"Strengthen democratic forces with a clean electoral process...help achieve a political framework for overall economic and social development of this country." —Objective of the Tata Electoral Trust.
NO one could have imagined that the trust, conceived in August 1997, would be called to deliver so soon. Says Dinesh Vyas, a Supreme Court lawyer and chairman of the trust: "Frankly, business and industry is in a bad mood. Indian business had hardly recovered from the last elections when this one was announced."
Ratan Tata, the chief architect of the fund, wants it to be run by an independent panel of trustees. Apart from Vyas, the other two trustees are D.M. Sukhatankar, ex-municipal commissioner of Mumbai and Hansa Mehta, a reputed social worker.
While targeting a corpus of Rs 50 crore, the fund's coffers are empty today. Tata Sons, the holding company of most of the Tata group, has indicated that the group companies should contribute up to 5 per cent of their average net profits in the last three years. And as political donations come under the Companies Act, the money will have to get the shareholders' sanction. Once that happens, the money will be disbursed. So, it's a long way to go before the fund gets active. Says Mehta: "No one expected elections so soon. We haven't yet started the modalities of the trust." The only thing that's ready is the trust deed which states that contributions will be made in a "manner that is transparent and non-discretionary".
The distribution will take place in two phases. The first will phase out the political parties that didn't get 5 per cent of the parliamentary seats in the previous Lok Sabha. So, any political party that sends less than 26 members to Parliament are out of the fund's purview. It is only in the second phase that the funds will be doled out. So far it's not clear, but in all likelihood, the funds will be strewn around in proportion to the number of MPs—subject to a maximum of half the corpus.
By setting up the fund, the Tatas have given the corporate sector a new way to fund elections. But to expect business to fund political excesses of repeated elections is going too far. As Rahul Bajaj said at the World Economic Forum: "The industry wouldn't mind financing elections, provided there is an assurance of stability at the Centre."
