Under The Table: An Anthropology of Corruption Podcast · Aaron Ansell and Sylvia Tidey

"Transparency and Anti-Corruption in India, a chat with Anu (Aradhana) Sharma" (1/19/2024)

·1 hr 3 min·5 clips

A volunteer was gang raped while trying to stop a child marriage, revealing the state's failure in women's empowerment.

This episode features a conversation with Anu Sharma, a professor at Wesleyan University who researches corruption, anti-corruption, and good governance in India. Hosts Aaron Ansell and Sylvia Teide interview Sharma about her work, which connects transparency legislation to women's empowerment and critiques liberal anti-corruption frameworks. Sharma's research examines the "techno-moral assemblage" of good governance within India's political landscape under Narendra Modi. Sharma's initial fieldwork focused on a state-sponsored women's development program in Rajasthan, where a volunteer was gang-raped and the state failed to provide justice. She later shifted to studying India's Right to Information (RTI) Act of 2005, a transparency law born from a 15-year grassroots movement led by activist Aruna Roy. Sharma shadowed the NGO Parivartan, founded by former bureaucrat Arvind Kejriwal, which used the RTI to assist slum residents. Kejriwal's group later launched the India Against Corruption movement to demand a stronger anti-corruption law with more enforcement power. Following government resistance, this movement transformed into the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), which now governs Delhi and Punjab. Sharma argues transparency laws are necessary but insufficient for combating corruption without mechanisms to act on exposed information. She describes Kejriwal's political evolution as a "kaleidoscopic move" from NGO work to social movement to political party, aiming to fight corruption from both inside and outside the state. The AAP positions itself as a non-ideological "common man's party" focused solely on clean governance, which critics label as practicing a "soft Hindutva" line. Sharma's concept of a "techno-moral assemblage" describes how global good governance discourses merge technical policy with local moral vernaculars, such as Kejriwal invoking Gandhi's term "swaraj" (self-rule). The World Bank's promotion of good governance as a flexible standard after 1991 allowed it to accommodate various ideological positions, inadvertently enabling populist politics. Sharma contends that moralistic, anti-corruption politics is not inherently depoliticizing but represents a specific, judicialized form of politics that can narrow the political field. She suggests potential for alternative politics lies within informal networks and interstitial spaces, viewing corruption not merely as a problem but as an unresolved, generative problematic. The conversation references scholars like Chantal Mouffe, James Ferguson, and Nandini Sundar to analyze these dynamics. The tone is academic and conversational, reflecting a collegial dialogue between researchers familiar with each other's work. The style is analytical, delving into ethnographic detail and theoretical frameworks like techno-morality and vernacularization. Listeners interested in the anthropology of the state, social movements, and post-colonial governance in India would find this episode compelling. Those seeking a journalistic or narrative account of corruption scandals might find the theoretical discussion less engaging.

As heard by us

A sharp look at transparency and corruption that favors careful argument over slogans.

Anu Sharma's conversation with Aaron Ansell and Sylvia Teide treats anti-corruption in India as a question of transparency, the legibility of the state, and the gray zones that keep bureaucracy workable.

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For a careful tour of corruption, transparency, and India’s anti-corruption turn.

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