PATNA: There are circumstances in which "bad politicians" can, in fact, be compatible with democratic accountability. Political parties selectively field criminal candidates in those areas where social divisions are more pronounced. These politicians are often referred to as 'protectors', 'guardians' and 'saviors'.
A recent (2012) PhD work on ' The Merits of Money and 'Muscle': Essays on criminality, elections and democracy in India' in the graduate school of Arts and Science, department of Political Science, Columbia university, in which the scholar describes at length why voters support politicians with criminal background in Bihar.
The research scholar Milan Vaishnav, in his 290 page PhD work, said:" I develop an alternate theory that suggests well-informed voters can display rational behaviour by voting for such candidates. Specifically, in contexts where social divisions are highly salient, voters often desire a representative who they perceive can protect group-based interests most credibly". This PhD dissertation sought to highlight how democratic elections can co-exist with a significant number of politicians implicated in criminal wrongdoing.
Specifically, it seeks answers to three questions- Why do parties nominate candidates with criminal backgrounds? Why do voters vote for them? And what does their proliferation mean for democratic accountability? To address these questions, the scholar argued that parties are attracted to criminal politicians because they have access to financial resources that allow them to function as self-financing candidates. This dissertation makes use of a database of affidavits submitted by more than 60,000 candidates contesting state and general elections between 2003 and 2009. The data contains detailed information on candidates' financial and criminal records.
The researcher selected two constituencies- Mokama and Danapur in Patna district for a more in-depth exploration because they featured popular candidates with criminal background contesting elections in 2010 and were known to be sites of intense inter-ethnic competition.
Not all voters within a constituency supported the candidates having criminal antecedents who contested elections from these two areas, and his research, in part, was designed to try to understand why. The research work made several references of personalities like Anant Singh, Reet Lal Yadav, Anand Mohan, Mohd Shahabuddin, Ashok Samrat and Kamdeo Singh. The researcher spent a good number of days in Bihar including Patna in 2010. The study provides more information on fieldwork conducted in Bihar before, during and after the 2010 state assembly elections (October-November).
A separate chapter contains detailed case studies of electoral dynamics in two state assembly constituencies in Bihar: Mokama and Danapur. "The basic research strategy I adopted was to follow campaigns of the leading candidates having criminal antecedents in both constituencies, interviewing politicians, party workers, and voters who turned up at rallies or lived in the constituencies", he said in the research work.
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