Penned by a recently-retired senior bureaucrat who is well versed in the administrative machinery of the Government of India and who possesses the ease and flair of a natural writer, these anecdotes of governmental corruption are at times so humourous that one forgets the gravity of the problem under discussion, while at other moments the magnitude of the problem is laid bare.

Argues that a corrupt state maintains the façade of rule of law but will not permit any inquiry beyond that of individual deviance.

As corruption continues to be a persistent problem in India, concerned citizens believe empowered police agencies independent of political control are effective ways to deal with corrupt officials and politicians. What is corruption and how is it facilitated? What are the appropriate agencies to combat corruption professionally in India? Why are these not effective in deterring corrupt practices? Are the alternative solutions to tackle corruption successful? This book seeks to engage with these questions, discuss and analyze them, and conduct a thorough analysis of law, bureaucratic organizations, official data, case studies and comparative international institutions. It analyzes vast data to argue that a corrupt state only maintains the façade of rule of law but will not permit any inquiry beyond that of individual deviance. Using criminological perspectives, it presents a novel mechanism, the 'Doctrine of Good Housekeeping', for public officials to combat and prevent corruption within their own institutions.

Comparativist scholarship conventionally gives unbridled primacy to external, material interests–chiefly votes and rents–as proximately shaping political behaviour. These logics tend to explicate elite decision-making around elections and pork barrel politics but fall short in explaining political conduct during credibility crises, such as democratic governments facing anti-corruption movements. In these instances, Baloch shows, elite ideas, for example concepts of the nation or technical diagnoses of socioeconomic development, dominate policymaking. Scholars leverage these arguments in the fields of international relations, American politics, and the political economy of development. But an account of ideas activating or constraining executive action in developing democracies, where material pressures are high, is found wanting. Resting on fresh archival research and over 120 original elite interviews, When Ideas Matter traces where ideas come from, how they are chosen, and when they are most salient for explaining political behaviour in India and similar contexts.

Crony Capitalism in India provides a comprehensive and scholarly examination of the important topic of crony capitalism, filling an important gap in the market. Bringing together experts from various backgrounds, it addresses the key underpinnings of this complex and multifarious issue. Given the emergent nature of the Indian economy, this book provides important information for decision makers in both government and business to help establish a robust institutional framework that is so desperately needed both in India and globally.

A social theory of grand corruption from antiquity to the twenty-first century. In contemporary policy discourse, the notion of corruption is highly constricted, understood just as the pursuit of private gain while fulfilling a public duty. Its paradigmatic manifestations are bribery and extortion, placing the onus on individuals, typically bureaucrats. Sudhir Chella Rajan argues that this understanding ignores the true depths of corruption, which is properly seen as a foundation of social structures. Not just bribes but also caste, gender relations, and the reproduction of class are forms of corruption. Using South Asia as a case study, Rajan argues that syndromes of corruption can be identified by paying attention to social orders and the elites they support. From the breakup of the Harappan civilization in the second millennium BCE to the anticolonial movement in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, elites and their descendants made off with substantial material and symbolic gains for hundreds of years before their schemes unraveled. Rajan makes clear that this grander form of corruption is not limited to India or the annals of global history. Societal corruption is endemic, as tax cheats and complicit bankers squirrel away public money in offshore accounts, corporate titans buy political influence, and the rich ensure that their children live lavishly no matter how little they contribute. These elites use their privileged access to power to fix the rules of the game—legal structures and social norms—benefiting themselves, even while most ordinary people remain faithful to the rubrics of everyday life.

The malaise of corruption has become deeply embedded in the political and social fabric of the Indian society. The increased frequency and scale of corruption have had deleterious effects on a wide range of issues. Corruption, therefore, must be viewed not just as an issue of law and order or of the criminal justice system; instead it has larger and adverse implications for development initiatives, transparency in administration, economic growth, access to justice, and human rights. This important and timely work adopts a new approach for analysing corruption—corruption as a violation of human rights. Highlighting the inherent deficiencies in the existing institutions, mechanisms, laws, and law enforcement agencies, the book strongly proposes the adoption of a multi-pronged strategy for eliminating corruption. This includes the creation of a new legislative framework, an effective institutional mechanism, a new independent and empowered commission against corruption, and greater participation of the civil society. It also compares India's experiences of combating corruption with many societies in Asia including Singapore and Hong Kong.

Contributed articles.

For every story of optimism about the growth of medical tourism to India, there are multiple others about medical neglect. Scratch the surface and you find a thick layer of corruption in this life-sustaining sector. This hard-hitting volume shows a mirror to society and, more specifically, to those associated with the health sector—on how healers, in many cases, are shifting shape to becoming predators. In the essays by contributors from within and outside the medical fraternity, we see the many faces, the many facets of corruption—from exorbitant billing by corporate hospitals to the non-merit-based selection in medical colleges to questionable motives playing strong in the area of organ transplantation. But Healers or Predators? is not only about the illness affecting the sector. It also offers solutions, and some stories of hope. The Foreword by Amartya Sen is an added bonus. ‘This splendid, if depressing, book will do a lot to remedy [the] momentous neglect [of healthcare]. We have excellent reasons to be grateful to the authors and editors of this important collection of investigative studies.’—Amartya Sen