India and free and fair elections

Ruling BJP regime is creating a terror wave among political parties in India. Imprisoning rival politicians, freezing bank accounts of opposition political parties, unleashing tax department & other agencies on opposition political parties.  There's really no doubt that these are not free and fair elections. But activists have pretty narrow view of "free and fairness" of elections. Fact is that India never had free and fair elections in many decades. To understand this, we need to understand what "free and fairness" of elections actually means. For liberal activists, idea of free and fair elections is where political parties and politicians can campaign freely and participate in electoral process without any foul play, obstruction and mischief from ruling govt. 

A further addition to free and fair elections can also be said about funding of political parties. All political parties should have balanced funding for their campaigns. But the ruling govt with monopoly over state power can twist various arms and hatch various schemes which gives them significantly more funding for electoral exercises. Of course this skews the level playing field. Another side effect of dark money in politics is that real issues get drowned as special interest groups who finance political parties ultimately reap the most benefits. The people - the electorate - are net losers while the special interest groups, the plutocrats and oligarchs are real winners in whole process. It's not really surprising that politicians' main allegiance is to their financiers, not the people who vote for them.

There's truly no free and fair elections by this logic in the entire world. Even in modern developed nations, there's a large sway of special interest groups over politicians and political parties. Billions of $$$ of dark money through known and unknown super-PACs flows in electoral system. But this also is not the real problem. The real problem lies elsewhere.

One essential criteria of free and fair elections is that political actors participating in elections are upstanding citizens (at least on face value). What it simply means is that criminals, Mafias, fanatics, terrorists etc should not be allowed to participate in elections. That is the most critical part of free and fairness. But in India, all kind of Gangsters, terrorists, sociopathic criminals, murderers etc - all can participate in elections. In a twisted sense of view, this is the essence of free and fair elections in India. No matter how big of a criminal you are, you are free to participate in elections.

I am not a big believer of Democracy in India in present shape and form. But i am surprised that Indian activists have become accustomed to ignoring criminalization of politics. If you really want free and fair elections, the very first thing you need is political candidates who are not a criminal. Okay, politicians can be cretins, scoundrels and liars. But criminalization of politics should be the red line. Looking at modern developed nations, they also have a lot of dirty money and influence of special interest groups in politics. But their political actors are not criminals, at least not overtly. 

The problem with India is the political system failure and institutional failure. The institutions have become dysfunctional to the point that it simply cannot act against criminals. That's why people have learned to accept criminal politicians. Political candidates with dozens of criminal cases (riots, rapes, murders etc) freely participate in elections. Is it surprising that when they get to power, they run govt institutions like a criminal enterprise?

The political actors of BJP you see right now were terrorists and criminals involved in mass murders, riots and organized crime in the past decades. But they were never brought to any accountability. They participated in "free and fair elections" and won political power. When they reached the top, they started destroying everything. Don't complain now that the ruling politicians are not allowing a free and fair elections to take place in India. India never had free and fair elections in many decades as all these criminals were allowed to participate in political process.