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WHEN CRIME PAYS: Money and Muscle in Indian Politics. By Milan Vaishnav. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2017. xxiii, 410pp. (Illustrations, maps.) US$40.00, cloth. ISBN978-0-300-21620-2.
This book concerns one of the central puzzles of Indian democracy: the election of a significant number of representatives at the national and state levels with criminal records. It is worth remembering that after the 2014 national elections, 34 percent of India's members in the directly-elected lower house of parliament (Lok Sabha) faced criminal cases, with 21 percent of them facing serious charges. Between 2004 and 2014, of the two national Indian political parties, 14 percent of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)'s MPs faced serious cases, compared to 12 percent for the Indian National Congress party.
Vaishnav analyzes this puzzle of Indian democracy by asking three questions. First, what are the incentives of those with criminal records to contest elections? Second, why do political parties select such candidates? Third, do voters have good reasons for electing such people? He attempts to answer these questions using a market analogy where the buyers are voters and the sellers are political parties and politicians. The environment in which this market operates is one where institutions are weak and there is a high incidence of corruption.
While Vaishnav...