The self-styled Gandhian social activist Kisan Baburao “Anna” Hazare catalyzed a national anticorruption movement with his hunger strike to induce the Indian Parliament to pass a particular piece of anticorruption legislation known as the Jan Lokpal (or Citizen’s Ombudsman’s) Bill. The presence of freedom-of-information laws, effective anticorruption agencies, and a working and independent judicial system can promote transparency and accountability. These may in turn help to restore a modicum of faith that India’s democracy, rather than being a playground for corruption, can be counted on to work for and not against the interests of India’s citizens.
About the Author
Šumit Gangulyis a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, where he directs the Huntington Program on Strengthening US-India Relations and is also Distinguished Professor of Political Science and the Rabindranath Tagore Chair in Indian Cultures and Civilizations Emeritus at Indiana University, Bloomington. He is the author (with William Thompson) of Ascending India and Its State Capacity (2017) and the coeditor (with Eswaran Sridharan) of The Oxford Handbook of Indian Politics (2014).
Charges that Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his party threaten liberal-democratic safeguards are best understood as the overheated reaction of an insular elite that is still struggling to come to terms with its…
