‘Crusaders’ for democracy : aspirations and tensions in transparency activism in India
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Date
01/07/2015Author
von Hatzfeldt, Gaia
Metadata
Abstract
Through an ethnographic study of the Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan (MKSS) –
an organisation renowned for its persistent fight against corruption in India – this
thesis explores the aspirations and tensions of anti-corruption activists. In their
commitment to improving governance structures by means of campaigning for
transparency and accountability laws and policies, these activists ultimately aspire to
strengthen democratic practice and to improve statecraft. By studying in detail the
forms of actions, dynamics, politics and relationships among anti-corruption
activists, the thesis explores how ideas of the state and democracy come to be
internalised and addressed by civil society actors.
The context is the nation-wide anti-corruption agitation that swept the country
through most of 2011. This agitation gave rise to friction between civil society actors
otherwise working for similar ends, leading to tension and competition on what
constitutes democratic process and procedure. Based on extensive fieldwork, the
thesis examines the ways in which MKSS responded to the shifting political
landscape of anti-corruption activism. Drawing on the notion of relationality, I argue
that political positions and identities are shaped and consolidated circumstantially
through an oppositional stance and through processes of ‘othering’.
In considering the diverging understandings of democracy among civil society
actors, this thesis seeks to expand ethnographically the theoretical concept of
‘agonistic pluralism’ (Mouffe 1999), that postulates that political conflict and
disagreement is not only integral, but, moreover, crucial to democratic debate. Based
on this conceptualisation, the conflict over the meaning of democracy among the
anti-corruption activists is considered here as creating space for the expansion and
enrichment of democratic debate. The very essence of democracy in India, as will be
concluded, is constituted by such a productive tension.