It is said that my dear mentor, Tip O’Neill, the legendary Speaker of our House of Representatives, said “money is the mother’s milk of politics.”

For democracy to function, we must have political parties to offer up their best candidates that can champion what their party’s platform is. Political parties to do their necessary work require money – from the rich to the poor – be it $5 or $5Billion.

Integrity of the electoral politics is the business of every nation state, to make sure only a nation’s citizens are voting, and that the ballot box is not tampered with. This includes the necessity to block foreign money from playing in one’s political process – for to permit same would be to allow a nation to surrender its sovereignty at the ballot box.

That said, our Supreme Court in “Citizens United” ruled that “independent expenditures, including those made by corporations, do not give rise to corruption or the appearance of corruption.” By so doing, it held that “Political Speech” is a core part of “Free Speech” of every American, and permitted non-candidate controlled entities to put their message out so long as it was not coordinated or controlled by the candidate running. This created “soft money,” which is undisclosed to the public, as opposed to “hard money,” which is disclosed, regulated and limited, but can be used by the candidate as she or he wishes. While Citizens United brought calls of “the sky is falling,” today after a decade, the proof is that money generally favors – albeit, not by much – the party in power. So, the sky did not fall.

India’s Supreme Court’s holding, while altruistic, stands as a weak dam to hold back the citizenry of India’s powerful desire to do what they wish to do to support those they wish to support.”

(Ravi Batra is an eminent attorney)