ToI Article About Ceiling Suspeciously Close To Mine
Today in Times of India I found an article so suspeciously close to what I have written before, that had it not been written by a Professor from an esteemed institution, IIM-Banglore, Prof. M V Rajeev Gowda, I would have assumed it was copied from me.
Here is the article in question, Don't cripple clean politicians [cached copy]. Compare it with my article: Remove Election Expense Ceiling that I wrote about three months ago.
Since this blog is a cryptoblog, it is impossible for me to modify the content of my article without leaving a public trail, and since you are free to verify that it doesnt exist, it should be obvious beyond doubt I did indeed write it three months ago, and it is impossible that I could have lifted this from Time Of India article.
Similarities in Articles
Lets first examine the similarities based on which I am making this claim.
The first key idea is that not just election expenditure ceiling is bad, it cripples honest politicians. Here is what I wrote:
Shiela is going to spend those 10s and 100s of Cr, but Kejriwal will be tied by the 20L limit, as he is a honest man, his entire foundation is his honesty. He will rather give up politics than violate the laws.
This is the key theme of my article, and is also the key theme and the title of the offending article.
There are many commentators who considered the election ceiling bad, they too say that people misrepresent their election spending to election comission, but they did not argue that this is "crippling the clean politicians".
In fact the common debate on this topic is in the lines of:
Electoral purists argue that hiking the cap on election expenses would shut the door on the not-so-rich people to enter electoral politics.
So the above commentator thinks that removing the ceiling will cripple the honest candidate, where as my article, and professors one argues completely opposite that the ceiling cripples it.
The opening paragraph of my article contains:
While corruption in politics is a global phenomena, in India there is a systematic issue that further makes it impossible for Indian politicians to not be corrupt. It is the ceiling on how much a politician can spend during election campaign.
The professors article contains:
... Can we identify and attack the root causes instead?
One fundamental flaw is our farcically low limit on election expenditure. ...
You will see both me and the professor is arguing a fundamentally different idea than commonly understood, which is that its not that politicians are corrupt but that it our system which is forcing the corrupt to get ahead. This is not an individual issue, but a systematic one. And the systematic defect is EC spending ceiling.
Then is the next key idea that EC is playing a losing battle:
My article:
Election comission is completely toothless to limit the money, and any effort to do so is a wasted effort, its a cat and mouse game, that politicians will keep finding loopholes and winning.
Professors:
The Election Commission tries hard to enforce these limits, with spectacularly counterproductive results.
Professor did not explicitly elaborate on the "counterproductive results", where as I did:
The end result is that the money spent is all necessarily black. EC, election comission, makes it impossible for a fair and honest candidate to fight, no body can win an election spending 10-20L, when his corrupt opponents are spending 100s of times more.
Then again, me:
The real problem is, nobody honest today has any hope of competing against the corrupt.
Professor:
Thereby, clean politicians are crippled by the system.
In terms of legitimate expenses that merit more than allowed limits by EC, professor says:
Low limits ignore the numerous legitimate expenses associated with campaigning. In the private sector, a marketing campaign aiming to reach 20 lakh people may cost at least Rs 100 per person. But to reach 20 lakh voters, politicians cannot spend more than Rs 2 per voter! Feeding volunteers and sending a postcard to each voter would exhaust that budget.
And me:
Another thing one can do with legal money is PR agencies. PR agency can help a politician properly gauge the mood of public, and act accordingly, but no PR agency will work for less than 20-30L rupees, the entire budget EC thinks a member must spend.
Here is what professor demands:
We need to get out our deep denial and make expenditure limits realistic (e.g. Rs 15-20 crore per Lok Sabha candidate) or get rid of them altogether. Then, as election expenditures emerge overground, cleaner candidates who can raise white resources will also be ableto compete. Unlike today when people want clean candidates but political parties shun them on the criterion of 'winnability'.
And this is my demand:
This ceiling must be abolished, or adjusted to some number suffeciently high to reflect the actual election expenditure, 100 Cr or so.
We both think fund raising will help honest candidates, me:
Another point is, we have not yet tested the true power of political fund raising in India. In US, Obama raised close to a billion dollars, and there is a very good possibility that the amount of money we can raise with proper fund raising far outweigh the pocket of corrupts.
Professor:
One way to bring this about is by allowing open contributions to individual candidates.
Some wordings are too supseciously close, professor:
Instead of playing cat and mouse games with political parties, India needs to wake up and smell the coffee.
Me:
Election comission is completely toothless to limit the money, and any effort to do so is a wasted effort, its a cat and mouse game, that politicians will keep finding loopholes and winning.
Conclusions
So I hope you can see there is plenty of resemlance. It is provable that my article was published first, comes in the first page of google search result for many "election spending ceiling" related searches. So it is highly conceivable that professor did research before publishing it and came across my article. You can read the two article side by side and judge it for yourself.
If indeed my article influenced the professor it actually pleases me, I would love to hear from him.
But what pleases me more than the flattery of imitation, is that I am on right track, this thesis of mine that there is a systematic problem in India that is causing corruption, and is easily fixable by adjusting the election expenses ceiling and allowing political fund raising, has been validated by congress spokesperson and IIM professor. This gives me hope.
An Appeal
If you would like to help me do it, or if you want to stay updated with my progress with this, please signup here.