I think the real issue is, in some sense, not corruption, but a scarcity of jobs in general. I live in a small-town in India (population: 200000, yes, that’s what counts as small back home) and in a sense the only occupation that’s viable if one stays back is to work for the government (banks, electricity boards, what have you) or to become a teacher.

The teacher story is an even stranger one. There’s a big demand for schools and colleges in India and entrepreneurs fall over themselves to start one (which means more bribes, since most of these schools don’t really have any facilities). The hope is to stay a school long enough to be eligible for government aid. And so till these schools become financially viable, they don’t pay their teachers at all (so in effect, this is like paying to become a teacher). Which, of course, means that the said teachers need to find a way to make a living – hence a whole new parallel economy of private tuition and coaching classes gets sustained.

I’m going to stop here. But it’s nice that Anna has been able to inspire the middle-class – which in India has been typically apathetic and a-political. But I’m pretty sure that a Jan Lokpal bill will do nothing to curb corruption in India.

For instance the National Campaign for the Right to Information has put forward such proposals.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SrjJCpn9xZ0

The concept of “adjustment” in India is well known. The gap between the formal and what is livable is well established, possibly because governance was originally imposed by an imperial power, and a lot of the same statute is still on the books, unsympathetically framed.

However to say that corruption is liberating is to say that passive resistance is liberating: It misses the point of where the oppression is coming from.

So the debate on the Lokpal is interesting because it raises the profile of debates on how the law came to be the way it is, and how it is implicated with the wider distribution of resources in India.

As Kerim points out many government officials have to pay for access to their jobs. But what allows that to happen? Why are the officials that ask for this money never prosecuted? Why are people so desperate that they will pay this money?

I think it is important that Anthropology links a consideration of local categories with these wider questions.

Certain forms of anti-corruption raining and administration of police make policemen afraid ever to give anyone a break — strictly by the book. It’s a tricky question because everyone opposes police arresting people on whim, but sometimes if police have the option of using their own judgment about letting people go the result can be more humane, but it can also result in favoritism.

I think that zero tolerance policing is generally regarded as excessive and harmful — except by the electorate, when applied to minority communities. But the electorate fully agrees when zero tolerance is applied to them.

I know that there’s a sociological literature, but I can’t remember any names or titles.