The Roots of Ill-Governance and Corruption - Hardcover

This book provides a comprehensive assessment of the motivation behind corruption and ill-governance in countries, such as India. It presents a sound theoretical structure outlining the journey through various phases of elitism, counter-elitism, competitive populism, and, finally, good governance.

The political willingness to bring in good governance, the book argues, depends on the electoral importance of the middle classes. Ironically, however, such a middle class emerges out of the policies of distributing private goods, including education, facilitated through counter-elite capture and competitive populism.

This book emphasises that despite the emergence of the middle class in India as a whole, during the last two decades, their percentage and role in many states are currently limited. The continuation of high levels of ill-governance and corruption is explained here in terms of the role they play in shaping the central government, and also many state governments in India.

V. Santhakumar is currently Professor, Azim Premji University, Bangalore. He had been a faculty, for 15 years (1996–2011), and is currently a Visiting Professor at the Centre for Development Studies, Trivandrum. He worked as a full-time volunteer in a major non-governmental organisation called Kerala Sasthra Sahithya Parishad. He completed doctoral research from the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras. He has held postdoctoral scholarships at the Wageningen Agricultural University, Netherlands, and Vanderbilt University, United States.

V. Santhakumar has also carried out a number of consultant assignments for the Asian Development Bank, United Nations Environment Programme and United Nations Development Programme in different states of India, and in Tajikistan, Palestine, Laos and so on. He has received the research medal and the outstanding research award of the Global Development Network, during its initial years. He specialises in institutional issues of environment, natural resources, energy and infrastructure. In addition to publishing in international journals, he has authored Analysing Social Opposition to Reforms (2008), Economic Analysis of Institutions: A Practical Guide (2011) and Economics in Action: An Easy Guide for Development Practitioners (2013)―all published by SAGE India. He has also co-edited the two-volume series on Law and Economics (2013) published by SAGE India.