Bulletin n. 3/2009 | ||
January 2010 | ||
Sen Ronojoy |
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The Problem of Corruption | ||
in Journal of Democracy , Volume 20, Number 4, October , 2009 , 89-92 | ||
For democrats everywhere, the news coming out of India in the spring of 2009 seemed unalloyedly good: The country had held yet another in what has become a long string of consistently fair and largely peaceful national elections, with the result that the incumbent Congress party and its coalition had won a clear mandate to govern. Yet over the years Indians have come to trust their political leaders less and less. A huge share—nearly a quarter—of the MPs elected to parliament in 2004 were under investigation or actually facing criminal charges. This presents a paradox: While there is overwhelming support for democracy in India the level of trust felt toward political parties and politicians is low, perhaps dangerously so. | ||