India and the politics of ‘corruption’

By Anjan Chakrabarti & Anup Dhar

Philosophers of Change - February 4, 2014

Politics begins where the masses are, not where there are thousands, but where there are millions, that is where serious politics begins. — Lenin

Think of all the people in Tagore’s Red Oleander, residing perhaps in post-independent India -- who did not have names and were identified as mere numbers, 21F, 79D, 84M, etc. — forming their own party with the assistance of Nandini, the female rebel protagonist (Ranjan — the other rebel protagonist had already been killed by the King) and challenging the King, the Gosain (clergy), the Adhyapak (professor) and a host of other sycophants; throw in also the madness and music of Bishu Paagla (Bishu, the mad one), the carnivalesque anarchism of the multitude — and you have something like the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP).
There is little doubt that the rise of AAP, especially since its extraordinary electoral success in Delhi, has transformed at least some of the political language in India. Using ‘corruption’ — itself a term that needs much unpacking, even deconstructive work: as the ‘entry point’ (to some this would nevertheless appear to be a simple entry point; we shall try to show how it is not simple with respect to India) and then connect it to a host of other related processes. It has inaugurated a new political language and praxis that is in turn a critique of what AAP has designated as the Indian ‘political system’ and the political class. The appreciation of the overdetermined nature of reality by at least leading AAP functionaries has given to its political praxis immense flexibility and the option to shift the focus of public attention and critique from region to region, issue to issue. Consequently, as it moves from Delhi to Haryana to Uttar Pradesh to Gujarat to Karnataka and even to Maharashtra and so on, what it means to be AAP mutates.

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