Paper Tiger (Cambridge Studies in Law and Society) - Softcover

Mathur, Nayanika

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1108458173 ISBN 13: 9781108458177

Publisher: Cambridge University Press, 2018

Synopsis

A big cat overthrows the Indian state and establishes a reign of terror over the residents of a Himalayan town. A welfare legislation aimed at providing employment and commanding a huge budget becomes 'unimplementable' in a region bedeviled by high levels of poverty and unemployment. Paper Tiger provides a lively ethnographic account of how such seemingly bizarre scenarios come to be in contemporary India. Based on eighteen months of intensive fieldwork, this book presents a unique explanation for why and how progressive laws can do what they do and not, ever-so-often, what they are supposed to do. It reveals the double-edged effects of the reforms that have been ushered in by the post-liberalization Indian state, particularly the effort to render itself more transparent and accountable. Through a meticulous detailing of everyday bureaucratic life on the Himalayan borderland, Paper Tiger makes an argument for shifting the very frames of thought through which we apprehend the workings of the developmental Indian state.

About this title

About the Author

Nayanika Mathur is a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow at the Department of Social Anthropology, University of Cambridge.

Edition details

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Publication date: 2018
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1108458173
• ISBN 13: 9781108458177
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 216