Anna Hazare, Liberalisation and the Careers of Corruption in Modern India: 1974-2011

This paper sets the Anna Hazare phenomenon in the context of a longer discursive history on corruption in modern India, examining in particular the JP movement of 1974 and Rajiv Gandhi's use of corruption narratives. Far from being above and outside of politics as its exponents would have us believe, anti-corruption narratives are in fact inextricably mired in political struggle. Corruption's meanings and the uses to which they are put have changed with the liberalisation of the economy in India. This article traces the way in which India's increasingly assertive middle-classes have co-opted the anti-corruption discourse and used it as a tool to discredit their political opponents - the political class and the poor.