend, on their own campaigns and on those of some others, these numbers rising with their seniority. This means that political leaders raise money off the books, maintain a war chest and spend from it when required. Since most of the funds so raised and kept ready for spending is off the books, most leaders sit on quantities of black money. If a serious enough effort is made by an investigating agency, almost any leader can be caught with assets disproportionate to his or her known means of income, except those senior enough or smart enough to leave no trail.

Traders and businessmen fund not parties but individual leaders. They give money as token of respect, out of gratitude for work done or because they are forced to (the last kind of tribute leads to a backlash). Politicians wax rich. Without this columnist naming names and risking a charge of libel, anyone can identify, eyes shut, politicians in their state who have become abnormally rich for no apparentreason other than being in politics.

Change, this system must. But the starting point has to be institutionalising transparent funding of politics, not raids on individual leaders chosen by expedience.