Seeing the State

Poor people confront the state on an everyday basis all over the world. But how do they see the state, and how are these engagements conducted? This book considers the Indian case where people’s accounts, in particular in the countryside, are shaped by a series of encounters that are staged at the local level, and which are also informed by ideas that are circulated by the government and the broader development community. Drawing extensively on fieldwork conducted in eastern India and their broad range of expertise, the authors review a series of key debates in development studies on participation, good governance, and the structuring of political society. They do so with particular reference to the Employment Assurance Scheme and primary education provision. Seeing the State engages with the work of James Scott, James Ferguson and Partha Chatterjee, and offers a new interpretation of the formation of citizenship in South Asia.

Stuart Corbridge is Professor of Geography at the London School of Economics. He is the author or co-author of five books, including Reinventing India (with John Harriss, 2000).

Glyn Williams is Senior Lecturer in Geography at King’s College, London. He is the co-editor of a collection of essays on South Asia in a Globalising World (2002).

Manoj Srivastava is a Research Associate in the Crisis State Programme, Development Studies Institute, London School of Economics. He has worked for the Indian state for nearly twenty years.

René Véron is Assistant Professor in Geography at the University of Guelph, Ontario. He is the author of a book on Real Markets and Environmental Change in Kerala (1999).

Contemporary South Asia 10

Editorial board

Jan Breman

G. P. Hawthorn

Ayesha Jalal

Patricia Jeffery

Atul Kohli

Contemporary South Asia has been established to publish books on the politics, society and culture of South Asia since 1947. In accessible and compehensive studies, authors who are already engaged in researching specific aspects of South Asian society explore a wide variety of broad-ranging and topical themes. The series will be of interest to anyone who is concerned with the study of South Asia and with the legacy of its colonial past.

1 Ayesha Jalal

Democracy and Authoritarianism in South Asia: A Comparative and Historical Perspective

2 Jan Breman

Footloose Labour: Working in India’s Informal Economy

3 Roger Jeffery and Particia Jeffery

Population, Gender and Politics: Demographic Change in Rural North India

4 Oliver Mendelsohn and Marika Vicziany

The Untouchables: Subordination, Poverty and the State in Modern India

5 Robert Jenkins

Democratic Politics and Economic Reform in India

6 Atul Kohli (ed.)

The Success of India’s Democracy

7 Gyanendra Pandey

Remembering Partition: Violence and Nationalism in India

8 Barbara Harriss-White

India Working: Essays on Society and Economy

9 Baldev Raj Nayar and T. V. Paul

India in the World Order: Searching for Major-Power Status

Seeing the State

Governance and Governmentality in India

Stuart Corbridge
London School of Economics

Glyn Williams
King’s College, London

Manoj Srivastava
London School of Economics

René Véron
University of Guelph

CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS
Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, São Paulo

Cambridge University Press
The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB2 2RU, UK

Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York

www.cambridge.org
Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521542555

© Stuart Corbridge, Glyn Williams, René Véron and Manoj Srivastava 2005

This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception
and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements,
no reproduction of any part may take place without
the written permission of Cambridge University Press.

First published 2005

Printed in the United Kingdom at the University Press, Cambridge

A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication data
Seeing the state: governance and governmentality in India / Stuart Corbridge . . . [et al.].
 p. cm. – (Contemporary South Asia; 10)
ISBN 0-521-83479-1 – ISBN 0-521-54255-3 (pbk.)
1. India – Politics and government – 1977–2. Political participation – India.
3. Civil society – India. Ⅰ. Corbridge, Stuart. Ⅱ. Contemporary South Asia (Cambridge, England); 10.
JQ281.S44 2005
320.954‵09‵045 – dc22 2005041081

ISBN-13 978-0-521-83479-7 hardback
ISBN-10 0-521-83479-1 hardback
ISBN-13 978-0-521-54255-5 paperback
ISBN-10 0-521-54255-3 paperback

Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

Contents

Boxes, figures and tables

Acknowledgements

This book draws on two linked projects supported by the United Kingdom’s Economic and Social Research Council (grant number R000237761) and Department for International Development (grant number CNTR 00 1553) in the years 1998–2001. We are grateful for the financial support of these institutions, while noting that they are not responsible for the findings we report here. As we also note in Chapter , we are especially grateful to seven colleagues who worked with us in Bihar (now Bihar and Jharkhand) and West Bengal on the ESRC project: Vishwaranjan Raju, Ashok Baitha and Rakesh Kumar in Bihar and Jharkhand and Lina Das, Md. Basar Ali, Khushi Das Gupta and Surajit Adhikari in West Bengal. We are also grateful to them and to Pramod Kumar (DPO Jehanabad), Deepak Srivastava, Sanjeev, Ramedra Nath, B. N. Patnaik, in Bihar, and Somen Dhar, Shibesh Das, Piyalee Sharma Das, Alok Kumar Mukhopadhyay and Dibyendu Sarkar, in West Bengal, who worked with us in 2000–2001 on the DFID-funded action research projects that grew out of, and developed, our original research project.

   In addition to these co-workers we want to thank all the people we worked with in the field localities. We cannot list everyone by name, but in Bihar and Jharkhand we extend special thanks to Ram Lakhan Manjhi, Shiv Nandan Pike, Soma Munda, Ranjeet, Sudhir Manjhi, Budhwa Lohra and Thuchuwa Lohra in Murhu Block, Ranchi District; to Ram Ballav Paswan, Sonelal Paswan, Ram Prasad Paswan, K. D. Rai, Master Bhogendra Rai, Lal Babu Rai, Chander Singh and Anant Singh in Bidupur Block, Vaishali District; and to Laxman Ram, Sundershan Ram, Lohri Ram, Ramashish Ram, Viday Paswan, Chandrageet Ram, Sriman Narayan Singh, Kesho Ray and Baidaynath Singh in Sahar Block, Bhojpur District. In West Bengal, we want particularly to thank Shibshankar Adhikary in Debra Block, Ratan Karmaka and family in Old Malda Block, and Mona Mishra, all of whom made fieldwork a pleasure. We are also indebted to Arun Mal, Katik Potar and Abani Biswas in Old Malda, and to Narayan Sur, Parbati Sing, Manbendra Sing, Rampada Tudu, Debi Sing, Pradip Maity and Himansu Sarkar Roy in Debra. We realize that our questions must have seemed odd at times, not to mention time-consuming, and that very few of our respondents will get to see (let alone read) this book. Nevertheless, the book is very respectfully dedicated to the people whose stories are at the heart of this volume, and we hope that we shall in time be able to repay their many kindnesses in other and perhaps more practical ways.

   Elsewhere in Bihar and Jharkhand we are in the debt of a large number of friends and colleagues who guided our research project and helped bring it to life. Again, we are forced to single people out from among a diverse group of activists, NGO workers, government personnel, journalists and politicians, to all of whom we remain grateful, but special thanks are certainly due to Arun Das, Raghupati, Rupesh, Akshay, Pawan, Sushil Kumar, Ms Nutan, Ms Subhraja Singh, Urmila, TN Singh, Ranvindra Bharati, Sushil and Sagir Rehmani from the community of social and cultural activists (including representatives of Lok Samiti, Bhor [literacy campaign], Panchayat Parishad, the Bihar Education Project, the State Commission on Child Labour, and not forgetting the twenty-two actors from Bhojpur who staged the folk drama, Dugdugi); to Fr Jose, Fr Francken, Fr Manthara and Ms Vizi Srinivasan from among the community of NGO workers; and to K. H. Subramanyam (Commissioner and Secretary, Rural Development), Jayant Das Gupta (Secretary, Panchayati Raj), and Vijay Prakash (Secretary, Higher Education). At the District and Block levels, we would like to thank Uday Singh, Deepak Kumar, H. S. Meena, Sudhir Kumar, Suman Kumar, the DDC of Vaishali District, and the BDOs of Bidupur, Sahar and Murhu Blocks, from among the community of government personnel, noting as well that without the help of a large number of Village-Level Workers, panchayat sewaks, junior engineers, and others it would have been difficult to carry out our work as we did.

   Thanks also to Pranab Chaudhury of the Times of India, Patna, to Mammen Matthew of the Hindustan Times, Ranchi, and to N. R. Mohanty of the Hindustan Times, Patna, for their advice and support, which were always welcome, and to Shaibal Gupta and his colleagues at the Asian Development Research Institute, Patna. The A. N. Sinha Institute, also in Patna, was kind enough to host a meeting we held in January 1999 at the beginning of our research in Bihar. The academics and activists who attended that meeting were collectively responsible for pushing us to rethink the direction of some parts of the planned research, and we remain grateful to them. Finally, we are pleased to thank Shri Laloo Prasad Yadav (ex-Chief Minister, Bihar; currently Union Minister for Railways), Shri Jagdanand Singh (Minister, Water Resources), Shri Ram Chandra Purbey (Minister, Primary Education), K. D. Yadav (State President, CPI-ML), Ram Dayal Munda (Jharkhand activist and politician), and Ravi Shankar Prasad (State BJP leader, ex-Minister, Government of India), from among the community of politicians, for repeatedly taking time out of their busy schedules to share their thoughts with us.

   In West Bengal we would like to thank Debdas Banerjee, Dwaipayan Bhattacharyya, Indranil Chakroborti and Abdul Rafique for their intellectual support. We also benefited from discussions with Dr Surjya Kanta Mishra (Minister, Panchayats and Rural Development), Prasad Ranjan Roy (former Secretary, Department of Panchayats and Rural Development), Manavendra Roy (Secretary, Department of Panchayats and Rural Development), Malai De (Department of Panchayats and Rural Development), Rajiva Sinha (now with UNICEF), Jude Henrique (UNICEF), Dilip Ghosh and Bijon Kundu. At the District and Block levels we thank Shefali Khatoon, Sushil Kumar, Md. Abdul Gani, Dibyendu Das, Athena Mazumdar, Sanatan Ram, Dhiren Choudhury, Dilip Das, Abdul Malik, Dilip Kumar Sarkar, K. N. Dhar, A. C. Sikar and Munsur Ali in Malda, and Mamad Sahid, Jahangir Karim, Biman Bhumia and Robin Sing in Midnapore. Grateful thanks also to colleagues at the State Institute for Panchayats and Rural Development, Kalyani, and at the Centre for Studies in Social Science, Calcutta, who helped us with institutional support.

   In New Delhi, we have benefited from discussions with Gerard Howe and Arif Ghauri at DFID, with Mark Robinson at the Ford Foundation, and with colleagues at institutions as diverse as JNU and the World Bank, including Anand Kumar, T. K. Oommen and Yogendra Singh. Special thanks also to Ronald Herring, Kuldip Nayyar and A. J. Philip for their strong support of our action research project in Bihar.

   We have also discussed our work with a number of colleagues in Europe and North America, and would like to thank Abhijit Banerjee, Fiona Candlin, Kanchan Chandra, Sharad Chari, Partha Chatterjee, Shubam Chaudhuri, Nicholas Dirks, Chris Fuller, John Echeverri-Gent, John Harriss, Barbara Harriss-White, Walter Hauser, Patrick Heller, Craig Jeffrey, Sarah Jewitt, Sudipta Kaviraj, Steven Legg, Janek Mandel, Emma Mawdsley, John de Monchaux, Tanni Mukhopadhyay, Roopa Nair, Suppiramnaiam Nanthikesan, Ranjit Nayak, Philip Oldenburg, Johnny Parry, James Putzel, Saraswati Raju, Sanjay Reddy, Ben Rogaly, Nikolas Rose, Sanjay Ruparelia, the late Professor T. Sathyamurthy, Alpa Shah, Edward Simpson, Bishwapriya Singh, Kristian Stokke, Judith Tendler and Ashutosh Varshney for engaging critically with our work. We are also grateful to two anonymous referees for Cambridge University Press, and to our Editor there, Marigold Acland. Above all, we want to thank our partners and children, Pilar and Joanne, Paula and Anna, Nina, Saagar, Shikhar and Roshini, and Lori, Lili and Alexandre. This project has occupied us for the best part of six years, and we are extremely grateful to them for their patience and support.

Glossary

* – used here of West Bengal

Abbreviations