The electorate in West Bengal and Tamil Nadu has unanimously voted for poribartan. The CPM MLAs? fortunes mirror West Bengal?s finances. The state has accumulated nearly R2 lakh crore of debt over the last 34 years of Left rule and CPM MLAs are now poorer by 25%, with candidates seeing a drop in average assets from 19.8 lakh in 2006 to 14.8 lakh. An analysis, of data collated by the Liberty Institute and National Election Watch, shows that this is a rather unusual circumstance?it is rare that the average assets for MLAs from incumbent parties have witnessed a decline, as exemplified by MLAs from across the country. Although the Trinamool was in the opposition, its MLAs have seen average assets rise four times from R21 lakh in 2006 to R85 lakh in 2011. Similarly, Congress MLAs have also seen a rise in wealth, with average assets doubling in the five-year period.

Unlike West Bengal?s CPM, Tamil Nadu?s DMK at the helm of government, has seen the average assets of its MLAs increase by 10 times, from 95 lakh to 9.2 crore. Not surprising, given the number of enterprises, including media agencies, the leader of the DMK controls. Its ally, the Congress, has also seen its MLAs average assets triple from R2.4 crore to R6.2 crore. The AIADMK?s MLAs are the poorest, with average assets worth R3.4 crore. Kerala also saw a rise in the average assets of its MLAs, with the Congress coming in at R8.9 crore versus the CPM?s R4.8 crore.

Surprisingly, this set of assembly elections do not corroborate the expected trend that candidates of incumbent parties see a larger increase in their assets, than do MLAs from opposition parties, as exemplified by the CPM in Bengal and Kerala. So, is being rich a factor of importance in predicting election outcomes? It appears not. The AGP lost to the Congress in Assam even though its MLAs were 1.2 times richer, as did the DMK even though its MLAs were three times richer than the AIADMK?s.

On criminality, the strong anti-incumbency factor seems not to have taken into account the chequered histories of candidates?the number of Trinamool candidates with criminal records has gone up from 8 of 32 MLAs in 2006 to 69 of 184 in 2011. That?s an increase in the number of Trinamool MLAs with criminal records in Bengal?s legislative assembly from 25% to 38%. The Congress?s candidates have also become more criminal, wherein 17 of 42 (40%) MLAs analysed in 2011 were found to have pending criminal cases against them versus just 5 of 21 (25%) in 2006. The CPM?s candidates have a less criminal record?although the percentage of MLAs with criminal cases against them has risen from 12% to 18%, the actual number has dropped, from 20 to 7, given that the CPM has 40 MLAs in the assembly this year versus 173 after the election in 2006. Thus, West Bengal?s assembly has more constituents with criminal records at 35% in 2011 than it did at 16% in 2006.

But does West Bengal?s record reflect what happened across the other three major states that went to the polls? Yes and no. A similar trend is seen in Tamil Nadu, where about 40% of the MLAs from the party elected to government, the AIADMK, have criminal cases pending against them. Thanga Tamilselvan of the AIADMK has 17 cases pending against him, by far the highest number against MLAs from Tamil Nadu, two of which are on account of attempt to murder. The percentage of criminal MLAs from the DMK has remained static at 21%, but given the loss of vote-share to the party, there has been a steep fall in the number of tainted DMK MLAs from 31 in 2006 to 7 at present. Kerala breaks the mold in having fewer MLAs with criminal records, overall?only 2 of the 38 Congress MLAs have cases pending against them; the CPM has 15. Assam fares the best, with the lowest number of MLAs with criminal records?only 4 from the Congress and 1 each from the AGP and BJP.

Thus, while the MLAs elected in this round of state elections are richer, they are also more criminal. This is to be expected, given the quality of candidates that were fielded by the various parties across the states?as expected, Assam has the lowest number of MLAs with a criminal record, given that only 8% of Assamese candidates had pending cases whereas 35% of West Bengal?s MLAs have criminal cases pending. These results are in line with a study by Poonam Gupta, Icrier, and Arvind Panagriya, Columbia University, of the 2009 Lok Sabha elections, which finds that candidates who are richer and have a bigger criminal record are more likely to win. The study also points out, though, that the political party affiliation makes a big difference in states where growth is higher.