The Influence of Corruption on the Elections and Policymaking in India

Program

The International Development Speaker Series, in conjunction with the RAND Center for Asia Pacific Policy, is pleased to host Indian MP Rajeev Gowda. Gowda's research examines how corruption influences the elections and policymaking in India. Competitive political parties and election campaigns are central to the health of democracies. Parties and campaigns require significant resources to be effective. India has developed complex election expenditure, political party funding, and reporting and disclosure laws. These laws have perverse impacts on the electoral system: they drive campaign expenditure underground and foster a reliance on unaccounted funds or ‘‘black money.’’ This tends to lead to adverse selection where those able to work with black money dominate politics, and corrupt governance overall. Possible remedies include partial state financing of political parties and realistic election expenditure limits.

Speaker

Rajeev Gowda is an Indian politician and academic. He is currently a Member of the Rajya Sabha, the Upper House of India's Parliament and a National Spokesperson for the Indian National Congress party. He has previously been the chairperson of the Centre for Public Policy at the Indian Institute of Management Bangalore, director of the Central Board of the Reserve Bank of India, and associate professor at the University of Oklahoma. He has a Ph.D. in public policy and management from the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, and has been an Olin Post-Doctoral Fellow at the University of California Berkeley and a Carnegie Council Global Ethics Fellow. His most recent co-edited book is India's Risks, published by Oxford University Press India in 2014.

Learn More

If you would like to schedule a meeting with Dr. Gowda, contact Nelly Mejia, nmejia@prgs.edu.

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