Economic Times: New
Delhi: Friday, June 14, 2013.
If India is now
debating opening the books and operations of political parties to the public,
it's because of these six people who pulled strategic levers and applied
relentless pressure. Soma Banerjee traces a four-year effort that converted
intent to action
Balwant Singh
Khera, a politician from Hoshiarpur in Punjab, is not a name that will strike a
chord in mainstream politics or social discourse today. It might in Sizthe
years to come, as the inadvertent fount of a significant piece of political
reform. Back in July 2009, the Central Information Commission (CIC), which
deals with matters related to information sharing by the government, rejected
Khera's plea to make political parties open their finances and operations to
the public at large.
That
rejection found acceptance, in another form, in another place. Reading the
order from his perch in New Delhi, Anil Bairwal, whose organisation had been
pressing its own levers to make political parties more transparent and
accountable, understood this was one reform that would have to be argued
differently. "Khera's defeat was a lesson for us," says Bairwal.
"We were
up against a mighty force. It became evident that we could take up the case
only when armed with sound facts and documentary evidence." The
organisation he headed, the Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR), had built
substantial reserves of facts and figures on political parties during its work
in these spaces in the last 14 years. But even that wasn't enough to build an
overwhelming case to bring political parties under the Right to Information
(RTI) Act, the relatively new weapon to source information on matters related,
directly and indirectly, to the government. So, Bairwal and his team put in
place a plan to collect more information, using the RTI itself.
But it
wouldn't be just any information. It would be strategic and scientific in
nature, building and fortifying four pillars of information they would rest
their case on.
Bairwal
leaned on young lieutenants. In the latter part of the fight, there were two in
particular: Manoj Kumar, 32, an IIT graduate who turned his back to the high
world of finance, and Shivani Kapoor, 24, a post-graduate in law and in her
first job. They were young, yet mature. They were idealistic in their beliefs,
yet realistic in their approach.
Along the
way, they found or drafted new allies. One was Subhash Agrawal, who claims to
have filed the maximum number of RTIs in India and who, on a parallel track,
had petitioned the CIC to bring the Congress and the BJP under the RTI. Another
was Ashok Aneja, an ex-commissioner of income tax who crafted tax foregone into
one of the four pillars of information.
Each brought
in something that made the whole bigger than the sum of its parts. So big, so
convincing that it has set the ball rolling on a significant piece of
politicalfunding reform and created a unique situation where the six political
parties are, for once, on the same side. But also in a corner. "They (ADR)
have used the RTI very effectively," says Nikhil Dey, member, National
Campaign for People's Right to Information (NCPRI).
"The RTI
way is not easy, it takes time. But if there is a record, the experience is you
will get it." On June 3, the CIC passed an order bringing six national
political parties— Congress, BJP, BSP, NCP, CPI (M) and CPI—under the RTI.
This means any citizen can ask, say, the Congress for a list of the top 100
donors or the BJP about the minutes of the meeting that decided Narendra Modi's
appointment as the head of the party's election campaign committee. Basically,
any activity of these parties that is recorded. The political parties, all of
whom have opposed the order and may even go to court over it, have been given
six weeks to appoint an information officer.
"It's an
opening into the black box," feels Bairwal, national coordinator of ADR
and the principal petitioner in the case, on the judgment. It's some sort of
arrival of a four-year journey of strategic choices and unrelenting pressure,
of a team of six ordinary citizens who worked indefatigably to change a system
by working within its construct. But, even before they started, they waited.
Party
Doublespeak
In late-2009,
a few months after the CIC had dismissed Khera's plea, Bairwal began thinking
of picking up where Khera left off. "The logic was clear in my mind,"
he says. "Political parties form governments that make policies. How can
political parties who field lawmakers be excluded if the RTI empowers citizens
to know about the government?" But an information officer told Bairwal to
wait for the RTI movement to gather steam before seeking information from
political parties. He waited.
In October
2010, about a year later, Bairwal asked two questions to six parties. One,
which donors made the biggest funding contributions to the party for the 2004
general elections? Two, which donors made a single contribution of Rs 1 lakh or
more between 2004-05 to 2009-10? He got nothing. The BSP and the BJP did not reply.
The CPI, CPI(M) and NCP refused, saying they were not a "public
authority". The Congress, under whose reign the RTI was enacted in 2005,
said they had no manpower to furnish those details.
In March
2011, Bairwal moved the CIC. He built his case, in consultation with Jagdeep S
Chhokar, one of the ADR founders who also argued the case with the CIC. They
listed four counts on which political parties were drawing benefits from the
state: occupying subsidised land and property, availing free advertising time
on state radio and television; securing electoral rolls for free and exemption
from income tax. Even as Bairwal and his team started gathering information,
largely through RTIs, they began meeting political leaders, only to encounter
varying degrees of doublespeak.
"Rahul
Gandhi (Congress), Arun Jaitley and Sushma Swaraj (BJP) welcomed our
initiative, but the replies from their parties toed a different line,"
says Bairwal. The CPI, he adds, did a U-turn: its leader AB Bardhan told them
that parties were public entities and were accountable, but the party's reply
on the RTI argued against it.
200 RTIs
With
trenchant opposition from political parties, ADR needed strong data to make a
forceful case. "The money involved in housing offices of political parties
in Lutyens Delhi is mind-boggling," says Manoj Kumar, who worked
extensively on securing and mining the land data. This was no easy job. While
one could locate offices of political parties, the challenge was to obtain
supporting documents and records.
They got a
break in the form of a brief note that ADR stumbled upon. This note, prepared
by the department of estate under the ministry of urban development, listed
offices, schools and hospitals that had been given land on concessional rent
from 1920 onwards.
"Getting
the list was round one," says Kumar. Round two was imputing market values
to those land holdings, objectively. ADR used data from reputed real estate
consultants— Cushman & Wakefield, Jones Lang LaSalle and Citigroup—to
arrive at these valuations. Kumar says ADR's calculation of about Rs 2,700
crore as the value of benefits derived by political parties from land and
property, in fact, erred on the side of conservatism. For example, he adds,
they used the official circle rates, which valued Central Delhi land at Rs 1.6
lakh per sq ft, whereas transactions happen in the range of Rs 12-15 lakh per
sq ft. Their task got tougher as they moved to state capitals.
Karnataka
maintained that political parties were never allotted any land or office space,
while Maharashtra said all records were burnt in the fire in the state
secretariat last year. Where they did get a reply, they still had to make sense
of it and piece it into the puzzle. "For every land RTI, we received a
reply this thick," says Bairwal, holding his hands a feet apart.
Piles of
paper occupy every nook and cranny of ADR's office in New Delhi, on the
fourth-floor of what looks like the most dilapidated building in the pretty
Qutab Institutional Area. It has about 25 employees, mostly youngsters in their
20s and 30s, and a platoon of volunteers and interns. Formed in 1999 by a group
of 11 professors, with the core from IIM Ahmedabad, ADR "conducts multiple
projects aimed at increasing transparency and accountability in the political
and electoral system".
Levers of
Influence
According to
Bairwal, who joined ADR in 2008, it must have filed about 200 RTIs in two
years. It also drew from a similar number filed by NGOs—ADR has tied up for
information with about 600 of them—as well as by Subhash Agrawal, who had
separately approached the CIC in 2011 after both the Congress and the BJP
denied him information.
"I had
got land records of all the office space occupied by the two national parties,
which was the basis of declaring them as a public authority," says
Agrawal, who fielded activist-lawyer Prashant Bhushan to argue his case. The
CIC, in 2012, clubbed the ADR and Aggarwal petitions, and they started
collaborating more. Certain information, like obtaining airtime charges from
Prasar Bharati, was relatively easily procured. For others, they had to push
the right buttons, especially with the information officers.
"It
could be a small thing of where and how to file a particular RTI to obtain the
information, and this needed me to build a rapport with them," says
Kapoor. All along, they had to think ahead and be prepared for rejection. A
dive into income-tax filings of political parties strengthened their case.
While parties are exempt from paying taxes, they have to file returns based on
their declared incomes. ADR decided to extrapolate from the exemptions the
revenue foregone by the state and brought in Ashok Aneja, a retired chief
commissioner of the income tax department. The tax exemptions worked out to
about Rs 1,000 crore annually, says Aneja, but there was more to this.
"For
instance, there is a tax forgone even at the contributor's level." Aneja argues
that, unlike NGOs, which enjoy tax exemptions with conditions, political
parties have a blanket exemption. They presented all this during the CICI
hearings.
"While
most parties opted to attend at least one of the (two) hearings, the Congress
stayed away," says Kapoor. After the judgment, though, parties have been
vocal about their opposition. "This decision has expanded the scope of the
RTI," says Dey of NCPRI, adding that, when they were drafting the RTI Act,
they had sought including political parties, trade unions, cooperatives,
religious trusts and NGOs.
Dey feels
political parties will go to court, something that even Bairwal and team
expect.They have already filed a caveat in the Delhi High Court, which means
that if any political party goes to court over the CIC order, the court cannot
stay the matter without hearing ADR. On another track, ADR has prepared a draft
bill on political funding, which is presently being circulated for views.
"This is only the beginning of a long journey," says Bairwal.
Political
Parties and State Benefits
The Association
for Democratic Reforms argues that political parties should come under RTI
because they receive these 4 state benefits of substantial value……
The
Political Reformer
Anil Bairwal,
42, National Coordinator, ADR
After 10
years of writing code for Oracle in California, heading the Indian operations
of another software MNC and setting up his own software business in the
country, Anil Bairwal was looking for "more exciting" avenues to work
in. The year was 2007, the RTI Act was evolving into a force, and citizen
groups were busy understanding its potential.
One such
group was led by Bairwal's former professor at IIM Ahmedabad, Trilochan Sastry.
Bairwal was keen to work on social causes and Sastry prodded him to join ADR,
but Bairwal was unsure. He agreed to join for six months. It's been five years.
This computer engineer and alumnus of IIM, Ahmedabad, has been the national
coordinator for ADR since 2008. In the last five years, Bairwal has engaged
with hardy political leaders, bureaucrats and activists, while leading a young
team into new realms of data gathering, processing and presentation on
political parties and politicians. "It is a longterm, low-intensity war we
have been waging to keep the discourse alive for three years," he says.
"This
(the RTI order) is not a one-shot game for ADR," adds Nikhil Dey of NCPRI.
"They have been at issues of political funding and internal democracy in
political parties for a long time." Scientific in approach and optimistic
by nature, Bairwal has instilled a professional culture in ADR, where processes
are set, job profiles are defined and technology is used heavily. "This
ensures continuity even if people leave and there is a system of accountability
and transparency in place," he says.
The Land
Compiler
Manoj Kumar,
32 Research Fellow, ADR
IN 2004,
Manoj Kumar was writing algorithms for a financial company. Today, he
spearheads a key front in what is shaping into a long -- and arduous -- fight
to clean up political funding, while earning a fraction of what he did in his
corporate job. "Do you want to be a part of the wheel?" asks the
32-year-old textile engineer from IIT, Delhi.
"Or, do
you want to step back to see the larger picture and create a new wheel? I may
have earned Rs 25 lakh with my degree, but what is its worth if it leaves me dissatisfied?"
That pursuit of satisfaction brought Kumar to ADR. "What struck me about
ADR was that they were not about one report, but about systemic change. They
were using innovative ways to make their case," he says.
For the last
nine months ago, Kumar has been doggedly compiling and analysing details of
land and property occupied by political parties. Kumar, at long last, was in
the socio-political conversation he always wanted to be a part of. As a
student, he engaged in discussions on social and political issues. Keen to play
a more active role, he took his first participative step by attending the Anna
Hazare sit-ins for the Lokpal Bill in 2011. He still draws from principles from
the world of finance. "In the derivatives market, there is the principle
of one pricing and one takes note of the arbitrage market," he starts.
"Similarly, I look at earlier or equivalent judgements on similar topics
and use that information to build my defence in a fresh case."
The RTI
Tracker
Shivani
Kapoor, 24 Program Associate (RTI disclosures and PILs), ADR
IN the
pursuit of this political reform, ADR filed about 200 RTI applications. The
responsibility of coordinating these RTI applications, and dealing with the CIC
and parties, was assigned to Shivani Kapoor: 24 years, lawyer, in her first
job. Kapoor had sought such responsibility for as long as she knew. "The
cause", she says, was her calling.
In 2011,
after completing her post-graduation in human rights, constitution and
international law from Amity University in Noida, she joined ADR. "I was
lucky as I hit the road running," she says. "On day one, I was given
a bunch of letters from parties who said the RTI does not cover them." In
the last 18 months, Kapoor has handled many more such letters with persistence,
maturity and understanding. Some of those qualities were shaped when, as a law
student, she interned with the ministry of women and child welfare, and saw the
grind of policymaking. It made her think about working in this space. Engaging
with stakeholders, be it information officers or parties, taught her new
lessons.
"You
have to win them over to get the best out of the system," she says.
However, she is less forgiving of politicians. "They run governments and
make laws, but consider themselves beyond law, almost like superior
untouchables," she says. Kapoor feels a sense of accomplishment, more so
when she considers the alternative of being a corporate lawyer that most of her
batchmates chose. "I have had a role in reshaping our democracy, and this
is only my first job," she says.
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