So if this is an old problem, why has it suddenly become such a hot political issue? Has Indian society now come of age, as the citizenry demands official transparency and freedom from corruption? This is partly true: the movement for the Right to Information (which culminated in a law) does reflect to some extent the social mobilisation and citizens' awareness necessary in mature democracies.
Recent eruption
But this does not explain the recent eruption of either the problem of corruption or the social reaction to it. All indicators suggest that economic illegality, fraud and corrupt practices have ballooned in recent times in India. Increasingly, this is felt as a great betrayal by a populace that had been told that the era of neoliberal economic policies would end vices that were supposedly associated with greater government involvement in economic activity.
Scams and scandals have become a staple of the economic environment. The numbers keep growing, as hundreds of billions of rupees are extracted in various ways: through government spending on mega-projects or big events (such as the recent Commonwealth Games in Delhi); through often illegal and inadequately compensated expropriation of land to benefit large private players (for industries and real estate projects); through the gratuitous takeover and handing to favoured parties resources ranging from water and minerals to spectrum (the allocation of which was at the centre of one recent high-profile scam).
Collusion
One reason for the public anger is that the period of market-oriented reforms has delivered higher aggregate growth but also significantly increased economic inequality and material insecurity for the majority of India's population. As the elites and burgeoning middle classes become more confident, they become more brazen in flaunting their consumption to a population that is generally denied any such access and may even be facing worsening prospects. So the collusion between economic power and political/bureaucratic power that leads to the rapid enrichment of a few is resented even more.
Many recent analyses of such corruption have seen it as a brake on India's growth potential. In fact, however, such graft and the "crony capitalism" associated with it have been an integral part of India's growth trajectory. The last two decades have seen strongly "corporate-led" growth, with huge rises in the ratio of profits and interest to GDP. Much of this is related to what Marx called "primitive accumulation" the use of extra-economic means to extract resources and surpluses. The Indian state has played a crucial role in this.
Entrepreneurs
The animal spirits of entrepreneurs tend to be unleashed by such avenues of surplus generation, and this contributes to buoyant economic growth. But this is raw, wild west-style economic dynamism unfettered by adherence to any rule of law that treats all citizens as equal, and reliant on close relations between capital and the state to ensure high levels of surplus extraction.
The extreme dependence of large corporate capital on these relations, and therefore the extent to which they are deeply implicated in the corruption that they openly deplore, is usually missed by observers. Most of the media and even the citizens' movements against corruption add to the obfuscation, by presenting the problem solely in terms of the corrupt behaviour of politicians.
Consider the two protests that are currently exercising the media and the government in Delhi.
Apolitical
One of them is led by Anna Hazare, a self-styled Gandhian social worker with some success in water harvesting and other development activities in his village of Ralegan Siddhi, in Maharashtra. He combines personal integrity with a puritanical, and even slightly authoritarian, streak. Hazare went on a fast to demand (eventually conceded by the government) to be part of a panel to draft a bill for a public auditor to monitor the activities of top officials.
Hazare's associates pride themselves on being "apolitical" (as if that itself were a badge of honour), and persist in seeing the problem entirely in terms of the government politicians and bureaucrats without noting the connection with corporate power. Their demand for yet another law conveniently ignores the point that the lack of genuine implementation of existing laws is often the most obvious way in which corruption occurs.
Recently, another figure has emerged. Baba Ramdev is an entrepreneurial yoga instructor who has built up a significant business empire based on yoga camps, traditional medicines and TV channels. Unlike Hazare, Ramdev openly declares political ambitions and plans to float a political party, and he has a large mass following. Many businessmen and bureaucrats are also impressed with his skills, despite his often socially reactionary views.
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