Of Violence, Paper and Neoliberalism: Bureaucracy and the Everyday State in South Asia

Abstract

It is, however, not difficult to list a number of obstacles that the ethnographer, willing to embark on a study of the bureaucracy, might encounter, such as arduous access to the organization and its inner workings, lack of legitimacy, etc. It is therefore noteworthy that the three books under review are based on extensive and impressive fieldwork. Gupta's book is based on a year-long ethnography conducted in the early 1990s in two administrative offices in the Mandi subdistrict. Qureshi's analysis is grounded on a rich ethnography, conducted over more than a year, mostly at the Pakistani National Aids Control Program (NACP). Mathur's analysis is based on a tenmonth ethnography during which she immersed herself in the daily activities of the cell charged with implementing NREGA in the town of Gopeshwar. In the last two cases, the authors became involved in day-to-day state activities, ranging from small tasks such as translation and letter typing (Mathur 2016:26) to writing and editing activity reports or being an official observer for a World Bank mission (Qureshi 2018:18).