Everyday State and Politics in India: Government in the Backyard in Kalahandi [Paperback]

List of abbreviations  Preface  Acknowledgements  1. Framing Kalahandi as an Iconic Backward District  2. Understanding State-Led Development: Emergence of the Mission Mode  3. The Government Has Become the Biggest NGO These Days  4. Everyday Practices of GOs and NGOs  5. The Vernacular Domain of Toutary  6. Conclusion  Appendices

The Kalahandi district in the state of Odisha in Eastern India is regarded as an iconic region of underdevelopment, and is often perceived to be the Somalia of the country. It is also the site of a large number of governmental interventions.

This book focuses on processes of governance in Odisha, and provides an ethnographic account of the changing forms of governmental actions in Kalahandi by analysing the implementation of WORLP (Western Orissa Rural Livelihoods Project), a new generation watershed development project. The book also shows the morphings of the forms of the state on the ground, and the ways in which it is perceived by the agents and objects of statist actions. Arguing that changes in the institutions and practices of the state in India over the last three decades are better understood through the conceptualisation of state-fabrication, rather than of state-formation, the author describes the governmental tactics related to emergent modes of governmental action. The book identifies an increasing convergence in the everyday practices of governmental and non-governmental organisations, and the growth of the social as a terrain and object of governmental actions, as two important effects of the process of deployment of these tactics. It argues that the vernacular sphere of toutary is a key domain of sociality that frames the perceptions and actions of people related to the state in Odisha. As a dlc&