video
Thư viện
Tài trợ
Dữ liệu cho thấy ranh giới mờ giữa tiền và chính trị ở Ấn Độ
18 Mar, 2024
danh sách nhà tài trợ và người thụ hưởng đưa ra hợp đồng với chính phủ và cuộc điều tra của cảnh sát dưới góc nhìn mới không mấy tốt đẹp
----
Politics in India is an expensive business (lĩnh vực kinh doanh đắt đỏ), and sometimes lucrative, too. In this year’s election, parties are expected to spend more than $14 billion — as much as in the United States. But there has been little in the way of transparency for the huge sums sloshing around.
On Thursday night, a rare and chaotic beam of light (chùm ánh sáng hiếm và hỗn loạn) shot through the darkness. By order of India’s Supreme Court, the government-owned State Bank of India handed reams of data to the election commission (ủy ban bầu cử), showing who had directed cash to the country’s political parties through a mechanism known as electoral bonds.
Reading between the lines of the spreadsheets full of names poses questions about the intersection of government and business in India. Construction companies, gambling impresarios, pharmaceutical bosses and many more corporate entities and individuals had forked over $1.7 billion in bonds since 2019. Many ended up winning government contracts (giành được hợp đồng chính phủ). Most had faced trouble with the federal police (cảnh sát liên bang).
The full reach of this data dump will take days if not weeks to parse. In the meantime, election season is hitting a fever pitch (cơn sốt). On Saturday, the voting dates will be announced; they are likely to stretch from April into May.
Electoral bonds are just one avenue for campaign finance (tài trợ chiến dịch), but they have attracted more attention than any other since the B.J.P. introduced them nearly seven years ago.
Electoral bonds as a mechanism may go away after the Supreme Court’s decision against them a month ago, but their story is not yet over. On Friday, India’s chief justice issued another directive to the State Bank of India. Why, he asked, has it failed to provide the bonds’ identifying numbers, which would establish which political group received funds from where?
source: nytimes,
Post a Comment