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India's 2009 Elections: The Problem of Corruption
- Journal of Democracy
- Johns Hopkins University Press
- Volume 20, Number 4, October 2009
- pp. 89-92
- 10.1353/jod.0.0129
- Article
- Additional Information
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Abstract:
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.