Party money: this is where black money trail begins

by Akshaya Mishra Jul 11, 2012

Our periodic outbursts of anger over political corruption are illogical, stemming from inadequate understanding of how parties function. Think of what the bouts of outrage have delivered in terms of concrete result and you realise why. The fact is, there would be no end to such corruption until the country finds ways to streamline and monitor the finances of political parties and devise a system where funding to parties is transparent.

The fundamental flaw in the popular discourse on political corruption is the short shrift given to the reality that political parties need a great deal of money to function. They need to fight elections at regular intervals and keep the party apparatus in fine fettle during non-election times. Parties have bureaucracies which need money to run. There are routine expenses on heads such as leaders travelling to different places and mobilisation of people for events. These are genuine expenses for which parties need to generate money.