The totalitarian project behind the electoral bonds scheme https://frontline.thehindu.com/politics/bjp-modi-electoral-bond-scheme-truth-hindu-rashtra/article68001490.ece
. Mar 29, 2024 PARANJOY GUHA THAKURTA,ABIR DASGUPTA Beyond trade-offs and extortion, the scheme goes to the very heart of the Sangh Parivar’s long-term goal of an ideological dictatorship
Transparency in political finance requires transparency on both sides—fund-raising and expenditure. These structural features are barriers to transparency at both ends. ..Transparency as a lens and a goal, however laudable, is not a political principle in itself. It cannot be disconnected from the ideological. This is where it is necessary to return to the larger political project within which the electoral bonds scheme was implemented...
when the government brought in the electoral bonds scheme, the BJP was already far outstripping the other parties in donations: so what was the need for the scheme? The answer to this question lies in the form of society and polity that the Sangh Parivar’s wider project seeks to create. That society features a totalitarian and authoritarian state, with a permanently mobilised para-state, primed to the over-riding priorities of its ideological project. This system oversees every individual’s life, in as granular detail as it is able to, and it relies on people to act as its enforcers, whether out of belief or fear. Virtually no personal choice remains in that society, every person’s life and mission is to serve the national project. That state brooks no form of independent motivation in any institution or individual in the public sphere (including anyone who might donate funds) that does not adhere to its political project and priorities. It is inconceivable for any committed individual, association, or company, to not contribute to the national project, whether monetarily or otherwise—it is everyone’s civic and national duty.