What Costs So Much in Indian Elections?

Abstract

This chapter focuses on what candidates concretely spend their money during presumably expensive campaigns. Specifically, it is interested in two questions. First, to what extent is this expenditure illegal—that is, unaccounted for officially? Second, and more importantly, to what extent is this illegal and unaccounted spending directed towards illegitimate tactics or tactics that potentially threaten the fairness of elections? Estimates from two recent campaigns suggest that gifts are neither the only nor the main reason why electoral campaigns are expensive in Mumbai. Other kinds of expenses, such as the short-term wages that candidates pay to their workers and to the crowds these workers in turn recruit, or even simply ‘politics as usual’ expenses, place equally important constraints on candidates. This suggests that the perceived increase in the cost of campaigns does not have one cause but several, and that the narrative assigning the rise in the cost of campaigns to increasingly illegitimate tactics may be simplistic, or simply erroneous.