Gupta makes very interesting remarks about the role of paper in the everyday workings of the state and society in contemporary South Asia. Chapter 5 highlights writing as not just a recording of bureaucratic actions, but constitutive of state practice itself. It also critiques the use of writing to exhibit exclusionary politics towards the poor.
Different genres of bureaucratic writing like forms, files, registers, reports, statistics, inspections, and complaints shape state-society relations. Statistics are complementary to narrative in state writing, not just a substitute. Statistics classify and enumerate, generating new narratives to explain anomalies. Similarly, forms are portable because they encode data which can then be translated into statistics. However, as they move up the bureaucratic ladder, the numbers may lose context.
Other forms of writing include inspections and complaints which make conflicts visible within bureaucracies and between state and citizens. Complaints provide insight into subaltern conceptions of the state. However, most people, especially the poor, are reluctant to file written complaints due to a lack of cultural capital and fear of retaliation. Moreover, intra-bureaucratic conflicts revealed through complaints do not necessarily make the state more accountable or reduce structural violence.
Gupta also points out that the amount and forms of writing far exceed the functional requirements of administration and critiques that the processes of following state-society relations through writing are increasingly and unnecessarily bureaucratic, such as the process of filing complaints. This reminds me of Ayesha Jalal’s analysis of colonial legacies and bureaucratic authoritarianism.
In my opinion, bureaucratic authoritarianism is a remnant of colonial legacies from the time of British censuses that even today follow an exclusionary model towards the poor. The state-society relationship is still the same but who is state and who is society has changed. For example, forms are just one of many means that ensure the poor stay out of bureaucratic decision-making as they lack the social capital to be able to fill out forms or file complaints. This is being made far worse by the widening technological divide as more and more bureaucratic processes become digitized. Personal anecdotes shared by students in class whether regarding the process of obtaining a driver’s license or a passport/ visa have further informed my understanding of the elitism and exclusionary politics behind such processes as well.