Paper Tiger
Law, Bureaucracy and the Developmental State in Himalayan India

Paper Tiger shifts the debate on state failure and opens up new understanding of the workings of the contemporary Indian state.

Nayanika Mathur (Author)

9781108458177, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 20 September 2018

214 pages
23 x 15.3 x 1.2 cm, 0.34 kg

'Nayanika Mathur's Paper Tiger is an ethnographic work that reads beautifully for scholars and non-scholars alike. … (Mathur's study) lays the necessary groundwork for more detailed explorations of the roles and the effects of laws targeting the improvement of the livelihoods of the poor in developmental states. The strength of this work rests in the author's convincing representation of bureaucracy as an axis that generates affection through its effective use banalization and specialization. It adds depth and nuance to a growing body of scholarly work on transparency and accountability, as well as on Indian welfare laws and political culture.' Irene Hadiprayitno, The Journal of Legal Pluralism and Unofficial Law

A big cat overthrows the Indian state and establishes a reign of terror over the residents of a Himalayan town. A welfare legislation aimed at providing employment and commanding a huge budget becomes 'unimplementable' in a region bedeviled by high levels of poverty and unemployment. Paper Tiger provides a lively ethnographic account of how such seemingly bizarre scenarios come to be in contemporary India. Based on eighteen months of intensive fieldwork, this book presents a unique explanation for why and how progressive laws can do what they do and not, ever-so-often, what they are supposed to do. It reveals the double-edged effects of the reforms that have been ushered in by the post-liberalization Indian state, particularly the effort to render itself more transparent and accountable. Through a meticulous detailing of everyday bureaucratic life on the Himalayan borderland, Paper Tiger makes an argument for shifting the very frames of thought through which we apprehend the workings of the developmental Indian state.

Acknowledgements
Glossary
Acronyms
Prologue
Introduction
1. A remote town: the paper state
2. The state life of law
3. The material production of transparency
4. The letter of the state
5. Meeting one another: paper tiger?
6. The reign of terror of the big cat
Conclusion: the state as a paper tiger
References
Index.

Subject Areas: Law & society [LAQ], Law [L], Black & Asian studies [JFSL3]