ons taken in an impersonal manner rather than on personal and communitarian considerations; the study follows the claim of a citizen, as embodied in the file, an essential component of this impersonal rule bound system. The aim, to see how the State responds to this claim and examine the conventional wisdom that the State and its bureaucracy do not operate in the manner expected of the normative frameworks of a modern liberal democratic state.

We have chosen to examine the file as it goes through its motions and look at what the process leads to; namely the accretion in favour of the citizen applicant, to the bureaucratic functionaries, the State and Society at large as the file wends its way upwards or downwards. Therefore we have been less concerned with holding up the practice of bureaucracy against its normative model or showing up what is not.

As we searched for a single file to typify and problematise the experience of citizenship as expressed through the history of a file, we realized that the Bureaucracy has multiple and differentiated functions. To study a single file would not adequately elucidate the important functions the processes perform. We thus selected other cases which allowed us different points of entry into the stories of citizens interacting with the State via its bureaucracy including one of how a recent bureaucrat herself understands her location. The cases allow us to be sensitive to select nuances of the process. Through these case studies, it also became obvious that the State is not similarly disposed to all citizens and hence different categories of citizens invite different processes to be set into motion.

The field chosen for this study was from the West Coast State of Goa in India. The files followed vary from one revolving around land and development of it, to the application for social security pension from the State. The categories of citizen experiences covered range from the upper middle class to the lower socio-economic segments.


The Files

We come upon therefore the story of Shri Ramchandra Gauns, resident of one of Goa’s coastal villages, who wishes to get a license to convert an existing store house within his residential property into an outhouse. Construction of such a structure, requires No Objection Certificates (NOC) from district level authorities such as the Planning and Development Authority, the Collectorate and others, each of which must be processed through the village self governing authority called Panchayat, in deference to an ancient tradition where village or caste elders gathered together to take decisions on village management.

Reading through his story, attached as appendix to this essay as Case Study 1, we see that Shri Gauns has recognized in advance, the need to network with the ward member, the Sarpanch (elected Chairperson) and the Deputy Sarpanch of the village local self-government body, if he is to get his work done. This networking with both these elected officials is not just a matter of propriety and good sense but is in fact necessitated due to the distribution of interface with the State. Not every file that moves to the district level in its prescribed journey moves directly from the Sarpanch. At times it is required that the file move from the desk of the Sarpanch, while at other times, it is the Deputy Sarpanch that is the prescribed office bearer who must send the file forward.

Getting his work done comes easier if Shri Gauns gives a ‘party’ (i.e. to entertain at some restaurant) to the Secretary of the Panchayat, who is a paid and not elected official of the Panchayat. For example, the Secretary was as a result of this party willing to allow for Gauns’ construction to proceed even while the approval from the district level higher authorities had not arrived, even though the risk of such unauthorised construction would be solely of Shri Gauns.

This process of networking is particularly crucial at the village or local level where there is to a large extent a face-to-face interaction with the elected representatives and the State is at its most intimate and daily contact with the citizenry. This generates for the elected local self-government authorities the much-needed social and political legitimacy by allowing them to prove their fides in securing access to the State services for their constituents.

Networking is therefore a mechanism to reinforce local ties. The reason for the distribution of the functions and powers to different members by the elected members of the Panchayat themselves, is to generate opportunities for the face-to-face interaction between the ‘public’ and ‘elected members’ – or so suggests Mr Gauns. Such networking tends to be popularly taken for granted at the local self-government level.

This privileging of the ‘locals’ to gain legitimacy is played out in a number of ways. For example in the same coastal zone of Goa, the written rules instituted by the village Panchayats some years ago permitted only locals (or more properly, those with domicile) to set up beach side shacks or restaurants (a source of considerable short term low investment incomes) to cater to the tourists frequenting the beaches. This exclusive reservation for the locals, and its rationale was challenged in the Court, which struck down this reservation on grounds of arbitrarily benefiting a class of citizens (i.e. the locals).

However, the privileging of the locals is formalised through introduction of criteria such as domicile as in opportunities for education, employment and other State facilities. At other times even though not formal it becomes a crucial and deciding criteria for instance during recruitment. Even while national level selection is mandated for teachers in Higher education, actual recruitment favours the local in an overwhelming majority of cases. More importantly, the very fact that once a file has been instituted one has to physically interact with officials, who privilege the idea of the ‘local’ could make things simpler or difficult for the applicant depending on how he is perceived.

In the case of someone who is not from the village, i.e. the ‘outsider’, a financial inducement is invariably called for, by the Panchayat staff or the elected official, and this can be seen as some form of an entry fee for becoming an insider. In such cases, where the activity for which the license or official cooperation is required, the financial inducement that is required would depend on the perception of profits that would accrue to the applicant, once the project is in operation. The higher the perceived profits to the applicant, the more complex the nature of the payment which would include individuals in the bureaucracy, the political party or individual politicians etc.

Mr Gauns is now required to take the file to the district level in person (which is not encouraged by the norms) as left with the Panchayat he would not know if the file would ever move upwards. Moving to the district level, the case for Shri Gauns presents a whole new dimension. At this point, he is unable to understand the intricacies of the law that mandates unreasonably large levies to be paid to the State for obtaining permission to build his little outhouse. Why should he pay for ‘converting’ 2000 sq mts of land when all he proposes to build is an addition 25 sq mts over and above the existing 50 sq. mts? The unreasonableness of the high levies and his inability to even locate the legal source of these levies forces him into a situation where it is suggested to him to offer inducements to the relevant officer who will in turn ‘adjust the matter somehow’. Subsequent to the inducement being paid, the mandatory levies reduce drastically (i.e. for 25 sq. mts only) and the file faces no further difficulty in navigating the processes of site visit, inspections, the change in the proposed plans, etc. This result is read by Shri Gauns as pointing to the fact that all the government personnel are in league and that the confounding rules are in fact not confounding at all, but merely a red herring, a deliberate ploy to extract monetary inducements.

In the case of another file that we followed, attached as appendix to this essay as Case Study 2-A, the applicant wished to avail of a Government scheme that provides interest free loans to students to cover the tuition fees in India or abroad of high cost professional courses of graduate and post-graduate students of the State of Goa.

In this case the scheme does not originate at the village or district level but is processed at the first instance at the State level. Most such cases are addressed immediately on fulfilling the defined criteria, and discretion of the authority can be used where a case is made out for special treatment. However, this is where the bureaucratic authority’s role ends, and the case is referred up to a higher politically elected authority. In this instance, a case was successfully made out that even though the rules specified that the loan will be available for tuition fees only, the scholarship ought to be granted for living expenses on the grounds that the rules themselves allowed for the making of special cases, and should hence be sent upward for approval. It appears that social acquaintance of the candidate with a relative of the leader of the State, that came up in passing in discussions with authorities may have been critical in allowing the discretion to favour the applicant.

The scheme studied in Case Study 2-A and 2-B contrasts sharply with that of Case Study 1. Given that Case 2 concerns a scheme that caters to middle class interests, one can understand the greater sensitivity to financial graft, the strict adherence to rules, and concern with modern bureaucratic procedures. Notice 2‑B which exhibits features like processing is sought to be done via the internet, boasts of a flat file-processing structure with almost no tiers to move through and a high level of discretion at the top. These are the features normally associated with contemporary efficiency of organic bureaucracy and will be returned to later.

What is common to both cases is that they both posses a notion of the insider, the local, one who gets preferential access to the system. The notion of the insider/local is conceptual and not geographical. For example, at the level of the panchayat it is those who matter at that level i.e. constituents of the institution there that make the local, and it is likewise at the State level.

A third case studied is a scheme of the Government of Goa that aims to provide pension for the un-incomed aged of the State, attached as appendix to this essay as Case Study 3. The system works most efficiently when the political parties through part time workers identify the intended beneficiaries, the destitute and marginalised; and initiate and process the application on behalf of the beneficiary. What is interesting to note is that not only do the party workers not seek financial inducements from the beneficiaries of the scheme, but must at times pay the legitimate State fees for the process for if they pass these fees on to the beneficiaries they are then suspected of making economic gain through the process. While the ‘applicant’ is assured of receiving the pension, the political party worker, gains social and political legitimacy by working for the benefit of the local needy without displaying personal or pecuniary interest. Here politicians who have greater financial resources are better able to appoint party workers to push a larger number of applications as compared to those politicians who do not have personnel or financial resources at their disposal. In a word, it is therefore not the politician of the ruling party but the better-resourced politician who is able to better utilise the scheme for political mileage. A second corollary to this is that politicians must therefore always accumulate both economic gains and social-political legitimacy and delicately balance and trade off one against the other.

Another feature exhibited by this scheme is that this system requires that the politician at the time elected to power, verify the income of the applicant, a function otherwise given to the State bureaucracy. This amounts to the written and formal legitimating of the role of the politician in the bureaucracy. This bears some similarity to the situation mentioned earlier where options to open shacks on the beach were reserved only for locals on recommendation of local politicians, a provision subsequently struck down by the Courts, on the grounds that politicians, elected or otherwise, have no special competency, or the machinery to fulfil such bureaucratic functions. What is striking is that despite the Court’s frowning on this tendency, the compulsion to create a formal role for the politician within bureaucratic procedures persists.

The apparently well intentioned intervention of party cadre in rooting services of the State to its intended beneficiaries, who would otherwise been quite unable to avail of this scheme does not seem to however prevented the abuse of the scheme. There have been complaints of misuse of the pensions and of illegitimate beneficiaries owing to the political patronage. Currently, due to criticism within the legislature and public forum the government has been forced to identify illegitimate beneficiaries and weed them out.

This manner of the involvement of the political parties in all matters of decision making of the bureaucracy and the State, at all levels, from the lowest to the highest level, has been referred to as the politicisation of the bureaucracy. It may be noted that such involvement of political parties in the bureaucracy and other State and non State institutions can take extreme forms (as has been suggested by some in the State of Kerala) and this leads to the politicisation of civil society where the party itself plays the controlling role in and of civil society.

Bureaucratic processes are therefore process that are operated by the politician-bureaucrat combine and work towards reconciling two contradictory pressures:

These two forces seem to act in opposite directions. However as Case Study 4 shows, it is possible to design institutional mechanisms which seamlessly weave together the opposing pressures for financial inducements and political legitimacy. Case Study 4 is on a scheme which provides a monetary subsidy for the purchase of water pumps the system of financial inducement is completely woven into the machine that generates social and political legitimacy. The supplier of the water pumps who provides the financial inducement is himself politically appointed and the personnel who are to certify and scrutinize the delivery of the supplier are also recruited through the political network. Once the beneficiary approaches the supplier, the supplier initiates and terminates all the transactions with the bureaucracy. The pecuniary benefits come to the politician and bureaucrat directly from the supplier and not through the beneficiary. The beneficiary therefore is insulated from the system of graft and the belief is that it is a win-win situation for all parties concerned.


Discussion

From the ethnography above we believe it is possible and natural to deduce that the written rules of procedure are themselves drafted in a manner that not merely favour but also require the intervention of political agents over and above the role envisaged for the bureaucracy.

In the ethnography above, we have emphasized instances where the violation of bureaucratic norms have been officially institutionalised (for example the requirement for the MLA/MP to verify the file which violates the rule of non-interference of political parties, in the case of Shri Gauns the need for him to personally follow the file, that violates the lack of personality of the file) only to show that the normative structure of the bureaucracy in itself does not enjoy a great degree of sanctity.

To therefore think of the rules as being manipulated and twisted out of its original intentions, as some would have us believe, is, as per our understanding, not quite the way it works, as to arrive at this conclusion we need to presume that the legislature does intend a separation and an isolation of the bureaucracy from the networking that exists in any polity. As we have pointed out the rules and procedures and practiced norms themselves favour the use of political agents or financial inducements the legislation thereby originally envisaging and deliberately blurring the distinction between the person and his office and so also making the office a position for enhancing personal profit. Personal profit in turn can be used to acquire social and political legitimacy as demonstrated earlier.

Legislation is also sometimes sweeping and clearly not intended for implementation. The more stark instances are the earlier total ban on child labour, the criminalization of parents not sending children to school, no construction from 500 tide line.

As Shri Gauns sees it political interference or bureaucratic lethargy are complicated, expensive and time consuming in judicial procedures. We can also conclude that these procedures as not merely unfortunate and representative of archaic procedures or an insensitivity to the plight to the common man, but in fact advantageous to the role of political agents as embedded in the bureaucracy. Shri Gauns hints that the entire machinery is in collusion over this matter and he would include the judiciary here too.

Nelken makes a similar point when discussing the cause of sluggish court processes in Italy. This slowness he suggests is a form of punishment for not being in sufficiently good standing in wider social hierarchies or groupings to be able to use more privileged routes or alternatives to vindicate their claims. Thus while it may not be the reason, the consequence is definitely to reinforce social hierarchy.

At every level therefore, from the written rules and procedure to the highest appellate authority, the rules of the game are so framed that the role of agents seeking either social and political legitimacy or financial gain are made essential and central to the operation of the democratic state. The political agent therefore, remains embedded within the system.

This is not to suggest a stasis however; on the contrary, given that this arrangement is located with a system of competitive democratic politics, we are confronted with a scenario that is exceedingly dynamic and suited toward engineering change. Given that competing political parties must vie for their legitimacy from the electorate from the ward level to the national level, they are forced to make the State and its resources increasingly available or at the very least appear to be available to different social categories. Persuaded in this manner, the system then is therefore obliged to spread out and diffuse the benefits and if need be, also deprive groups that may not have adequate voice, or are popularly perceived as deserving of denial of the patronage of the State, till of course some other political party begins to remobilise the discontent that is inaugurated by such exclusions. The boundaries and tensions are therefore constantly being redrawn, in manner most often messy and sometimes violent, so that the number and the social categories of those who have access to the system is ever changing and indeed the social categories themselves get redefined. This makes the entire complex we are discussing a dynamic and fluid system.

What is the promise of democracy? If it be the promise of equality of opportunity, of greater access to the State and its accountability to the citizen, then we argue that the very embeddedness of social networks and politicians into the bureaucratic procedure of the file is guaranteeing a widening access of the State to the citizenry, thereby only through the very perversion of the conventional norm itself, enhancing democracy in the polity.

It might well be possible therefore to make a distinction between the ‘procedures’ of democracy and the ‘process’ of democracy. Our ethnography therefore throws up the hypothesis that we must examine democracy as a living ‘process’ as opposed to a set of rigid procedural principles. The elaboration of this distinction must be a combined effort of ethnography and political theory which lies beyond the scope of this short work.

This sort of system, defined as one that allows for corruption and a lack of accountability has been termed as Rule by Law, a circumstance where the system of laws connives to support the power of the State and Government rather than prove to be a effective cap on its powers, in contrast to Rule of Law, the ideal scenario where the idea of law is such, that it is above all else, including the State, and is hence a restriction not just on personal liberties and freedoms, but also caps the State’s powers, keeping it and its officers in check. The distinction however fails to recognize that even where the Rule by Law is operative it is itself being constantly constrained by need for social and political legitimacy. As we pointed out above, that these pressures do not necessarily push it towards a Rule of Law situation, as it continues to ignore those with least voice, it should be realized that they do push the system to be more sensitive towards groups that are able to mobilize, voice an agenda and demand more attention and resources from the State.

How then do we understand the current global atmosphere, marked by the frequent demand for the adoption of among other things, classical values, procedures and norms of Bureaucracy into the developing world? The tone in addition to being insistent is marked by an evangelical character, sharing the idea of a single truth, which if realized can radically change the way the world works.

This argument needs serious consideration also because it draws its strength from the fact that it is shared by International agencies as well as the vocal middle classes such as Shri Gauns who are incidentally as we have shown also beneficiaries of the current bureaucratic system. We contend that the two arguments of the pantheon of global economic order and popular belief are not just phonetically similar, but are in fact locked within a relationship whereby they feed off each other and support the other in a cyclical manner.

We believe that these arguments have their origin at the time of the decolonisation and the creation of new nation states in Africa and Asia. Conceived of and perceiving themselves as lacking efficient modern governance institutions, they begin from the moment of their inception in a race in which they are forever relegated to the position of second best.

It was at around the same historical period that the Law and Development movement emerged that encouraged the imitation of the institutions of the democratic west and promoted aid as a method of achieving this goal. What the system of aid did was to ‘magnify’, or more properly construct the divergence between norm and reality. A new norm was constructed that not only displaced, but discredited the functioning norm of society and rationalised and legitimised the penetration of global aid.

This discourse is increasingly appropriated and echoed by the existing and the growing middle classes of these developing polities, who in addition to the deficient self image that they inherit, are also increasingly exposed to the ‘realities’ of the developed world.

This ‘popular’ discontent is in its own turn utilised to the advantage of the aid institutions and the middle class powered State governments to push forward the agendas of transplantation and imitation, by now convinced of the impossibility that the local experience of the law, democracy and its working can be anything but second rate and imperfect, suitable only for displacement.

The argument for such adoption is buttressed on the grounds that the procedures described in the ethnography above, in fact subvert State policy and thereby compromise democracy. Consequently if proper procedures were adopted then both democracy and development would be strengthened.

First, it needs to be pointed out that in the west it was efforts of the State, responding to the calls of the citizenry, in reigning in the excesses of free enterprise; thereby legitimatizing the State both socially and politically, while at the same time contributing to the efficiency of free enterprise, that led to introduction of norms that have made matters more norm driven and impersonal for the common man but at the same time allows graft, etc. at the higher levels.

By a perverse reverse logic it is now assumed that if these norms are imposed top down (transplanted) in developing countries then development will follow. This argument bears a familial resemblance to that which suggests that if we change the values that govern society then development would necessarily follow, not recognising that existing value system in the West is also consequential to its particular mode of economic development and even if there were economic development elsewhere the values to emerge might well be different.

We have in this discussion, and through focusing on the significant issues thrown up by the case studied, tried to show how in fact the reverse of the conventional wisdom about the role of bureaucratic norms may be true. These aberrations from the classical norm in fact just as much as the classical norms and the contents of the reform packages submitted to the developing world, force State policy and process to act in directions that allow accessibility and sensitivity to groups hitherto excluded – even while they may continue to remain immune to those who cannot raise voice.

We believe that the history of the demand for the reform packages must be understood in terms of the discourse that allows the developing country to remain always deficient.

The process of realization of the norms and flexibility apparently characteristic of the so called more efficient and organic systems must also be seen in the light of their consequences that often translates into loosing of lower level staff and the reposition of greater amount of responsibility and discretion in the hands of superior authorities, as displayed in the Government loan scheme.

This does not necessarily lead to a displacement of lower level staff, though this can and has on a great number of occasions led to the ‘voluntary’ retirement of a great number of lower level bureaucracy. Where these staff is retained, there is an increasing push to make them contracted employees rather than enjoying security of tenure as was normally the case. While this may possibly lead to a more efficient work culture, what is often overlooked is the fact that this is accompanied by a deprivation of due process to these lower level staff. While there are a number of instances of generous golden handshakes, we doubt that this is always the case, suspecting that the lay offs impact adversely especially those who are at the bottom of the scale.

This denial of due process to lower rung bureaucratic staff is at the same time accompanied by a scenario that allows the higher cadre existing if not greater liberties within the system, very often liberties for discretion that can be utilized for realizing financial and other gain.

This however, translates into more than just the loss of employment and due process to lower level bureaucratic staff. It is the lower level staff that is able to provide access to the State for lower segments of society or smaller cases. The decimation or the curtailing of their (lower level) powers leads also to the denial of access to these segments of society.

Given this scenario, what these plans therefore translate to is a clamp on the processes that allow for social mobility for those with less access while bringing even greater efficiency and flexibility to small sections that have access. Given the admitted nexus between living standards, social mobility and the greater success of the democratic state, how far is this process of transplanting procedures and systems really moving towards success?

However, hopefully where such norms are adopted the resilient dynamics of these target societies will be strong enough to subvert such consequences.


References

1.	Burns and Stalker, 1966: The Management of Innovation, London: Tavistok.
2.	Carothers, Thomas 1998. ‘The Rule of Law Revival’, Foreign Affairs, Vol. 77, No. 2.
3.	Nelken, D: 2001. ‘Law in Action or living Law? Back to the Beginning in Sociology of Law’ in R. Cotterrell (ed), Sociological Perspectives on Law, Vol. 1, Dartmouth: Aldershot, pp. 157- 214
4.	Nelken, D. 2004: ‘Using the Concept of Legal Culture’, Australian Journal of Legal Philosophy. (Forthcoming)
5.	Souza Santos, Boaventura de 1995. Towards a New Common Sense – Law, Science and Politics in the Paradigmatic Transition, London: Routledge.

Acknowledgements

Jason Keith Fernandes contributed to the writing of this piece and equally importantly in his familiarity with recent work on the Sociology of Law was significant in shaping the contours of the argument in the discussion section. Sammit Khandeparkar and Ratisha Fernandes went through prospective files and interviewed applicants. I am also grateful to applicants and party workers and officials in the bureaucracy who generously made time and showed concern for this work.

APPENDIX

Case Study 1

An interview on the Movement of a File for the request of Permission from concerned authorities for repair and extension of a structure.

Location: Xandolim in Goa. Xandolim is one of what may be called the ‘tourist villages’ of Goa. It has a much tourist infrastructure.

The researcher and an assistant visited Shri Ramchandra Gauns in his village house where he was proposing to construct a small additional house. Shri Gauns is about 40 years old, a high school teacher by profession. Having availed of the scheme of voluntary retirement, he now attends to his small property and rents two small houses. He has some experience in getting licenses for construction in his property as he has earlier built a wall and extended his own residential house.

While transcribing the interview all additions are shown in parenthesis either because they are not clear on the recording or because they were mentioned after the recording was complete. (… signifies a time lag or inaudible recording). The text has been left in its original oral style. Paragraphs have been inserted to facilitate the reader. Questions have been asked by the researcher.

Shri Gauns: So now what I was saying about this house - a structure - there was a storehouse; there was an existing house which was used to store coconuts. It also had the panchayat number, registration number, house number. So what I wanted to do was build and convert that into a dwelling unit. Now the area of that I think was 25 sq. meters & it is reflected on survey plan now I wanted to increase 25 sq. m. more & make it 50 sq. m. For that I had to ask for the what you call repair, alteration and addition to the existing structure…not repair, but alteration and addition to existing structure. Now if you totally build a new house then rules are totally different when there was no house. But this is existing which is there on survey plan.