Book Description

Fields of Power: State, Bureaucracy, and Political Culture in Punjab, India The Punjab region in South Asia has been a site of intense government intervention since the British colonial period, during which the colonial state innovated new forms of bureaucratic rule and drove societal changes through investments in agricultural infrastructure. In the contemporary period, Punjab's agricultural production sits at the heart of the world's largest welfare policy, providing subsidized food to millions of people. Additionally, the state was one of the first to enroll its entire population into the Indian government's Aadhaar card program, a biometric ID card seeking to give the state visibility over its population and help mitigate corruption. However, citizens note only increasing levels of corruption, political interference in the administration, and confusion of how to access state services because of its opacity. This dissertation seeks to understand contemporary governance in Punjab by asking: How do contemporary bureaucrats in India, the All India Services, drive large-scale policy implementation in Punjab? How do citizens and bureaucrats themselves navigate a large and complex bureaucracy? How does the state maintain its legitimacy despite failure and corruption? I answer these questions through sustained fieldwork in Punjab with high-powered bureaucrats and citizens. I argue that despite the social science common sense that elites easily cut red tape and accomplish their work in the state, its operations are opaque to them; this opacity exists even for the bureaucrats that labor in it. I further explore how, in the quest to access state services through using personal networks, it exacerbates the state's opacity, furthering its power in individuals' lives.