Anti-corruption watchdog Transparency International currently ranks the national perception of corruption
in India to be 87th highest in the world (in an index of 182 positions). While many nations fare better
than India in this ranking, many evidently fare much worse, including regional neighbours Pakistan and
Bangladesh. However, the real signifi cance of perceptions of corruption does not lie in the extent to which
phenomena such as bribery are perceived to be prevalent across society. A more important assessment
is of how differing forms of corruption are deemed to be concentrated at different levels of the state,
and whether such practices are seen as integral to the consolidation of power. In India, public scandals
of the previous twenty years, which link numerous elected politicians and even government ministers to
repeated acts of parliamentary corruption, embezzlement, land seizure, blackmail, extortion, kidnap and
murder, serve to erode the assumption of legitimate political authority and the effi cacy of the ballot box.
While bribery in its many forms undoubtedly impedes the proper functioning of institutions, the preponderance of criminal politicians corrupts the very notion of the accountable and democratic state on which the idea of India rests.
The popular perception of Indian political criminality is
well substantiated by the available data. In the current
Indian parliament, of the 543 elected representatives
of the lower house, 158 (29 percent) are currently
charged with a criminal offence. More shockingly still,
seventy four (14 percent) are charged with crimes in
the most serious category of offence, comprised of
murder, rape, extortion, banditry and theft. While it
is problematic to draw a simple relationship between
criminal charges and actual guilt, it is apparent that
politicians fall foul of the law far more frequently than
almost any other section of Indian society, posing
the pertinent question of why particular types of
people are so often attracted to a political career.
Alternatively, though less plausibly, one could ask why
it is that politicians are so disproportionately targeted
for spurious criminal investigations.
The distribution of criminal charges within the Indian
parliament is weighted towards MPs representing
the smaller parties, whose support bases rely upon
the politics of caste and ethno-regionalism. Among
the two major parties, the Congress Party, whose
ideology is a secular state-socialism, has 5 percent
of its 205 MPs currently facing charges, while the
Bharatiya Janata Party, representing a broad platform
of Hindu nationalism, sees 16 percent of its 116
MPs charged. At the other end of the spectrum, the
regional Samajwadi and Bahujan Samaj parties, who
predominantly represent the interests of untouchable
castes, have 60 percent of their MPs currently charged.
Other ethno-regional parties fare similarly poorly.
Interrogating this phenomenon better substantiates
the contexts in which criminals are likely to enter
Indian politics.
Many of the Indian political parties strongly associated
with criminality have their support bases in a vast
northern swath of the country, running from the
state of Haryana in the centre west, across Uttar
Pradesh to the eastern states of Bihar and Jharkhand.
Obscuring the understanding of political criminality
in these states is a popular national perception
of this region as a violent, culturally conservative
backwater, plagued by poverty and communalism.
That some of the politicians who represent these
states should be criminal despots is often said to
express the particular troubles and cultural dispositions
of the region. In reality, the emergence of political
criminality in this part of India relates to the use of
political violence by the central government from the
1970s, and the present relationship between provincial
criminal politicians and their ostensibly more legitimate
counterparts is closer than one would suspect.
In explaining the rise of India’s criminal politicians,
one might consider the possibility that a new type of
charismatic political leader emerged during the 1970s
that broke with the ‘statesman’ model of the Congress
Party, and was valued for their willingness to dirty
their hands on behalf of their constituents. Certainly,
a profound change overtook political leadership during
this period, as violence began to be valued more highly
by certain sections of the electorate, particularly within
ethno-regional movements. However, the widespread
incorporation of criminals into Indian politics stems
initially from the use of coercion during Indira Gandhi’s
‘State of Emergency’ from June 1975 to March 1977.
During this period, the Congress Party embarked upon
a dictatorship, ostensibly to secure national unity in
the midst of parliamentary turmoil.
The ‘emergency’ saw many civil liberties suspended
and political dissent silenced through widespread
arrest and coercion, a signifi cant proportion of which
was conducted by criminal enforcers at the behest of
the state. The Congress Party’s use of violence made
criminal enforcers an integral element of political
control in many areas of the nation; enforcers who
then subsequently used state connections and
increased economic power to consolidate their own
positions. Dire ethical failings aside, the practical fl aw
of the Congress’ use of violence lay in their failure to
anticipate that the criminals which they courted would
remain part of the political landscape long after their
immediate usefulness had been exhausted. The most
successful of these criminals amassed suffi cient power
and infl uence to enter parliament themselves, where
the status of their offi ce could further their enterprises.
The present concentration of India’s criminal politicians
in quite particular areas of the nation can be
explained with reference to the political economies
of the regions concerned.
Across Haryana, Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, postindependence
rural relations have been characterised
by a progressively open state of confl ict between
lower-caste tenants and their upper-caste landlords.
In this climate, the use of politically orchestrated
violence is increasingly salient, and charismatic criminal
leadership is more likely to fl ourish. In Bihar, criminal
authority was further entrenched by 1975’s statewide
alcohol prohibition, which created a lucrative
market for bootlegged liquor. Regional criminal
organisations prospered in the 1970s by providing
coercive political services and fulfi lling black market
demands for consumer goods. These organisations
eventually diversifi ed into labour contracting, haulage,
mineral extraction, metal trading and waste disposal
as the region’s industrial sectors expanded throughout
the 1980s. During the 1990s, the power of regional
criminal politicians received a further boost from the
centre, as a series of weak coalition governments
allowed the smaller parties on which they were
dependent to wield a disproportionate level of power
in parliamentary votes. It is during this period that the
Congress Party became embroiled in the ‘bribes for
votes’ scandal, which saw Prime Minster Narashima
Rao convicted of corruption, and Sibu Soren, the
head of the ethno-regional Jharkhand Mukti Morcha
Party, convicted for the directly related murder of an
alleged blackmailer.
It is not coincidental that the areas of the nation
in which political authority currently enjoys the
least confidence (namely Bihar, Jharkhand and
Uttar Pradesh) are also those regions which afford
political entrepreneurs some of the greatest economic
opportunities through land seizures, industrial
contracting, racketeering and labour brokerage. The
penetration of known criminals into parliament has
its clearest origins in the emergency’s use of applied
violence. One might also conclude that the class and
ethnic confl icts of particular regions explains why
violence initially became a feature of charismatic
leadership in Indian politics. However, it is the
capacity of parliament to enable the consolidation
of personal power that presently explains the allure
of a political career to criminals, as well as the Indian
electorate’s increasingly strident denunciation of
such forms of authority.
The challenge presently facing the Indian state is to
restore public confi dence in the morality and capacity
of the nation’s politicians, by ensuring that criminals
fi nd it harder to gain entry to a potentially lucrative
parliamentary career. Meeting this challenge requires
an as yet absent governmental will to reform the
legislation that enables those charged with serious
offences to stand for offi ce, and to avoid future
criminal investigation once elected. The current
governmental response to Hazare’s campaign seems
encouraging, and is at the very least testament to
the power of a well-informed citizenry to press its
demands upon the state. However, one must doubt
the depth and perhaps the sincerity with which the
Indian parliament presently searches its collective
soul. Neither the issues raised by Hazare or their
proposed remedies are new. On the contrary, the
corruption and criminalisation of politics has been
the subject of numerous governmental commissions
since the 1960s, most of which have reached the same
conclusions as Hazare, and have vainly made almost
identical suggestions for reform to those presently
under discussion.
For example, the fi rst Indian Committee on the
Prevention of Corruption reported its fi ndings as
early as March 1964, having been convened to
investigate a perceived rise in ministerial corruption
since independence. The committee concluded that
India’s legislative framework was ill equipped to deal
with political corruption, and outlined a procedure
whereby complaints against members of parliament
could be investigated by an independent committee,
prior to police referral. If the 1964 committee’s
suggestions seem well suited to the current political
climate, it is because they were never acted upon
and the legislative failings which they identifi ed have
remained largely unaddressed for the previous four
decades. Likewise, the ‘Lokpal’ bill, currently so fi ercely
debated, has a long and faltering ancestry in Indian
politics. Between 1969 and 1998, six separate Lokpal
bills have been passed in India, only to lapse with the
dissolution of parliament.
What the historical farce of the Lokpal bills suggests
is that the consistency with which independent
enquiries diagnose and prescribe against political
corruption in India, is matched only by the uniformity
with which their activities are ignored or obfuscated
by the parliament. The fate of proposals directed
more specifi cally at fl agrantly criminal acts of political
corruption is worse still. Most recently, the 2010
background paper on electoral reforms prepared by
the Indian Election Commission has revisited two unheeded
recommendations with which to combat the
criminalisation of Indian politics, both of which were
fi rst proposed in 2004. The Commission advises that
prospective candidates for the lower house of the
Indian parliament be required to declare all previous
convictions, pending criminal cases and assets prior to
standing, and suggests that the withholding of such
information should be made punishable by a minimum
of two years imprisonment. Moreover, the commission
recommends disqualifi cation for all candidates against
whom charges have been brought at least six months
prior to election for the most serious category of
offences. While a number of the Committee’s wider
recommendations (regarding restrictions on the
publication of exit poll results and the closer scrutiny
of deposit monies) have been enacted, the bulk of
suggestions that would curtail the entry of criminals
into parliament have yet to fi nd favour.
The will to restrict the entry of criminals into politics
has to date not been present in any Indian government,
and it is sensible to question the likely effectiveness
of a corruption ombudsman whose architects are
a parliament composed of such a high number
of suspected criminals. Furthermore, the tenacity
and success with which the prosecution of political
corruption will be able to proceed in the future requires
the redress of a number of substantial legislative
failings. These include inadequate provisions for
commissions of inquiry, courts and investigative bodies
such as the Central Bureau of Investigation that are
open to nepotistic appointments, and a legislative
position of public offi cials that places them beyond
the scope of some forms of legal scrutiny.
Whether the Lokpal bill will be passed, and its
associated ombudsman proven effective remains to
be seen. The bill’s critics argue quite reasonably that
the omniscient scrutiny of a central ombudsman
potentially trades one form of despotism for another,
and it is prudent to ask whether the commission
can itself remain immune from corruption, even
if the institution were theoretically powerful.
Certainly, many of the proposals in Hazare’s original
bill have been considerably diluted in the version
presented before parliament and the composition of
the ombudsman will be a matter of intense scrutiny in
coming months. As admirable as Hazare’s campaign
has been, the wider struggle against state corruption
in India is unlikely to be fulfi lled by the Lokpal alone.
In addition to the Election Commission’s suggestions
to broaden the disqualifi cation of criminal electoral
candidates, at least three major reforms are necessary
to forestall India’s further slide into institutional
criminality. First, the state needs to address the
substantial legislative failings surrounding the pursuit
of judicial and political corruption, which presently
grant public offi cials inexplicable immunity from
prosecution in a bewildering array of contexts. In
short, powerful public offi cials must be not only liable
to public scrutiny, but also subject to the same forms
and extent of punishment as the citizenry. Second, the
state must endeavour to create a more transparent
culture of business, through a rigorous and systematic
enquiry into the context and fi nancing of corporate
mergers, the sale and development of land, and the
securing of contracts for the supply of labour, goods
and services. The chief avenues by which corrupt
politicians presently fi nd their business profi table
must be subject to far greater attention. Third, the
effectiveness of violent coercion by political authorities
must be curbed by strengthening and rehabilitating
India’s law enforcement agencies, which presently
suffer from their own crisis of public confi dence
owing to perceptions of corruption and institutional
incompetence. If wielded by the state at all, the use of
violence must be the preserve of an accountable and
publicly trusted judiciary and not of political autocrats.
The lack of faith in state institutions, and the popular
suspicion that power is frequently derived from
criminality, invites a critical reading of India’s rise to
superpower status. The global authority which the
nation is likely to wield in coming years is only to be
lauded if power and prosperity is distributed more
evenly within India itself: a challenge which requires
a serious engagement with the problems of state
corruption. Whilst the task facing the Indian state is
indeed substantial, the recent popular outcry shows
that the country is rich in the popular will to enact
such reforms.
in India to be 87th highest in the world (in an index of 182 positions). While many nations fare better
than India in this ranking, many evidently fare much worse, including regional neighbours Pakistan and
Bangladesh. However, the real signifi cance of perceptions of corruption does not lie in the extent to which
phenomena such as bribery are perceived to be prevalent across society. A more important assessment
is of how differing forms of corruption are deemed to be concentrated at different levels of the state,
and whether such practices are seen as integral to the consolidation of power. In India, public scandals
of the previous twenty years, which link numerous elected politicians and even government ministers to
repeated acts of parliamentary corruption, embezzlement, land seizure, blackmail, extortion, kidnap and
murder, serve to erode the assumption of legitimate political authority and the effi cacy of the ballot box.
While bribery in its many forms undoubtedly impedes the proper functioning of institutions, the preponderance of criminal politicians corrupts the very notion of the accountable and democratic state on which the idea of India rests.
The popular perception of Indian political criminality is
well substantiated by the available data. In the current
Indian parliament, of the 543 elected representatives
of the lower house, 158 (29 percent) are currently
charged with a criminal offence. More shockingly still,
seventy four (14 percent) are charged with crimes in
the most serious category of offence, comprised of
murder, rape, extortion, banditry and theft. While it
is problematic to draw a simple relationship between
criminal charges and actual guilt, it is apparent that
politicians fall foul of the law far more frequently than
almost any other section of Indian society, posing
the pertinent question of why particular types of
people are so often attracted to a political career.
Alternatively, though less plausibly, one could ask why
it is that politicians are so disproportionately targeted
for spurious criminal investigations.
The distribution of criminal charges within the Indian
parliament is weighted towards MPs representing
the smaller parties, whose support bases rely upon
the politics of caste and ethno-regionalism. Among
the two major parties, the Congress Party, whose
ideology is a secular state-socialism, has 5 percent
of its 205 MPs currently facing charges, while the
Bharatiya Janata Party, representing a broad platform
of Hindu nationalism, sees 16 percent of its 116
MPs charged. At the other end of the spectrum, the
regional Samajwadi and Bahujan Samaj parties, who
predominantly represent the interests of untouchable
castes, have 60 percent of their MPs currently charged.
Other ethno-regional parties fare similarly poorly.
Interrogating this phenomenon better substantiates
the contexts in which criminals are likely to enter
Indian politics.
Many of the Indian political parties strongly associated
with criminality have their support bases in a vast
northern swath of the country, running from the
state of Haryana in the centre west, across Uttar
Pradesh to the eastern states of Bihar and Jharkhand.
Obscuring the understanding of political criminality
in these states is a popular national perception
of this region as a violent, culturally conservative
backwater, plagued by poverty and communalism.
That some of the politicians who represent these
states should be criminal despots is often said to
express the particular troubles and cultural dispositions
of the region. In reality, the emergence of political
criminality in this part of India relates to the use of
political violence by the central government from the
1970s, and the present relationship between provincial
criminal politicians and their ostensibly more legitimate
counterparts is closer than one would suspect.
In explaining the rise of India’s criminal politicians,
one might consider the possibility that a new type of
charismatic political leader emerged during the 1970s
that broke with the ‘statesman’ model of the Congress
Party, and was valued for their willingness to dirty
their hands on behalf of their constituents. Certainly,
a profound change overtook political leadership during
this period, as violence began to be valued more highly
by certain sections of the electorate, particularly within
ethno-regional movements. However, the widespread
incorporation of criminals into Indian politics stems
initially from the use of coercion during Indira Gandhi’s
‘State of Emergency’ from June 1975 to March 1977.
During this period, the Congress Party embarked upon
a dictatorship, ostensibly to secure national unity in
the midst of parliamentary turmoil.
The ‘emergency’ saw many civil liberties suspended
and political dissent silenced through widespread
arrest and coercion, a signifi cant proportion of which
was conducted by criminal enforcers at the behest of
the state. The Congress Party’s use of violence made
criminal enforcers an integral element of political
control in many areas of the nation; enforcers who
then subsequently used state connections and
increased economic power to consolidate their own
positions. Dire ethical failings aside, the practical fl aw
of the Congress’ use of violence lay in their failure to
anticipate that the criminals which they courted would
remain part of the political landscape long after their
immediate usefulness had been exhausted. The most
successful of these criminals amassed suffi cient power
and infl uence to enter parliament themselves, where
the status of their offi ce could further their enterprises.
The present concentration of India’s criminal politicians
in quite particular areas of the nation can be
explained with reference to the political economies
of the regions concerned.
Across Haryana, Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, postindependence
rural relations have been characterised
by a progressively open state of confl ict between
lower-caste tenants and their upper-caste landlords.
In this climate, the use of politically orchestrated
violence is increasingly salient, and charismatic criminal
leadership is more likely to fl ourish. In Bihar, criminal
authority was further entrenched by 1975’s statewide
alcohol prohibition, which created a lucrative
market for bootlegged liquor. Regional criminal
organisations prospered in the 1970s by providing
coercive political services and fulfi lling black market
demands for consumer goods. These organisations
eventually diversifi ed into labour contracting, haulage,
mineral extraction, metal trading and waste disposal
as the region’s industrial sectors expanded throughout
the 1980s. During the 1990s, the power of regional
criminal politicians received a further boost from the
centre, as a series of weak coalition governments
allowed the smaller parties on which they were
dependent to wield a disproportionate level of power
in parliamentary votes. It is during this period that the
Congress Party became embroiled in the ‘bribes for
votes’ scandal, which saw Prime Minster Narashima
Rao convicted of corruption, and Sibu Soren, the
head of the ethno-regional Jharkhand Mukti Morcha
Party, convicted for the directly related murder of an
alleged blackmailer.
It is not coincidental that the areas of the nation
in which political authority currently enjoys the
least confidence (namely Bihar, Jharkhand and
Uttar Pradesh) are also those regions which afford
political entrepreneurs some of the greatest economic
opportunities through land seizures, industrial
contracting, racketeering and labour brokerage. The
penetration of known criminals into parliament has
its clearest origins in the emergency’s use of applied
violence. One might also conclude that the class and
ethnic confl icts of particular regions explains why
violence initially became a feature of charismatic
leadership in Indian politics. However, it is the
capacity of parliament to enable the consolidation
of personal power that presently explains the allure
of a political career to criminals, as well as the Indian
electorate’s increasingly strident denunciation of
such forms of authority.
The challenge presently facing the Indian state is to
restore public confi dence in the morality and capacity
of the nation’s politicians, by ensuring that criminals
fi nd it harder to gain entry to a potentially lucrative
parliamentary career. Meeting this challenge requires
an as yet absent governmental will to reform the
legislation that enables those charged with serious
offences to stand for offi ce, and to avoid future
criminal investigation once elected. The current
governmental response to Hazare’s campaign seems
encouraging, and is at the very least testament to
the power of a well-informed citizenry to press its
demands upon the state. However, one must doubt
the depth and perhaps the sincerity with which the
Indian parliament presently searches its collective
soul. Neither the issues raised by Hazare or their
proposed remedies are new. On the contrary, the
corruption and criminalisation of politics has been
the subject of numerous governmental commissions
since the 1960s, most of which have reached the same
conclusions as Hazare, and have vainly made almost
identical suggestions for reform to those presently
under discussion.
For example, the fi rst Indian Committee on the
Prevention of Corruption reported its fi ndings as
early as March 1964, having been convened to
investigate a perceived rise in ministerial corruption
since independence. The committee concluded that
India’s legislative framework was ill equipped to deal
with political corruption, and outlined a procedure
whereby complaints against members of parliament
could be investigated by an independent committee,
prior to police referral. If the 1964 committee’s
suggestions seem well suited to the current political
climate, it is because they were never acted upon
and the legislative failings which they identifi ed have
remained largely unaddressed for the previous four
decades. Likewise, the ‘Lokpal’ bill, currently so fi ercely
debated, has a long and faltering ancestry in Indian
politics. Between 1969 and 1998, six separate Lokpal
bills have been passed in India, only to lapse with the
dissolution of parliament.
What the historical farce of the Lokpal bills suggests
is that the consistency with which independent
enquiries diagnose and prescribe against political
corruption in India, is matched only by the uniformity
with which their activities are ignored or obfuscated
by the parliament. The fate of proposals directed
more specifi cally at fl agrantly criminal acts of political
corruption is worse still. Most recently, the 2010
background paper on electoral reforms prepared by
the Indian Election Commission has revisited two unheeded
recommendations with which to combat the
criminalisation of Indian politics, both of which were
fi rst proposed in 2004. The Commission advises that
prospective candidates for the lower house of the
Indian parliament be required to declare all previous
convictions, pending criminal cases and assets prior to
standing, and suggests that the withholding of such
information should be made punishable by a minimum
of two years imprisonment. Moreover, the commission
recommends disqualifi cation for all candidates against
whom charges have been brought at least six months
prior to election for the most serious category of
offences. While a number of the Committee’s wider
recommendations (regarding restrictions on the
publication of exit poll results and the closer scrutiny
of deposit monies) have been enacted, the bulk of
suggestions that would curtail the entry of criminals
into parliament have yet to fi nd favour.
The will to restrict the entry of criminals into politics
has to date not been present in any Indian government,
and it is sensible to question the likely effectiveness
of a corruption ombudsman whose architects are
a parliament composed of such a high number
of suspected criminals. Furthermore, the tenacity
and success with which the prosecution of political
corruption will be able to proceed in the future requires
the redress of a number of substantial legislative
failings. These include inadequate provisions for
commissions of inquiry, courts and investigative bodies
such as the Central Bureau of Investigation that are
open to nepotistic appointments, and a legislative
position of public offi cials that places them beyond
the scope of some forms of legal scrutiny.
Whether the Lokpal bill will be passed, and its
associated ombudsman proven effective remains to
be seen. The bill’s critics argue quite reasonably that
the omniscient scrutiny of a central ombudsman
potentially trades one form of despotism for another,
and it is prudent to ask whether the commission
can itself remain immune from corruption, even
if the institution were theoretically powerful.
Certainly, many of the proposals in Hazare’s original
bill have been considerably diluted in the version
presented before parliament and the composition of
the ombudsman will be a matter of intense scrutiny in
coming months. As admirable as Hazare’s campaign
has been, the wider struggle against state corruption
in India is unlikely to be fulfi lled by the Lokpal alone.
In addition to the Election Commission’s suggestions
to broaden the disqualifi cation of criminal electoral
candidates, at least three major reforms are necessary
to forestall India’s further slide into institutional
criminality. First, the state needs to address the
substantial legislative failings surrounding the pursuit
of judicial and political corruption, which presently
grant public offi cials inexplicable immunity from
prosecution in a bewildering array of contexts. In
short, powerful public offi cials must be not only liable
to public scrutiny, but also subject to the same forms
and extent of punishment as the citizenry. Second, the
state must endeavour to create a more transparent
culture of business, through a rigorous and systematic
enquiry into the context and fi nancing of corporate
mergers, the sale and development of land, and the
securing of contracts for the supply of labour, goods
and services. The chief avenues by which corrupt
politicians presently fi nd their business profi table
must be subject to far greater attention. Third, the
effectiveness of violent coercion by political authorities
must be curbed by strengthening and rehabilitating
India’s law enforcement agencies, which presently
suffer from their own crisis of public confi dence
owing to perceptions of corruption and institutional
incompetence. If wielded by the state at all, the use of
violence must be the preserve of an accountable and
publicly trusted judiciary and not of political autocrats.
The lack of faith in state institutions, and the popular
suspicion that power is frequently derived from
criminality, invites a critical reading of India’s rise to
superpower status. The global authority which the
nation is likely to wield in coming years is only to be
lauded if power and prosperity is distributed more
evenly within India itself: a challenge which requires
a serious engagement with the problems of state
corruption. Whilst the task facing the Indian state is
indeed substantial, the recent popular outcry shows
that the country is rich in the popular will to enact
such reforms.
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