From Subjects to Citizens? Rationing, refugees and the publicity of corruption over Independence in UP

Bibliographic Data

ID3664458
AuthorsWilliam Gould, William B Gould (0000-0001-5774-3006, University of Leeds, corresponding author)
Year2011
Volume45
Issue1
Pages33-56
Publication date2011-01-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueModern Asian Studies (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0026-749X • E-ISSN: 1469-8099
PublisherCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/s0026749x10000302
OpenAlexW2102825426
LanguageEN
Citations received7
References cited11

Building on recent work on the 'everyday state' and citizenship in 1947-1948, this paper examines changing practices and representations of 'corruption' in Uttar Pradesh, India over independence. The management and publicity of 'corruption', particularly in the food supply and rationing bureaucracy from the mid-1940s to the 1960s captures changing discussions about public expectations of government and narrates everyday urban experiences of the local state. Representations of administrative corruption within UP government 'anti-corruption' planning, around the late 1930s to early 1940s, reflected changing ideas about the public and citizenship in UP in general-from a colonial stress on administrative authoritarianism, where corruption was presented as a regrettable but unavoidable facet of local power, to a sense of public accountability. By the 1940s, with war-time commodity controls accompanying rapid political change, opportunities for nefarious gain widened, and administrative rules and functions quickly became much more complex. 'Corruption', as a symbolic political weapon, was publicized in a way which now connected national, state and local level discussions of independence, citizenship and state authority. Specifically, the very nature of different types of corruption in the crucial sphere of controls and rationing brought about more developed forms of political protection and backing for the corrupt administrator and encouraged new clientelist networks across the political spectrum

Accountability · Bureaucracy · Citizenship · Independence (probability theory · Language change · Political corruption · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Publicity · Sociology · State (computer science · Anthropological Studies and Insights · Law · Public Administration · South Asian Studies and Conflicts · Southeast Asian Sociopolitical Studies