An Indian summer: Corruption, class, and the Lokpal protests

Abstract

In the summer of 2011, in the wake of some of India's worst corruption scandals, a civil society group calling itself India Against Corruption was mobilizing unprecedented nationwide support for the passage of a strong Jan Lokpal (Citizen's Ombudsman) Bill by the Indian Parliament. The movement was, on its face, unusual: its figurehead, the 75-yearold Gandhian, Anna Hazare, was apparently rallying urban, middle-class professionals and youth in great numbers-a group otherwise notorious for its political apathy. The scale of the protests, of the scandals spurring them, and the intensity of media attention generated nothing short of a spectacle: the sense, if not the reality, of a united India Against Corruption. Against this background, we ask: what shared imagination of corruption and political dysfunction, and what political ends are projected in the Lokpal protests? What are the class practices gathered under the ''middle-class'' rubric, and how do these characterize the unusual politics of summer 2011? Wholly permeated by routine habits of consumption, we argue that the Lokpal protests are fundamentally structured by the impulse to remake social relations in the image of products and ''India'' itself into a trusted brand. Taking ''corruption'' as a site at which the middle class discursively constitutes itself, we trace the idioms and mechanisms by which the Lokpal agitation re-articulates the very terms of politics, citizenship, and democracy in contemporary India.

Corruption and its Impact on Protest Activities in Post-communist Europe

“…In recent years, there has been research on whether corruption is what drives people to the streets. There are several scientific articles dealing with corruption and public protests across world continents such as Latin America or Asia (Sun 1991;Gingerich 2009;Machado et al 2011;Khandekar and Reddy 2015;Avenburg 2017). In post-communist Europe, however, such research is absent, so it is necessary to fill the gap in current research and test the possible impact of corruption on protest activities in this area.…”

Mobilität und Zeitgestaltung

“…2011 gab es in Indien, angeheizt durch mehrere Skandale, eine starke Anti-Korruptionsbewegung, in der Anna Hazare, damals fünfundsiebzig Jahre alt, die Gallionsfigur war (Khandekar und Reddy 2013: 222). Das Ziel der Bewegung "India Against Corruption" war unter anderem die Einführung eines starken Jan Lokpal-Gesetzes 124 , das es ermöglichen würde, Korruptionsvorwürfe von einem unabhängigen Gremium untersuchen zu lassen (Khandekar und Reddy 2013).…”

Paradigms of Digital Activism: India and Its Mobile Internet Users

“…With regard to the other paradigm, that of engaging users with inspiration, there are several instances of urban-based digital activism, the most recent being Anna Hazare's campaign against the Anti-Corruption Bill. Hazare provided a voice for the middle class population's frustration with what seems to be irrevocable corruption (Khandekar and Reddy 2013). A retired soldier and activist dedicated to the cause of rural development, 75-year-old Kisan Baburao Hazare, popularly known as "Anna" (which translates to "father" in the Indian language Marathi), launched his non-violent, fast-based protest to demand a "comprehensive anti-corruption law and draft a citizen's ombudsman bill" (Chand 2011, n.p.…”

“…This only goes to emphasise the absence of "a significant centre" that characterises the digitized decentralisation of decisionmaking. However, Khandekar and Reddy (2013) attribute the gradual weakening of the anti-corruption campaign after 2011 to the fact that the movement had become a "genericide" (p. 20), that is to say, had met its death by being generic. According to them, the movement reduced the cause to a "product class" (ibid) by virtue of failing to raise its voice on specific cases of corruption, and ending up with a string of casual disputes.…”