Doctors in in the Indian city of Kolkata have been protesting and striking against the state’s ruling political regime since August 2024, with no end to the demonstrations in sight. The protests were initially sparked by the brutal rape and murder of a junior doctor at R.G. Kar Medical Hospital, with anti-misogyny as the protesters’ central rallying cry. The “Reclaim the Night” march in Kolkata, which inspired parallel marches across India and garnered international attention, epitomized this early focus. In recent months, however, the protests have evolved into a broader movement against corruption. As one politician noted in his resignation letter, “the present outpouring of public anger is against this unchecked overbearing attitude of the corrupt.”

This might appear puzzling, as this anticorruption rhetoric seems rather disconnected from the movement’s original focus on justice for the victim and the broader culture of misogyny and violence against women. But there are at least three reasons why protests that originated in outrage over violence and misogyny have evolved into protests that foreground concerns about corruption.

• First, the initial protests—which emphasized the hospital’s failure to provide adequate security—zeroed in on the conduct and decisions of Sandip Ghosh, the hospital’s former principal. As protests gained momentum, corruption allegations surfaced against Ghosh; these included claims that he had installed loyalists in key positions, extorted students for academic favors, and profited from rigged hospital tenders. Such accusations, which only came to light after the initial “Reclaim the Night” protests, had nothing directly to do with the security failures that led to the assault of the doctor. Yet for many, Ghosh became a symbol and illustration of how unchecked power erodes accountability, allowing both financial exploitation and systemic negligence to flourish. Thus, the rhetoric of anticorruption became a tool for protestors seeking justice for the victim. In particular, protestors could characterize the tragedy as stemming from the same sort of financial mismanagement and self-serving behavior that characterized the corrupt administration of the hospital, and other state institutions. 
• Second, and relatedly, the shift in emphasis of the protests from anti-misogyny to anticorruption may have provided a useful organizing and sustaining function. Unfortunately in India, movements addressing misogyny and gender-based violence face challenges in sustaining broad-based support. As Professor Shruti Kapila incisively observes, India’s “high levels of social tolerance of sexual violence” have rendered public outrage over such tragedies little more than “routine spectacles” that are rarely transformative. Corruption, by contrast, is experienced as a direct and daily injustice, particularly in Kolkata and the broader state of West Bengal, making it more relatable and mobilizing for many citizens (perhaps especially men). From bribes for basic public services to nepotism in healthcare and education, nearly everyone in West Bengal has encountered corruption’s pernicious impact, creating a shared sense of grievance that transcends class or profession. Hence, by framing the victim’s death as not just a gendered tragedy but as a failure of corrupt systems that prioritize profits and patronage over safety and accountability, the R.G. Kar protests have united doctors, students, and the middle class alongside delivery workers and rickshaw pullers under a common banner. (Politics plays a role here too: The BJP, West Bengal’s minority party, has capitalized on the protests to highlight the consistent pattern of corruption among members of the ruling party, and while the protests remain primarily grassroots, the opposition’s involvement has fueled media attention and fervor around the protests.)
• Third, the rhetoric of “corruption” is sufficiently capacious that it serves as a catch-all term that encapsulates frustration and anger at the systemic abuses of power that characterize life under the current regime (see here, here, and here for only some recent examples in West Bengal). Protestors may chant against “corruption,” but for many, their words seem to be addressing the endemic failure of governance, a failure that enables violence, neglect, and injustice. In other words, these protests are targeting “corruption” not just in the narrower sense of bribery, embezzlement, nepotism, and conflict of interest, but in the broader sense of unaccountable, unchecked authority that abuses its power. The evolution of the R.G. Kar protests reveal the elasticity of anticorruption rhetoric and the capacity to unify people with diverse grievances toward the government and other authorities.

In short, what has happened with the R.G. Kar protests illustrates the fact that movements gain momentum not solely through their initial goals but by resonating with collective frustrations, and also demonstrates how the rhetoric of corruption and anticorruption can unify a diverse coalition of those who are frustrated with the failures of the current system. Still, there is a downside: The shift toward corruption as a central theme in these protests risks attenuating the movement’s original focus on justice for the victim and the systemic misogyny that enabled such a tragedy. Corruption, while powerful as a rallying cry, can be such a capacious term that it obscures the focus on particular injustices, and on a specific tragedy. The challenge lies in ensuring that expansive narratives of government corruption channel public anger into meaningful reform, without losing sight of the the protests’ original purpose.