A primary assumption of French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu’s work is that there is a correspondence between social structures and mental structures, between the objective divisions of the social world and the principles that agents apply to it.11 In the vast body of academic literature on subcultural delinquency theory as well, it has been proved that once individuals live in a group culture where violence is the norm, it is hard for them not to become violent themselves. Similarly, I believe there are social factors that work through the individual, and influence their disposition to make them corrupt. Dispositions can be so strongly determined by social context that it is hard for the individual to escape the behaviour within that context. When consistently reinforced in certain ideas and acts, it is difficult for an agent to step outside that culture. Hence, it is difficult, often impossible, for the individual to get something done without resorting to corruption in India because it is embedded in the societal structures around him. It is for these reasons in India that it is not uncommon to hear corrupt individuals say:
‘Everyone is doing it and so I do it too.’
Or, ‘I still think I did nothing wrong.’
From the need-based network between the rich and the poor, which favours the wealthy, a causal path leads to the group behaviour of corruption within the network. That, in turn, affects the individual’s mental state. Based on this argument, the reason Chirag did not succumb to corruption in India was that he was an outsider to the need-based network in India, as he had never lived here. His mental state was still conditioned by the ways of doing business in New Zealand. In India corruption is not merely an individual’s faulty character.
There is less emphasis on the individual than there is on community relations and affiliations in India, in both society and the state, and I have demonstrated this in great detail in an earlier chapter. We are deliberately taught—at home, in school, and by society—not to nurture the skill of developing our individual values (which is ultimately sourced from an independent mental faculty). Society dreads a free-thinking individual that may chance to think contrary to the socially accepted norm. Here, society and corporations are aligned in their practices. They want obedient zombies, men here want subservient wives, and parents want children who conform to existing social rules. So much so that it makes individuals wary of developing a rational and independent mental faculty lest they upset the accepted societal structure and destroy the system. Corruption is part of our social structure, and it will continue to be as long as the dominant groups in society benefit from it. Till then, every independently developed individual moral compass which might point to a non-corrupt course of action will be a freak case and an exception.
In 2007, a survey by the research firm AC Nielson was carried out in Delhi about those aspects of society that had seen the least progress since Independence. In the survey, 82 per cent respondents said that it was corruption that needed to be eradicated.12 Rapid urbanization, globalization and the struggle for resources contrasted starkly with the masses of wealth accumulated by a few individuals. Everyone wanted as much wealth as others, angry about how a few had got ahead.
By 2010, the frustration amongst these citizens escalated at the revelations of extraordinary corruption in the organization of the Commonwealth Games in New Delhi, the issuance of 2G licence contracts to telecom companies, and the corrupt politico-business nexus. Some citizens began to organize themselves into small-scale movements against corruption and a few leaders emerged from civil society. Modern communication channels offered citizens unprecedented access to information, resulting in a more knowledgeable society and greater awareness about the conduct of government and business.13
In response to the public discontentment, the Indian government introduced a bill in the Parliament called the Lokpal Bill as a step to combat the problem. The bill stipulated that ordinary citizens could send complaints about corruption to the Speaker of the Lok Sabha (the Lower House of the Indian Parliament) or the chairperson of the Rajya Sabha (the Upper House). They, in turn, would forward certain complaints for further examination to an advisory body called the Lokpal, which would then send its report to the appropriate authority for action. The civil society leaders in India disagreed, arguing that the proposed bill did not grant the Lokpal any power either to initiate action or to receive complaints of corruption directly from citizens, and would hence be unsuccessful in combating corruption.
Social movements in the Arab countries at that time in my opinion further encouraged these Indians to raise their voices and demonstrate against the Lokpal Bill proposed by the government. In its stead, civil society leaders proposed a Jan Lokpal Bill drafted by them, which they asserted was the credible solution to ending corruption in India. They then went about mobilizing citizens nationwide in an organized way, transforming roused emotions into what they hoped would be a large-scale people’s movement.14
A group of twenty, brought together by Arvind Kejriwal, a former Indian Revenue Service officer–turned–social activist, mobilized tens of thousands of anti-corruption activists for a protest against the Lokpal Bill on Delhi’s Ramlila Maidan on 30 January 2011. The success of this event, the government’s hitherto unwavering stand on the Lokpal Bill, and the example of the successful revolutions in Tunisia a few months earlier, as well as the ongoing revolution in
