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Waiting for the state: Gender, citizenship and everyday encounters with bureaucracy in India

Author

Listed:
  • Grace Carswell

    (University of Sussex, UK)

  • Thomas Chambers

    (Oxford Brookes University, UK)

  • Geert De Neve

    (University of Sussex, UK)

Abstract

This article focuses on practices and meanings of time and waiting experienced by poor, low-class Dalits and Muslims in their routine encounters with the state in India. Drawing on ethnographic research from Tamil Nadu and Uttar Pradesh, it presents experiences of waiting around queuing and applying for paperwork, cards, and welfare schemes, in order to examine the role of temporal processes in the production of citizenship and citizen agency. An analysis of various forms of waiting – ‘on the day’, ‘to and fro’, and ‘chronic’ waiting – reveals how temporal processes operate as mechanisms of power and control through which state actors and other mediators produce differentiated forms of citizenship and citizens. Temporal processes and their material outcomes, we argue, are shaped by class, caste and religion, while also drawing on – and reproducing – gendered identities and inequalities. However, rather than being ‘passive’ patients of the state, we show how ordinary people draw on money, patronage networks and various performative acts in an attempt to secure their rights as citizens of India.

Suggested Citation

  • Grace Carswell & Thomas Chambers & Geert De Neve, 2019. "Waiting for the state: Gender, citizenship and everyday encounters with bureaucracy in India," Environment and Planning C, , vol. 37(4), pages 597-616, June.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:envirc:v:37:y:2019:i:4:p:597-616
    DOI: 10.1177/0263774X18802930
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Masiero, Silvia, 2015. "Redesigning the Indian Food Security System through E-Governance: The Case of Kerala," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 67(C), pages 126-137.
    2. D. Asher Ghertner, 2017. "When Is the State? Topology, Temporality, and the Navigation of Everyday State Space in Delhi," Annals of the American Association of Geographers, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 107(3), pages 731-750, May.
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    Cited by:

    1. Block, Joern & Kritikos, Alexander S. & Priem, Maximilian & Stiel, Caroline, 2022. "Emergency-aid for self-employed in the Covid-19 pandemic: A flash in the pan?," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 93(C).
    2. Agnihotri, Anustubh, 2022. "Transfer preferences of bureaucrats and spatial disparities in local state presence," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 159(C).
    3. Lieke Wissink & Irene van Oorschot, 2021. "Affective bureaucratic relations: File practices in a European deportation unit and criminal court," Environment and Planning C, , vol. 39(5), pages 1049-1065, August.
    4. Canoy, Nico A. & Robles, Augil Marie Q. & Roxas, Gilana Kim T., 2022. "Bodies-in-waiting as infrastructure: Assembling the Philippine Government's disciplinary quarantine response to COVID-19," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 294(C).

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