The governing party in India, the Congress
Party, received twenty billion rupees or $365 million in donations in the past
seven years, more than twice the amount donated to the primary opposition
party, the Bharatiya Janata Party. These estimates are the products of the Association
for Democratic Reforms who spent fourteen months getting the data from public
lawsuits and using India’s Right to Information Act to make parties disclose
their figures. Indian law allows political parties to keep their source of
donations from being disclosed when the donations are less than twenty thousand
rupees. Political financing contributes a great deal to the corruption in
India. Reports even show that political parties spend much more than what these
figures reveal.
It’s difficult not to view India’s
corruption in political financing by contrasting it with America’s own campaign
finance laws. By the demands for a purer form of democracy by citizens in the
United States of America, there has been a great deal of improvement in the
amount of corruption in politics. If Indian citizens continue to demand that
their political parties be held accountable for their actions, then Indian
politics might see a dramatic change at some time in their future. If Indian
citizens continue to want to strive for a less corrupted form of democracy,
then it is possible for change to occur. Citizens give power to their government,
not the other way around. When government takes power that isn’t given to them,
that is when corruption occurs. The
Indian government needs to recognize this so that India may have a better
future with purer democracy."India's Congress Party Leads in Donations"
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