Welcome to The India Fix by Shoaib Daniyal. This time I unpack the Aam Aadmi Party defeat in Delhi and try and draw an insight from it that applies across Indian politics: the relevance (or not) of corruption as an issue.
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By Indian standards, the anti-corruption movement of 2011 was not particularly large. The Ramlila Maidan in Delhi where it began has a capacity of around 25,000 – a modest number for even routine political rallies in India.
However, what made it different was the incredible media attention it received. For months, it dominated headlines. Eventually, one section of this movement used this publicity to launch a new political outfit: the Aam Aadmi Party.
Boosted by media momentum, the Aam Aadmi Party shot off the blocks. In its very first election, for the 2013 Delhi Assembly, it managed to form the government. Curiously, it did so with support from the Congress – the very party that the AAP’s founders had attacked as irredeemable corrupt just a couple of years before.
Welfare > Corruption
Subsequently, in the 2015 and 2020 Delhi elections, the AAP won massive mandates. It did this not by appealing to its origin as a party battling corruption but by reinventing itself as an economically populist force, highlighting its development work and welfare schemes targeted at the city’s working class.
This dynamic was maintained in the 2025 Assembly polls, the result of which were declared on Saturday. AAP contested the election on its welfare record – not on fighting corruption. In fact, the elections were conducted against the backdrop of serious allegations of corruption against AAP. Senior party leaders, including Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, had even spent time in prison.
However, this seems did not seem to have played a significant role in AAP’s loss. Eventually, it was dissatisfaction with the AAP’s welfare delivery that resulted in a portion of its working-class support moving to the Bharatiya Janata Party. The number was not large, though: AAP got nearly 44% of the popular vote, less than two percentage points behind the winner, the BJP.
Correlation and causation
The Aam Aadmi Party’s journey in Delhi therefore has an interesting insight for Indian politics as a whole: big-ticket corruption is a hot button topic for India’s middle classes and hence the media. However, in elections, most voters do not vote directly on the issue of corruption. This is why AAP had to concentrate its efforts in Delhi on delivering welfare – not fighting corruption.
This is not a new insight. Research from 2013 shows that even as the Congress was relentlessly pilloried by the media on the issue of big ticket corruption, most voters had not even heard of the names of the alleged scams. Even more remarkably, knowledge of a scam did little to influence voter choice. Attributing the Congress’ 2014 loss to claims of corruption might be a case of confusing correlation with causation.
Another way to observe this same insight is to look at the Teflon immunity enjoyed by the Modi government even in the face of widespread allegations of corruption such as the controversy about the purchase of Rafale fighter jets or claims that is favours the Adani group. India’s middle class – the principal cohort that raises its voice against corruption allegations – is a strong supporter of Modi and the BJP. Hence, since 2014, the issue of corruption has taken a back seat nationally, as India’s middle class voters are hesitant to point fingers at their own political choice.
Free pass
As the recent tax cuts show, the only real pressure that the Modi government has faced from the middle class has been on hard economic matters. Wage stagnation and inflation are problems that have actually channeled middle-class anger against Modi in a way that, say, being seen as close to Adani has never done.
Why does the Indian voter ignore corruption when it comes to the hustings? For one, the link between big-ticket corruption and quality of life is difficult to see in real time. A voter happy with, say, cash transfers would hardly abandon Modi over his alleged connections with Adani. Moreover, corruption, both big and small, is a systemic problem that no party seems to be able to solve.
AAP, which was literally created on an anti-corruption platform, now faces allegations that it used kickbacks from Delhi’s excise scam to fund its campaign in Goa. While these allegations remain to be proved, it is clear that the massive funds required to fight an election will create factors extremely conducive to corruption.
Moreover, small-ticket corruption – think small bribes to junior officials – is so pervasive that a voter pivoting her vote on it makes little sense. It is thus little wonder that other factors easily outweigh corruption in an Indian election.
