Horse Trading and Political Funding

The drama that is unfolding in Karnatka is interesting. It seems to prove why time and again people in India face a dilemma as to who to elect? It becomes difficult to decide who to sympathize with. On one hand there is a political party which came to power after being backstabbed by its partner in its alliance agreement. This government has been accused of helplessly standing by when two mining barons illegally mined tonnes and tonnes of iron ore as they wished. The Chief Minister has been accused of giving away prime property at throwaway rates. Do we pity the CM for his helplessness or revile him because of the property dealings? On the other hand we have a party which seems to want to ensure that the present government goes out of power and whose only objective is to grab power, everything else be damned.

The Congress has holed up its MLAs in a resort in Maharashtra to ensure that they are not won over by the BJP. The rebel BJP MLAs are holed up in Chennai. The Governor seems to be interested in the entire scene shooting off a letter to the Speaker who in turn is taking umbrage at the Governor's actions. This would not be the first time a Governor originally from the Congress takes actions that benefit the party at the state level. 

Now the question that comes to mind is, how is the Congress funding its MLAs' stay? Where is it getting the money from? For that matter where do all political parties get their money from? I checked out the websites of the INC and the BJP. Neither seems to have given a clear list of the fund sources. This is one scenario. We also have people like Mayavati. The money that she is spending to build her own statues is from the taxpayers. The CPM government in West Bengal has renamed the New Town locality in Kolkata to Jyoti Basu Nagar and is also planning to install a number of statues of him. This is again from taxpayers' money. In the media there are advertisements which exhort taxpayers to pay their taxes and hold their head high, to contribute to the future of the country etc. Why should I spend my hard-earned money on taxes when I see all the kinds of people that I have just described and people like Kalmadi? When I know most of the money I pay will go into somebody's pocket illegally it just makes my blood boil. So why do we pay taxes? Willingly? No, we only pay them beacause it would be illegal if we did not.