Understanding regulatory cultures: The case of water regulatory reforms in India

Abstract

This article uses the concept of regulatory cultures to understand the (dis)embedding of "independent" water regulation in India. It analyzes the specific case of the Maharashtra Water Resources Regulatory Authority and explores how discourses and practices shaped the regulatory development in the water sector. By documenting the practices of meaningmaking of "independent" regulation, the paper queries the process(es) of subnational regulatory diffusion and analyzes how water regulation is translated, negotiated, contested, and subverted as situated meanings evolve in the process. Taking an anthropological approach to studying the State and regulation, the article demonstrates how and why the State remains at the very center of the regulatory project in the water sector in India.

Noncompliance with the law as institutional maintenance at ultra‐religious schools

“…These similarities and variations among the schools correspond with studies revealing how external cross‐pressures and internal organizational sources pull organizational decisions in different directions (see Fransen et al, 2020; Kayaalp, 2012; Li & Farid, 2022; Perry‐Hazan & Birnhack, 2016; Srivastava, 2021). Most of the sources we analyzed (rabbis, school networks, educators' perceptions, and parents), as well as the Haredi sects' distinguishing features that we identified, are intertwined with ideological variations in the Haredi community.…”

The social life of mangroves: Neoliberal development and mangrove conservation in the changing landscape of Kutch

“…This binary interplay of power is quite central to conservation in this remote frontier where the state is present in overt (disciplining movement because of the border) and covert ways (in alliance with capital to facilitate capitalist expansion), as mangroves become sites of re-regulation. The state through its dispersed (formal and informal) institutional practices, policy frameworks and networks tends to facilitate these practices of enclosures (Ferguson and Gupta, 2002;Srivastava, 2021) whilst displaying features of both roll-back (retreat of the state) and roll-out neoliberalism (increased penetration of the state through industrial capital) in these marginal environments (Peck and Tickell, 2002). This hydra-headed (Mann, 1993) and dispersed nature of the state also accounts for the contradictions in the enactment of repair and re-regulation of landscapes.…”

“…Our focus on mangrove ARR projects that do not explicitly focus on producing commodities provides an interesting example to unpack the modalities of repair and how these work as sub-components of an incomplete and patchwork marketisation process that is currently underway in Kutch. In this way, the article builds on the scholarship on the diverse modalities of neoliberalism (Bakker, 2005;Li, 2007;Peck and Tickell, 2002;Srivastava, 2021). As these marginal environments are strategically turned into sites of re-regulation, the role of the state is reconfigured to facilitate capitalist extraction (Bakker, 2005).…”