Religion and attitudes towards corruption in India: a collective action problem?

This paper argues that religion influences the ways that people think and speak about corruption, typically leading to condemnation. However, it is also argued that, in a systemically corrupt country, such condemnation is unlikely to influence actual corrupt behaviour. Based on fieldwork in India, the paper finds that existing anti-corruption policies based on a principal-agent understanding of corruption, even if they incorporate religious organisations and leaders, are unlikely to work, partly because people consider “religion” to be a discredited entity. Instead, the paper argues that if corruption were to be seen as a collective action problem, anti-corruption practice would need significant rethinking. Despite its current lack of influence, revised policies and practices may see a role for religion.     

Cultivating “success” and “failure” in policy: participatory irrigation management in Nepal

Introduced over a decade ago and considered largely successful by irrigation professionals, Irrigation Management Transfer and Participatory Irrigation Management (IMT/PIM) policies were recently reviewed and seen to have resulted in more cases of “failure” than “success”. Primary research on two IMT/PIM projects in Nepal, which were among the few “successes” in the assessment supporting a “failed” PIM, shows how such policy-driven evaluations, when defining success, overlook incongruities between policies, institutions, and the evolving dynamics around class, caste, ethnicity, and gender. Without exploring the dynamics of practice, the process of “cultivating” success and/or failure in evaluations provides little insight on how irrigation management works on the ground.     

The religious factor in the reification of “neo-ethnic” identities in Kyrgyzstan

This paper studies how religions, Islam in particular, play a part in the attempted reifications of “neo-ethnic” identities in Kyrgyzstan, a Turkic-speaking republic with a nomadic tradition and a Muslim majority (Hanafî Sunni Islam). In a context characterized by brutal transformations (decline in living standards, widening social inequalities, etc.) and by an increasingly failing central state whose autocratic rule appears ineffective, Islam intervenes as a paradoxical resource that is subjected to contrary uses. The traditional social link between collective identity and Islam is in fact reinvested ideologically within the framework of the new state construction. As a result a key question is what function the re-emergence of religion on the Kyrgyz political scene fulfils, especially considering broad disenchantment with politics. Islam is first re-emphasized as a national element by the authorities and, in the process, it becomes the subject of a drive towards territorialization that aims at erasing any transnational and/or pan-Islamist dimension from this universalist religion. Yet Islam and ethnicity are reinvested again in a new mode, the mode of subjectivization of religious belief, which gives rise, outside state control, to overlapping and often contradicting Islamic identities.     

Curbing Corruption in India: An Impossible Dream?

This article analyses the serious problem of corruption in India by examining its causes and the various anti-corruption measures employed by the government from the formation in 1941 of the first anti-corruption agency, the Delhi Special Police Establishment, which was expanded to form the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) in April 1963. India's ineffective anti-corruption strategy can be attributed to the lack of political will of its leaders and its unfavourable policy context, which has hindered the enforcement of the anti-corruption laws. The lack of political will in fighting corruption is manifested in the lowest per capita expenditure and least favourable staff-population ratio of the CBI when compared to those of its counterparts in Singapore, Hong Kong, South Korea and Thailand. To enhance the CBI's effectiveness, it should be removed from the jurisdiction of the police and be established as an independent agency dedicated solely to curbing corruption. The Constitution of India should also be amended to empower the CBI to investigate corruption cases at the state level without obtaining the consent of the chief minister of the state. In view of the lack of political will, this article concludes that curbing corruption in India remains an impossible dream in the foreseeable future.     

The Communist Ideological Legacy and Serb–Albanian Relations in Kosovo∗

This article uses Central Asian examples to challenge theories of ethnic nationalism that locate its origins in intellectual activism (Hroch), state modernization processes (Gellner), or the rise of mass media (Anderson). Modern Uyghur cultural politics and traditional Central Asian dynastic genealogies reveal related processes used in constructing modern nationalist symbols and pre-modern ideologies of descent. Modern territorial states with ideals of social unification and bureaucratic organization rely upon nationalist discourses to elaborate and rework cultural forms into evidence for the ethnic nation. The state links citizens to institutions through nationalist content used in political discourse, schooling, and public performances. Because such content is presented as authentic but used instrumentally, its contingency and fabrication have to be concealed from view: the culturally intimate spaces of bureaucratic production of culture and narratives are separated from public performances. The creation of genealogies used to legitimate pre-modern states are similar: compositional processes and goals are kept offstage, and little is disclosed in the public historical narratives and performances.