National Indian Congress Party: a victim of the criminalisation of politics or a patron of it?

For two decades, Lalu Prasad Yadav was a giant on India’s political stage. He ran a state of 100 million people, he took charge of the country’s massive rail network and his party was a crucial prop for the shaky coalition government in New Delhi.

Yadav managed all this despite a constant whiff of corruption around him. Indeed, he liked to thumb his nose at the law, riding triumphantly on the back of an elephant after a brief spell behind bars in 1997 as a crowd of admirers cheered.
Last week, a court sentenced Yadav to five years in prison for his part in a multi-million-dollar embezzlement case.