An Indian Summer: Corruption, Class and Lokpal Protests

In the summer of 2011, an unusual drama appeared to be unfolding: a civil society group, India Against Corruption, and its figurehead, the 75 year-old Gandhian, Anna Hazare, were apparently rallying urban, Indian middle-class professionals and youth in great numbers—a group otherwise notorious for its political apathy—in a spectacular uprising against state corruption. What shared imagination of corruption is projected in these protests? What are the class practices gathered under the “middle class” rubric? Taking “corruption” as a site at which the middle class discursively constitutes itself, this talk traces the ways in which these protests re-articulate the very terms of politics and citizenship in contemporary India.

Aalok Khandekar is Lecturer in Technology and Society Studies, Maastricht University. Situated at the intersection of Cultural Anthropology, Science and Technology Studies, and South Asian Studies, his current research interests are two-fold. The first focuses on formation of scientific and engineering subjectivities in Indian contexts. His previous research has focused on the transnational migration of Indian engineers under contemporary conditions of globalization and the political and ethical transformations that they entail. His current research, in this vein, engages with Indian nanotechnologists. His second set of research interests hone in on middle-class formation in contemporary Indian contexts characterized by neoliberal political-economic reorganization.