It’s not been a banner year for governance in the world’s largest
democracy. The ruling Congress Party-led government of Prime Minister
Manmohan Singh has seen its popularity and credibility plummet following
waves of corruption scandals implicating top politicians accused of
exploiting their positions for financial gain. The reported incidents of
graft have been both epic—a billion-dollar telecoms scandal—and petty,
but all have fueled the fires of public anger. Foreign observers now
warn that the Indian model for democracy and development could be
derailed by the country’s venal bureaucracies and crony capitalism. The
grassroots populist fervor championed in 2011 by anti-corruption
activist Anna Hazare was transformed into a political mission in 2012 by
Hazare’s former colleague Arvind Kejriwal. The latter’s new Aam Admi
party, launched this November, may struggle at the polls, but represents
a black mark on
Singh’s government, which has squandered much of the
domestic and international goodwill it won when it came into power in
2009 with what seemed then to be a massive electoral mandate.
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