Lobbying (Also Lobby) Is the Act of Attempting to Influence Decisions Made by Officials in the Government, Most Often Legislators Or Members of Regulatory Agencies
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Lobbying (also lobby) is the act of attempting to influence decisions made by officials in the government, most often legislators or members of regulatory agencies. Lobbying is done by many different types of people and organized groups, including individuals in theprivate sector, corporations, fellow legislators or government officials, or advocacy groups (interest groups). Lobbyists may be among a legislator's constituencies, meaning a voter or bloc of voters within his or her electoral district, or not; they may engage in lobbying as a business, or not. Professional lobbyists are people whose business is trying to influence legislation on behalf of a group or individual who hires them. Individuals and nonprofit organizations can also lobby as an act of volunteering or as a small part of their normal job (for instance, a CEO meeting with a representative about a project important to his/her company, or an activist meeting with his/her legislator in an unpaid capacity). Governments often define and regulate organized group lobbying that has become influential. The ethics and morality of lobbying are dual-edged. Lobbying is often spoken of with contempt, when the implication is that people with inordinate socioeconomic power are corrupting the law (twisting it away from fairness) in order to serve their own conflict of interest. But another side of lobbying is making sure that others' interests are duly defended against others' corruption, or even simply making sure that minority interests are fairly defended against mere tyranny of the majority. For example, a medical association, or a trade association of health insurance companies, may lobby a legislature in order to counteract the influence of tobacco companies, in which case the lobbying would be viewed by most people as justified (duly defending against others' corruption). The difficulty in drawing objective lines between which lobbyists are "good lobbyists" and which ones are "bad ones" is compounded by the cleverness with which lobbyists or their clients can speciously argue that their own lobbying is of the "good" kind. At heart, the effort to influence legislation is a power struggle. As in other forms of power struggle, such as war or law enforcement, motives range from predation to self-defense to fighting for justice, and the dividing line between predation and justice is subject to rationalization. Meaning: Lobbying refers to the intention of influencing decisions made by legislators and officials in the Government by individual, other legislators and officials in the Government. A lobbyist is person who tries to influence legislation under the influence of his special interest or a a member of a lobby. Corporate lobbying refers to the lobbying done by the corporations and firms in a country in order to influence the Government of that country in some way or the other so as to get the decisions, policies framed by the Government in their favor. Background: The economic stimulus packages initiated in several countries have given fresh momentum to corporate lobbying; in which influential corporations spend millions ensuring that legislation and policy are drafted to favor the area and scope of their business. The practice of corporate lobbying is a matter of scale, when practiced, serves in the benefit of the Corporations and associates. There is a significant positive relation between lobbying and financial performance, and lobbying ensures the policies tailored to the personalized requirements benefiting to a certain class or generally to a specific business. Almost no major countries require oversight, transparency, or accountability in lobbying. In fact lobbying is a legitimate business activity when it comes to the United States. There can be seen continuous reforms under the Federal Legal System pertaining to lobbying which have been acclaimed positively and negatively both. Presently, the mechanism in the most powerful nation provides the reporting mechanism which ensures transparency in the accountancy and the social justice to the citizens. Indian scenario: In India, Corporate Lobbying is expanding in the form of intensive briefings and presentations to Ministers and Senior Civil Servants. The political system in India makes Ministers, Officials, and Legislators more amenable to the term and its behavior. Further, the paucity of high-quality research centre and poor reporting mechanism makes officials vulnerable to slick lobbying and instant publicity countering allegations. Presently, with the efforts of media and news, the stakeholders are turning more responsible and alarmed which in turn pressurize the corporations to provide detailed information on their lobbying. However, an early change in the lobbying culture is unlikely. Multi National Corporations operational in India often try to influence the decisions of the Government through corporate lobbying to fulfill their ulterior motives, however; sometimes the degree of the corporate lobbying is so high that it takes the form of Corruption leading to the policies being tailored in favor of the influential corporations. In other words, it can be said that what is corporate lobbying in the developed nations, is a broad form of corruption in the developing nations like India. Corporate lobbying in India recently came into the limelight due to the 2G spectrum scam in the telecom sector relating to the sale of 2G spectrum licenses to the private telecom players at throwaway prices and resulting into a loss of almost Rs. 1.7 trillion to the exchequer. With this scam what also came into limelight, was the connivance between the high profile corporate houses and Politicians, Government officials and others. The 2G scam also challenged the limits within the parameters of which the media should operate. The question on the limits of media aroused with the event of media leaking taped conversations between the corporate lobbyist Niira Radia and many high profile personalities, politicians, corporate and media person. Challenging this act of media, Mr. Ratan Tata, a renowned industrialist and Chairman of Tata Group has filed a petition in the Supreme Court seeking to prevent publication of transcripts in order to protect his right to privacy and the revelations of the influence wielded by corporate power players, evident from the telephonic conversations involving corporate lobbyist Niira Radia, have shocked the Supreme Court. Law Regulating Corporate Lobbying: Presently there is no law regulating the corporate lobbying in India. Lobbying per se is not illegal however; it should stay within the logical limits. As per the suggestion given by the former Corporate Affairs minister Shri Salman Khurshid, corporate lobbying should be subject to the Right to Information (RTI) Act. RTI is a democratic right of people and provides transparency into the working of the government and its agencies. The only drawback which this Act suffers from is that it does not have in its ambit the areas of Public Relations, lobbying and specific influence that should be known to the general public. Conclusion: Corporate Lobbying should be regulated by curbing it into the legal limits. As evident from the revelations made in the 2G scam, it can be apprehended that if corporate lobbying is not curbed into the legal limits, it would increase the corruption and shall adversely affect the growth of the nation as a whole. Therefore, the need of the hour is to devise a law to regulate the corporate lobbying. If no separate law can be made, corporate lobbying should be brought under the ambit of RTI. There is an iconic photograph of a high-power meeting from 1995 that will go down in the annals of high-visibility corporate lobbying by a multinational giant to influence Indian political opinion to its advantage. In the context of the ongoing controversy over disclosures that global retail giant Wal-Mart lobbied politicians in the US – and perhaps even in India – that photograph is illustrative of what happens at the intersection of politics and business. In the photograph (which you can see here), Shiv Sena supremo Bal Thackeray — whose party had recently been voted to power in the State as part of an alliance with the BJP— is seated, in flamboyant saffron dhoti-kurta, in a chair in his residence. Diagonally across from him, seated on the edge of a sofa, with – as Anil Dharker described it here – ―her hands neatly folded, her knees primly together, her smile that of a nervous schoolgirl‖, is Rebecca P Mark, head of Enron‘s international gas and power operations and one of the most powerful businesswomen of those times. ―Mark the Shark‖ – as she was known – is dressed in a short skirt and flashing a lot of leg, and her choice of wardrobe, while seated across from a conservative politician like Bal Thackeray, was the result of crafty calculation. Journalist Jeff Stein recalled in an article that Mark once summoned her employees to a meeting in the company‘s Houston headquarters – just to explain her wardrobe style. Stein wrote: ―The mini-skirts and spike heels that were her trademark on three continents, she told assembled hands, had a purpose. Day in and day out, she said, she called on a foreign official who typically spent most of his time with other conservative men, her competitors. He will not remember most of them, she said, but he will remember me.‖ he most vociferous defence of Wal-Mart, following disclosures that the big-box retailer lobbied US politicians on, securing access to the Indian market has come from lobbyists in India who seem to be deficient in irony. AP Rebecca Mark evidently made a stirring impression on Thackeray. That meeting stretched for far longer than scheduled, which left Chief Minister Manohar Joshi, who was to have met her later, fuming. It is the political context of this meeting between the ‗Shark‘ and the ‗Tiger‘ that explains the enormous capacity of multinationals like Enron then – and Wal-Mart today —to bend the arc of politics to their advantage by overcoming even the most virulent opposition that they may face.