5 - Checks and Balances and the India Against Corruption Movement

Summary

Where there is a consciousness of unjust or dishonorable purposes, communication is always checked by distrust in proportion to the number whose concurrence is necessary.

—James Madison, 1788

I think we [the UPA] were a double coalition. The Congress Party itself was a coalition. There were people in the party that did not believe in policies that myself and those close to me put forward. But, superimposed on this was that we were a coalition government – the communists, regional partners, and others. Their commitment to our party and our government was never watertight.

—Manmohan Singh, author interview, 2015

Polycentric Power Center

Between 2011 and 2012, the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) coalition government engaged in a series of negotiations with the India Against Corruption (IAC) movement. These negotiations were less a result of decision-makers’ collective desire to actively engage with the movement. Rather, state elites, as part of a division of policymaking power at the executive level between Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and the Congress Party president Sonia Gandhi, established divergent diagnoses in response to the movement. Some leaders urged full negotiation, while others urged counteraction. Several distinct decision-makers were tasked with crafting a response to the anti-corruption agitation, namely within the PMO, the cabinet, senior politicians in the Congress Party, and the NAC, and played an important role in this polycentric environment.

Prime Minister Singh effectively shared executive-level authority over policymaking during UPA rule with the Congress chief, Sonia Gandhi. Whereas the prime minister maintained objective power by leading the cabinet and the PMO, a statutory body comprised of technocrats, civic activists, and some politicians was formed under Sonia Gandhi to offer the dynast executive-level policy input, consequently diminishing Singh's subjective power in government. This statutory body, the NAC, would be the primary vehicle to design and implement core features of the Common Minimum Program (CMP), which ensured coherence on policy matters among UPA coalition partner parties and allies. Given the backgrounds of the decision-makers who comprised the de facto parallel cabinet, the NAC would interface between the government and civil society to supplement cabinet policymaking recommendations. Crucially, the decision-makers who surrounded the prime minister and the party president maintained divergent ideological approaches to social and economic development issues (as we will see in the next chapter), including the causes of the nationwide anti-corruption collective action.