Understanding Political Corruption in Contemporary Indian Politics
| Published date | 01 August 1997 |
| Date | 01 August 1997 |
| DOI | 10.1111/1467-9248.00099 |
| Subject Matter | Article |
Understanding Political Corruption in
Contemporary Indian Politics
GURHARPAL SINGH
The ®ftieth anniversary of India's independence in August 1997 is likely to be
overshadowed by the realities of a political system in serious turmoil. The
demise of the Congress Party which has ruled India for most of the period since
1947 has been accompanied by the rise of unstable national governments and
the failure of the Hindu right as represented by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)
to make a decisive breakthrough. At the same time the country has appeared to
be at war with itself with secessionist insurgencies in Kashmir, Punjab and
Assam and the emergence of caste militancy which has transformed political
representation in the most populous states. These developments, moreover, have
coincided with a structural adjustment programme since 1991 which has sought
to move India away from soviet-styled planning to economic liberalization with
the aim of replicating the achievements of ASEAN states. Against this complex
background the period since mid-1995 has also witnessed the unfolding of
major political corruption scandals that have placed the whole political system
on trial. In fact political corruption in India today has become a metaphor
which symbolizes the crisis of governance. How eectively corruption is dealt
with in the short and medium terms will signi®cantly in¯uence the capacity of
the political system to reform itself.
`Corruption ± the fact itself, but even more important, the talk of it ±
occupies a great place in Indian politics'.1 In the 1960s Gunnar Myrdal, one of
the earliest students of the subject, highlighted the need to examine the folklore
of corruption and the extent to which in India it re¯ected `a weak sense of
loyalty to organized society'. If there were `a general asociality that leads people
to believe that anybody in a position of power is likely to exploit it in the interest
of himself, his family or other social groups to which he has a feeling of loyalty
. . .', Myrdal insisted, `people's beliefs about the corruptibility of politicians
and administrators would be in part a re¯ection of what they would like to do,
given the means'.2 Myrdal's suggestion ± and the relationship it implies
between politics and society ± has, until recently, remained largely ignored,
with profound implications for the understanding of political corruption in
An earlier version of this paper was presented at a conference on Political Corruption held at
the University of Nottingham, 10±11 June 1996 and a workshop on Political Corruption in South
Asia held at the Institute of Commonwealth Studies, 29 November 1996. I am grateful to
participants at both events for making many helpful comments and suggestions. Any errors that
remain are, of course, entirely my own responsibility. I am also grateful to De Montfort University
for making available a small grant which enabled this research to be undertaken.
1 W. H. Morris-Jones, The Government and Politics of India (London, Hutchinson, 1971), p. 62.
2 G. Myrdal, `Corruption as a Hindrance to Modernisation in South Asia', in A. J. Heiden-
heimer (ed.), Political Corruption (New Brunswick NJ, Transaction, 1978), p. 232.
# Political Studies Association 1997. Published by Blackwell Publishers, 108 Cowley Road, Oxford OX4 1JF, UK and 350 Main
Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA.
GURHARPAL SINGH
627
contemporary Indian politics. But if the 1960s corruption remained at the level
of folklore, in the 1980s and 1990s it moved into the heart of national and
provincial political institutions. The sequence of events which culminated in the
present situation began before the national general elections in April and May
1996.
Following the revelations of the Hawala scandal (1995)3 of widespread
payments for favours to leading politicians and bureaucrats by a businessman,
the incumbent Prime Minister, P. V. Narasimha Rao, dismissed some leading
members of his own cabinet who were under investigation. Because the indict-
ment in the scandal included the leader of the BJP, L. K. Advani, the move was
widely interpreted as being politically inspired. Indeed, following the general
elections which produced a minority centre-left United Front government, a
series of investigations were launched against Rao implicating him in four
dierent scandals. Ironically one of the accusations against the former Congress
Prime Minister arises from the failure to award a contact after accepting a bribe
through an intermediary.4 Rao's ritualized humiliation in the courts has spurred
a further series of police and judicial inquiries into ®nancial irregularities by his
erstwhile colleagues which have included the taking of large scale bribes by the
Minister for Communications (Sukh Ram) and systematic nepotism by the
Minister for Petroleum (Satish Sharma).5 A large number of former leading
Congressmen, non-Congress politicians and senior bureaucrats are either under
criminal investigation by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) or involved
in protracted court cases.
These exposures at the national level have been followed by parallel develop-
ments in the states. The former Chief Minister of Karnataka, M. Veerpa Moily,
has been implicated in one of the cases faced by Rao. J. Jayalalitha, the
¯amboyant former Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu, who is reported to have
amassed property worth 580 million rupees during her tenure in oce. Police
investigating charges of alleged corrupt practices against her recovered 30 kg of
gold and 500 kg of silver at her residence.6 In sum scams, scandals, charges and
counter-charges of corruption have become the daily diet of Indian political life.
Public perceptions of corruption have evidently begun to re¯ect folklore dimen-
sions. In a recent poll the majority of respondents were `no longer surprised by
reports of corruption in politics' while almost half of those who replied were of
the opinion that `one has to be corrupt to survive in politics today'.7 These
®ndings are further reinforced by external assessments of corruption in India. In
an index of corruption ranking from 1 to 49 compiled by the World Economic
Forum, India came 45th in terms of the honesty of government ocials, 46th in
the ability of corporate directors to ensure honesty, and 40th in terms of
corporate and individual willingness to pay tax.8 Commenting on these ®ndings
India Today observed that there was `little wonder [that] India is viewed as one of
the more corrupt nations in the world, with corporate ethics in short supply and
the shareholders' interests usually getting sacri®ced'.9
3 For details of the Hawala scandal see India Today (New Delhi) 15 March 1996.
4 India Today, 30 September 1996.
5 See India Today, 15 October 1996.
6 India News Network Digest (Bowling Green University) 10 December 1996.
7 India Today, 15 March 1996.
8 India Today, 30 November 1996.
9 India Today, 30 November 1996.
# Political Studies Association, 1997
628
Corruption in Contemporary Indian Politics
I
Explanations of corruption in India have generally tended to be dominated by
economists who either support or oppose economic liberalization. For Neo-
liberals India has long been the ideal model of a rent-seeking political and
economic system in which the `rights to corruption' were entrenched by the
elaborate process of bureaucratic regulation (`licence-permit-raj') that under-
pinned economic planning. These regulations it is argued created powerful
networks of rent-seeking politicians, bureaucrats, businessmen and landlords
which through the abuse of the allocative role of the state systematically
misappropriated resources on a grand scale.10 Economic liberalization has
begun to decouple the institutional link between politics and the economy, insist
Neo-liberals, but the reforms have not been comprehensive, sustained or
continuous enough to provide the foundations for greater transparency in
public life. Opponents of Neo-liberal policies in India, on the other hand, have
highlighted how economic liberalization seems to have increased the demand
and supply of corruption, provided new opportunities for corruption through
deregulation and state disinvestment, and marketized politics for the poor.11
While some of those scandals currently under investigation can be attributed to
the economic reforms, for example the case of Sukh Ram, at this stage there is
insucient evidence to establish a more general causal link between Neo-liberal
policies and corruption. It is in the absence of this kind of clear evidence that
political scientists have been inclined to evaluate political corruption in relation
to the normative ideals of the Nehruvian era.12 High among these ideals is a
legal view of political corruption implicitly incorporated in the constitutional
settlement at independence. As explained by the famous Santhanam Com-
mittee, political corruption includes all forms of `improper or sel®sh exercise of
power and in¯uence attached to a public oce or to the special position one
occupies in public life'.13 What was seen as proper or unsel®sh exercise of power
and in¯uence in public life was in¯uenced strongly by the constitutional legacy
from the colonial government with its re®ned sense of constitutional propriety
about the role of elected ocials and bureaucrats. This legacy was further
buttressed by the ocial ideology of public morality...
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