The ethics of efficacy in North India'sgoonda raj(rule of toughs) (original) (raw)

This study of goondas (gangsters or toughs) in North Indian politics comes by way of a comment on intellectual method in the anthropology of moralities. More especially, it offers critical remarks on the recent adoption of 'virtue' as the cardinal moral coordinate of human life. Drawing on field research conducted across northern India, we show that when people celebrate goondas as leaders, they do so not because they see in them virtuous men, but because they think them capable of 'getting things done'. This ethics of efficacy is neither merely instrumental nor is it but another variant of virtue ethics. It presents, instead, an altogether different moral teleology orientated towards effective action rather than excellent character. While challenging the self-centred bent of the late anthropology of ethics, we also make preliminary remarks on the contrast between 'moral' and 'practical' judgement, and the limits of 'the moral' as such. Look, these people here give me their votes, they give me their love, because I get things done. A gangster-politician in Jaipur (February 2013) Of the many disquieting news items that issue from India, the most alarming perhaps is 'political criminalization' , or the invasion of the country's political ranks by goondas, or toughs. 1 More than a third of India's parliament elected in 2014 face criminal charges (including kidnapping, murder, and rape), many own guns, and some even stand for elections or run their constituencies from prisons (Witsoe 2011: 73-4; 2013). 2 Despite spirited counter-efforts by a vast army of watchdog organizations and India's highly autonomous Election Commission, the trend has shown no sign of abating. 3 More goondas fill India's legislative assemblies now than ever before. Columnists and academics alike see in 'goonda raj' (rule of toughs) a symptom of India's political and economic infirmities: its broken order of law, moribund and highly politicized bureaucracy, rogue capitalism, collapsed political institutions, mass unemployment, and an electoral process driven by fear and force. 4 Some blame it on the 'vacuum of authority' formed by the collapse of the Congress Party (Kohli 1990; Kothari 2010); others on rampant corruption and unbridled liberalization (Sanchez