INTRODUCTION
1.7. Research Objectives
From the study of existing literature, it is clear that analysing the process of state formation forces us to rethink the mechanics of rule and workings of power. It is carried out via apparently mundane state activities like providing health services, tax collection, subsidised food distribution to the poor, or the issuance of voter identity cards. Following this everyday interplay of rules and processes, we can study the operation of power in a disaggregated manner and de-emphasise the state as the ultimate seat of power (Sharma and Gupta, 2012). It enables us to examine the dispersed institutional and social networks through which rule is coordinated and consolidated. It also empowers us to look into the roles those
“non-state” institutions, communities, and individuals play in mundane governance processes (Trouillot 2003). For Foucault (1991), it can be described as "etatisation of society" (p.103; emphasis in original) and for Nikolas Rose is the "de-statization of government" (1996:56).
It is also clear from the discussion on the state that structural and functional notions view it as a set of institutions that perform specific functions related to governance and security. This view is evident in Weber's idea of the state possessing a monopoly over force.
Simple categorisation of the regimes into 'democratic', 'authoritarian' or 'totalitarian' takes the meaning of these words to be self-evident and suggests the core nature of the state.
Such an understanding does not consider the 'cultural' aspect of the state's working. Many comparative and classificatory analyses of states, such as those that rank states as "weak" or
"strong," effectively strip the unit of analysis, i.e., the state- from its cultural roots when it comes to the working of the everyday state. Such an understanding takes for granted the Western liberal democratic states to be fully developed and ideal. Thus, we see western states often being employed as the norm against which other states are judged. In other
words, the criteria for a "strong" state are almost always those that apply to a specific subset of Western nation-states.
A look into how citizens interact with the state by following an anthropological perspective focuses on the state's cultural construction. It forces one to look into how people perceive the state, how their understanding is affected by their location, and how their interactions with the state officials shape their notion of state. Understanding the everyday practices and cultural moorings through which the state is experienced enables us to see the illusion of cohesion and unitariness created by the state. It also shows how a state's authority is fragile and contested when it comes to the working of the relaxed state.
Studies of the everyday state in India (Gupta, 1995; William et al., 2011; Hansen et al., 2001) suggest that the structure of bureaucratic authority, via which the state carries out its functions, depends on the repetitive re-enactment of everyday bureaucratic practices.
These repetitive practises are performative (Butler, 1990) in that 'rather than being an outward reflection of a coherent and bounded state core, they constitute that very core'.
Thus, we find that the coherence and continuity of state institutions are constituted and sometimes destabilised through these re-enactments of everyday practices. Using the model of performativity to understand the state's rules and political spectacles is helpful in another sense. Performances assume an interface between actors and spectators; they constitute and are constituted by an audience (Taylor, 1997). The repetitive performance of state procedures, for a variety of audiences located at different levels (such as rural peasants, local and national bureaucrats, activists, international development or human rights experts, and officials of other nation-states), shapes audiences' ideas about the trans- local nature of the state and their relationship to "it." (ibid).
However, we also find that the reproduction of the state as an institution through bureaucratic practices is not as smooth and inevitable a process as it sometimes appears to be. When it comes to the trust in the written words of the officials, at times, people tend to be suspicious or critical of what is being promised and resist the hierarchicalism and proceduralism inherent in bureaucratic practices (Scott, 1998). There is always a possibility of subversion looming large. Resistance to very routine activities of recording the population's demographics in the form of census gives us a sense of how people avoid being 'written' up in the state registers and records (Appadurai, 1993).
The everyday practices of the state bureaucracies help establish state limits to produce what Timothy Mitchell (1999) calls the "effect of the state". His work suggests that the line between state and non-state realms is partly drawn by bureaucrats' everyday work practices and encounters with citizens. Through contested cultural practices of bureaucracies and the people's encounters with them, the boundary between the state and the non-state is drawn and redrawn. Such methods also decide the ways and means via which people at the margins interact with the state. Such everyday interactions with the state shape the people's imagination of what the state is and how it is restricted. It also enables people to devise various means and strategies to resist the state. The beneficiaries of government programs also learn to use interaction techniques, like the lower-level state agents, to sabotage the 'official' state and its mandates. Studies in rural India (William et al., 2011) find that people learn about paper-pushing, leaving paper trails, and adopting official mannerisms. People use the practices mentioned above and a host of strategies in their everyday interactions with officials to gain institutional access or subvert official scrutiny.
They also use them when interacting with non-officials to establish their authority over others.
The study's primary objective is to uncover such practices and strategies that are deployed by the people at the margins while interacting with the state. Understanding everyday practices is essential because they are signifying practices. It brings us into the complex relationship of such approaches with the sphere of circulation of representations of the state. Hence, it is in the realm of representation that the explicit discourse of the state is produced (Sharma and Gupta, 2012). The representation of public culture and the performance of statehood is crucial in shaping people's perception of the state's nature.
Through the symbolic sphere of the state, those working with it come to understand their position (ibid.). Symbols like official noticeboards, letter-heads, stamps, visits by officials all present an image of the 'state' for both its functionaries and beneficiaries. People learn about the state boundaries and their position in the state machinery through the circulation and dissemination of images. Understanding' representation' helps us examine how people at the margins view their relationship with the institutions of the state. The existing literature exists that people's experience of bureaucratic institutions is shaped by the representation of the state, which in turn is mediated by daily encounters with the bureaucratic institutions. What needs to be analysed is how the practices and representation of 'the state' fit within the imagination of those who work within it (the representative) and those who seek to gain from it (the represented).
From the above discussion and analysis, two intertwined themes or objectives of the study stand out. First, this study highlights state-society relations in terms of offerings made by the state and the steps and strategies (prizes, welfare schemes, reservations) that shape citizens' encounters with the state. This work also examines how diverse positions of marginality decide how the state is experienced by the margins and how the differential exercises of agency shapes this experience. Second, another essential aspect of this work is
to identify and discuss how the agency is articulated and practised, which has implications for the realisation of citizenship to different degrees. The study represents the multiple ways in which political actions are deployed by people living in the margins in their interactions with the state by looking into the implementation of welfare provisions in the tea garden areas in the context of the present study. This kind of politicking takes the form of acts of compliance and staking of claims in some cases. At the same time, in other instances, the strategies employed involve defiance, self-provisioning, and improvisations are amongst the methods that the marginalised employ. In viewing the state-society relationship from the margins, people and communities define and remake themselves as citizens. In this way, the work points to the continual reconfiguration of the relationship between the state and society and exemplifies citizenship's workings as lived experience.