Anatomy of Indian Mindfinal

Pulickal 1
Running head: Psychological investigation into corruption
Anatomy of Indian mind: A psychological investigation into corruption
Jose Pulickal
Sampurna Institute of Advanced Studies,
Old Madras Road Bangalore
Karnataka

Pulickal 2
A young man among the thousands who gathered at the Ramlila Maidan, New Delhi to press
for the Anna Hazare’s Jan Lokpal Bill reported to have admitted that he also would have
taken bribe if opportunities arise.1 Considering the extent of corruption at various levels in
Indian society2 and as long as one is not implicated or arrested, one seems to feel alright in
involving in it, we may tend to ask whether the ongoing agitation to establish a strong
legislation against political corruption has a psychological cause rather than the protesters are
seeking a remedy for a personal injury or a strong desire for a reformation of the corruption
producing system. When the more powerful ones – local bureaucrats or public officials – are
apprehended a sense of popular relief and pleasure emerges in the public mind, without
nevertheless deterring individuals from involving in everyday corrupt practices, even at
miniature way. Involving in corruption thus appears as not being a great evil at personal
level.
The public’s awareness of the damaging impact of political and economic corruption
on society, the endless debates and protest meetings organized for months to combat it by
new laws, the investigation by Criminal Bureau of Investigation (CBI), by a retired Chief
Justice or Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC) seem to have anesthetized our minds not only
to believe that something is being done to protect us and our interests, but also to keep us
from considering it widespread and pervasive aspect. For most Indians citizens – from above
or from below, from the elite to middle and low social levels – wake up allured towards
corruption; they either practice it, or accommodate to it consciously or unconsciously. Even if
Anna Hazare and his team succeed in forcing the government to put in place a more stringent
anti-corruption law, one has to wonder whether it will reduce other, local and more subtle
forms of corruption in Indian society? As Arundhati Roy critical viewpoint on the India
1 Hindusthan Times (2011) August 21.
2 In 2011 India was ranked 95th out of 178 countries in Transparency International's Corruption Perceptions
Index.

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Against Corruption campaign has stressed it, should we not rather reflect on the sense and
meaning of corruption: “is corruption just a matter of legality, of financial irregularity and
bribery, or is it the currency of a social transaction in an egregiously unequal society, in
which power continues to be concentrated in the hands of a smaller and smaller minority
[...]?” (Roy, 2011). Should we not look more closely into the social context of corruption,
that is to say, pay attention to the larger socio-economic issues fostering inequalities and thus
undertake reformation of the system? This article written from a social psychological
perspective is more to further the inquiry into the corruption generating factors in the Indian
mind rather than to fix the cause to one factor or the other. These are more hypothesis than
proven conclusions.
OPERATIONAL DEFINITIONS
The term corruption in this paper is seen not merely from the narrow meaning perceived
generally as economic or political corruption. Brooks has defined corruption as "the
intentional misperformance or neglect of a recognized duty, or the unwarranted exercise of
power, with the motive of gaining some advantage more or less directly personal" (Brooks,
1974: 46). The advantage of this definition is that it both bypasses the narrow legal definition
of corruption as well as a definition focusing only on public sector, so as to include not only
unlawful actions but also many other activities that, while being lawful, can be considered as
morally or ethically doubtful. However, this enlarged definition still fails to take note of the
fact that corruption is a by-product of socio-economic, institutional and political forces which
mandates and impels it.3 It is the reason why we suggest to use the broadened term of
3 For another opinion see S. Visvanathan, The Necessity of Corruption, The Seminar, September 2011, 625, 63-
65. He sees the corruption not as a deviant pathology of the society but as necessity emerging fromthe socio -
political arrangement. .

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“corruption complex” whose advantage is notably to consider what different corrupt practices
“have in common, what affinities link them together, and to what extent they enter into the
same fabric of customary social norms and attitudes” (de Sardan, 1999: 27). Such a view
allows us to analyze how the social system produces a psychological framework in the
individuals which reinforces corrupt behaviour through a process of numbing effect of the
conscience. This paper looks at corruption from this vantage.
SEARCHING DEEPER INTO THE CORRUPT MIND
To understand the psychological process of corruption three relevant phenomena need to be
considered:
1°) firstly, the phenomenon of corruption cannot be seen in isolation from the other
realities that are existent in the society. Indian citizens experience an increase in anxiety,
depression, competition, dissatisfaction with life and feelings of incompetency. At the same
time they are also witnessing an increase of social violence at various levels. This seems to be
stemming from the socio-economic developmental paradigm that inspire and guide India’s
planning and development. One needs to ask whether such paradigm is the seeds giving birth
to corruption.
2°) The spread effect of corruption is the second phenomenon worthy of being noted.
Every section, whether rich or poor – be it an auto-rickshaw driver or a multimillionaire –
and every social agency are gradually swept into corruption. One act of corruption seems to
produce multiple acts of corruption. Borrowing a concept from mathematics, corruption
multiplies in algebraic proportion. Does this expansionist trend indicate that people are
modelling their behaviour on the corrupt practices of others?

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3°) Thirdly, persons tend to involve in corruption by a subtle unconscious process.
Normally drive to self-preservation should have controlled human actions, but when one
involves in corruption s/he even bypasses this drive. The dishonest practices themselves
appear imprudent and foolish since the nature of the corruption is that it would be eventually
detected with the inevitable disgrace that this will bring about for the culprits. How can even
the educated and ‘honourable’ people involve in such irrational activity? They tend to be
drawn in corruption unconsciously, from a psycho-analytic perspective, by use of an “ego
defence mechanism”4. A person involves in corruption indeed knows that the act is wrong
and may have legal and ethical consequences. Nevertheless when one involves in such
practices s/he is unconsciously made to believe that s/he would not be apprehended and that
such an act would enhance her/his welfare and is tolerable in the context of perceived larger
socio-economic compulsions or wants.
All these three phenomena are interrelated and tend to express what Okhotskii names
the “duality of the public consciousness”: “on the one hand, society understands how lethal
corruption is - the public rates it negatively and dreams of being disentangled from it. On the
other hand, many citizens have become reconciled to corruption and do not consider it a very
serious evil: instead, it has become something familiar and commonplace that is taken for
granted” (2011: 51). One can reasonably argue therefore that the corruption practices point to
the Indian socio-economic system creating a pathological mind.
CORRUPTION-MANUFACTURING DEVELOPMENT PARADIGM
4 According to the classical psychoanalysis, “ego defence mechanism” refers to the unconscious psychological
strategies brought into play by a person to cope with reality and to maintain self-image.

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Indian mind has been nurtured for the last four or five decades on two psychological
premises. The first is the belief that the aim of life is happiness, that is, maximum pleasure,
defined as the satisfaction of any desire or subjective need a person may feel. Secondly,
egoism, selfishness and greed, as the system needs to generate them in order to function, are
believed to lead to harmony and peace. The primary premise of the consumerist economic
development paradigm is precisely the creation of a mind that purchases more and more, and
newer and newer goods. As Marcuse has perceptibly foreseen some four decades ago in the
context of the U.S. society, happiness is being conceived as something that can be purchased.
He argued that, in what he calls “the consumerist society”, wo/men began to see themselves
as extensions of the objects they are producing. At the beginning of One-Dimensional Man
he writes: “The people recognize themselves in their commodities; they find their soul in
their automobile, hi-fi set, split-level home, kitchen equipment” (Marcuse, 2002: 11),
meaning that under capitalism human beings become extensions of the commodities they
create. The myth engendered in the minds is that more and the newer goods a person
acquires, the more s/he is happy. The “more” always stands in comparison with another, be it
person who has newer goods. This calls for a relationship based on competition and
egocentrism. Unconsciously though may be, it is on the psychological edifice of these two
premises the current Indian dream and quest for development (so called “Shining India”) is
arguably being built.
Before we examine more closely these two premises and how they are related to the
corruption scenario, we need to scrutinize the developmental paradigm pursued in India.
THE INDIAN DEVELOPMENT QUEST

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At the time of Indian Independence three developmental paradigms were available to Indian
policy makers: i) the so-called socialistic model as interpreted and propagated by the Soviet
Union of Russia, ii) the development model seen in the Western countries, and iii) the
Gandhian swaraj model (“self-rule”) which was yet not well defined and was seen as a sort
utopia. It goes without saying that behind each of these paradigms is an ideology or a
worldview which informs it and upholds. For instance, according Gandhian view, Swaraj is
implementing a system whereby the state machinery is virtually nil, and the real power
directly resides in the hands of people. This philosophy rests inside an individual who has to
learn to be master of her/his own self and spreads upwards to the level of her/his community
which must be dependent only on itself. According to Gandhi, "in such a state [where swaraj
is achieved] everyone is his own ruler. He rules himself in such a manner that he is never a
hindrance to his neighbour. [...] It is swaraj when we learn to rule ourselves” 5. He explained
his vision of swaraj more precisely in 1946:
"Independence begins at the bottom... A society must be built in which every village
has to be self sustained and capable of managing its own affairs... It will be trained
and prepared to perish in the attempt to defend itself against any onslaught from
without... This does not exclude dependence on and willing help from neighbours or
from the world. It will be a free and voluntary play of mutual forces... In this structure
composed of innumerable villages, there will be ever widening, never ascending
circles. Growth will not be a pyramid with the apex sustained by the bottom. But it
will be an oceanic circle whose centre will be the individual. Therefore the outermost
circumference will not wield power to crush the inner circle but will give strength to
all within and derive its own strength from it." (quoted in Murthy, 1985: 189)
5 http://www.mkgandhi.org/swarajya/.htm

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Outlining the reasons why this utopian concept was not fully accepted exceeds the main
purpose of this article; what is worthy of note is that, in the course of the decades that
proceeded the independence, the Indian policy makers adopted, at least theoretically, a kind
of a concoction of all the three.
Thus at one time India adopted the five year plans, nationalisation of organs of
services, industries, the panchayat raj, etc. As usual the powerful psychological process takes
precedence over the more sublime Gandhian utopian visions. To use the concept of
Maslonian concept of “hierarchy of needs” (Maslow, 1943), the immediate and base needs
(read as happiness dream about which we spoke earlier) for prosperity took precedence over
the self actualising needs. In fact only the base needs were seen as the “happiness dream”.
Nevertheless, the developmental model of socialistic democratic, sovereignty model which is
based on the ideal of self actualization brought in stringent rules of state control of all the
economic and social activities. This led to the lucrative ways of fulfilling the base needs of
plenty. In a system of state control the backdoor ways of corruption became easy means to
gain wealth. Consequently the socialistic policies proved a failure. Public enterprises incurred
losses and this became an argument for the privatization. Thus eventually, the policies of
liberalization in the 1990s were brought in much to the relief of capitalistic worldview.
CORRUPTION: A BY-PRODUCT OF THE SOCIO-POLITICAL SYSTEM
Nowadays, the governments, mass communication media, and industries are relentlessly
manipulating and controlling minds to instil the belief that maximum happiness lies in the
things and services we can enjoy. Feelings, thoughts and tastes are being moulded and shaped
by these agencies to fit the consumerist society. A perceptive analysis will reveal that the
clandestine objective of these agencies (Packard, 1957) is not the real good of the individual

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but the creating of a “desiring subject” through the promotion of a system which stands on
the economic principle of creating endlessly demand. This belief is strengthened with the idea
according to which satisfaction of the pleasure drive is not only the privilege of a minority
but it is available for every Indian. Even the commonest men and women dream of having
what the industries and mass media promote for the ultimate resolution of their misery. From
peripheral perspective such hedonistic dreams are harmless and even projected as
progressive. What is the harm in it? “It helps them to work harder and achieve even
unachievable”, they argue. But then, not only the premise of maximum happiness is faulty; or
even if we accept it as true, studies tend to show that the real purchasing power of the
commoners especially during the recent years has steadily declined (income has been shifting
away from the majority towards the wealthy minority) despairing individuals from achieving
the goal of maximum happiness through possession of things. The premise that the maximum
happiness can be gotten from the things one possesses is faulty for the simple economic
principle that fulfilment wants create ever newer wants. The newer wants is often perceived
as musts for happiness. In having the goods one unconsciously thinks that s/he can get
friends, better family, achieve greater success, reputation status, and a sense of security,
which in reality is not the case. The psychological costs of such a developmental paradigm
are anxiety, stress and other related phenomena of the current Indian society. Merton,
borrowing the term “anomie”6 from Durkheim, well described the internal contradiction
within the cultural system resulting from the “American dream”: “the extreme emphasis upon
the accumulation of wealth as a symbol of success in our own society militates against the
completely effective control of institutionally related modes of acquiring a fortune. Fraud,
corruption, vice, crime, in short, the entire catalogue of proscribed behavior, cultural induced
success-goal becomes divorced from a coordinated institutional emphasis” (1938: 675-676).
6 It can be translated as “normelessness” in English.

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Crave for maximum happiness by maximum fulfilment of desires leads to and
promotes individualism and unfettered individualism leads to egoism. An egoist can be
defined as a person: who wants everything for her/himself; who gets pleasure in possessing
and not in sharing; who is greedy because her/his aim is having, and in more s/he has more
s/he feels worthwhile; who is antagonistic towards all others: her/his customers whom s/he
wants to deceive, her/his workers whom s/he wants to exploit. S/he has no end to her/his
wishes. S/he must be envious of those who have more and afraid of those who have less.
These are repressed to feel good about oneself and good in front of others (Fromm, 1976: 16).
Egoism is particularly becoming a necessity in a system where the personal satisfaction of the
constructed desires – i.e. manufactured goods and services – is conceived as the essence of
happiness. Consequently, the by-product of such individualistic egoism can be seen as
corruption. Corruption generally occurs when the personal interest dominates over the
general interest or interest over others. For an egoistic person the personal interest is more
important than the wider interest of the society. S/he does not bother who is harmed or what
the consequences are as long as her/his needs are met. Even the recent anti-corruption
agitation in India has been seen as proceeding from this unbridled need to promote the
consumption crave of the Indian middle class. Patnaik insightfully comments on the
agitation: “The consequence of the hullabaloo over “corruption”, seen primarily as an integral
part of the functioning of the State, is to delegitimize the State and usher in further
privatization, and hence commercialization, of a range of activities still undertaken by the
State. This can only hurt the poor, and it amounts to a carrying forward of the agenda of
financial and corporate interests, which want precisely a combination of tax reduction and
privatization of what have hitherto been considered as State responsibilities” (Parnaik, 2011).
Both the egoistic character and the “maximum-happiness-dream” that the system
therefore produces create a corrupt society. In other words, the widening gap between the

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perceived present and the future “needs” and the means to fulfil them through honest ways
surely lead to unethical ways of acquiring means to fulfil them. And the egoistic character
that the system propagates reinforces it.
SOCIAL LEARNING: IMITATION AND CONTAGION
Right in the midst of this “individualistic-egoistic-development paradigm” we can notice
another phenomenon at work. How to explain the process of engaging into corruption? One
has to look at the many forms of social interactions that influence the learning of corrupt
behaviour and may lead to corrupt practices. Flimsiest though may be, the reasoning that
often the common person involves to explain the latter is: “everyone is doing it” (Sherif,
1937). Ever since the Bandura’s classic experiment, popularly known as the “bobby doll
experiment”, it is almost accepted fact that people learn behaviours through observation of
other’s behaviour, also known as modelling (Seligman, 2006: 167). But what is at stake
seems less to be the imitation of other people’s behaviour as such than the imitation of their
beliefs and desires. Indeed, so as to understand how corruption spreads in a population, one
has to look to the importance of imitation of beliefs and ideas. Far from the illusory vision of
a sovereign and enlightened self, Tarde in his Laws of Imitation (1890) precisely compared
the state of the individual in society to that of a hypnotized one: “the social state, just as the
hypnotic state, is a dream of control and a dream in action. It is the illusion of both the
somnambulist and the social human being alike to take those ideas to be spontaneous, which
in fact she has taken over by suggestion (1921: 83). People may imitate a behaviour though
may be ethically wrong when, as apprehended by the individual, it seems justifiable, unless
s/he is prevented from doing it through other compelling motivations, for instance fear of
punishment. The justifiable motive in the case of corruption often is the perceived primary

Pulickal 12
needs of immediate and future security, wanting to be prosperous like others, etc. Along with
it is a sort of aggressive secret vengeance the injustice (corruption) meted out to him or her,
often become motive.
The consequence of this expansionist and “contagious” process of corruption (Goel &
Nelson, 2007) is that it becomes all the more and deeply embedded in social habits and
produces a kind of culture of corruption, instilling a value system and cultural codes
justifying corruption by those who practice it.
ATTEMPTS TO PREVENT CORRUPTION
The present day efforts to address the issue of corruption are built on the faulty premise of
“bad apple theory”. The bad, immoral people are the cause for corruption; consequently
removing the bad apple and society will be corruption free. Discovering the corrupt people
and punishing them would deter others from resorting to it. However, this does not seem to
happening. Dr John M. Darley, Psychology professor of Princeton University, finds the bad
apple theory preposterous for the simple reason that this theory assumes that everything else
in the system is alright and is functioning healthy. Writing about increasing corruption he
considers it is simply “a useful fiction that enables those who hide behind it to avoid the more
thoroughgoing implications of recent transgressions” (Darley, 2005: 1178).
The above is not to disparage the attempts of preventing corruption through legislative
means. The researches on social violence have shown that in the absence of preventive
mechanisms such as stringent laws and law enforcing agencies, the number of persons
participating in violence tends to increase (Sofsky, 2002: 128). Extending this to the violence
of corruption stringent laws such as lokpal laws may deter some from participating in the
corruption for the fear of apprehending and penalised. However, this occurs mostly when the

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fear of detection is more and the factors of allurement are less. Indeed, people obeying a
norm depends on both empirical and normative expectations: what one expects to do and
what one believes other think one ought to do. A conflict between these two kinds of
expectation can occur. It has been noticed for instance that “even in the presence of law and
social norms condemning corruption, the widespread occurrence of bribery and kickbacks
can induce people to form empirical expectations that most people are corrupt, while
simultaneously holding the normative expectation that most people disapprove of corruption”
(Bicchieri, Erte Xiao, 2009: 193).
Furthermore, such laws gets teeth only when: i) the law enforcing agencies are
honest; ii) the people are so educated that they have the knowledge of the law and access to
the law enforcing agencies; and iii) the people have a desire to be morally upright and have
opportunities for upward mobility in economic prosperity.
In India and in any country even agencies of identifying the corrupt elements and
punishing them themselves are under grip of the same evil. In a country where, according to a
2005 study7 75 per cent of the people claim to have firsthand experience of corruption hardly
a couple of the corrupt get punished. The law enforcing agencies are swept away by the very
forces that allure the general population into corruption. According to this study conducted by
Transparency International India, 77 percent of those who approached the police adopted an
alternate route like bribe, using influence, or using a middleman. The 87 percent of the
Indians who interacted with the police perceive Indian police to be corrupt and 77 percent felt
that corruption is on the increase.
Deterring people from getting allured into corruption thus calls for a high standard of
morality. In most cases, morality takes precedence only when the perceived biological,
psychological, social and economic needs could be met within the socio-economic ambient in
7 See Transparency International India, India Corruption Studies 2005, www.tiindia.in

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which the individual lives. When this conducive ambient is perceived as inexistent, resorting
to corruption is perceived as morally justifiable. Furthermore, though objective moral
principles arguably exist, practically, when it comes to individuals it is the subjective
apprehension and application of the moral principle that matters. The grasp and application of
the moral principle depends on the conscience of the individual. The individual often does
not apply the moral principles objectively apart from his/her subjective experience. Kohlberg,
renowned for his studies on moral development of persons stated that to follow objective
morality (the highest moral development in a person) persons have to assume a “veil of
ignorance,” i.e., they have to assume that they have not undergone the unjust treatment. This
seems improbable and even Kohlberg called this a “theoretical stage” and temporarily
dropped this final stage, i.e. Universal Principle moral development stage from his research
(Kohlberg, 1973). A person who is him/herself a victim of corruption often resorts to
corruption believing that it is not unjust. The victim does not rise over his/her subjective
experience and think objectively of corruption. S/he not only justifies in her/his acts of
corruption, but also s/he is perhaps allured towards it.
Search for Solutions
What kinds of empirical and normative expectations influence the choice to obey a norm or
the one to engage in corrupt practices? Thus so far in the article, we put particular emphasis
on the role and impact of the current development paradigm being implemented India. Our
attempt was to map out some of the benefits a critical socio-psychological analysis may bring
to traditional ways of considering the problem of corruption. Far from representing only a
political, economic or legal sensitive issue, corrupt practices involve psychological
mechanisms - both at the individual and collective level - which are worth considering in

Pulickal 15
relation to the values, the beliefs, and cultural codes a social system is promoting. The present
socio-political-economic paradigm of India does not have a psychological mechanism that
prevents corruption. Instead, the present system seems to promote and nurture the tendency
of the individuals to involve in corruption. Thus to address the issue of corruption especially
in India one cannot be rest satisfied with the legislative means alone, rather one has to
approach it at the socio-economic-politically and by all the social agencies and individuals.
***
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