The business of politics: A venture for future?

POLITICS INC: CNN-IBN panel debates if politicians and corporates can work in tandem.

        

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Chairman and Managing Director of Reliance Industries Limited Mukesh Ambani met Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Congress President Sonia Gandhi on Monday just days after Samajwadi Party General Secretary Amar Singh launched an all out attack against him.

For the first time in Indian politics, a political leader made no secret of his corporate affiliations. Amar Singh had also asked the Prime Minister to intervene in the corporate rivalries between Mukesh and Anil Ambani. So is the SP leader being refreshingly honest or has he crossed the lakshman rekha (the threshold)?

With General Elections just a few months away, Face the Nation debated: Is corporatisation of politics inevitable?

The panelists included Chairman & Managing Director, Videocon Group, Venugopal Dhoot; Bajaj Electricals Ltd Executive Director R Ramakrishnan; Honorary Director, School of Convergence Paranjoy Guha Thakurta and Founder & Consulting Partner, Perfect Relation Dilip Cherian. Sagarika Ghose moderated the discussion.

Thakurta started the debate by pointing out that the election system needs to be more transparent in India.

“Hopefully. It is still early days. The most amazing thing that Amar Singh has done is that here is the fifth richest man in the world according to Forbes magazine who is having a terrible fight with the sixth richest man in the world and they are not even listening to their mother. ‘So Prime Minister please sort out this problem. Anil and Mukesh are fighting. This is in national interest.’ I find it truly amazing. I really wonder if we could have descended to a lower depth. We all know from where politicians get money to fight elections. We know the glaring loopholes in the law. According to the Election Commission a candidate can spend X amount on elections. But there is nothing stopping their friends from spending large sums of money. We don’t have a system, which is half as transparent as say United States of America,” Thakurta, who has written a lot on the relations between corporates and politicians, said.

When Cherian was asked why should corporates back political parties, he replied, “In this case the evidence seems to be that it is not corporate houses or big money backing politicians. It is a question of playing with the government. The implication seems to be that corporate houses will decide which way the government goes.”

Cherain warned that Amar Singh backing a particular business group was not as simple as it seemed.

“I suspect most of this is actually a smokescreen. They are not talking about brokering peace. This is about the whole issue of buying and selling the politicians as it were and parties taking interest in issues which are not to do so much with business but to do with their own survival and what happens next in their game for staying in power,” Cherian said.

In the recently held Assembly elections in Karnataka, some constituencies had budgets of nearly Rs 50 crore. Sagarika pointed out that in the US, Barack Obama had got $272 million, Hillary $26 million and John McCain $100 million for their election campaign and then asked Videocon Group chief Venugopal Dhoot if people with money-power are looking at acquiring political power too.

“I am an industrialist and work for my industry. In Chamber of Commerce we don’t discuss all these things. I am not an expert in politics. So I don’t know what you are talking about. I know that I am working for the country and politicians are also working for the country. We are trying to become an economic superpower and I want to work towards that end,” Dhoot said.

Bajaj Electricals Ltd Executive Director R Ramakrishnan said, “I think there is a need for dialogue between government and industry for the progress of the nation. Even now Prime Minister and Cabinet Ministers come in for CII forums, Assocham forums. There are very active interactions in CII, World Economic Forum, India Economic Summit etc. But where I am drawing the line is not so much about corporatisation of politcs, it is about politicisation of corporates.”