Paper, public works and politics

Tracing archives of corruption in 1940s–1950s Uttar Pradesh, India

Datos Bibliográficos

ID12254607
AutoresWilliam B Gould (0000-0001-5774-3006, University of Leeds, autor de correspondencia)
Año2017
Volumen25
Número1
Páginas38-55
Fecha de publicación2017-01-02
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessNo
TipoARTICLE
RevistaContemporary South Asia (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0958-4935 • E-ISSN: 1469-364X
EditorialTaylor & Francis (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/09584935.2017.1292214
OpenAlexW2604423623
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas2
Referencias citadas18

In moving away from older linear narratives around the costs and benefits of ‘corruption’ to development and democratic processes, social scientists have tended to downplay temporality in their work on the phenomenon in the global South. Historical research, however, offers a different kind of nuance around moments in which corruption becomes important in political and administrative discourse. Examining archives on corruption in detail and comparatively poses different questions about the operation of the everyday state. It also provides alternative means for exploring the nature of citizenship, national belonging in India and how the disempowered are often unevenly affected by corrupt acts. Using two case studies in the Public Works Department during state transition in the late 1940s and early 1950s, in India’s most populous state, Uttar Pradesh, this article examines how archives convey multiple and contingent meanings to early postcolonial discourses of ‘corruption’. Such archives present the phenomenon as a vehicle or symbolic resource for larger political processes over the period. This potentially challenges our perspective on some of the larger questions surrounding the early postcolonial state, the nature of civil/political society in that period for India, ideas of national belonging and the relationship between India and Pakistan

Citizenship · Democracy · Development economics · Economics · Language change · Narrative · Phenomenon · Political corruption · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Social science · Socioeconomics · Sociology · State (computer science · Temporality · Uttar pradesh · Anthropological Studies and Insights · Law · South Asian Studies and Conflicts · Southeast Asian Sociopolitical Studies