Is corruption no longer an electoral issue?

In the 2011 Assembly elections, the Trinamool Congress got 184 seats with a 39 per cent vote share. In the last five years, the Mamata government was in the news mostly for corruption, her erratic behaviour, unruly and abusive leaders and violence. The biggest issue, this election, against the Mamata Banerjee-led Trinamool Congress was corruption. Narada, Sarada and a collapsed flyover became symbolic of TMC's corrupt regime. 

The Narada sting operation aired, less than a month ahead of the Assembly elections, showed 11 leaders of the TMC – including state ministers Subrata Mukherjee and Farhad (Bobby) Hakim – being allegedly bribed. Everyone thought these visuals were powerful enough to kick the TMC out of power. But when the results came out its tally went up by 28 seats, from 184 to 212. Even its vote share went up from 39 to 46 per cent.

So, was TMC the exception? Have people of West Bengal ignored corruption? That is not necessarily true.

Even in Tamil Nadu, where Jayalalithaa made a comeback, corruption was a big issue. In 2014, Jayalalithaa was convicted of corruption by a trial court and sentenced to four years in jail. Having spent 21 days in a Bangalore jail, Jaya was released on bail and appealed against the verdict. In 2015, she was acquitted by the Bangalore high court.

An appeal against her acquittal is now pending in the Supreme Court. But that hardly made any difference. In 2011, she had 150 seats with 38.40 per cent of the votes. And despite her conviction she got 134 seats, which may be 16 seats less than the last election, but her vote share has gone up to 41 per cent.

Just ahead of the polling in Bihar, a cabinet minister in the Nitish Kumar government was forced to resign after a sting operation showed him allegedly taking a bribe. In the video, even a Rashtriya Janata Dal candidate was shown giving “assurances” that if money was paid the “work” would get done.

Worse is that the RJD head, Lalu Prasad, who allied with CM Nitish Kumar, is a convicted felon in a corruption case. Every one thought that Nitish's alliance with “corrupt” Lalu would drown him. But the RJD-JDU-Congress alliance got 178 of 243 seats in the Bihar Assembly and defied all such theories.

All three results seem to show that charges of corruption do not bother the people. They seem to have no qualms in voting for those who face serious corruption charges. But ironically it was a series of corruption scandals like the 2G, CWG, Adarsh, Antrix Devas deal, coal scam, the AgustaWestland chopper deal, alleged land deals involving Robert Vadra that brought down the Manmohan Singh-led UPA-II.

The people it seems vote for the corrupt at the local level but against corruption at the national level. That is what even a cursory comparison of the last general elections and the three state elections seem to point towards.

Can we then draw the conclusion that for the average voter stealing from the state is fine but stealing from India is not?