The reality is that businessmen perceive their own interests that are, many a time, at variance with the legal structure laid down by elected representatives. Powerful business groups make every effort to win over the public policymakers for the protection and promotion of their own business interests. If politics wants to control and regulate economic activity with a view to promote public good, business too wants to influence and control the government in every democracy for its own personal advantage. Hence, every modern democracy has engaged itself in evolving mechanisms to keep political decision-makers insulated from the attempts of businessmen to influence the making of public policies.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is seized of the problem of keeping ‘politics at a distance from business’ and, on February 3, the media reported that the ministers have been asked ‘to sever all ties with business in which they have a stake’ . The PM rightly felt that there is a likely conflict of interest if ministers are associated with business and, hence, they are advised to distance themselves from the conduct of any business they might have been interested in before appointment. While the PM set the cat among the pigeons, company affairs minister Salman Khurshid on February 4 suggested a way out and advised the ministers that, like the US President, ‘politicians in power should get trusts to handle their business interests.’ inter-relationship and illicit liaison between politics and business does not end with ministers managing their own businesses or the possibility of inter-penetration of politics and business on the basis of funds provided by businessmen for elections to political parties or individual influential political leaders. Every democratic country including India has laws for the regulation of corporate funding of elections.