“All elected leaders buy votes. Even children know that” (NPR).

This is how governance in India is viewed by many of its citizens: a system that is democratic in name, with duly elected leaders, but cannot avoid the influence of money and power. One of the faults of Indian democracy which has been both historic and contemporary is clientelism, or the use of money and material goods by politicians or parties to influence the outcomes of elections in a “quid pro quo” fashion. This long-standing trend is limiting pushes to make India more democratic as well as their efforts to become a strong democratic leader in the region.

Cash-for-votes is not uncommon across many states in India. It was a prevalent issue during the most recent national elections in May of this year, and has risen to the top of the local news cycle again this month as opposing parties have accused each other of attempting to buy votes in state level elections in Maharashtra. This was especially notable because the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), India’s dominant political party and the party of now three-term Prime Minister Narendra Modi, was the main voice in the media accusing their biggest challenger of paying for electoral support. The accusations went both ways, however, with the opposing side also placing allegations on BJP’s candidate. As called on November 23, 2024, BJP won a majority of seats in the Maharastran legislature but Rohit Pawar, the main opposition candidate accused of buying votes, also retained his seat. The continued success of those accused of buying their voters points to a pervasive flaw in India’s democracy: an absence of truly free and fair elections. Further research shows that clientelism has been prevalent in their democratic practices for years and likely continues to impact the outcomes of their governance and electoral practices in ways which are antithetical to the theory and promise of true democracy.

However, this begs the question of inclusion and participation in India: if clientelism at times gives underrepresented voters a platform and voice, does the subsequent increase in representation cancel out clientelism’s negative effects on the fundamental principles of democracy? I argue no, that the country must find other ways to include their more vulnerable populations without illegal and undemocratic practices such as buying votes, particularly because this simulated inclusion does not represent peoples’ true opinions or political leanings, but instead the leaning of whoever was able to buy their vote.

In name, India has been a democracy since they gained independence from Britain in 1947. They aim to be a regional leader for other South Asian countries and to form deeper alliances with Western countries through a supposed shared commitment to democracy. The strength and authenticity of their democracy, however, has been debated over the years, tainted by corruption, censorship, and the effects of caste and religious discrimination which continue to be present across the nation. As of 2022, Freedom House gives India a freedom score of 66 out of 100, demarcating them “partially free”. One of the places where they have a lower score (2 out of 4) is on the measure of “safeguards against official corruption”. Bribery and other forms of government corruption are commonplace and often go uninvestigated and unpunished, even if the instances are known and reported by the public. This has somewhat improved in recent years, with an official body for investigating corruption created in 2014, but is far from being fully eliminated.

One of the most well known forms of corruption by Indian officials, particularly politicians running for office or their representatives, is clientelism. Clientelism is explicitly defined by Mares and Young as “elections where politicians work…to give voters individual incentives to vote in a particular way” (269). They go on to explain that poorer voters are more likely to accept bribes in exchange for their vote; the money is simply worth more to them, and a small incentive goes a long way—the principle of diminishing marginal utility. This is especially relevant in India because, in the world’s most populous country, over half of the people live below the global poverty line (equivalent to $3.10/day). The country’s richest 16 people have as much wealth as their poorest 600 million. This huge discrepancy makes it easy for the wealthy—which politicians, or at least their backers, tend to be—to extort and use the vote of the lower classes to their benefit.

India’s lower classes may not even realize they are being taken advantage of, and if they do it is seen as totally normal. In a survey conducted by the Association for Democratic Reforms in New Delhi in 2018, researchers found that 72% of Indian voters are aware that politicians offering cash or gifts for votes is technically illegal, yet 42% openly say that inducements were a key factor influencing their vote choice at the polls. It was a less influential factor than political party or the candidates themselves and their identity, but clientelism still affected almost half of the electorate in a significant way. Politicians see bribery as simply “the cost of doing business”; it is an expense factored into their campaigns, to be recouped after winning. Party spokesmen deny any allegations in the public eye, of course, to maintain a facade of legality, when in reality clientelism is an open secret across the country.

In India’s most recent election, for Legislative Assembly seats in the state of Maharashtra, multiple candidates from different political parties were involved in cash-for-votes scandals. All sides debased one another for the act in the media, acting as if it were an unheard-of crime. Regardless of how it looked morally or democratically, though, the fact becomes clear that the practice of clientelism was successful. An analysis by the Economic Times of India found that paying rural women in Maharashtra as little as $18 each completely flipped the election results and BJP won many seats they had been projected to lose in the polls just a few months prior. This finding has both negative and positive implications: clientelism dirties the electoral process, yes, but at the same time, gives power and a voice to the country’s most ignored and silenced demographic—poor rural women—by encouraging them to turn out to vote when they typically may not have. In this view, one may say that clientelism is not all bad. But the benefit to society, however good, does not neutralize or cancel out the detriment to democracy caused by allowing your vote to be swayed by money or gifts. For a government to truly represent the will of the people, all citizens must have a voice and the people must be able to express their true opinions without any confounding influences.

India is striving to be a democracy at the same level as the United States and European nations, but this cannot be fully achieved until the influence of money and gifts are removed from their electoral process. Historic and modern clientelism must be publicized, addressed, and counteracted in order to make Indian elections free and fair, alongside the inclusion and true participation of minority voices.